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Home > Ask the Scholar > Family > Is It Permissible to Marry Between the Two Eids?
Is It Permissible to Marry Between the Two Eids?
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu waRahmatullahi wa Barakatuh. In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. In this fatwa: There is nothing wrong with concluding marriage between the two Eids. Answering your question, the General Iftaa' Department in Jordan, states the following: Getting married after Eid Al-Fitr is lawful and recommended during Shawwal. The reprehensibility of concluding the marriage contract or consummating the marriage between the two Eids has no foundation in Islamic Shari`ah, as this is one of the beliefs of the Jahiliyyah (the days and traditions of…
As-Salamu alaykum. What is the ruling on marriage between the two `Eids?
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There is nothing wrong with concluding marriage between the two Eids.
Answering your question, the General Iftaa’ Department in Jordan, states the following:
Getting married after Eid Al-Fitr is lawful and recommended during Shawwal. The reprehensibility of concluding the marriage contract or consummating the marriage between the two Eids has no foundation in Islamic Shari`ah, as this is one of the beliefs of the Jahiliyyah (the days and traditions of ignorance).
Rather, some Muslim scholars recommend people to get married during the month of Shawwal i.e. between the two Eids.
This is based on the hadith in which Urwah (may Allah have mercy on his soul) reported that Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her) said, “The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), married me in Shawwal and consummated the marriage with me in Shawwal, and which of his wives was more favorable to him than me?”
He added, “‘Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her) used to recommend her female relatives to conclude their marriage during this month.” (Muslim)
An-Nawawi (may Allah have mercy on his soul) said in his commentary on the hadith of Aishah:
“It indicates that it is recommended to conclude the marriage contract and to consummate the marriage in Shawwal. Fellow scholars say that this recommendation is based on this hadith by which Aishah wanted to refute the ignorant belief of Jahiliyyah, and what some of the common folk still believe today – that it is reprehensible to conclude the marriage contract or to consummate the marriage in Shawwal. This is false and baseless. It is one of the remnants of the Jahiliyyah, when they used to be superstitious about that because of the connotations of the name of Shawwal which related to the drying up of the camel’s milk and the lifting of its tail.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.
marriageMarriage in Islam`Eid al-Adhaeid al-fitrshawwalEidsIs Marriage Between the Two Eids Permissible?marriage in shawwal
About General Iftaa' Department in Jordan
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Home > Muslim News > N. America > Miss Muslimah 2019: Showing Unique Side of Muslim Women Beauty
Miss Muslimah 2019: Showing Unique Side of Muslim Women Beauty
With the 2019 Miss Muslimah USA pageant set to take place in July, the event's organizers hope to celebrate Muslim women's inner beauty while maintaining religious beliefs. “I wanted to change the stigma that surrounds Muslim women and the stereotype views that has been placed upon us,” Maghrib A. Shahid, the founder of Miss Muslimah USA, told AboutIslam.net. “One is that we are oppressed! The second is that Muslims are violent people and we are very aggressive people 9-10 this is not true. The majority of Muslim women chose the wear the hijab/head covering freely and represent their religion proudly. Miss Muslimah Pageant…
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Canadian City Plans Privacy Swims for Muslim Women
With the 2019 Miss Muslimah USA pageant set to take place in July, the event’s organizers hope to celebrate Muslim women’s inner beauty while maintaining religious beliefs.
“I wanted to change the stigma that surrounds Muslim women and the stereotype views that has been placed upon us,” Maghrib A. Shahid, the founder of Miss Muslimah USA, told AboutIslam.net.
“One is that we are oppressed! The second is that Muslims are violent people and we are very aggressive people 9-10 this is not true. The majority of Muslim women chose the wear the hijab/head covering freely and represent their religion proudly.
Miss Muslimah Pageant USA was founded in 2016 and crowned its first pageant winner in 2017. The 2018 pageant’s winner is Ifrah Hashi from Minnesota, who earned a $1,000 prize.
Dr. Khadijah Ismail, who resides in Newark, New Jersey, was the winner of Miss Muslimah USA, 2017 the first Miss Muslimah pageant.
Preparing for the third event next July 18 in Dearborn, Michigan, the “Islamic” beauty pageant was a long-time dream for Shahid.
“I felt that this platform was very much needed! There is no other organization or platform that displays or acknowledges the accomplishments and achievements as well as the talents of Muslim women,” she said.
Focusing on inner beauty, she hopes to support women who choose to wear hijab with a style.
“Our main goal is to promote modesty. We want to show that modesty is something that is still beautiful in America,” Shahid said.
“We need Miss Muslimah USA, we need Muslimah women representing for each other We need to change the narrative and show that Muslim women too can be Miss Muslimah USA, and wear the crown proudly while still representing their country.”
According to Shahid, contestants are judged according to their character and the way they interact with their colleagues, how modest is their attire as well as unique, their Qur’an recitation, and finally a 5-minute speech that sums up the majority of these points.
Maghrib A. Shahid, the founder of Miss Muslimah USA
Answering a question on the usual criticism they face with many seeing beauty pageants as rendering women to beauty objects, Shahid said, “Miss Muslimah USA has faced a lot of criticism and mainly from the Muslim community; some Muslims feel that we are imitating the non-Muslims and that a pageant puts the Muslim women’s body on display for entertainment.”
“Iʼve heard people say even though your mission is to promote modesty and inner beauty, it’s still a “beauty pageant”. This can’t be further from the truth.
“Miss Muslimah USA is an organization that represents Muslim women. It gives Muslim women a chance to openly change the misconceptions about them. It gives Muslim women a platform which is an opportunity to compete in a pageant, something that has not been afforded to them before now.”
Despite criticism, Miss Muslimah has grown significantly since it was first launched in 2016.
“Miss Muslimah USA has grown a lot. We have more Muslimahs reaching out, showing interest and signing up to compete this year and wanting to attend, or just be a part of the event,” Shahid said.
“I think after the first year, people still did not understand what Miss Muslimah USA was all about. But in the year 2018, a lot of Muslims women attended the event and got to see the event take place firsthand.”
Shahid believes that the event would be the “Islamic” solution to the problems many young Muslim women face, as they are usually affected by the glamour of similar national and international events.
“I honestly whole hearty believe that Miss Muslimah USA provides an Islamic alternative to Muslim girls who are interested in competing in traditional pageants and modeling for Modeling agencies. Why? Because we offer an Islamic and modest alternative,” she said.
“We allow Muslim women to compete without sacrificing their religious beliefs.”
Beauty Pageants in Islam
Islam is the religion of morals; as it protects woman’s honor and dignity, it also raises her status and preserves her chastity.
On the issue of beauty and pageantry, Islam intends to safeguard Muslim women from all attempts to render them into mere beauty objects.
According to Muslim scholars, the Islamic Shari`ah obligates covering the `awrah and protecting honors.
What’s common in non-faith-based Miss World contests is that the contestants are required to display their God-given architecture for the whole world to review and this is absolutely haram.
That’s why Muslim scholars state that Muslims are not allowed to organize or participate in these contests.
hijabMuslim womenBeauty pageant in IslamBeauty pageantMiss MuslimahMiss Muslimah USA
About Susan Yasin
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ADRA’s “A Closer Walk” to Premiere on Hope Channel January 23 at 7 p.m. EST/ January 24 at 1 a.m. CET
In July 2014, the ADRA International Film Team visited us to film our project activities. We are very excited about the outcome!
Watch with us on Saturday, 24. January 2015, 01:00h on Hope Channel! Click here: A Closer Walk
The immersive, nine-part documentary series takes viewers to the most remote places in the world to see how humanitarian aid really works and how change unfolds from impossible circumstances.
“We hope our supporters will take “A Closer Walk” with us on Fridays this season,” said Jonathan Duffy, ADRA International president. “Our work at ADRA is greatly inspired by Matthew 25, and we are excited to pull back the curtain on what humanitarian work looks like and how, through our friends, ADRA is taking God’s love to the world in need.”
The series features the everyday heroes who are transforming the communities where they live. Follow in the footsteps of aid workers in the rainforests of Vanuatu, the refugee camps of Uganda, and with the children of the ex-Soviet Bloc. Each episode shows humanitarian work at the human level, where the need is met with love.
Episode 1: The Roma (Albania)
For centuries the Roma have suffered discrimination, inequality, and abject poverty. Derogatively labeled “gypsies,” these people struggle for survival every day on the streets of Albania, with few allies and even fewer resources. Local ADRA workers Rezi and Kristi take us on a Roma experience to a dilapidated hospital, a house crowded to capacity by extended family, and a rare outing to the seaside, to show us the humanity behind the negative stereotypes.
Watch with us on Thursday, 24. January 2015, 01:00h on Hope Channel! Click here: A Closer Walk
Albanian School Doors Stay Closed to Disabled Children Unpacking Love!
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Petition to Recall Senators Who Voted for NDAA in the Works in Montana
December 26, 2011 in Indefinite Detention, Jon Tester, Max Baucus, U.S. Constitution
By JC
Update #2 (this is an update from the original Kos post linked to below):
This is from a statement from Stewart Rhodes of Oathkeepers regarding Republican Denny Rehberg as a target of recall, who also voted for NDAA.
Here in Montana, while we will go after all three violators of the Bill of Rights, I will place special emphasis and “focus of effort” on Denny Rehberg, since he is so fond of wrapping himself in the flag and claiming to be defending the Constitution while his votes do the exact opposite. In that sense, Rehberg is much like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, two Republicans who, right along with Carl Levin and Joseph Lieberman, are leading a sustained and relentless assault on our Bill of Rights.
Do people really believe it is appropriate for our Senators (or Rep) in Montana to cast votes that take away constitutional rights?
Well, many in Montana and across the country don’t believe so. Jonathan Turley, at the TurleyBlog — the foremost legal blog commenting on civil rights in the country — makes a fine example of what many Montanans are doing in response to Max and Jon’s (and should be doing to Denny, too) ill-advised votes for indefinite detention of american citizens:
…Now Montana citizens have decided to try another approach given the non-responsive attitude of our leaders — they are moving to remove their two Senators from office over their votes in favor of indefinite detention powers.
Montana is one of nine states with recall laws. The other states are Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Eighteen states have recall laws, but most do not apply to federal officers.
Montana Code 2-16-603, on the grounds of physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of certain felony offenses. [sic]
Presumably, they are arguing that voting for an unconstitutional measure that allows for indefinite detention of citizens constitutes both a violation of the oath of office and incompetence. Usually official misconduct does not include policy differences, though voting for potentially authoritarian powers would not be viewed as good conduct in a free nation.
The move by the Montana votes shows something that I found in doing speeches around the country: there is no difference in red and blue states in citizens (1) fed up with our current two-party monopoly and dysfunctional politics and (2) opposed to the loss of civil liberties in this country.
It seems that occasional 4&20 commenter William Crane and others are behind this effort:
Montana law requires grounds for recall to be stated which show conformity to the allowed grounds for recall. The draft language of the Montana petitions, “reason for recall” reads:
“The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all U.S citizens:
“a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed…”
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA 2011) permanently abolishes the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, “for the duration of hostilities” in the War on Terror, which was defined by President George W. Bush as “task which does not end” to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001.
Those who voted Aye on December 15th, 2011, Bill of Rights Day, for NDAA 2011 have attempted to grant powers which cannot be granted, which violate both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
The Montana Recall Act stipulates that officials including US senators can only be recalled for physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of the oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of a felony offense. We the undersigned call for a recall election to be held for Senator Max S. Baucus [and Senator Jonathan Tester] and charge that he has violated his oath of office, to protect and defend the United States Constitution.”
…Montana would be the first recall drive to be launched as a result of the vote for the NDAA military detentions provisions.
Ah, it’s a fine day when the “principled left” believes that a dialog about the electeds stripping Constitutional rights from citizens needs to take center stage! As to Turley’s point above about the “two-party monopoly”, Denny should be taking his licks for his vote, also.
Update with thought exercise: What will the election for Senator look like if both candidates have active petition recalls against them? And what might happen if the petitions actually lead to a vote before the general election next year? And who might the fill in candidates be if both recalls succeeded? Who might replace Max?
Jay Stevens
Until Rehberg is included, I call bullsh*t on this.
Then let’s pressure the folks who are working on the petitions to include him.
hey Jay, I like this part of your “about” page:
Ultimately what got me interested and active in blogging and politics was the violations against the Constitution by the Bush administration and its allies.
Which explains why I’ve been pretty pissed off at the Obama administration about their continuing the Bush anti-terror policies.
http://www.eriereader.com/topics/politics/street-corner-soapbox-kill-list
Jay, I won’t go so far as the Republicans who say that now that Obama has adopted them, they are fully now the “Obama anti-terror policies” but as a tea partier who is critical of both sides, I ask, can’t we now fairly call them the “Bush-Obama anti-terror policies”? After all, you’re continuing to deflect blame and failing to really give Obama his due ownership as long as you call them the Bush policies and imply that Obama doesn’t get a full share of responsibility because he is ONLY continuing them. I’m happy to give them equal blame at this point, aren’t you?
I agree! Temporarily in New Mexico. Hoping to know when the petitions are out so I can sign them. Better this, than what’s coming next!
The oathkeepers appear to be going after Rehberg:
Daily Kos UPDATE 12/26/2011:
This is fine political theater. It will attract attention, enrage Democrats, and not go anywhere. I’m voting for Tester, warts and all.
is there anything Tester could do to lose your support James? do you see this continued assault on the constitution as mere “warts”? what recourse do us lowly citizens have when our constitutional protections are being eroded by BOTH parties?
With whom would you replace Tester? Are you willing to improve Rehberg’s odds of winning (and if so, why on earth why)?
Denise Juneau. now I answered your question, James, do you have any answers to mine?
You answered the first question, but not the second.
I employed “warts” in a figurative sense, but not to minimize Tester’s shortcomings. I’m as outraged as anyone over the detention provisions in the defense bill.
I consider Tester a conservative Democrat, especially on economic issues. I don’t know whether I would prefer him to Juneau. Realistically, he’s not going to be recalled, and I rather doubt that Juneau will challenge him in the primary.
For me, the choice is not between Tester and the perfect Democrat (a null class), but between Tester and Rehberg. As an incumbent senator, I think he has the best chance of any Democrat to beat Rehberg — and there’s far more than a dime’s worth of difference between them. If Republicans capture the senate next year, they’ll wreak enormous damage to civil liberties.
That’s why, although I disagree with Tester on some things, I’ll put a clothespin in my pocket before leaving for the poll, and vote for him on election day.
sure, maybe a quarter’s worth.
and yes, I am willing.
I’d be very happy to send Denise a few bucks if she ran for the House seat.
Is Juneau running???
Yes. For Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Jaden Morgan
awesome! it is time we hold our politicians accountable. I wish California had the right to kick out our crooks at the highest level that are not representing our rights
California kicked out a labor-backed candidate for a corporation-backed candidate just eight years ago. Do you have a short-term memory problem?
You have that theoretical opportunity. Thanks to the Supreme Court, fat chance you’ll be able to exercise it. They have let corporations buy whatever politicians they want. The crooks would be hardest to recall and for-profit prison corporations had a lot to do with putting Schwartzenegger into office.
actually, I was deployed to Iraq 8 years ago. I understand that you are mad but dont take it out on me. slinging mud at someone that can stand with you only keeps you down in a quagmire
In the Senate, six “D”s and six “R”s voted against the measure, as passed by the conference committee, Lieberman and Sanders splitting the “I” vote.
In the House, the vote was 190 Republicans for, 43 against, 93 Democrats for, 93 against. So 82% of “R”s voted for, 18% against, 50% of “D”s for and against. (6 “D”s and 8 “R”s didn’t vote.)
Passing a resolution to go after two Democrats without going after Denny, who wants Jon’s seat, will likely wind up ousting Tester and electing Rehberg. Even unsuccessfully going after Tester could probably cause Rehberg to beat Jon next year. Going after all three will have the same effect.
What this means is that it could help get the “D”s out of the Senate majority and we could see “R”s controlling both houses. If you think about all the bad legislation those 53 votes have stopped, and you still work or vote to recall Tester, you need to get a clue.
I’ve been around a lot of elections and have volunteered on them virtually every two years since 1966.
This petition has to be one of the dumbest moves that could be embraced by a progressive since 50,000 Florida Greens, left wing Democrats and Independents supported Nader in 2000.
You’re upset about “Corporations are People?” Think where that ruling came from.
In cruder terms, the petition rates a “shit for brains” appraisal.
what would you rate voting for indefinite detention of anyone, anywhere?
It’s terrible.
Could Baucus or Tester have stopped it? The vote was 85-14 (Moran, R-KS not voting).
Do you want someone who votes with you 95% of the time, or 5% of the time?
Wait. Think about this one.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
Rehberg or Tester.
Tell me when you’ve decided.
I’m not making my decision until next November. I’ve maintained up to this point that I’m voting for Tester because Rehberg is atrocious. legislation like this, and Tester’s support, is forcing me to reassess how despicably complicit our Democrat senators have become.
I wonder if Jon has even tried explaining himself on this one. pretty soon it’s not just going to be us crazy extremists tiring of Jon’s political decisions.
While with a couple of union friends in another state, I was approached by a “D” Senator in October at a Democratic party meeting. He told us, “I was your candidate for governor, last year.”
I said, “I know.” “I supported you and gave you contributions until you cast the deciding vote to keep the death penalty.”
He said, “Well, it’s not like we are in Texas,” (where your counsel has to be drunk AND sleeping for you to get convicted of Murder I, and have it possibly overturned on appeal).
So he said, “Did you vote for (the Republican)?” (Who won.)
I said, “If I was driving him in my car I’d drive off a cliff.”
I don’t think the death penalty and our constitutional protections are comparable, because without crucial mechanisms like due process, the whole American experiment could die a nasty, fascist death.
One of Justice Stevens’ great regrets was that he did not vote to find the DP to be per se “cruel and unusual.”
no due process, no appeal process, no hope. the death penalty is bad. the death of the constitution is worse.
Ingemar Johansson
Gotta get me some butter and salt.
glad to see you survived Christmas Ingy. if you value being left alone, like you were whining about in that other thread, you might want to be a bit concerned Rehberg is going along with all this.
If you commit “acts of treason” you deserve repercussions.
U.S. Constitution Article 3 Section 3
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
U.S. Constitution Amendment 14
5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 349 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1481)
(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality—
(7) committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.
Ok, that being said, if you are no longer a U.S. citizen, then you don’t have the right guaranteed to the CITIZENS of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA by the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Does anybody argue this point?
Absolutely disagree. The constitution does not apply just to american citizens. The constitution applies to all individuals within the united states boundaries, depending on the provision. And you forget to mention that conviction on article 3 sec 3 is preceded by a lengthy process that is full of constitutional protections. Or at least used to be protected… a bit less so, these days.
Do you think that all constitutional provisions should be equally applied? Or do some like the one you quoted above carry more weight for some reason to you than the protections against say, warrantless searches or indefinite detention?
Are you a selective constitutionalist, above and beyond thinking that the constitution is only reserved for citizens? And speaking of citizens, do you think corporations deserve citizenship in order to exert their first amendment rights granted to them by the SCOTUS?
Not up to us, is it?
All in all tho, I think you’ve won as many as us when it comes to the Supremes.
And that corporation decision…think of stockholders as union business owners.
JC wrote: What will the election for Senator look like if both candidates have active petition recalls against them? And what might happen if the petitions actually lead to a vote before the general election next year? And who might the fill in candidates be if both recalls succeeded? Who might replace Max?
Neither will be recalled. Baucus won’t have to run. Tester will lose. Rehberg will win.
Because those who support Rehberg are okay with his vote. Those who don’t support Tester’s vote for the NDAA won’t vote at all. Rehberg will win.
It’s telling that Rehberg isn’t a subject of recall, though. This is clearly an effort to give corporations even more power.
Think about this a little more. Right now there’s a good chance no Democrat, even a centrist, could get appointed to the Supreme Court, if one of those five bastards, or one of the other four, died tomorrow. The Tea Party morons would keep the seat empty hoping their last man standing would fill it in 2013.
so why did Tester vote for this fascist bill in the first place if the political price is potentially so steep?
My guess is that it was a calculation.
How many votes would he lose in a heads up with Rehberg, by voting for it?
Few, he’d figure.
How many more votes would he win if he voted against it?
Few, he’d know, but he’d lose a lot more, especially to centerists and independents.
Let’s roll back the clock nine years and two months.
Bush, less than a month before the 2002 election, successfully promoted the “You’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.”
The vote to authorize carte blanche for Bush to invade Iraq came to the Senate floor.
Despite eloquent opposition from the likes of Teddy Kennedy and most particularly and movingly and lengthily, Robert Byrd, the lemmings joined the rush off the cliff.
How many Republicans voted against it?
One. (And he lost his next general election after a stiff and odious primary challenge.)
How many Democrats facing a reelection challenge dared to vote against it?
Right. Same answer. One. (And he died a week or so later.)
They calculated. They didn’t have the votes to stop it. Not a prayer. They didn’t want to walk off and leave the seat in worse hands than they would have otherwise. Some didn’t want to have to go job hunting, though they would have gotten a lot better pay anywhere.
I’m guessing at all this. Maybe someday someone who was there will write their memoirs.
Wonks should take a better look at the Senate vote. There was one state, Oregon, where both voted against the NDAA.
However, there were thirteen states where both members voted for the Udall amdendment to take the detention provision out of the bill. All had Democratic delegations. Both Tester and Baucus voted for that, along with 32 other Democrats. (Both Alaskans, “R” and “D” skipped the vote.
I wouldn’t be in such a rush to carry those petititons.
Maybe someone will post these sorts of thoughts at Daily Kos.
I should correct myself.
Two Republicans voted for the Udall amendment. Rand Paul and Mark Kirk from Illinois. So the IL delegation was bipartisan for the amendment.
well, he’s losing my vote over this, and I can’t imagine who he thinks he’s picking up to replace my vote because of his calculated support for this despicable bill. I can’t hold my nose and vote for someone who doesn’t seem to care that the casualty of his reelection efforts is our constitutionally protected rights.
“Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.”
could someone please explain to me the strategy for Tester behind this vote? how does it help him win reelection?
it seems like Tester is stuck in a microcosm of Obama’s problem: by trying to out-Republican Republicans on issues of national defense, it seems they’re chasing votes in the middle and center-right, while simultaneously giving some segments of the Dem base plenty of evidence that their previous support is not just being taken for granted, but actually being treated as a hostile fringe not even worthy of being taken seriously.
because what are you going to do, assholes, vote for Rehberg?
if that’s the strategy, it’s pretty goddamn stupid if you ask me.
I’ve updated my post above to include the following updated info from the recallers:
Seems like the initial flurry of agitation over the limiting of the recall to senators has prodded the Oathkeepers into focusing on Rehberg. The plot thickens (or is it “congeals”?).
I hope I don’t need to repeat my opinion that this won’t hurt Rehberg with those who already favor him, but it would hurt Tester who those who hold him in favor.
Lieberman, of course, is not a Democrat.
When Gore announced him as his pick on TV back in 2000, I hollered, so loudly that I startled my wife, “It will be a cold day in hell before I vote for THAT son of a bitch.” Good thing I didn’t have a shoe handy to throw at the set.
Levin surprised me on this one, early on. I expect he sold out for defense contractors.
why should Levin care? if MI dems are like MT dems, then more resources and energy will be expended defending him instead of allowing bottom-up energy the opportunity to rise and challenge him.
Meet The Oath Keepers
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on February 22, 2010 – 10:32am
Justine Sharrock has a long article on The Oath Keepers in the latest issue of Mother Jones that notes the organization’s ties to Tea Party and 9/12 activists and, by extension, figures like Ralph Reed, groups like the Eagle Forum, and members of Congress:
Founded last April by Yale-educated lawyer and ex-Ron Paul aide Stewart Rhodes, the group has established itself as a hub in the sprawling anti-Obama movement that includes Tea Partiers, Birthers, and 912ers. Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Pat Buchanan have all sung its praises, and in December, a grassroots summit it helped organize drew such prominent guests as representatives Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun, both Georgia Republicans.
There are scores of patriot groups, but what makes Oath Keepers unique is that its core membership consists of men and women in uniform, including soldiers, police, and veterans. At regular ceremonies in every state, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution—but then they go a step further, vowing to disobey “unconstitutional” orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government.
It was while volunteering for Ron Paul’s doomed presidential bid that Rhodes decided to abandon electoral politics in favor of grassroots organizing. As an undergrad, he had been fascinated by the notion that if German soldiers and police had refused to follow orders, Hitler could have been stopped. Then, in early 2008, SWAT received a letter from a retired colonel declaring that “the Constitution and our Bill of Rights are gravely endangered” and that service members, veterans, and police “is where they will be saved, if they are to be saved at all!”
Rhodes responded with a breathless column starring a despotic president, “Hitlery” Clinton, in her “Chairman Mao signature pantsuit.” Would readers, he asked, obey orders from this “dominatrix-in-chief” to hold militia members as enemy combatants, disarm citizens, and shoot all resisters? If “a police state comes to America, it will ultimately be by your hands,” he warned. You had better “resolve to not let it happen on your watch.” He set up an Oath Keepers blog, asking soldiers and veterans to post testimonials. Word spread. Military officers offered assistance. A Marine Corps veteran invited Rhodes to speak at a local Tea Party event. Paul campaigners provided strategic advice. And by the time Rhodes arrived in Lexington to speak at a rally staged by a pro-militia group, a movement was afoot.
Rhodes has become a darling of right-wing pundits. In a column last October, Pat Buchanan predicted that “Brother Rhodes is headed for cable stardom.” Glenn Beck has cited the group as a “phenomenal” example of the “patriot revival movement,” while Lou Dobbs declared that its platform “should give solace and comfort to the left in this country.” Conspiracy-radio king Alex Jones even put an Oath Keepers segment, including footage of the Lexington speech, on his hit DVD Fall of the Republic. “I can’t stress enough how much your organization is scaring the globalists,” he told Rhodes on his show.
On the conference’s final day, National 912 Project chairman Patrick Jenkins stepped up to talk about the National Liberty Unity Summits his group was organizing in cooperation with Oath Keepers. They would provide a chance, he said, for patriots to forge a common agenda and a plan to carry it out. At the first summit, in December, attendees included representatives of groups from FairTax Nation to the Constitution Party to Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. On hand were Ralph Reed Jr. (former director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition and recent founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition), Larry Pratt (head of Gun Owners of America), and Tim Cox (founder of Get Out of Our House, an organization praised on Fox News for its goal of replacing business-as-usual incumbents with “ordinary folks”). Most notable were representatives Broun and Gingrey, who according to summit organizer Nighta Davis have expressed willingness to introduce legislation crafted by summit attendees. (So, Davis says, have Steve King [R-Iowa] and Michele Bachmann [R-Minn.]. None of the representatives agreed to comment for this story.)
I sure don’t trust anything the Oathkeepers say or do. Does someone expect lefties to jump on their sick bandwagon?
I’m not sure I’m remembering this right, but didn’t Obama promise last week to have a “signing ceremony” pledging his unwillingness to enforce the most unconstitutional part of this act?
Bush did this all the time. Why not Obama? Then the act or bill or whatever it is can be changed later.
Well, a few lefties already have jumped on the bandwagon, as i pointed out that William Crane was one of those leading the way. In any case, I rightly or wrongly brought the issue forward as I always like a good debate on the policy of horrendous issues like indefinite detention.
But as to signing statements, they aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Many of the pooh-poohers about the bill’s effect say that all it does is codify behavior that the administration and military are already conducting. SO what
s a signing statement going to do? Say they don’t agree with provisions in the NDAA that they already are implementing?
And what about the next administration? Will they honor the signing statement? Does Obama honor Bush’s? Has he unwritten some of them with new statements?
When does the gradual erosion of civil liberties end? When do we get to talk about the cumulative effect of the attack on our constitution? When does it become too late to begin to recover our lost liberties? When does the opportunity for a peaceful revolution end, and the only way out of fascism is through violence?
The sections of the NDAA that seem to deny constitutional rights to people are certainly troubling. But Obama couldn’t have done anything about these sections without vetoing the entire bill. He doesn’t have line-item veto powers, so he couldn’t get rid of the “indefinite detention” part (inserted by Republicans) without getting rid of the whole act.
I’m not a big fan of the military, but for President Obama to abruptly defund the Pentagon by vetoing the NDAA would be economically devastating for the country – and politically fatal for him and the Democrats. Defense contracts would have to be cancelled and thousands of workers at companies like Boeing and General Dynamics would be thrown out of work. The country would plunge into depression. President Romney and Senator Rehberg would waltz into office and immediately begin to make good on their promises to return the country to the early twentieth century.
This won’t bring much comfort to some, but it appears that there are sections of the so-called “indefinite detention” part of the NDAA that contradict the most offensive language. This includes the last sentence of Section 1021: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”
I think, since Obama has expressed strong reservations about the section (despite the mitigating language cited above), he would quickly act in his second term, especially if he got a Democratic congress to work with, to remove the parts we all object to. Obama’s refusal to veto the entire NDAA to get rid of a small part of it is no indication that he would let the offensive, unconstitutional parts of it survive for long.
I think you’re being the eternal optimist here, Turner. I have no such delusions that the powers that be would ever let Obama–given any COngress (remember his promises about Guantanamo?) — start to roll back the military industrial complex. And our Constitution will continue to undergo assault until it is a worthless scrap of paper shoring up nothing more than corporate and military rights: fascism.
Turner, the Obama administration actually thinks it already had the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens. Basically with this bill Congress was covering its *ss.
So there’s no way Obama would write a signing statement opposing the measure.
Well, I hope in his second term when he doesn’t have to worry about offending blue dogs and rightists he can set his better self free. I still see him as an ethical pragmatist constrained by forces which will be less potent in his second term.
MontanaMaven
That’s called magical thinking. You “see him” a certain way. It’s a belief but it doesn’t jive with Obama’s actions. The way to a better place is through direct action as in the OWS movement not through this corrupt and totally broken electoral politics. That’s why citizens’ initiatives are a more direct way of dealing with this rush to keep an authoritarian state in place.
Don’t get your hopes up, for an improved second term.
He completely caved on the Bush millionaire fair share of taxes exemption two years ago this month, when he had the votes to let them die.
You don’t need hindsight to have seen that the health care “reform” (where I think Max had Dr. Margaret Flowers thrown out of the committee room, as a visible and
consequently unpleasant reminder of a single payer alternative) was foredoomed to failure.
You didn’t need to be Ms. Cleo to understand that the “R”s would have had to cave in early 2010 to extended unemployment, etc., or there would have mobs with torches and pitchforks outside the Rayburn/Cannon/Longworth House buildings.
In hindsight, I think I would have been better president than he is, and I’m ancient and only slightly more mobile than FDR. I didn’t go to Columbia or Harvard either. After all, I don’t have any bankster or Wall Street friends.
By far his finest attribute is that he’s not Romney, Paul, Santorum, Gingrich, etc., who are currently running at 25%, 22%, 16% and 14% respectively, in Iowa polls. The alternatives the “R”s can offer at this point is the best of a bad lot.
Even Paul is better than him on imperialistic wars, the incredibly porky military budget, the need for actual controls on the federal reserve, and an end to the wars on drugs as we know them.
You are an Obama tool. First of all he stated he would not sign this legislation and now your weak argument is trying to justify his signing it on New Years eve. Either you are naive to a fault or you are grossly ignorant of your constitution.
Your Constitution protects the country from treasonous acts which includes terrorism. This legislation with its vague and contradictory language affords the opportunity for the federal govt to arrest any US citizen and charge them with being an enemy of the state and be detained indefinitely. I guess you calculate since you support Obama you would be safe from being arrested. Well Good Luck with thAT because if you are arrested you won’t even get a phone call. Stop your sell out and look at the facts. It is your own future you are gambling with.
Careful with those “tool” condemnations.
85 Senators, with one abstaining (Moran, KS) voted to pass NDAA.
If Obama vetoed the bill, it wouldn’t matter, given that majority. They would need 17-18 Senators to change their votes to override.
What part of simple math is beyond you?
Sorry, that was unclear. They would need that many Senators changing their votes in order to fail to override the President’s veto. Two Republicans voted for the (Mark) Udall amendment.
William Crane, I hope, is not a harbinger of things to come.
No activist such as himself should be so deluded as to think an alliance with the Tea Party/Oathkeepers would be useful for any of his issues unless he’s a closet Nativist or Theocrat.
Let me once again state that the only reason they have promoted a recall is to damage Democratic candidates, who as we’ve already seen, will run like lemmings if they’re chased.
“R”s on the other hand, are the cliff over which the country is being driven.
Here’s a clue, for the clueless. The only reason that Rehberg was belatedly included in the recall banter was because they have a need to pretend that they are driven by rational issues, when such is clearly not the case. If no one had objected, they’ve be carrying signs for Denny and trolling sites such as these with his praises.
If they somehow seriously went after “R”s who had signed on to NDAA, they would use exlusively it to mount primary challenges to those who occasionally stray off the right-wing rez, congresspersons who increasingly are annually moving from the “threatened” to the “endangered” lists.
This interesting discussion seems to be circling customs and conventions which once defined our commonly-accepted morality in a society of free individuals. The problem is no such authority exists today.
The individual person described in our Constitution has no place left to exist. Wherever such individuals remain, they are targets of endless ridicule and scorn. Everyone else — victims and enforcers alike — has been re-engineered as cogs in the an authoritarian society, one which no longer has the capacity to exceed the sum of its parts. We have been conditioned to fear constantly, to react to extreme conclusions, and self-censor any action society might find objectionable. We are guilty every time we think creatively or imagine a more perfect Union.
Montana should seriously consider replacing all three congressional representatives.
The NDAA is a heinous bill, don’t get me wrong, but it should be noted that both Tester and Baucus voted for the Udall amendment that would have struck down the indefinite detention provision in the bill. Unfortunately, that amendment failed.
Seems like it is all Kabuki to me. Or too clever by half.
If it was simply Kabuki (or even The Theater of the Absurd), there would have been more than those two “R”s signing on.
Kirk only got elected thanks to Blago and the incredibly lame party in Illinois. Rand Paul actually believes in curtailing government power to spy on and coerce citizens, though he has more faults than his dad.
44 “R”s voted against Udall. Lisa M. didn’t vote. If the “D”s had a clue, they’d be trumpeting that from the housetops.
(If they had a clue, they’d be Bernie Sanders.)
I wish people would read the US constitution. If they did, they might realize that there is NO RECALL in the US constitution.
Yes, we can recall state offices. NO we can’t recall FEDERAL OFFICES, like members of the US House or the US Senate.
Please hear this: Unless we get a US Constitutional Amendment first, THERE IS NO PROVISION FOR RECALL IN THE US CONSTITUTION.
(Sorry for shouting, but people seem deaf to what the law is.)
Hey Steve. I don’t think most of us think that a recall would ever happen, and if by some fantastical chain of events it did, most certainly a legal challenge would tie it up in court for years.
But it allows us to start the debate over the whittling away of our constitutional rights. This is a topic that will not go away anytime soon.
Pete, please, the Udall vote was puppet theatre.
Replace does not necessarily mean RECALL. And if people can’t think, create and act without triggering elevated levels of rational and/or irrational fear, what earthly good is the United States Constitution?
Ppgie
Can you make a handy list of votes that matter and those that don’t? The rest of us lack your insight as to which votes pass muster.
Tester (and Baucus) voted to strip the language from the bill. That was the right thing to do. While they could have offered a quixotic fight against the broader Defense authorization, it would have been politically foolish and practically pointless.
That some of the left are supposed to Tester and Baucus that they’re proposing working with a hate group like the Oath Keepers is simply astonishing.
My brother is an Oathkeeper and he’s dangerously nuts.
He’ll find a LOT of company there.
However I prefer the term, “Boneheaded.”
I’m not astonished, however. I’ve been involved in progressive politics for over 50 years and I’m not easily surprised.
I’ve seen too many well meaning “Cranes,” for decades.
I’m actually more surprised when people do the right thing, regardless of the consequences.
We lost Russ Feingold last year because he consistently did so.
Good question. What earthly good is the US Constitution? I have ordered Gerald Fresia’s “Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions”. Here is what a reviewer says about it:
He lays out how the Constitutional Convention was actually a secret meeting of rich property owners and merchants who saw that their business interests (greater economic development, expanded trade and accumulated personal wealth) threatened by smaller landholders who had seized control of the legislatures of 12 out of 13 of the original colonies. The smaller farmers, like farmers everywhere, depended on an economy based on credit and bartering. The merchant class, on the other hand, wanted a centralized economy based on hard currency – which they needed to advance their exceedingly lucrative trade with Great Britain and the West Indies.
Dr. Drek
Huh, this thread could just as well be on Reason.com. Now we’re getting somewhere.
How’s this for a take on Oathkeepers?
Skinheads, Tea Partiers, Ralph Reed Jr. and his theocrats, birthers, truthers and assorted conspiracy theorists.
ABC Nightline
By COLLEEN CURRY, PIERRE THOMAS (@PierreTABC) and JASON A. RYAN
A former Marine who is part of a right wing group that calls for an uprising is the target of an FBI manhunt ranging from Oklahoma to Florida.
Charles Alan Dyer, 31, of Duncan, Okla., failed to appear in court on Monday, Aug. 15, on charges he raped a 7-year-old gir. His failure to appear launched a federal dragnet covering 12 states in the South.
Authorities are warning that Dyer is believed to be armed and dangerous. Sheriff Wayne McKinney of Stephens County, Okla., described him as a “Timothy McVeigh” like individual, referring to the right wing militia member executed for blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Dyer is part of a controversial group called Oath Keepers that includes current and former law enforcement and military members who take an oath to obey the Constitution rather than the president. Dyer has posted videos on YouTube talking about a “New World Order” and calling for people to “rise up” against “tyrannical government.”
An ABC News review of court records reveals that Dyer was indicted on federal charges for possessing an unregistered Colt M-203 grenade launcher.
Authorities believe Dyer was in the Houston area last week following reports from residents in nearby Wallis that a man matching Dyer’s description knocked on doors there asking for a ride to Houston, according to ABC News affiliate KTRK.
lder brother had him there. He was knocking on his window,” witness Greg Hatton said. “When I pulled up, for example, first I called him to see if that’s him, hold him. That’s the guy we’re looking for, hold him. And we’re always armed. We’re concealed gun licensed carriers and he had him right at the point there, but he took off running. And when he took off running he ran across this track here, went to my neighbor’s house and asked him for a ride.”
The FBI said that Dyer does not seem to have a car and is instead using a network of people he knows from Oath Keeper websites to get around, according to special agent Clay Simmonds, a spokesman for the agency.
Craig Moore
Sorry to interfere with this love fest, but it appears that Obama requested indefinite detention: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Obama-Will-Not-Veto-ND-by-Ralph-Lopez-111210-198.html
Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) on Senate floor explaining it was Obama who requested the provision for indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial.
Now to be consistent, will signers of the recall petition swear not to vote for Obama’s re-election in the same spirit that they call for removal of Montana’s Washington delegation?
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SportChevron Right IconCricket
Smith not captain but 85 a leader's knock
Rob Forsaith
Thursday, 11 July 2019 9:39 pm
EX-captain Steve Smith held Australia's innings together in the World Cup semi-final at Edgbaston.Image: AP
Steve Smith no longer has the title of captain but his knock of 85 in Australia's World Cup semi-final was leadership personified.
Smith's steadying hand at Edgbaston on Thursday, coming after a rattled Australia confronted not only defeat but embarrassment after being reduced to 3-14, helped his team post 223.
It may not be enough to deny the tournament favourites a spot in Sunday's final against New Zealand but it at least gave Australia's attack something to bowl with.
It was also the latest example of Smith, who enhanced a reputation for scoring clutch runs in high-pressure clashes with his highest score of the current tournament, looking a class above his teammates.
Smith's batsmanship was the impetus for an incredible rise from outcast to Test captain, completed in 2014 when he filled in for a hobbled Michael Clarke then ratified the following year when he was appointed Clarke's successor after standing up during a tour of England.
The issue of whether Smith will lead his country again is yet to be seriously broached by Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive Kevin Roberts or coach Justin Langer, who feel such questions are almost disrespectful to Aaron Finch and Tim Paine.
Smith, who now shares the record for most 50-plus scores in World Cup knock-out fixtures alongside Indian icon Sachin Tendulkar, has repeatedly insisted he is giving the hypothetical no thought.
But private and public discussions about the prospect of Smith, barred from holding any leadership position until the end of March 2020 as part of CA's sanctions handed down in response to the Cape Town cheating scandal, will grow more frequent and louder with every great innings.
It is a complex call for all involved.
The classy right-hander's imposing mountain of runs failed to stop him committing the life-changing leadership failure that preceded the sandpaper saga's eruption in South Africa.
The leadership skills of Finch and Paine have both earned immense praise from teammates, Roberts and Langer.
Another factor is the dearth of genuine contenders to replace Finch and Paine whenever they - or CA's hierarchy - decide it is time for a change.
Mitch Marsh was earmarked then axed; Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins have also served as vice-captains but it is unlikely either bowler will take on the top job.
Alex Carey is another vice-captain held in high regard but the keeper is yet to be picked in a Test squad, was dropped from the national Twenty20 team earlier this year and only recently entrenched himself in the one-day side.
The captaincy of Paine, who will be 35 at the end of the coming Australian summer, is also seemingly far closer to ending than that of Finch.
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Following on from our First six months photographic synopsis, we decided to also create an activity and financial synopsis, to record the details of our life on the road to date:
As motorhoming newbies, going full-time in our very first van was quite a scary proposition at first. Would we enjoy it? How would we cope with the driving? Would our budget be sufficient, or have we made any miscalculations? How would we get on in such close confinement every day? The answers would only be supplied by time, patience, prudence and experimentation.
We learned not to see our day-to-day life in our van as a holiday, but as a specific lifestyle choice that brings its own trials, complications and rewards. We gave up a lot of valued possessions, personal comforts and money to gain the time, freedom and frugality we experience on the open road. Along the way we’ve had our share of difficulties and headaches, made some mistakes, but these normal hiccups in our new lives have been the insignificant parts of a much larger and complex jigsaw puzzle we have been building slowly and rewardingly together over these past six months.
The above image is a rough sketch of our route, from our initial arrival in Dieppe until we arrived back in Dieppe six months later. In these first 184 days on the road, we have:
Driven 7071 miles, in three countries (not including England), for an average of 38 miles per day. ( France – 3256 miles; Spain – 2756 miles; Portugal – 1059 miles. )
Had our fuel costs and driving efficiency (27.1 mpg) average out to around €0.19 per mile
Cycled 1040 kilometres, mostly off-road, with 30 outings on our bikes
Walked over 500 kilometres (GPS tracked) and more urban kilometres that weren’t recorded
As mentioned previously in our ‘80 days’ synopsis post, we tracked all money spent on the road, because we wanted to ensure this is a fully sustainable way of life for us. We created an over-complicated multi-tab excel spreadsheet, a good sign of much too much time on our hands, that we used every day to input distances travelled and costs incurred. We then compared what we spent our money on from month to month and from country to country, and tracked all our outgoings in specifically defined categories, as detailed below:
FOOD – Food bought from a supermarket / shop. This includes wine and beer, but not eating out
FUEL – Diesel for Benny
LPG – Propane gas for cooking, heating and running the fridge when not on sites
TRANSPORT – Tolls, vignettes, ferries, bridges, public transport & parking when not overnighting
EATING OUT – Eating and drinking out in restaurants and bars (also includes snacks and ice creams)
OVERNIGHT STAYS – Cost of sites, aires or parking overnight, where a cost applied
ENTERTAINMENT – Entry fees for museums, galleries, castles, cathedrals, attractions and other events etc..
Note: This final category also includes personal items such as clothes, shoes, laundry and other misc. items
The current ratio of our spending is as per the image below:
The final category, the loosely defined ‘Entertainment’, has proved to be the most problematic for us, as it became the place to dump in all costs not otherwise specified. This category then became massively skewed by the inclusion of a week’s skiing in Serre Chevalier, as this added the equivalent cost of around six weeks of travel into just one week. If we removed all the main costs associated with our full week of skiing, including purchasing ski chains, lift passes, ski and pole hire and the ski aire camping costs, we would instead have:
Our ‘by country’ cost averages worked out as:
77 days in France – €60 / day (inc. skiing) or €46 / day with skiing trips excluded.
75 days in Spain – €29 / day
31 days in Portugal -€25 / day
It’s clear that by removing skiing from the equation the general theme remains, as before, that feeding ourselves is the biggest expense, followed by diesel for travel, with every other category of expenses lagging far behind. But in general, we’re comfortable with our pace, our spending and our level of activity throughout. All is going well and looking fully sustainable going forward.
Our next long trip, beginning in a few weeks at the end of April, is east and north, for a touch of Midnight Sun. We plan to ferry to the Hook of Holland and drive through the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark before crossing to explore Sweden, Norway and Finland. We definitely will continue to track all costs and miles, writing up posts and recording our experiences as we go, keeping active and living as we originally planned.
This entry was posted in Finances, France, In France, In Portugal, In Spain, Our First Six Months, Our Travel Journal, Portugal, Spain on Mar 25, 2017 by Aaron Hill.
Our first six months – a photographic synopsis
Over the preceding twenty-six weeks, or more accurately 184 days, we have passed through many stunning places, towns and landscapes around Western Europe. We have cycled, walked and swam in beautiful and varied locations, covering more ground and staying fitter than we would have during the cold, grey winters of home. We have eaten well, enjoyed the company of many friendly people, revelled in the noise of busy cities and the solitude of high mountains or rural retreats along the way. It’s been nearly impossible to narrow each of our adventure-packed months down to only a few choice photos, but that’s the task we set ourselves for this post, to create a quick and colourful, impressionistic overview covering many aspects and experiences in our new life to date.
September 2016 – Synopsis
Day one in France took us to Rouen to see the cathedral, then Giverny and Monet’s Garden. From there we enjoyed cycling to Mont St. Michel and Dinan, before seeing Poitiers and visiting friends in Chateau-Gontier and Moncontour. We then relished a few days exploring on Île de Ré. We headed south to first see Dune de Pilat then Biarritz, before crossing into Spain and stopping at San Sebastian. Next up were Bilbao and Santander, before we reached the Picos de Europa where we walked Fuente De and Cares Gorge. Then we headed west along Spain’s north coast, stopping in Gijon, Cudillero and finally Navia where we spent a few relaxing days on a clifftop with our own private beach below.
September 2016 – Photographic highlights
Exploring Monet’s Garden, Giverny, France
Sketching in the park in Avranches, France
Enjoying a long rural cycle to reach Mont St. Michel, Northern France
Beach walking under an Île de Ré sunset, Western France
Enjoying the sun and sand at the Dune de Pilat, Western France
Trekking the mountains in the Picos de Europa, Northern Spain
Cycling the rugged coast near Navia, Northern Spain
October 2016 – Synopsis
Tapia de Casariego was our next stop, where we cycled and walked portions of the Camino de Santiago, an experience we repeated from Palas del Rei. We drove the Spanish west coast to Boiro, then on to a rural stop in O Mundil, before crossing into Portugal at Bragança. We had long, rainy and tough cycles around Meda, Benquerenca and Idanha-a-Nova, before a more religiously influenced route took us through Tomar, Fatima and Batalha. We reached the Atlantic and west coast of Portugal at Nazare, before following it south to Sintra and Cascais. We visited Belem and the capital Lisbon and then spent long, lazy days in glorious sunshine at the beaches of Fonte da Telha.
October 2016 – Photographic highlights
Chilling on our private decking on the beach at Boiro, Western Spain
Skinny-dipping in the cold river at O Mundil, Spain
Climbing the heights at Monsanto, Eastern Portugal
Visiting the cathedral of Batalha, Portugal
Walking to Pena Palace from Sintra, Western Portugal
Lazy days and fantastic sunsets, Fonte da Telha, Portugal
Playing in the wild west coast surf, Porto Covo, Portugal
November 2016- Synopsis
We tore ourselves from Fonte da Telha to visit further beaches at Porto Covo, Lagos and Luz, before turning east to Albufeira. Skipping the rest of Portugal, we jumped back into Spain and a fantastic city break in Seville. We loved the Via Verde cycling at Puerto Serrano and Olvera before escaping into the high mountains to see Ronda and Casares, where we encountered griffon vultures. We skipped through the busy Costa Del Sol, preferring to be back into the rural tranquillity of El Torcal, before reaching Granada and the sublime Alhambra. We returned to beach living at Playa La Carolina before reaching Totana and the Sierra Espuna where we climbed beautiful, rugged mountains.
November 2016 – Photographic highlights
Exploring the beautiful city of Seville, Spain
Cycling and walking the pueblo blanco town of Olvera, Spain
Exploring the town of Casares in the mountains, Spain
Climbing Sierra Crestalina and seeing griffon vultures, Spain
Wandering through the amazing rock formations of El Torcal near Antequera, Spain
Exploring the incredible Alhambra in Granada, Spain
Climbing peaks in the Sierra Espuna near Totana, Spain
December 2016 – Synopsis
We met up with Nicky’s mum for five days of exploring Murcia, Cartagena and the nearby coastline from our base in Torre Pacheco. We saw the groovy town of Castell de Gaudalest before arriving in the orange groves of Simat de la Valldigna where we enjoyed many mountain walks. We cycled around Carcaixent before an eye-opening visit to Valencia and a weather-beaten tour of Peniscola. We briefly visited Morella and hid in the deep quiet wetlands of the Delta L’Ebre for a few days. We visited Tarragona and ArtCAVA then had two days in Barcelona in glorious weather, before spending Christmas by the beach in Blanes. We visited musical Girona and Sant Feliu De Guixols to end our year.
December 2016 – Photographic highlights
A fantastic swim and play in the sea near Cobaticas, Spain
Exploring the monastery and orange groves of Simit de la Valldigna, Spain
Walking around the grand city of Valencia, Spain
Bracing , wild weather storm in the walled citadel of Pensicola, Spain
Having a wonderful tour and chat with Ramon from ArtCAVA, Spain
Revisiting Barcelona and the Gaudi masterpiece of the Sagrada Familia, Spain
Christmas day on the beach, complete with long swim, Blanes, Spain
January 2017 – Synopsis
Our year began with a beautiful coastal walk from Tamariu to Llfranc, before we headed back into France via Cadaques. We visited Argeles-sur-Mer, then skied in Los Angles in the Pyrenees. We saw Cathar castles in Duilhac-sous-Peyrepertuse, before working north through Quillan and Esperaza to Limoux, to visit friends Jan and Andy. We saw Carcassonne and the Canal du Midi, before heading west to Lagrasse. A visit to Narbonne was followed by windy beach walks around Gruisson. Further city visits to Beziers and Montpellier followed, then a long-awaited reunion of Nicky with her French pen-friend in Saint-Just. We saw Nimes and Saint-Gilles, then drove south to visit a rainy Camargue, before seeing Arles, beautiful Avignon and finishing deep into wine country at Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
January 2017 – Photographic highlights
A wonderful New Year’s Day walk along the Costa Brava coast, Tamariu, Spain
Overlooking the rooftops of Quillan, deep in the foothills of the Pyrenees, France
Visiting the bullring and central streets of Nimes, France
Braving the harsh winds to enjoy the view in Gruissan, France
Climbing the heights of Beziers, southern France
The beautiful city of Avignon, Southern France
Enjoying many wine tastings in the Chateauneuf-du-Pape region, France
February 2017 – Synopsis
We continued enjoying dégustations in Provençal villages, and a truffle market in St.Paul-Trois-Chateaux. From the peaceful aire at Domaine des Lauribert we next went to Gap, Briançon and onwards to meet friends for skiing in Serre Chevalier. We crossed the Col du Lautaret to Grenoble, staying at Visieu and Belley where we cycled peaceful canal routes. We visited Vongnes, enjoying wine tastings and nature walks. We cycled around Dôle, visited Besançon and the quiet lake at Vesoul, before an architectural pilgrimage to Ronchamp cathedral. We had a few restful days in Charmes, then a busy city visit to Nancy before arriving in Mareuil-sur-Ay in the heart of Champagne country.
February 2017 – Photographic highlights
Our architectural pilgrimage to Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp, France
Quiet walks through vineyards in rural wine country, France
Long walks through the lavender fields of Provence, France
Skiing with friends in Serre Chevalier, France
Restful parking overlooking the lake at sunset in Vesoul, France
Cycling to the waterfalls of Glandieu near Belley, France
Cycling and walking through the countryside around Vongnes, France
This entry was posted in France, In France, In Portugal, In Spain, Our First Six Months, Our Travel Journal, Portugal, Spain on Mar 13, 2017 by Aaron Hill.
Laon, Thiepval and the Somme
We drove up the winding contours of the steep hill leading to the historic centre of Laon, where we reached comfortable camping-car only parking set adjacent to the medieval walls. We walked through the walls and into the old town, following the grey stoned cobbled streets to reach the large square that opened out in front of the impressive Notre Dame cathedral. Built between the years of 1150-1235 CE, this Gothic cathedral was a precursor and inspiration to many more famous local cathedrals, such as those at Chartres and Reims.
We continued our walking tour through the city, busy with commerce and traffic, to the Abbey church of Saint Martin. From a raised promenade near here we could enjoy views out across the local countryside. The hillside city, known by the Gauls as Lugdunum, was set on a large mound in the centre of the wide valley, providing the opportunity for great views and leaving it prominently visible for many miles around. The towers of the Notre Dame cathedral dominated the skyline, but the green forests at the base of the walls, locally called the ‘lungs of Laon’ provided the natural, softening backdrop.
We moved on, deeper into the quiet northern flatlands, where we stayed overnight in a French Passion aire in the small village of Sancourt. Les Canards de la Germaine, a farm selling produce such as duck, fois gras and cider, were our friendly hosts. We bought some eggs and a bottle of demi-sec cider to see us through the night, before retiring to Benny to listen to the howling winds and bleating sheep. The following morning we continued into the Somme.
Thiepval and the Somme
Driving on tiny roads barely the width of Benny and with no passing places, we fretted on the possibility of meeting another vehicle and having to reverse for several miles, but thankfully none appeared. The fields either side were farmed right to the road verge, and with the overnight rain, we would have no chance of getting out without heavy assistance if we had slipped off into the sodden mud. We passed numerous memorials and cemeteries, many dedicated to specific regiments or countries that fought with the Allies, such as South Africa, Australia and Canada.
We visited the Thiepval Memorial, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens to commemorate and remember the fallen in the Great War. The site was completed in 1932 and has been continuously updated to reflect the names of those whose remains have since been identified. We walked around the museum in silence, reading the displays and soaking up all that we could. We walked out to the memorial, and for a short window we were the only visitors. From a distance the large stone and brick arches dominated the form, but up close the volume of names carved into the walls of stone made the monument deeply personal, a connection to all the individual lives, with so much youth, vigour and potential, lost unnecessarily to the futility of war. The grey skies and slow, persistent dripping of the light rain that followed us seemed apt for our visit, adding a damp, reflective poignancy that blue skies and sunshine could never deliver.
” The unreturning army that was youth;
The Legions who have suffered and are dust. “
Prelude: The Troops, Siegfried Sassoon
We overnighted in Doullens, north of Amiens, before cutting west through thin countryside back-roads in thick, plodding rain. The deep, splashing puddles slowed our progress, but we were in no hurry even if we now felt a little impatient for home comforts. Our sightseeing and exploring was mostly over; it was mainly about practical necessity now.
We reached the northern coast and the chilly waters of La Manche on the edge of a small village of Criel-sur-Mer, where we had planned to stop overnight but the aire here was closed as the large sea defences were being either rebuilt or reinforced. The water looked green with minerals, and we could see only a short way off shore in the close, wet air.
We took a satisfying moment to stand on the stony beach and look out towards home, thinking of our journey to date and how we were, after six months, about to close our first full loop. We then relocated, in more heavy rain, to the village of Saint-Nicolas-D’Aliermont to overnight, before heading to Dieppe in the very early morning to catch the 5.30am crossing back to Blighty, our first foreign adventure in Benny at a close.
This entry was posted in France, In France, Our Travel Journal on Mar 10, 2017 by Aaron Hill.
Reims and Champagne
From our mini-city break in Nancy we moved a few more miles, to an overnight stop on the grassy banks of a lake in the small town of Contrisson. We saw no one bar one hardy dogwalker as we suffered a harsh, windy night complete with driving rain that fell in fat, loud drops. Our van was shaken and rocked relentlessly all night, whilst also being bombarded by twigs and branches torn off nearby trees. In the morning all was calm and entirely still, like it had all been a bad weather dream.
We moved off quickly, entering into Champagne country proper. We were surprised to note the lack of grape vines in the fields, compared to other wine regions, with most fields we passed having been ploughed, turned, or recently planted with low level crops. We first reached the large town of Châlons-en-Champagne, but the percussion of raindrops had not ceased, so we had only a quick jaunt around. We were almost the only people silly enough to be outside when we reached the main square, to see the Hôtel de Ville and a giant champagne bottle shaped serving bar. The square was in the midst of having the flower beds replaced or replanted, and the workers seemed to have abandoned their posts to avoid the deluge, leaving sodden soil and dead plants strewn everywhere.
We stepped into the nearby cathedral to avoid a little of the rain, and to compare its majesty to the many others we had seen along the way. We lingered in the central nave and examined the clean, exposed stone structure with little colour or decoration inside except for the rainbow glow of the stained glass windows.
We headed straight back to Benny to shelter, then drove on to our next destination. We overnighted in the small town of Mareuil-sur-Ay, in nice, individually laid-out bays right on prime river frontage shared with moored pleasure boats. We walked along the canal, between two bridges and under the threat of further rain, before snuggling in for a quiet restful night in the shadow of our first Champagne vineyards.
The next morning we moved on only a handful of miles to the large town of Epernay. We parked in a central aire with lots of available room, with only one other camper in residence who had decided, despite a wealth of free spaces, to park in the one designated ‘bus only’ space; must have been French. Still, a perfect spot for visitor day-parking.
We walked to the town centre, to explore what is the main centre for Champagne production, with all the big name producers based here. We passed the grand offices of Moët & Chandon, set on the Avenue de Champagne. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be open and there were certainly no options for dégustations available, outside of pre-arranged and very expensive organised tours. The entire industry carried a very different feel, aloof, distant and exclusive, in comparison to the wine areas of Chateauneuf-du-Pape where everything was friendly, open and inclusive. We left rather disappointed.
We moved on north from Epernay, through the leafy natural park and passed hilly mounds of bare vineyards to see the celebrated cathedral in Reims and to search for a little more life in the off-season Champagne region. We approached a known aire, but the entry was barriered off and we first thought it had possibly changed and was no longer available. But we looped around the tight city roads and tried once more, this time calling a posted telephone number, where we gained entry from a friendly Kiwi who gave us the gate code.
It only took a few minutes to walk into the centre. We approached the cathedral along a busy road, wide and tree-lined, to reach the front square. The impressive, ornate façade was decorated with detailed stonework with more than 2000 figures, including uniquely sculpted angel statues with open rather than folded wings. Reims was the cathedral used for the coronations of the French Kings and carried that regal grandeur with aplomb.
We had our usual chat in the local tourist office, where we spotted Champagne cork stools, complete with wire cage muselet and plastic cap; a colourful reminder of where we were.
We walked a loop of the cathedral externally before entering to enjoy the highly decorative and sculpture heavy interior. There were stained glass installations ranging from the 13th to the 20th century, each a different stylistic interpretation of a specific religious narrative. The unadorned fluted stone pillars contrasted with the highly ornate walls. One alcove housed a detailed scale model of the cathedral, lit from below so it glowed from within, surrounded by a kaleidoscopic backdrop of modern stained glass patterns.
Afterwards, we walked further around the city centre, seeing many grand squares and neat streets. We reached the Hôtel de ville before turning around, to retrace our steps through the city streets, enjoying simply being outside on the dry, warm day. We saw little evidence of Champagne sales or dégustations in the regional capital, but we instead enjoyed the architecture and weather. Reims was the definitely highlight of our trip around the Champagne region, a beautiful, small and accessible city to visit.
Besançon, Vesoul and Ronchamp
We left the huge, sprawling car-park on the central canal in Dôle, following the water to the east to visit the city that, by Royal decree, took over Dôle’s duties as regional capital; Besançon. We parked in a central commercial aire that charged by the hour, so we paid for up to two hours, enough to explore around a little, then proceeded with our city visit walk. There was a slight spitting rain as we walked, and the air was chilly around us, giving the city a slightly ethereal feel, accentuated by the faint ghostly colours of the local stone.
The buildings and pavements were constructed with a light coloured stone, pitted and striped with faint runs of colour, like a pastel grey marble. Some cut stones were run with a prominent blue tint, leading to a decorative checkerboard effect on some facades. The centre was much more grand and elegant than we had initially expected, but then we knew very little about the city on our arrival.
We reached the Place de la Revolution where a large open-air market was in full flow, selling all manner of produce. The noise was a huge contrast over the previously quiet streets leading to the open square. We passed through the Musée du Temps courtyard to a leafy square, soaking up the views and atmosphere. Besançon Cathedral had a 70-dial astronomical clock that indicated sunrise, sunset, eclipses and tides, an apparently unique item that showcases their intricate horologist heritage. We missed the Citadelle on the hill behind for lack of time, or perhaps willing, but we always like to leave something to return for another day. The city was definitely worth more time that we offered it on our visit.
We drove on to a quiet stop near the town of Vesoul, on the shores of a large lake called the Lac de Vesoul-Vaivre, in the area of Vaivre-et-Montoille. First we looked at a larger, busier aire in a shared gravel car-park, but we didn’t quite like the scruffy quality and lack of a water view here. So we continued around to another possible stopping point on the other side of the lake, near the boat house. We parked up here, alone, with our nose facing the water and watched the slow sunset fall over the waving yellow reeds and the still lake.
I went for a run early morning, a fast paced, warming 6-7km loop of the leisure lake, where I passed highland cattle, cranes, egrets, a few dog walkers and, encouragingly, two other joggers. Although we had walked and cycled a lot, I hadn’t run much at all on our trip, and perhaps the break was beneficial as I was feeling strong. A white, moody mist was rising off the water as the day warmed up, and the kilometres disappeared easily, and I was back in Benny drinking tea within half an hour of leaving. The run had nicely shaken off the slight hangover from last night’s wine and had me feeling fully awake and alive for the day ahead. Revived, we headed off east to visit Notre-Dame du Hait.
We parked on the side of the road near the centre of Ronchamp town and made the decision to walk the twenty minutes uphill to the Notre-Dame du Hait site, to feel like we earned the privilege to visit. This was a long-awaited and overdue architectural pilgrimage to a previously well-studied building, albeit last discussed in any detail over twenty years ago back in a distant student past.
We climbed steadily, through tall, spindly trees that were casting long, narrow shadows across the road like twisted fingers. The morning sun was burning off the low mist and transforming everything into an early spring day, warm and clear. The only sound as we climbed was our own breathing and the low chattering of birds overhead.
The original church on the site was damaged by fire in 1913 then rebuilt in 1920 before being severely damaged by bombing in 1944 during the Second World War. The decision to rebuild again was taken, plans drawn up and in the spring of 1954 the design by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, began. Renzo Piano, of Pompidou Centre and Shard fame, later sympathetically added to Notre-Dame du Hait with a new concrete visitor centre and monastic accommodation for the community of Poor Clares from Bescançon, who requested the opportunity to live on the hill close to the chapel.
We first walked around the exterior, taking in the building’s form from all angles. A bus full of loud, Italian students suddenly appeared on site, and soon they covered every corner. Like ants, they climbed the Pyramide de la Paix for their selfies with the chapel. A series of external bells, added by Jean Pouvré, sat solemnly behind the chapel. It was smaller and much darker than expected inside, difficult to see any detail as only a few candles were lit. We sat a while and allowed time for our eyes to adjust to the deep contrast from the bright sun outside, so we could take in the details; deep openings with stained glass, thin concrete stairs, a sloping stone floor and curved floating concrete roof, the play of light and shadows through tiny openings above the alter.
Within the visitor centre we saw a display of some of the original drawings produced by Le Corbusier to facilitate construction of the various details around the chapel. The drawings looked somewhat vague and rather simplistic, in comparison to those we have to produce for contractors to build from today, but were clearly sufficient to create the vision he wished for. “I wanted to create a place of silence, prayer, peace, inner joy” Le Corbusier said on the Chapel’s inauguration day. I think he succeeded.
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Geomicrobiology
Heavy Metal Tolerance of Fe(III)-Reducing Microbial Communities in Contaminated Creek Bank Soils
Eva-Maria Burkhardt, Sebastian Bischoff, Denise M. Akob, Georg Büchel, Kirsten Küsel
Eva-Maria Burkhardt
Institute of Ecology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Dornburger-Straße 159, D-07743 Jena, Germany
Sebastian Bischoff
Denise M. Akob
Georg Büchel
Institute of Earth Sciences, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Burgweg 11, D-07749 Jena, Germany
Kirsten Küsel
For correspondence: Kirsten.Kuesel@uni-jena.de
Fe(III)-reducing soil enrichment cultures can tolerate 100 μM Cu and Cd, 150 μM Co, 600 μM Ni, and 2,500 μM Zn. Metal-tolerant cultures were dominated by Geobacter-related Deltaproteobacteria and Gram-positive Firmicutes spp. (Clostridia and Sedimentibacter). A Cd- and Cu-tolerant Fe(III)-reducing coculture of Desulfosporosinus and Desulfitobacterium indicated the importance of the Firmicutes for Fe(III) reduction in the presence of metals.
Toxic metals can be immobilized on surface sorption sites of soil Fe(III) minerals or can be included in the mineral structure (4, 29). Fe(III)-reducing bacteria (FeRB) can facilitate the release of these metals by reductive dissolution of Fe(III) oxides (9, 17) and bioreduction of Fe(III) oxide-bound trace metals (42). This release might enhance metal stress, suggesting that metal tolerance should be an important attribute for FeRB. Acidophilic FeRB can tolerate millimolar concentrations of Cd, Cu, Ni, and Zn (12), which might be a prerequisite to survival in habitats where low pH facilitates high metal solubility. In contrast, neutrophilic FeRB like Shewanella spp. tolerate only μM concentrations (34, 36). Geobacter spp. have not been tested to the best of our knowledge, but metal tolerance proteins are expressed during growth in uranium-contaminated sediments, which might be connected to metal resistance (19).
Near Ronneburg (Thuringia, Germany), uranium mining caused severe environmental contamination with metals and radionuclides (20). In creek bank alluvial soils of the Gessenbach, a main drainage system of upstream mining sites (41), high heavy metal concentrations occur both in solid phase and in the pore water of a ground- and surface water-influenced, oxidized, iron-rich Btlc horizon of a Luvic Gleysol. We demonstrated the solubilization of Co, Ni, Zn, As, and U in Btlc soil microcosms during biostimulated microbial Fe(III) reduction that was associated with the activity of microorganisms related to Delta- and Betaproteobacteria, Acidobacteria, and Firmicutes (7). The aims of this study were to (i) determine the heavy metal fraction of the solid phase, which could be released during reductive dissolution of Fe(III) oxides, (ii) estimate the effect of heavy metals on the activity of FeRB in the Gessenbach creek bank soil, and (iii) identify metal-tolerant FeRB, because the permanent exposure to contaminants during the last 50 years should have promoted metal tolerance.
Soil geochemistry.Putative binding forms of heavy metals in the Btlc soil solid phase were determined by sequential extraction (8, 43) in samples collected in August 2006. Metal concentrations were analyzed with either ICP-MS (inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry) or ICP-OES (optical emission spectrometry) (8). Most metals (20 to 40%) and even 80% of As in Btlc soil were detected in fraction 5, which is representative for amorphous Fe(III) oxides (Fig. 1). A considerable amount of uranium (30%) was recovered in the specifically adsorbed fraction, whereas only Zn and Ni were primarily recovered in the mobile fraction. Zn and Ni also dominated the heavy metal pore water concentration of the creek bank soil, which was sampled monthly from June to November 2007 (7). Pore water heavy metal and As concentrations always peaked in the Btlc horizon (see Fig. S1 in the supplemental material) and reached maximum concentrations of 38.6, 16.4, 3.9, 1.5, 0.6, and 0.3 μM for Zn, Ni, Al, Cu, Co, and Cd, respectively. Pore water Fe(II) concentrations, measured as previously described (7), increased with depth, starting at the transition between the horizons Btlc and Br1 (see Fig. S1). In the deeper horizons Br1 and Br2, pore water concentrations of heavy metals and As were low, although the solid phase was enriched with heavy metals (data not shown) caused by the permanent contact of contaminated groundwater and creek water.
Concentrations of selected metals obtained by sequential extraction from Btlc soil in different fractions, which can be correlated to the following putative binding forms: mobile (fraction 1), specifically adsorbed (fraction 2), bound to manganese oxides (fraction 3), bound to organic material (fraction 4), bound to amorphous Fe(III) oxides (fraction 5), bound to crystalline Fe(III) oxides (fraction 6), and bound to the residual fraction, presumably mainly silicates (fraction 7).
Metal tolerance of Fe(III)-reducing enrichment cultures.Based on in situ concentrations, four concentrations of Cd, Cu, Ni, or Zn were added to Btlc soil suspensions cultured in media selective for Fe(III) reducers (Table 1). In addition, mixes of metals representing Btlc pore water concentrations (mix 1) or Btlc bioavailable concentrations (mix 2), which are assumed to be represented by fractions 1 and 2, were added. For the enrichment cultures, 1 ml of soil suspension (9 ml of 0.7% NaCl solution added to 1 g of soil) derived from Btlc soil obtained in April 2008 was added to 9 ml of a basal medium (23), with 1 mM each of ethanol and lactate as carbon sources, 14 mM amorphous Fe(OH)3 (24) as the electron acceptor, and 0.5 mM FeCl2 as the reductant. Uninoculated controls received only 1 ml of NaCl solution. The final pH was 6.5 to 6.8. Fe(II) formation was measured at selected time intervals (7, 22). Dissolved metal concentrations were measured to check for precipitation or adsorption in selected treatments by ICP-MS (7) or ICP-OES (8). In a subsequent experiment, more concentrations were tested to specify the metal tolerance, if necessary.
Rates of Fe(II) formation in metal-amended Fe(III)-reducing Btlc soil enrichment cultures in the presence and absence of metals
Metal amendment affected Fe(II) formation rates (Table 1 and data not shown). Maximum pore water metal concentrations (mix 1) had no effect, but bioavailable solid-phase concentrations (mix 2) completely inhibited Fe(III) reduction. Also, addition of 150 μM Cu or 1,000 μM Ni caused complete inhibition of Fe(II) formation. In the presence of 100 μM Cu, 150 or 600 μM Ni, or 2,500 μM Zn, Fe(II) formation rates were reduced. Additionally, the lag phase was extended by about 2 weeks in cultures with 2,500 μM Zn. The addition of Co did not decrease Fe(II) formation rates, but the time before Fe(II) formation started was delayed by 1 week in the presence of 150 μM Co compared to that in the presence of controls with no metals added. Cd was tolerated at 100 μM, but at 500 μM, no Fe(II) formation was observed. For Al, Cr, and Pb, no toxic effects with up to 10 mM Al, 100 μM Cr, and 1,000 μM Pb were observed. The presence of As at up to 800 μM did not inhibit Fe(II) formation, but rates decreased at 1,600 μM As. These data indicated that Cu and Ni should be the main inhibitive contaminants in Btlc soil in situ. However, multiple effects of metal combinations cannot be ruled out.
Metal tolerances were comparable to those reported for Shewanella strains that cannot grow in the presence of 150 μM Co, 150 to 400 μM Zn, 75 to 150 μM Cd, or 150 to 400 μM Cu when cultivated aerobically in 10% LB broth (36). Anoxic hematite bioreduction by Shewanella putrefaciens is 50% inhibited by 210 μM Zn but not by 1.63 mM Ni (27). Clostridia, which can use Fe(III) as a sink for excess electrons from fermentation (16), can grow in the presence of 24 μM Cd but not 24 μM Cu (14). Cd solution concentrations of 2.8 to 1,503 μM can inhibit 50% of the Fe(III) reduction rate in different soils, depending on soil type (38). However, metal tolerances of those FeRB might be lower than those reported due to interactions of the amended metals with Fe(III) oxides or other medium components and due to metal sorption on cell surfaces (36, 37). When metal concentrations were checked at the end of our experiment, only 49, 5, or 73% of amended Ni, Zn, or Cu, respectively, were still dissolved in the medium of noninoculated controls, and even 23, 1, or 2% of those were dissolved in the inoculated cultures. Therefore, FeRB supposedly did not face the total concentration of amended metals, and their tolerance to dissolved metals should be much lower. Similarly, a previous study reported that the Cu tolerance of Shewanella varies between 75 and 750 mM depending on the nutrient load of the medium (36).
Identification of metal-tolerant microorganisms.To identify metal-tolerant FeRB, samples of three cultures, containing the highest concentrations tested of each metal that still allowed Fe(II) formation (1.1 μM Cu, 150 μM Ni, and 2,500 μM Zn), were pooled for clone library construction (see the supplemental material). The 16S rRNA gene-based clone library almost exclusively contained sequences related to Deltaproteobacteria (69%) and the Firmicutes (29%) (see Table S1 in the supplemental material). The importance of these groups is similar to that found in biostimulated soil microcosm studies (7). All Deltaproteobacteria clones were related to Geobacter, a genus that dominates during uranium reduction in bioremediation experiments (3, 18). Within the Firmicutes, several genera which are known to reduce Fe(III) by shunting electrons from fermentation to Fe(III) were detected (16). Microbial community fingerprints of these cultures generated by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) (see the supplemental material) demonstrated that some prominent bands were present in all cultures but that more bands were present in Cu-amended cultures than in Zn- and Ni-amended cultures. By sequencing the three main DGGE bands of the Zn-amended culture, all were identified as Firmicutes spp. related to Gram-positive fermenters of Sedimentibacter and Clostridiales strains that have not been reported for Fe(III) reduction (Fig. 2). One sequence was closely related to Sedimentibacter strains found in dechlorinating enrichments (5, 10). The Clostridiales-related sequence shared the highest identity with a clone obtained from a tar oil-impacted aquifer (40); the closest cultured relative was Clostridium aminobutyricum (95% identity). The same bands were also observed in the 150 μM Ni and 1.1 μM Cu treatment, indicating that the Firmicutes might also be important in those cultures. Studies of bacterial metal sorption indicated that isolated cell walls from Gram-positive organisms bind more metal than isolated envelopes of Gram-negative bacteria (37). Due to cellular metal sequestration, fermentative Firmicutes spp. may be important for ameliorating metal toxicity to FeRB within a community, as was seen in a bacterial consortium from metal-contaminated sediments (25). However, it cannot be ruled out that Firmicutes spp. might have survived as spores in the soil (5, 39) and were activated after nutrient addition in the enrichment cultures.
Microbial community DGGE patterns generated from metal-amended cultures. The main bands that were identified by sequencing are labeled, and the top BLAST hit is given with its GenBank accession number and percent identity. Band 1, Sedimentibacter clone VE117 (GenBank accession no. EF681724.1) with 99% identity; band 2, Clostridiales bacterium clone D10_24 (GenBank accession no. EU266794.1) with 99% identity.
Establishment of a metal-tolerant FeRB coculture.The metal-amended Fe(III)-reducing enrichment cultures were used for isolation attempts, with a modified agar shake technique (see the supplemental material). An isolated colony composed of uniform rod-shaped cells under a light microscope was obtained after the fifth transfer. When transferred to liquid medium, 25% of the supplemented Fe(III) was reduced, with lactate and ethanol as the electron donors. Consumption of lactate and ethanol resulted in the accumulation of propionate and acetate (data not shown). Although the isolate was thought to be a pure culture, 16S rRNA sequence analysis revealed that it was actually a coculture of two strains. The two strains, DA-1 and DA-2, were affiliated with the family Peptococcaceae within the Firmicutes, with strain DA-1 being most closely related to the Desulfosporosinus lacus strain STP12T (GenBank accession no. AJ582757) and an uncultured bacterium clone, GIF4 (GenBank accession no. AF407196), derived from monochlorobenzene-contaminated groundwater (1) (98% sequence similarity to both). Strain DA-2 was most closely related to Desulfitobacterium dichloroeliminans strain LMG (GenBank accession no. AJ565938) (96% sequence similarity).
Members of the Peptococcaceae were detected previously in biostimulated Fe(III)-reducing Btlc microcosms at the end of incubation when sulfate reduction also occurred (7). D. lacus can reduce sulfate and, unlike other strains, also Fe(III) in the presence of lactate and can grow fermentatively with pyruvate and lactate (28, 33). Since sulfate was not present in the enrichment cultures, DA-1 had to grow either fermentatively on lactate or by coupling growth to Fe(III) reduction. Although D. lacus was isolated from a pristine environment, members of this genus have regularly been detected in various contaminated sites, including radionuclide-contaminated sediment (26, 30, 35). D. lacus tolerates 2 mM As but is inhibited by 10 mM As, 10 μM Cd, 0.4 mM Cr, and 10 μM Zn (28). These concentrations are similar to the dissolved metal concentrations shown in our enrichments. DA-2 was distantly related to Desulfitobacterium spp., which are typically isolated from contaminated environments where they dechlorinate halogenated compounds or respire metals, such as As(V), Fe(III), Mn(IV), and Cr(VI) (14, 33).
Potential Fe(III) reduction rates of creek bank soil.Since the presence of Fe(II) in the pore water suggested ongoing in situ Fe(III) reduction, we incubated soil obtained from the Btlc and the deeper permanently reduced Br1 and Br2 horizons as slurries under anoxic conditions (7, 32) and calculated Fe(III) reduction rates from the regression slope during the linear increase of Fe(II). Initial Fe(II) formation rates in Btlc microcosms were negligible or did not exceed 2 μmol day−1 g (wet weight) soil−1 despite the high Fe(III) and carbon contents of this horizon (Fig. 3). Biostimulation with lactate or ethanol increased initial Fe(II) formation rates by up to four times, suggesting that an additional energy source is necessary to drive energy-consuming detoxification processes, like ATP-driven efflux pumps or the production of metal-binding compounds (2, 6, 11, 31). In contrast, the Br1 and Br2 horizons showed higher Fe(II) formation rates of up to 6 μmol day−1 g (wet weight) soil−1 independent of carbon amendment (Fig. 3), which corresponded with the higher Fe(II) concentrations detected in the pore water of the Br1 and Br2 horizons. The low heavy metal pore water concentrations in these horizons suggest effective metal attenuation processes. 35S tracer studies recently demonstrated that both of the reduced horizons have ongoing sulfate-reducing activity (32) and that the release of sulfide may have lead to the retention of metals as metal sulfides (13, 15, 21). Therefore, metabolically diverse sulfate reducers that can switch to Fe(III) reduction could fill an important niche in stratified contaminated soils. In addition, FeRB, like Geobacter spp. and fermentative FeRB, might profit from metal sulfide precipitation as a by-product of sulfate reduction. All together, in the presence of metal contaminants, microbial Fe(III) reduction may be dependent on (i) the presence of a sufficient carbon source to fuel detoxification, (ii) metal scavenging by cellular metal sequestration, and (iii) the metabolic diversity of nonclassical FeRB.
Fe(II) formation rates obtained in anoxic soil microcosms in relation to the initial Fe(II) concentrations. Initial Fe(II) formation rates were determined in carbon-unamended soil microcosms of horizons Btlc, Br1, and Br2, whereas biostimulated Fe(II) formation rates were determined in carbon-amended Btlc microcosms.
This work was supported by the German Science Foundation (DFG) within the Research Training Group 1257, “Alteration and Element Mobility at the Microbe Mineral Interface,” which is part of the Jena School for Microbial Communication (JSMC).
We thank Dirk Merten for helpful discussions and Sylvia Löffler, Jana Sitte, Christian Kaufmann, and Claudia Lüdecke for technical assistance.
Received 3 September 2010.
Accepted 5 February 2011.
Accepted manuscript posted online 4 March 2011.
↵† Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/AEM.02085-10.
Copyright © 2011, American Society for Microbiology
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Applied and Environmental Microbiology Apr 2011, 77 (9) 3132-3136; DOI: 10.1128/AEM.02085-10
You are going to email the following Heavy Metal Tolerance of Fe(III)-Reducing Microbial Communities in Contaminated Creek Bank Soils
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Moreno Ocampo: Ma’aliya are Janjaweed – By Alex de Waal
Yesterday I had the opportunity to put a question to Luis Moreno Ocampo, former Prosecutor of the ICC, who was visiting the Fletcher School. The question was a clarification on footnote 3 on page 12 of the July 14, 2008, public application for an arrest warrant against President Omar al Bashir. The footnote reads:
“The Militia/Janjaweed are described using various terms such as “Janjaweed”, “Fursan”, “Mujahideen” and “Bashmerga”. Janjaweed literally means “a man (a devil) on horse”. Historically in Darfur Janjaweed has referred to armed robbers or bandits mounted on horses or camels. In more recent times, however, the term has been used to refer to members of tribes mainly from Ma’aliya, Mahamid, Northern Reizegat, Jalul etc. who have volunteered to fight for and with the backing of the Sudanese Government.”
I asked Moreno Ocampo for clarification as to whether the Ma’aliya were indeed Janjaweed. He didn’t duck the question or say that his memory on this detail might have failed him. Rather, he insisted that yes they were Janjawiid and he had the evidence. When I pointed out that no literature on Darfur had ever, anywhere, made this claim, he dug his heels in and insisted that the details were confidential.
This footnote smacks of ethnographic illiteracy. For a start, the Jalul are a section of the Mahamid which is a section of the northern Rizeigat. The Mahariya are another section of the northern Rizeigat. The Ma’aliya live several hundred miles away and were uninvolved in the conflict in 2003/04. I suspect that one of the interns who compiled the arrest warrant made an elementary clerical error and meant to write Mahariya not Ma’aliya.
However, Moreno Ocampo insists that the very serious charge, that an ethnic group is part of a notorious militia, is correct. Let him not hide behind the claim that the evidence is secret: let him substantiate this accusation.
Alex de Waal is Director of the World Peace Foundation.
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Majid 12 May, 2015 at 07:18
Well, proof it Mr Ocampo. Ma’alia are paying the price for not being Janjweed.
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Zimbabwe: still waving and drowning – By Richard Dowden
Is Sudan a “Post-Islamist” State? II
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The Dirty (Baker’s) Dozen
On Monday we typed out a hearty endorsement of twelve incumbent city councilors seeking re-election next month. The nice-to-haves, let’s call them. So how about we bookend the work week with a screaming indictment of a dozen (+1) incumbents who contributed nothing to the well-being of the city and the residents they were elected to serve? I dub these, the need-to-gos. City Hall would be a much better place without them.
From worst to only marginally less worse.
1) Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7 York West)
Two words: Police Investigation. What can you say about a politician who allegedly accepted $80K as some sort of gift while serving in office? And it seems like he can’t understand how anyone thinks he did anything wrong! Add to that his noisy divisiveness and boisterous, braying demeanour whenever there’s a camera or microphone nearby, Councillor Mammoliti needs to be shown the door. A resounding ‘no’ in answer to the question: Could [fill in a candidate’s name here] be any worse?
2) Councillor Frances Nunziata (Ward 11 York South-Weston)
The soundtrack to the Ford administration. Councillor Nunziata succeeded in dragging the position of city council Speaker to the dreary depths of partisanship, procedural disregard and ear-piercing combativeness. She wasn’t a moderator. She was a cheerleader. Her plaintive and repetitive beef about her ward never getting nothing from the rest of the city belies the fact she has represented that ward in some manner or fashion for about three decades now. Ward 11 residents should take a long look in the mirror and reflect upon why that may be.
3) Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34 Don Valley East)
I will give the councilor this much. He adhered closely to the few principles he has when he voted against the Scarborough subway and a casino. The latter had something to do with his religious faith. The former underlined the fact there wasn’t a tax Councillor Minnan-Wong didn’t hate, an investment in the public realm that couldn’t be cheaper. While he may think of himself as the fiscal conscience of city council, he’s actually the spirt of miserliness, determined to shrink the city into helpless submission. His is a pre-amalgamation mindset, one we have to rid ourselves of if we actually are interested in building a cohesive, inclusive city.
4) Councillor David Shiner (Ward 24 Willowdale)
Councillor Shiner would probably rank as a true leader of civic destructiveness if he actually gave a shit anymore. He’s harmful enough as it is and he’s now just going through the motions. Nothing signals that more than his successful non-attempt to ban the selling of plastic bags in the city during the nickel tax debate. He just threw the item up for a disruptive laugh, with little debate, no city staff input or review, only to be caught off-guard when it actually passed. He’s another one from the ancien regime of Mel Lastman with little raison d’etre for serving on city council anymore.
5) Councillor Michelle Berardinetti (Ward 35 Scarborough Southwest)
In a close race, Councillor Berardinetti wins the worst rookie councillor award. It was better being an elephant in this city during her first term in office than say, a cyclist or public transit user. There didn’t seem to be a bike lane she wasn’t happy to tear up or a Scarborough subway plan she didn’t embrace lovingly. The fact that she became one of the most outspoken supporters for the subway extension of the Bloor-Danforth line speaks volumes to the dubious nature of the project. Gender (or location) alone didn’t earn her a spot on Rob Ford’s first Executive Committee. She was a true believer, changing courses only when it became politically expedient to do so.
6) Councillor Vincent Crisanti (Ward 1 Etobicoke North)
Owing his very presence on city council to Rob Ford, Councillor Crisanti proved to be nothing if not loyal. Literally. He was nothing but loyal to the mayor, right to the bitter end, voting against any sort of sanctions against the mayor even after the crack scandal broke wide. Aside from that, I can’t come up with one thing the councillor championed during his first term, few he even bothered to express an opinion on. He did excel in asking confusing questions to both staff and his council colleagues during city council meetings. So I wouldn’t go as far as to call him a complete and utter non-entity. Just a simple non-entity will suffice.
7) Councillor Ron Moeser (Ward 44 Scarborough East)
He came into last term ailing, missing many, many important meetings and decisions during the first 18 months. While his attendance and health appeared to pick up over the last couple years, I don’t think it unfair to make it an issue during this campaign. Even when he returned to work, there were times Councillor Moeser didn’t appear to be on top of the proceedings especially during the last budget deliberations after he was made a late addition to the committee. His most memorable moment over the last 4 years? Railing against ice cream trucks during the food truck debate.
8) Councillor Cesar Palacio (Ward 17 Davenport)
While the councillor wasn’t elected to office on Rob Ford’s coat tails, you certainly wouldn’t know that by how he conducted his council business. A Ford loyalist and then some, he even took to flashing his thumb in support of the Ford agenda during votes after Giorgio Mammoliti thought better of such public displays of affection toward the mayor. Councillor Palacio seemed to take great delight in railing against the St. Clair disaster despite the fact it painted a bleak picture of his own ward. Ward 17 residents have every reason to wonder exactly whose interests their councillor put first, theirs or the mayor’s.
9) Councillor Gary Crawford (Ward 36 Scarborough Southwest)
Not a word of a lie, even now, nearly 4 years on, whenever Councillor Crawford got up to speak at council, I’d be surprised. My immediate thought was, who is that guy? The quietest member of city council, he let his actions speak louder than his words, his major accomplishments being, painting a portrait of Mayor Ford and drumming for the band that played at a few of the mayor’s Ford Fests. After that, he silently supported the mayor’s agenda, rarely getting up to explain why. A loyal button pusher until it became problematic to do so, Gary Crawford is a city councillor without distinction.
10) Councillor Frank Di Giorgio (Ward 12 York South-Weston)
Amiable enough, the Team Ford 2nd budget chief, Councillor Di Giorgio came across as overwhelmed by all the big numbers. Actually, given his lengthy time in office, he seemed surprisingly overwhelmed by most aspects of the job. He regularly stood up in city council meetings to ask some of the most stupefyingly obtuse questions, to state the most stupefyingly obstuse points, you had to wonder some days how he was even able to find his way to City Hall. When people point to the low quality of local representation as the reason not to give municipalities more control over their future, they will end up pointing to the likes Councillor Frankd Di Giorgio as proof of their argument.
11) Councillor James Pasternak (Ward 10 York Centre)
I’ve conversed briefly with Councillor Pasternak. Councillor Pasternak seems to be a genuinely nice person. However, I still think Councillor Pasternak shouldn’t be a city councillor. His subway obsession in the form of the mystical North York Relief line and the burr he developed up his ass toward the Ombudsman combined to make for a petulant, pandering politician. The fact that he rose to the ranks of both Executive and Budget Committee member speaks more to the emptiness of the Ford Administration than it does to his talents as a city councillor.
12) Councillor Mark Grimes (Ward 6 Etobicoke-Lakeshore)
If anyone knows why it is Councillor Grimes got into politics in the first place, why he continues to seek re-election, maybe they can give us a hint. He doesn’t seem to much like his job, reluctantly participating in city council meetings. I think his main contribution this term was to try and limit the amount of time councilors got to speak during meetings. He gives off an annoyed, can-we-move-this-thing-along vibe regularly, as if he has more important things to do with his time than be, you know, a city councillor. The Midnight Mayor nickname Rob Ford bestowed upon him should ultimately mean nothing more than nobody really sees much of Councillor Grimes. That’s how much of a non-factor he ultimately is.
13) Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38 Scarborough Centre)
We include this bonus track because nobody so cravenly enabled the push for the Scarborough subway at the city level more than Councillor De Baeremaeker. A largely unremarkable councillor with a penchant for bringing props to council meetings, he displayed a serious lack of political judgment when did he did his 180 from LRT to subway in a matter of months for no other apparent reason than out of pure fear of Ford Nation electoral retribution. Turns out, there is no such thing as Ford Nation and now we’re stuck with an unnecessary subway extension. This Glenn De Baeremaeker is what gives politicians a bad name and supplies political haters with all the ammunition they need.
— helpfully submitted by Cityslikr
This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2014 at 11:43 am and is filed under City Building, City Council, Elections 2014, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Toronto Sun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
6 Responses to The Dirty (Baker’s) Dozen
How about Rob & Doug? the Ford Administration plus the Mush has been a cancer on progress in the City. Having promised “no cuts guaranteed.” Proposed 45 TTC route “reductions” that was fought down to 41. Cut child care that was saved by the Province. The road congestion is in part due to their bad cuts…
the 13 given there are 13 left and Joe will replace Adam in 20.
the leftish is
Dory Chalhoub
Mary Hynes
Paul Bocking
Idil Burale
Amarjeet Chhabra
Alejandra Bravo
Rob Spencer
Lekan Olawoye
Igor Toutchinski
Russ Ford
Sandra Bussin in W32
P.S. the polls are wrong and were wasted when Rob Ford ran.
NOW that there is the first DOUG Ford in a debate we shall see what
Greg Banks says:
Good to see you got most of the ‘inane repeaters’ you know the stream of Councillors who rise to ask silly questions and feel those questions are new and incisive because they changed two or three words. Nevetherless it is the same question asked repeatedly to the point that even Nunziata has to step in.
You did miss Perruzza who would probably be more comfortable in Stratford on Niagara-on-the-Lake, Cho whose age seems to be catching up with him, Filion’s bobbling and dithering, Bailao who seems lost to anything except cleaning women and Kelly who rose to the call in the last year was still less than stellar…
Simon Says says:
You obviously have not been out to South Etobicoke to see the work Mark Grimes has done for getting the outdoor skating track, the skateboard park, the changes to Marie Curtis park, 52 Division and the Police College. (plus more)
wheeler98 says:
I agree with the list but feel the need to add one Raymond Cho. He fails to have the simplest understanding of every issue he grandstands on…
PS: What were the arguments against a subway stop all the way in the west end of Etobicoke, i.e. Kipling Station in the late 1970’s?
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Dr Dude's expectations for Ontario were a lot less aspirational: twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/st… twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/st… 1 hour ago
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What I Learned Teaching IR in Asia (2): Show me the Policy Relevance!
Posted on February 1, 2012 by Robert E Kelly
The robot special effects are pretty funny
Part one is here, where I noted how teaching IR in Asia taught me to stop worrying and love American empire, and that American social science’ monolinguism is actually a highly responsible research technique. Here are a few more:
4. Imperial Star‘Fleet Professors,’ or why everyone seems to want to work for MOFAT. In his essay in Cooperation under Anarchy (btw, was that sorta the bible for anyone else in their first year of IR grad school?), Van Evera had that good remark about ‘fleet professors.’ The German navy, in the race with the Royal Navy, coopted professors, through money, access, and prestige, to make an intellectual case for expansion and competition. We used that term in grad school to indicate PhDs who wanted to work for the government or DoD, or more generally, had possible conflicts of interest because of relations with the state. Yet connection to the state is fairly common in Korea and smiled upon by university administration. Everyone (yes, me too) seems to have some relation to government-affiliated think-tanks and such (here, here, here). Conferences routinely and explicitly invite policy-makers and expect academics to comment on current issues. I worry about this, because government preferences inevitably influence positions, and it is so easy to get pulled into predictions for which you have little knowledge beyond a few articles you’ve read. I am regularly asked when NK will collapse, e.g., or who should own the Liancourt Rocks, but as Saideman noted, it’s so easy to put your foot in your mouth when you reach like that. It’s also kind of easy for this to turn into an academic food-fight, as it did the first time I debated a Chinese IR academic. By contrast, I find Korean colleagues quite excited to engage in the policy-making joust.
The idea that this might damage the ‘speaking truth to power’ role of the professoriate is generally not worried about. (Read this on the issue.) Instead, following the yangban legacy (similar to the Chinese mandarins), the idea is that PhDs, with all their accumulated wisdom (hah! somebody call the Tea Party!), should help guide the state better. On the one hand, this is terribly flattering. Koreans, and east Asians generally, respect academics in a way I was wholly unprepared for, especially given the widespread American attitude that we are either overintellectualized ballonheads who lose our glasses on our foreheads, or a liberal atheist threat to the good values of Christian America. I get invited to speak at think-tanks and public events, talk on the radio, and write in newspapers in way I never was at home. On the other hand, it does raise the next issue…
5. Enough of your model-building, Poindexter! We need policy relevance! Walt regularly laments that IR, and political science generally, are too abstract and too distant from reality (certainly grad school was). Korea and China (although not Japan so much in my experience) are the opposite. Political science is so policy relevant that it often threatens to become public policy prescription instead. I remember this issue of ISR which pretty much found that outside the US and a few other places, political science isn’t really about basic research at all. I understand in Korea, with the enormous pressure of NK on everything we do in IR here, why this is so; bizarre and terrifying, NK inevitably dominates a huge amount of my teaching and conference time. But I do think this impoverishes Korean IR theoretically. (Here is the best IR journal to come out of Korea; let me know what you think.) And with Chinese colleagues, it is worse. It is hard to tell how much of their policy edge comes from ties to the state, and how much is ‘overseen’ by the state or required by the party (although like most people, I have found Chinese scholars in private to be far less ideological and aggressive than at the conference table). My experience is that Chinese political science is pretty much public policy, not what Duck methodologists would consider social science. At some point, this will have to change in order to address issue 3 (American IR dominance). In the Korean case, given the enormous amount of time devoted to NK in IR here, I can’t see this until after unification.
6. Springer’s Final Thought: Nobody wins when IR theory cheats on its cases. Dave Kang once told me that East Asia is a ‘candy store’ of cases for IR, and they are terribly under-researched. Teaching here has really shown me that. Forget all your standard (i.e., western) IR examples like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the inter-war period, or Napoleon. Undergrads here only know this stuff vaguely, and you can’t connect with them if all you’ve got are stories about white guys. Start thinking about the Imjin War or Qianlong, and if you don’t know what that means, that’s the whole point. There are lots of good puzzles. For example, why don’t Japan and SK ally balance against China as realism/balance of power theory says they should? What about a pre-modern Confucian peace? It is unfortunate that Asian work on this is underdeveloped. Asian history has many good cases that we don’t know about, because we are overfocused on conflicts that are both modern (after Columbus) and Western. That space-time limit (Western, post-1500) has really struck me most as an IR theorist living here. Just within the West, consider that Rome and Carthage have scarcely been explored a as bipolar system, even though modern IR is pretty much built on cold war bipolarity. Then think about the fact that China has been a reasonably coherent entity for something like 2200 years. The room for IR theory application and improved generalizability is huge.
Cross-posted at Duck of Minerva.
This entry was posted in Asia, International Relations Theory, Political Science by Robert E Kelly. Bookmark the permalink.
6 thoughts on “What I Learned Teaching IR in Asia (2): Show me the Policy Relevance!”
Yessi Olivia on February 1, 2012 at 7:08 pm said:
Good posting! It reminds me of Amitav Acharya’s book about the lack of non western IR theories. Some of the chapters describe the development of IR in China and S. Korea. And just like some of the points you mentioned: political science in China is basically the description of public policy, and IR in S.Korea is pretty much occupied with security dilemma between them and N. Korea.
Robert E Kelly on February 1, 2012 at 8:56 pm said:
Thanks. I think you are right. I was at a confernce last year with Acharya and Kang where we discussed this in some detail. What book by Acharya were you thinking of?
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Yessi Olivia on February 2, 2012 at 8:46 am said:
The title is Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives On and Beyond Asia (Politics in Asia). Edited by Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan.
I am an IR lecturer from Indonesia and one of the problems that I’m facing when teaching IR theories is that not all of IR theories can be applied to explain the situation in non western world.
Robert E Kelly on February 3, 2012 at 10:38 am said:
Where do you teach, and what non-Western IR theory do you use?
Pingback: Why don’t Korean and Japan Align, even though IR says they should? | Robert Kelly — Asian Security Blog
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Soy. Fibroid Friend or Foe?
Whether or not to eat soy is a puzzle for the everyday consumer. It can be even trickier if you’re a woman with uterine fibroids. And yet, the latest research shows we’re not that much closer to finding a clear-cut answer.
Soy is rich in phytoestrogens or plant estrogens called isoflavones, which are similar in structure to human estrogen but not as potent. Because they’re weaker, it’s believed these plant estrogens could act as anti-estrogens and serve as a potential protection against several hormonal diseases like breast cancer.1
Uterine fibroids, although noncancerous, are tumors thought to respond to estrogen and progesterone levels. For this reason, researchers question whether soy intake will protect or worsen the condition.
Published in Nutrition & Cancer, a review of current research looked at relevant studies investigating any potential links between soy intake and uterine fibroid risk.1 A Chinese case-control study involving 73 women with fibroids and 210 without examined the women’s dietary habits, physical activity, and stress through validated self-administered questionnaires.1,2 Results showed that soy food intake wasn’t linked to uterine fibroids in either premenopausal or postmenopausal women. A similar Japanese cross-sectional study that looked at 285 premenopausal Japanese women also found no association.1,3 The same was found true for the Black Women’s Health Study made up of 22,120 premenopausal US women.1,4 These studies show that soy intake doesn’t seem to be correlated to fibroid risk in adult women, but could soy intake early in life affect fibroid development and growth later on? The Study of Environment, Lifestyle & Fibroids (SELF), an ongoing cohort study of 1,696 African American women ages 23-34 years, surveyed 1,553 women (89%) concerning soy intake during infancy.5
Out of the 1,553 SELF participants, 22% had fibroids and 13% reported being fed soy formula. Results showed that soy formula-fed women had a slightly lower prevalence of fibroids (20%) in comparison to women who were not given soy formula (23%)—these were values considered too similar to be significant. There also wasn’t any association between soy formula intake and fibroid number.5
What did stand out to researchers was that among women with fibroids, those who were soy formula-fed as infants had significantly larger fibroids in comparison to those not fed soy formula. On average, soy formula feeding was linked with a 32% increase in fibroid diameter of the largest fibroid and a 127% increase in total fibroid volume. The researchers concluded that this study supports the theory concerning the effects of early life phytoestrogen exposure on the uterus.5 Even though no link was found between soy formula and fibroid prevalence and number, animal studies have shown that when exposed to a soy isoflavone called genistein early in life, it can affect the developing uterus and promote both of these occurrences.6
If the results to these studies don’t seem very cohesive, researchers examining possible fibroid links within the Black Women’s Health Study found data that was even more conflicting.7 After following 23,505 premenopausal women, 12-year follow-ups reported 7,268 had fibroids. But the researchers also stated “there was little evidence of an association between [fibroids] and…exposure to soy formula in infancy” and that “these findings do not support the hypothesis that intrauterine and early life factors are strongly related to [fibroid] risk.”7
As the latest research has shown, the jury is still out on whether or not soy intake is connected to fibroids. As we reviewed, it may not affect adult women but may influence a developing uterus in ways that could later lead to fibroid growth.
Parazzini, F., Di Martino, M., Candiani, M., et al. (2015). Dietary components and uterine leiomyomas: a review of published data. Nutr Cancer, Mar; 67(4): 569-579.
He, Y., Zeng, Q., Dong, S., et al. (2013). Associations between uterine fibroids and lifestyles including diet, physical activity and stress: a case-control study in China. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr, 22(1): 109-117.
Negata, C., Nakamura, K., Oba, S., et al. (2009). Association of intakes of fat, dietary fibre, soya isoflavones and alcohol with uterine fibroids in Japanese women. Br J Nutr, May; 101(10): 1427-1431.
Wise, L., Radin, R., Palmer, J., et al. (2010). A prospective study of dairy intake and risk of uterine leiomyomata. Am J Epidemiol, Dec; 171(2): 221-232.
Upson, K., Harmon, Q., & Baird, D. (2016). Soy-based infant formula feeding and ultrasound-detected uterine fibroids among young African-American women with no prior clinical diagnosis of fibroids. Environ Health Perspect, Nov; 124(6): 769-775.
Greathouse, L., Bredfeldt, T., Everitt, J. (2012). Environmental estrogens differentially engage the histone methyltransferase EZH2 to increase risk of uterine tumorigenesis. Mol Cancer Res, Apr; 10(4): 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-11-0605.
Wise, L., Radin, R., Palmer, J., et al. (2012). Association of intrauterine and early life factors with uterine leiomyomata in black women. Ann Epidemiol, Dec; 22(12): 847-854.77
Why Collaboration of Care Is a Win-Win Solution to Treating Fibroids Revictimization: The Hidden Truth Behind Childhood Sexual Abuse
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Importance of Environmental Instability to the Sensitivity of the Rimed Ice Species in Convection
Submitter: Van Weverberg, K., Brookhaven National Laboratory
Vogelmann, A. M., Brookhaven National Laboratory
Journal Reference: Van Weverberg K. 2013. "Impact of Environmental Instability on Convective Precipitation Uncertainty Associated with the Nature of the Rimed Ice Species in a Bulk Microphysics Scheme." Monthly Weather Review, 141(8), 10.1175/mwr-d-13-00036.1.
Spatial distribution of the 5-hour accumulated surface precipitation for simulations that contain graupel (left) and hail (right). Squall lines are shown in the top four panels and supercells in the bottom four panels.
Despite a number of studies dedicated to understanding the sensitivity of deep convection simulations to the properties of the rimed ice species in microphysics schemes, no consensus has been reached on the nature of the impact. Considering the need for improved quantitative precipitation forecasts, it is crucial that the cloud modeling community better understand the reasons for the differing conclusions among previous studies and know the relevance of these sensitivities for the numerical weather prediction.
Research conducted at Brookhaven National Laboratory examined the role of environmental conditions and storm type on the sensitivity of precipitation simulations to the nature of the rimed ice species used (graupel or hail). Idealized three-dimensional simulations of supercells and squall lines were performed in varying thermodynamic environments.
This study showed that graupel-containing and hail-containing storms produce domain-averaged surface precipitation that is more similar than many earlier studies suggest if the simulation period is of sufficient length (> 2 hours). Graupel is lofted to higher altitudes and has a longer residence time aloft than hail, which causes a delayed precipitation onset for graupel storms compared to the hail storms; however, most of this graupel eventually reaches the surface, and the surface precipitation rates of hail- and graupel-containing storms converge. The magnitude of this sensitivity depends on environmental conditions, such as convective available potential energy (CAPE). Simulations of storms in large-CAPE environments (typical of storms in the mid-western U.S.) are more sensitive than their low-CAPE counterparts (typical of storms in Europe) to the nature of the rimed ice species in terms of domain-average surface precipitation. For equal amounts of CAPE, supercells are more sensitive than squall lines to the nature of the rimed ice species in terms of spatial precipitation distribution and peak precipitation.
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The IX - #1 in Australia Again
What a delight to find The IX topping the charts in Australia once again.
Thank you so much to all the fans who are supporting this remarkable story - and especially to the discerning readers Down Under who continue to highlight the popularity of science fiction there.
Have YOU read The IX?
Find out why you should
Weston deftly weaves the horrors of the Horde stealing human life-essences, with the beauty of his prose and imagery. I was right there, on Arden, while reading. Action-packed through every chapter, the story unfolds as former enemies are forced to learn how to trust each other, to trust the visions & experiences of those who walk the spirit-world, & to share information. I highly recommend this book to fans of SF/fantasy, & horror.
The IX has taken me back to the books I enjoyed in my youth (Jerry Pournelle's King David's Spaceship or Gordon Dickson's Hour of the Horde) It flows wonderfully. There's constant motion,& Weston takes the story in unexpected directions that are intriguing & fun.
If you're in need of some fast-paced storytelling, lots of action, & an army of characters drawn from Earth's past and future, The IX should serve you well.
Black Gate
Weston knows how to keep the reader on the edge of the seat without feeling as though the mission will never end. This is a complex combination of history, imagination& science fiction magic as is available today. A strong book by a solid author.
Grady Harp: Hall of Fame/Top 100 /Vine Reviewer
When it comes to science fiction, I want a book that captures me from page one and never gives me a reason to want to escape. I want a book that forces me to stay up until 3 a.m., because there is no point at which it is ideal to put it down. I want a book whose characters and plots are complex and intelligent, but elegantly crafted with the minimum of distraction. The IX delivers.
Fanboy Comics
If you like your science fiction fast paced and gritty, full of realistic action and dark humor in the face of overwhelming odds, then The IX is definitely the epic for you.
Fans of Julian May’s “Saga of the Pliocene Exiles,” Robert Heinlein’s “Have Space Suit, Will Travel”, and Jerry Pournelle's “Janissaries Series” will love this tale. It combines the divergent elements of the past, present, and future, and blends them together into a slick and stylish package that will leave you breathless and hungry for more.
The Must Read Science Fiction Adventure of 2015.
Sometimes, death is only the beginning of the adventure...
Find out for yourselves why...
http://www.amazon.com/IX-Andrew-P-Weston-ebook/dp/B00RM54QBA/ref=sr_1_1_twi_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424082827&sr=8-1&keywords=the+IX
Barnes & Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-ix-andrew-p-weston/1121115575?ean=9780986414008
Posted by Andrew P. Weston at 10:52 PM
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Budapest (and Hungary) Riding an Office Development Boom
Robin Marshall
How is Hungary’s office market positioned? What are the trends? Will we ever see genuine secondary markets in Hungary? The Budapest Business Journal asked Lóránt Kibédi Varga, country manager of CBRE Hungary, one of the leading real estate consultancies to drill down deeper into the local data.
BBJ: How would you describe the Hungarian office market in Q2 2018? How do you think it will develop across this year and further into the future?
Lóránt Kibédi Varga: The office market is enjoying great activity and momentum. There is a positive expectation regarding business confidence for 2018 and we can confirm that, based on our demand pipeline, we expect take-up level to remain solid in the coming quarters. As of April 2018, vacancy rates are at historic lows across most submarkets and there is a growing need for quality office space. We see that the supply side of the market is changing in 2018: There is a great recovery in development volume and we expect completions to reach 250,000 sqm this year – up from 80,000 sqm last year. Although the majority of the completions scheduled for 2018 are already preleased, there will be new availability coming to the market.
Based on experts’ consensus, the CEE region is expected to produce the strongest economic growth in the coming years, giving strong confidence that the Hungarian economy can keep outperforming the eurozone and converge to the core countries. This momentum will be supported by increasing EU funding in the coming years, in which regard Hungary traditionally excels among the region with high absorption rates. This further enforces our view of a healthy business environment for the coming one-two years, which helps office demand grow further.
BBJ: Most new office developments still take place in Budapest, with relatively very little happening in the provincial cities. Do you see any signs of growing development in the countryside, and when do you think we might be able to talk about genuine secondary markets in Hungary?
LKV: Indeed, the office market has an extreme concentration on Budapest. The business services sector is a significant driver on the Hungarian labor market, as attested by double-digit employment growth registered in the sector in previous years. At yearend, there were approximately 110 business service centers across the country, employing some 42,000 people. The dominant hub for the sector remains Budapest with a share of more than 70% in the total. However, large regional cities are proving more attractive to employers. An outstanding example is Debrecen, which won the “Emerging City of the Year” title in the 2017 CEE Shared Service and Outsourcing Awards. Recently, new target cities such as Szeged, Miskolc and Pécs are also appearing on the map. Most of these regional cities fall into the highest tier of subsidy eligibility across the EU, and local authorities or investment promotion organizations are readily available to assist prospective employers with local intelligence and incentives. It is not a coincidence that these cities had a presence at MIPIM this year and are clearly aiming to attract a higher proportion of new business coming to the country.
BBJ: For an investor considering Hungary, what advantages does it hold over other countries in the region?
LKV: Overall, 2018 could bring similar turnover to that of 2017 based on the pipeline we are now seeing – reinforcing that Hungarian assets are interesting for money seeking good value and return. Yield levels in Budapest still have a clear advantage compared to those in Warsaw or Prague for an investor. Moreover, we see growing interest for assets outside of Budapest at even more attractive yield levels. Financing conditions have eased significantly over the past two years and terms are expected to remain supportive and possibly even improve further. LTV ratios are edging back towards 70-75% with typical margins compressing to 200-250 bps. Having said that, the market is close to its theoretical ceiling – simply because of the size and depth of the market. We asked our clients this question during our “Investment Breakfast” event this April, and the vast majority of the real estate players expect a rather small change in the volumes for this year. This reinforces how strong the investment sentiment is in Hungary now. In terms of deal-flow, there is an increasing chance for larger, regional platform transactions materializing this year, as owners that have consolidated sizeable portfolios may be looking to reap their rewards.
BBJ: Green accreditation is now a given for office developments. What are the upcoming trends in Budapest? How supportive is the government of the construction industry? What more could it do to boost office development?
LKV: All new projects in Budapest aim to achieve a certain level of accreditation using one rating system or more. It is not a marketing gimmick but something that has material savings and benefits for the occupiers over the long-term. However, which accreditation system to choose and what level to target, remains more a decision for the developer depending on the individual project. The market is moving towards more added-value developments. Developing quality projects will be more important as tenants are becoming more demanding and are ready to pay for the upside. On the other hand, they expect operational costs to be as rational as possible.
The construction market is now in a boom. The current economic cycle intensifies the appetite for new commercial developments, while at the same time the Hungarian government also acts as a big market player by initiating large public funded development projects. Besides these two factors, the temporary reduction of the VAT rate from 27% to 5% on new residential developments acts as an administrative distortion and induces extra demand before this regulation is supposed to end in late 2019. Together, these factors put a strain on construction capacity and lead to price increases. I am not sure that the government needs to make any extra effort to boost development activity in the commercial sector.
BBJ: How much of CBRE’s Hungarian business is taken up with the office market, and how has this changed?
LKV: CBRE has a dedicated Office Agency team, comprising six full-time professionals, who specialize in the Budapest office market acting for developers, landlords, and occupiers as well as brokering transactions. The office team falls within CBREs Advisory and Transaction department which also includes Retail and Industrial Agency. Given the activity in the wider market, CBRE’s Investment team are very active on the buy or sell side with office Investments, primarily in Budapest. CBRE’s valuation team enjoys a lot of work in the office sector and we also have a Property Management team who manage nearly 98,000 sqm of office schemes and a Project Management team who are deeply involved with several high-profile office fit-outs. All in all, the office sector remains one of the most important for any multiple service line real estate consultancy such as ourselves.
Lóránt Kibédi Varga, who has a 30-year track record in international real estate and banking, has held positions in Brazil, the Netherlands, Hungary and Belgium. Previous senior level positions include CEO of both TriGranit Development Corporation, a CEE-based real estate investment, development and management firm, and CBS Property, a major Hungarian landowner. Since 2014, he has been leading CBRE Hungary as its managing director. In addition, Varga is the chairman of the board of the Netherlands-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and board member of the American International School in Budapest. He considers charity an essential part of his life and has been an avid supporter of Szent Miklós Children’s Home & School for more than 15 years.
Office market
Lóránt Kibédi Varga
CBRE Hungary
Árkád Budapest Food Loft project enters next phase
Budapest shopping mall Árkádʼs EUR 5.8 million Food Loft project has entered a new phase, with the development area being delivered to tenants, according to a press release sent to the Budapest Business Journal.
Fri, July 12, 2019, 12:35
Food Loft
Tram 1 extension wraps up Tuesday
The extension of Budapest tram line no. 1 will be presented to the public tomorrow. The 1.7-kilometer extension makes the tram line the longest in the city (18.3 km), stretching from Kelenföld Railway Station, crossing the river into Pest and back, to Óbuda, news site magyarnemzet.hu reported.
Mon, July 8, 2019, 15:35
Austriaʼs AVL building development center in Érd
Austrian engineering company AVL laid the cornerstone on Monday of a HUF 12.5 billion regional development center in Érd, on the southwestern outskirts of Budapest, state news agency MTI reported.
Tue, June 25, 2019, 09:30
Janetzko
UNESCO asks Hungary to halt Liget Budapest project
The World Heritage Center of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has requested that Hungary halt the giant Liget Budapest development project in a report, according to news site hvg.hu.
Mon, June 24, 2019, 09:00
South Buda City Center development to start in Újbuda
Negotiations are underway for a comprehensive city development project in District 11, with planned state and private developments resulting in the creation of one of Europeʼs largest intermodal junctions and a new city center in Buda.
South Buda
Futureal
Budapest One
Etele Plaza
Horizon to manage Park Atrium office building
Horizon Development Ltd. has announced it will take over the property management, redevelopment, leasing and marketing tasks of the Park Atrium office building starting June 1, 2019, according to a press release sent to the Budapest Business Journal.
Thu, May 30, 2019, 14:00
Horizon Development
Park Atrium
REInvest
Népliget: Budapest’s new business district
Located at the meeting point of Districts VIII., IX. and X., Népliget is becoming the new business district of Budapest and still has a good deal of development potential, according to portfolio.hu.
Fri, May 17, 2019, 10:00
Whosnews
Horizon names business development director
Real estate developer Horizon Development has announced the appointment of Tamás Ádány, ex-CEO of OTP Real Estate Plc., to the newly created position of business development director, according to a press release sent to the Budapest Business Journal.
Associate partner appointed at Horizon Development
The Horizon Development board is now complete after the appointment of Gabriella Sasvári as associate partner, the company has told the Budapest Business Journal.
Sasvári
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Torchwood… dang it, TorchLIGHT. Why do I keep doing that?
August 31, 2009 Syp8 Comments
No matter. Just came to my attention that we should all be following the development of Torchlight at Runic Games’ site — this title looks very, very promising. Particularly the recently-announced class, the Vanquisher:
“At E3 this Summer, we hinted around at our 3rd class. “She’s female,” is all we could confirm. Then little leaks came out – She’ll be a mixed-range class. Guns and bows. Badass babe stuff. You’ve been waiting … and we’ve been waiting to show you.
Girls of Gaming was her official debut, and what better way for a fine and classy young avatar to meet her public than with a smoking gun and a smirk on page 4. We also revealed that the third class –who you now know as The Vanquisher—had a backstory rooted in the overall world, even beyond the boomtown of Torchlight. She travels to Torchlight in disguise as a fellow treasure and adventure seeker. Secretly, however, she is a member of the elite and deadly guards of the world’s capital city, sent to investigate the mysterious and violent disturbances surrounding the boomtown’s Ember mines.
She has a nasty road of corrupted Ember and death ahead of her, but our girl is up to the task. Please meet the long-awaited Vanquisher.”
“The appeal of an MMO isn’t about features. If it was, EQ2 would be the biggest MMO, contested only by LotRO, and WoW would be a second-stringer. It’s about the overall package, of which the features list is one element, feel and atmosphere is another, and the overall sense of fun is the third.”
~ Ardwulf
There’s This Dungeon, See, And A Dragon…
DDO’s servers are down today, as the old DDO is put to pasture and the new DDO Unlimited is ushered into the room. I haven’t been in DDO for about a week now, mostly because I’ve been waiting for the new patch and busy with life elsewhere — but don’t take that as a lack of excitement, because DDO Unlimited might be the sleeper hit of the year.
Whether Unlimited’s re-launch works the way Turbine hopes is clearly too soon to tell, but they haven’t been hurting for publicity since the announcement a couple months back. It’s a game that’s consistently been the underdog ever since its 2005 launch, bleeding the initial swarm of lookie-lou’s into a small, 4-server community that’s seen precious little advertisement from Atari and pretty infrequent updates from Turbine (DDO Unlimited brings with it a content patch that players have been waiting for over 9 months). It doesn’t easily fit into many MMO molds, and is even shunned by various D&D lovers who loathe the Eberron setting or the compromises it had to make to be transformed into a MMO.
Free to play Unlimited carries with it a lot of nervous anticipation — current players still have no idea if their community is going to be bombarded and possibly ripped apart from a huge influx of mouth-breathing (this means something when every group uses voice chat) nitwits, or if their community will grow beyond their wildest dreams and give Turbine more motivation to further developing the game.
So here’s to Unlimited, may its future be considerably brighter than its past.
Check out these hugely hefty release notes!
Mind Yer Manners
As a corollary to the last post, I just wanted to add — make sure to really thank people in game when they go out of their way to help you out. None of this abbreviated “ty” nonsense — a properly spelled “thank you” is the bare minimum acceptable for this reponse. If they made your day or obviously went to a lot of personal trouble to give you a hand, then I think it’s appropriate to express gratitude through a note or by telling them why you appreciated what they did (“Thank you for the help taming this pet, I’m really going to love leveling him!”).
Or perhaps do the whole “pay it forward” thing — help someone else the way you were helped, and as a result, make the entire game a better place to be.
Helping Others vs. Helping Yourself
August 31, 2009 Syp11 Comments
I know we always like to come off as perfect people, but I hope that I’m honest enough to share the not-so-great parts about me from time to time. And I’ll be honest in this: sometimes I just don’t want to help you out in game, because it does nothing for me.
Ack! How horrible is that? How selfish, self-centered… pretty much the opposite of everything I strive to be in my daily life. It’s almost as if I started drinking a tall glass of Ayn Rand in the morning or something. And really, in games I don’t tend to be like that either — if a friend asks for a helping hand, or if a stranger needs a tip or a quick assist on a mission, sure, I have no problem with that. Part of MMOs is being tied into the social scene, and you give as well as take.
But every once in a while, well, there comes a time that someone asks for help and my brain does a quick calculation — how much time will it take to do that? If they’re asking for a two-hour dungeon run, well, that is an askance worth pondering.
Because if MMOs have done anything well, they’ve taught us to be greedy little self-seekers — to be always striving to make our own character better and stronger and richer. There’s nothing for our character to be gained in helping out, usually, so that little voice nags at you in disapproval for “wasting” that time. Yes, it sounds awful, but I think a lot of us have this little internal drama playing out on occasion. The more we help others, the less we’re spending on progressing our own character — kind of pushing someone up while keeping us standing still. Sometimes we don’t have enough time to do both, and I’ve had evenings where I agree to assist someone only to have it turn into a lengthy slog through content (in which we don’t succeed, sometimes) that eats up all my playing time for that evening. It’s nice to help, sure, but I leave the keyboard feeling as if I haven’t accomplished anything, and that can be frustrating.
I rarely ever say “no” for a direct plea for help, but I’m not always as altruistic as others I know by logging on and instantly asking if someone needs a hand, because more often than not, there’s always someone who will gladly pounce on that offer and eat up whatever free time you had. It’s a struggle to deny the pull of the game, which rewards me for selfish behavior instead of selfless — why don’t more games have systems that encourage you to help others, especially if MMOs are these great social places?
No profound conclusion here, just a little insight into something that I’ve always felt. If you find me in game and honestly do need help, I won’t mind, nor will I resent you for it — I just wanted to be open that there are these opposing forces at play inside me.
Star Wars: The DOOM Song
MMO players are well-known for many idiosyncrasies, and one of their more famous traits is in pronouncing DOOM (always spelled with all caps) in any upcoming title for reasons that are clearly apparent to them but perhaps not to most sane folks.
It’s no secret that Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of the most anticipated MMOs in years, and we’re only going to see the fervor increase as the due date approaches. But with great hype comes great grumpiness, as Uncle Ben once told me, and we’re already seeing the early notes of the DOOM song being warmed up on stage. It’s a great song, and chances are you know the beat – “Yeah this game looks to be pretty popularrrr… but this one thing is going to siiiiiiink it! DOOM!” It gives people something to fixate on and give them cause to be generally pessimistic toward the game.
Lately I’ve been hearing/reading one of three commonly repeated DOOM beats in relation to TOR, all of which I find a tad premature since our actual knowledge of the game is fairly limited as of now. I’m going to tackle these three debated factors, but I want to make it clear: I’m not taking the opposite stance and saying any of these are wrong. They may be proven right in the long run. I’m merely playing devil’s advocate because it’s simply too soon to know the truth behind any of these, and it’s kind of dumb to be pounding the DOOM tune out when the gaps between what we know could fit a Death Star. Or Two.
1. The “Single Player MMO” Hypothesis
By far, this is the one I’m hearing the most: “TOR is a single-player RPG masquerading as a MMO”, usually followed by a wistful “Why didn’t they just make a single-player KOTOR 3 instead?” It irks me because it’s been repeated enough to make it almost sound like a fact, instead of the baseless speculation of what BioWare’s shown us vs. not.
Most MMO companies, when starting to talk up their upcoming title, jump out of the gate with their unique selling point. Their big strength that sets them apart from the pack. For WAR, it was RvR; for Champions, it was mix-and-match powers; for WoW, it was the accessibility to the casual crowd; for DDO, it was the GM narration and unique dungeons; and so on. They don’t spend a lot of time talking about what they share in common with everyone else, because that’s a ho-hum mark against them in the PR department. So in this case, BioWare leapt out with their “fourth pillar” of storytelling, which was aimed at each player’s individual experience. They spent so much time talking about this that the perception grew that we’ll all just be going through these stories by our lonesome, never grouping, just waving to other players as we pass like ships in the night.
Yet BioWare isn’t stupid nor ignorant of what makes a MMO a MMO. They haven’t gone into a lot of detail, but they have indicated that there’s a lot of “massively multiplaying” going on — parties of multiple player characters, characters sharing a non-instanced part of the world, PvP, the economy and so on. Now, you may personally wish they had made KOTOR 3, but I’m all for this grand effort, because my character won’t “end” with the last part of my story, but have potential to continue in future chapters.
2. The “Too Much Talk/Story” Complaint
BioWare’s next big selling point was to announce that they are doing something that no other MMO has ever done before — fully voice every character, including your own — and to show off a couple examples of the cinematic dialogue you’ll be experiencing in their stories. For some of us, the response is a properly awed “oh wow COOL” as we consider the logistics behind voicing all of this, in multiple genders and in multiple languages. But no gift is too good as to be rejected by others, who see this as a potential black mark on the game. “Too talky! Me just want action! I don’t read quest text now, why am I going to listen to them jabber later?”
To be fair, this is a personal preference issue, which will be resolved when people see whether or not what BioWare does works for them. You may hate voiceovers in games. You may wish to skip it all, and to eschew the story. I’m sure BioWare will let you do that, somehow, but my feeling is that they’re making the game they want to make with the features that allow them to tell great stories like they’ve been doing for years. If you don’t like it, nobody’s forcing you to partake. But I’ve always loved being rewarded with conversations and cut scenes and scripted events when I’ve put in the effort to progress through a story, and this looks so much up my alley that I can’t applaud it loudly enough. Sure, maybe it will be TOO much chatter. Maybe I will hate the slower pace of storytelling. But from what I’ve liked about BioWare’s single-player titles, I doubt it.
3. The “You’ll Ruin My Conversation” Scenario
This is more of a smaller nitpick that’s coupled with a lack of clear understanding how these things will work. After all, nobody’s really done multiplayer conversations with NPCs in MMOs before, and from what we’ve seen, the game rolls a dice or something when you’re in a party to see which player is allowed to respond to the NPCs. The reasonable follow-through to that feature is that folks are worried that their party mates might make a wrong choice for their quest, or mess things up, or take the conversation in a direction that’s undesirable.
And, yes, it is reasonable to worry about this, but not to assume that it will be pure DOOM and BioWare isn’t aware of the potential problems with it. Hold on to that concern, if you have it, but keep it in check until we hear more about it, and see how it plays out.
Update: On a recent Darth Hater podcast, they reported that BioWare’s said that if it is your quest, you can allow or forbid your friends from controlling the conversation, so that you can direct it the way you want.
To summarize: all three of these topics are not proven fact, nor should be treated as such. They indeed might be, but we need to be a lot closer to the game’s launch to be able to judge this for ourselves, and until that point, keep speculation and assumption in separate rooms.
Champions: Sneakin’ Into The Head Start
I’ve heard a couple people say that they’ve been able to log in and play Champions even though they aren’t part of the head start group that you got if you pre-ordered from select vendors. Can anyone else confirm this?
RT @battlebardscast: twitter.com/albiononline/s… 31 minutes ago
How serious is Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMO? @lotro #lotro #lotrofamily biobreak.wordpress.com/2019/07/17/how… https://t.co/Y488rPh2Xw 48 minutes ago
Blaugust wants your word-thoughts! #blaugust2019 biobreak.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/bla… https://t.co/cjCPGRqQCK 21 hours ago
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Best of Bio Break 2013: Most anticipated MMO updates in 2014
December 31, 2013 December 13, 2013 Syp4 Comments
The Best of Bio Break 2013 is a series of “end of the year” lists that talk about various forms of entertainment that I enjoyed this year. They’re not awards, but they are ranked. Each entry doesn’t have to be something that came out this year, but merely something I encountered this year.
For my final list and post of the year, I’m going to wrap things up by looking at my most anticipated updates for MMOs come the new year:
1. The Secret World: Tokyo
I. Am. Ready. Heck, the entire playerbase is ready by now. 2013 was a great year of updates for TSW, with awesome and memorable story arcs, but we’re still in the same three areas that we were at launch. It’s time to move on, and that will come when Funcom opens up Tokyo. I really can’t wait for this — for more story, more conspiracies, and more answers.
2. LOTRO Housing Update
Turbine punted on this in 2013 after promising that they’d do it, so I’m going to hold them to that. Also hoping we’ll be getting a new expansion as well. Gondor time!
3. RIFT 3.0
I keep flirting with the idea of going back to RIFT, starting fresh and really getting invested in the game (and then I remember, oh yeah, WildStar). But I’m somewhat interested to see what Trion has in store for the game’s second expansion, currently titled RIFT 3.0. “Dreams, nightmares, and water” are the themes.
4. A post-Scarlet Guild Wars 2
Yeah, I’m pretty much disconnected from the living story right now, but the news that it’ll be ending after four more updates is reason to hope that the second “season” will vastly learn from the errors of the past and usher back in the fun and excitement of Guild Wars 2 that I enjoyed in its first year.
5. More Neverwinter classes
I know that the team is working on additional classes for the game, and I really hope we get them sooner rather than later. I’d like to see a different type of magic user as well as another healer. Bard? Bard would rock. I’d so be there if they did Bard.
Best of Bio Break 2013
Fallout: A newborn Vault baby
December 30, 2013 Syp1 Comment
(This is part of my journey playing through Fallout. You can follow the entire series on the Nostalgia Lane page.)
You voted — and now my next journey is back into the post-apocalyptic landscape. Instead of the basics of Wasteland, we’re going to jump forward ten years or so to that game’s spiritual successor. Fallout was and still is an incredible classic in the RPG arena and a great example of a series that kind of kept getting better as it went along.
By the time I was aware that Fallout was a thing, Fallout 2 was already out and became my game of choice. So I basically leapfrogged right over the first installment and have only been back on occasion to sample the fruits of the Vault Dweller. I think my enthusiasm for doing so has been dampened by the time limit that exists in the early game (I hate being under the gun like that, although I hear it’s not that big of a problem). So I’m glad y’all encouraged me to dig this out and give it a genuine go.
Say it with me, folks:
WAR.
WAR NEVER CHANGES.
So one of my gaming resolutions for this coming year is to get out of my comfort zone — particularly in RPGs — and start trying new and different things. Therefore, with Fallout I’m not going to be rolling my standard safe character. I’m going to go a little nuts here.
So here’s our hero of the hour: Betty, a 35-year-old guy who (at least in my mind) has a dented skull but plenty of muscles to make up for it. I did a major trade-off by jacking down his luck and intelligence to disastrous proportions while boosting his agility, endurance, and strength to compensate. Think of a dim-witted strongman and there you go. The bruiser and gifted traits helped to boost his stats further (lookit that strength at 13!) and I picked melee weapons, first aid, and lockpick for his tag skills. Betty really isn’t going to be winning any science fairs, but he should be big and tough enough to brute-force his way through the wasteland.
Actually, the screenshot up there isn’t accurate — apparently you can’t start with a stat over 10. So I took a few points off of strength and gave it to luck. Guess it’s Betty’s lucky day after all.
Gotta say, the opening cinematic and then the post-character creation cutscene both gave me the chills. Even though the CGI is not quite up to 2013 standards, it’s actually not that bad. A big talking head — Vault 13’s overseer, I’m guessing — tells me that the vault’s water purification chip is on the fritz and they have about 150 days left before… well, I guess before they’re all forced to the surface. Maybe they should start doing that now? Just in case? The guy tells me that I’m the vault’s best chance of survival, which is laughable considering my 40 IQ.
Quick as a bunny, I’m outside of the vault and wondering if this is an elaborate prank on behalf of my friends. “Guys? Not funny! Lemme back in! Please!”
Man, I am so in love with Fallout’s aesthetic. The retro-futuristic look just works for this game in a great way, suggesting that this is some sort of parallel Earth’s future and not our own. Pip-Boy and Fallout Boy are great icons of the series, and how about that isometric look? Beeeautiful! OK, a little grainy, but still beeeeautiful.
At least the game doesn’t fall into that trope of the villagers saying that I’m their last, best hope and then kicking me out to save the world with just the clothes on my back. I actually have a good starting inventory, with a pistol, lockpick, medical stims, and ammo. But it’s the knife that interests me the most. Betty likes knives. Betty can do art with knives.
The last guy to fall for this water purification chip scam is lyying nearby with a severe case of anorexia. I take his ammo and knife and then desecrate his corpse. Just to be sure.
With a knife in the hand and a song in my heart, what else is there to do than to (drum roll please) kill ten rats? Yup, that hoary old RPG trope is alive and kicking from the start in Fallout, as the introductary cave is full of easy-to-kill mutant rats. Hey, I don’t feel bad doing them in; I got a half-level from this fun.
After playing Wasteland a few weeks ago, the huge leap to Fallout’s looks and gameplay is a wonderful relief. The turn-based combat’s pretty simple to master and I’m greatly enjoying the simple act of walking around and stabbing rodents. As I should be. As I should be.
Enough of this — it’s time to head out into the world, Vault Baby!
Best of Bio Break 2013: Most anticipated new games in 2014
Today I want to talk about what games I’m most anticipating with the new year, the games that I wish I could be playing right now:
1. WildStar
No big surprise here, right? There’s just so much here that feels custom-tailored to what I love in MMOs: choice, colorful graphics, sci-fi western, housing, pets, and bizarre humor. I got to play the beta and talk about it, and I can say it’s definitely the real deal in terms of what the studio’s been promising. A lot of people have “the” upcoming MMO they’re holding out hope on, and this is mine. Can’t wait to play it in a live environment.
2. The Walking Dead Season 2
Yup, another no-brainer. The first season was one of the best adventure game experiences I’ve ever had, and I am excited and a little nervous to see what Clementine gets into with the next chapter.
3. EverQuest Next Landmark
With EverQuest Next pretty much not a possibility for 2014, I bet a lot of folks are going to be stampeding to Landmark for a fix. I also bet that this is what SOE expected (Landmark probably would be largely ignored if it launched at the same time as EQN). Still, I’m in. The building looks kinda cool, and at least there are worlds to explore and some element of MMO progression to it all. This will be the wild card of 2014, make no mistake, and could have a huge impact or practically none at all in the industry.
4. Wasteland 2
Early backers are in the beta and the reports are good, very good for this sequel. I love post-apocalyptic settings and hope that this game will hit all of the marks to make it as engaging as Fallout once was for me.
5. The Sims 4
Hey, I always end up buying the new Sims games in the numbered franchise (I’ve never bought an expansion, however), for the house building if nothing else.
6. Shroud of the Avatar
Could this be the UO/Ultima sequel fans have wanted for years? Since I’ve never really played either, I have no dog in that fight, but I do think that there’s a lot of interesting ideas going on here with the overall project feeling a lot like the early days of making MMOs instead of these bloated budget products they’ve become. Plus, Richard Garriott’s enthusiasm is quite infectious.
Best of Bio Break 2013: Events
December 29, 2013 December 11, 2013 Syp1 Comment
In real-life, it was a pretty tame year for me. Lots of busyness, of course, but no major changes or new babies or anything like that. In fact, where my real life and my geeky/blogging/MMO life overlapped, I can only think of three major events:
1. Starting up Battle Bards
I had been wanting to do an MMO music podcast since late 2012, although I kept telling myself that I didn’t have the time for it. What I knew is that for the podcast to be what I envisioned, I’d have to learn how to put together a podcast myself instead of relying on others to do that for me. So I did just that and reached out to fellow MMO-music fans Steff and Syl to see if they’d like to co-host a review roundtable show with me. Tesh agreed to create our graphics, of which I’m still grateful. With everyone on board, it took a couple of months of preparations until we launched our first show.
I love doing Battle Bards, I really do. If you’ve listened to the show then you know it’s a labor of love for the three of us. We acknowledge that our potential listening audience is small, but those who love video game soundtracks and MMO soundtracks in particular can be quite passionate about it. Through trial and error we’ve figured an efficient way to coordinate schedules and show planning, and our once-a-month recording sessions are something we all look forward to doing. So it’s been a great ride so far and we can’t wait to share with you what’s planned for 2014’s episodes!
2. Wrapping up Too Long; Didn’t Listen
As I had one podcast on the rise, another one vanished. Dodge and I had been doing TLDL for a little over a year, but real life intervened and he needed to take a break from podcasting. Fair enough, we had a good run, and TLDL then got passed on to a new team over at MMO Reporter.
3. Going to PAX
I don’t think I did any conventions in 2012 and I was starting to miss them, so I made the effort to do PAX Prime this year. Doing a convention as media is a lot of work — tons of running around, doing interviews, sticking to a schedule, and writing as quick as kittens — so it’s not the laid-back fan experience that attendees have. However, it’s also pretty fun in its own way, since you get to cut the line in spots, get direct access to developers and parties, and meet other people in the industry. I couldn’t stay for the entire thing, but the trip was a positive one and I had Rubi’s family to thank for housing me for the duration of it.
Best of Bio Break 2013: Other games
December 28, 2013 December 19, 2013 SypLeave a comment
Due to the nature of MMOs and everything else I have going on, I didn’t spend that much time playing games in the larger video game market. However, there are a few titles I did want to mention, so mention them I now will.
For me, The Walking Dead won’t be the comics or the TV show, but this game. Even with stripped-down puzzle-solving mechanics and a cleverly hidden linear path, season one was one of the most affecting, gut-wrenching, and involving video game experiences I’ve ever had. I agonized over my choices, I got to know the cast of characters very well, I mourned the loss of key people, and I jumped once or twice due to jack-in-the-box zombies. Can’t wait for season 2!
2. The Wolf Among Us
Speaking of Telltale Games, The Wolf Among Us — at least the first episode — was a terrific portrayal of the Fables universe and a pretty cool ride. Instead of a zombie survival setting, it’s more about being a detective in a fairy-tales-meets-the-modern-world. A little peeved that Telltale is taking so long with episode 2, especially considering that I paid for the whole game up front, but I have no power here.
3. The Simpsons Tapped Out
Yes, it’s one of those freemium Farmville-style games that’s so easy to hate and criticize, but even so I was just tickled yellow playing it over the year. Slowly growing my Springfield while laughing at the hilarious quest text and enjoying the holiday events made this worthwhile to me.
4. Hearthstone
I was really excited about Blizzard’s WoW-themed card game, and while I haven’t played in a while, it is one of those perfect games to pick up every now and then. Very slick and easy to learn, too.
5. Kingdom Rush: Frontiers
Probably the best tower defense game I’ve played in a long time and a source of countless evenings of fun on my iPad.
6. Starbound
Need to spend more time with this space-themed Terraria, but it’s pretty promising. I love the look and the exploration aspects, although I don’t know how much I’m suited for the constantly-crafting sandbox focus.
7. Card Hunter
Another terrific card-themed game that was more of a tactical strategy title than a proper CCG. I liked it — still like it — but I guess I go through waves of interest in card games.
8. Pocket Trains
After the stumble of Pocket Planes, Nimblebit did a great job getting rid of what didn’t work and putting in some more stuff that did to make a pretty engaging train management simulator. It takes just shy of forever to expand one’s network and get more trains, but that’s par for the course with games like this.
Best of Bio Break 2013: Television
TV and me have a strange relationship these days. There’s a lot of hour-long series I’d love to watch, but I really don’t have the spare time to do so unless it’s something my wife wants to view with me. Plus, we don’t have cable, so what we see is either on DVD or Netflix, leaving us behind the curve with the rest of the viewing community.
That said, here’s what tickled my fancy this year:
1. Doctor Who series 7
Out of the three newer Doctors, I’m very partial to Matt Smith. Tennant was fine but eventually got too much of a God complex for me to enjoy, and I relished Smith’s somewhat more alien quirkiness. He’s a total geek and he’s cool with that. His final season had us saying goodbye to Rory and Amy (best companions ever) and provided many fine hours of viewing — but the best was the 50th anniversary special that we saw in the theaters. Just great stuff all around, making me happy with the past and looking forward to the future. It’s so odd that Doctor Who has gone from a very much fringe cult series to this mainstream phenomenon, almost taking the place that Star Trek used to have.
2. The Office season 9
Again, I don’t see shows until they come out on DVD, so I only recently wrapped up my experiences with the crew of Dunder Mifflin. Even without Michael Scott, I liked the show a lot this year, much better than season 8, and I was definitely feeling that mixture of morose and exalted when it all came to a close. It’s one of my favorite series to watch from start to end, and I’m sure I’ll be doing so again in the near future.
3. Arrested Development season 4
Whew, was this a mixed bag in so many ways. I was extremely excited about my all-time favorite sitcom coming back, but how it did so was definitely different than the first three seasons. Maybe it was a little too long in spots, too convoluted overall, and too disjointed as the main cast couldn’t be together much, but it was also pretty funny and just awesome to see them back. I really hope they get a fifth season sometime soon. I’m also pleased that the Arrested Development soundtrack finally released this year as well.
4. Community season 4
I don’t care that much that this was the season without Dan Harmon and got cut down to 13 episodes — it was more Community and it was still pretty funny, so I took it with a smile. I dearly love this show and am so incredibly glad it’s coming back for a fifth season. #sixseasonsandamovie
5. New Girl seasons 1-2
Yeah, so, I am unashamed of this — it’s a really funny show, and “adorkable” or not, the cast and writing made me and my wife laugh constantly. I like how messed up and weird everyone is, not to mention how it’s not just about one girl but all four roommates.
6. Parks and Recreation season 5
Simply hilarious. Love this show. Ron Swanson is a hero to me.
7. Game of Thrones season 2
Yeah, season 2. Again, a year behind. But despite the gore and very excessive nudity, there’s a great show here and one that my wife’s been captivated with despite showing no interest in the books. I thought the season went pretty well, especially the climactic battle, although some of the aspects (Daenarys) came off weaker than they should’ve.
8. The Simpsons seasons 3-15
It’s been many, many, many years since I watched the Simpsons, so long that I can’t remember what year I stopped viewing them. So I embarked on a marathon to catch up on episodes old and new, and have made it through season 15 (which is where I think I stopped viewing regularly). I’m pleasantly surprised to see that the newer stuff is still pretty entertaining.
9. The Mindy Project season 1
Mindy Kaling had great writing and acting chops in The Office, so I gave her sitcom a try. I kind of like it, even if it is pretty uneven at times.
10. Happy Endings seasons 1-2
Another under-my-radar show that I’m glad I found due to its memorable characters, barrage of jokes, lack of a laugh track, and general weirdness. It’s like a better version of Friends.
11. Raising Hope season 2
Another oddball sitcom that I hope lasts for a good decade. Liked the second season a little less than the first, but it’s still willing to have fun with the pluck of the lower class and its dim-witted lead.
12. Warehouse 13 seasons 1-3
We’ve been working our way through this Syfy show. It’s good in small quantities, kind of a less-intense Fringe. While the plots and acting can get a little hammy, I genuinely like the humor and the fact that the leads have this brother-sister relationship instead of an unrequited love thing.
Vote for Bio Break’s next journey through a classic PC game!
December 26, 2013 Syp13 Comments
Because I’m feeling a little wonky and full of whimsy this holiday season, I’m going to open up voting for the next classic PC game playthrough to pretty much my entire GOG.com library barring some titles that I want to play in order. It’s wide open this time, and you can vote for as many titles as you like!
Pointless Poll of the Day
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UMass Boston Athletics
S.A.A.C.
About UMass Boston
#MyFirstChoice
Recruit Me Forms (M)
Recruit Me Forms (W)
Distinguished Alumnus Award
YES with Africa-UMass Boston Partnership
First Year English
Nursing & Health Science
RWSSC
Writing House Online (WHO)
Study Hall Hours
True Beacon Program
Declare/Change Major
1,000 Point Club
Women's Basketball Falls Just Short Against Rival UMass Dartmouth
UMass Dartmouth (20-4, 13-2) 16 18 20 6 60
UMass Boston (17-7, 10-5) 11 12 23 13 59
Pts: Nakira Examond - 22
Reb: Nakira Examond - 10
Ast: Danyel Gonzalez - 4
Pts: Jalani Jackson - 17
Reb: Alecia Quinones - 8
BOSTON, Mass.—UMass Boston women's basketball battled from a 10-point, second-half deficit to take the lead, but fell just short in an instant defensive classic with rival UMass Dartmouth.
UMass Dartmouth 60, UMass Boston 59
(UMass Boston 17-7, Little East 10-5)
(UMass Dartmouth 20-4, Little East 13-2)
In a rematch of the 2018 Little East Conference Championship Game, UMass Dartmouth senior Nakira Examond scored her first and only basket of the second half with 12 seconds left to give the Corsairs a 60-59 edge. On the other end, Jalani Jackson's (Brockton, Mass.) running layup fell off the mark and the Corairs were able to avoid turning the ball over in the final three seconds.
Jackson overcame a poor shooting night to pace the Beacons with 17 points on 13-14 shooting from the charity stripe. The sophomore tacked on four rebounds and two assists.
Joie Grassi (Plymouth, Mass.) had her offensive woes, but she still managed to compile a line of 11 points, seven rebounds and three steals.
Tahjai Mazyck (Hamden, Conn.), the Beacons usual third leading scorer, tacked on 10 points in the loss on 4-12 shooting.
The Beacons managed to stick with the LEC Regular Season Champion Corsairs because of the play of Alecia Quinones (Stoughton, Mass.) and Geanna Williams (Cromwell, Conn.).
Quinones was everywhere on the floor, especially on the defensive end. She finished the game with eight points and a game-high eight rebounds and added two steals. Williams was the Beacons defensive anchor, as she recorded three points, four rebounds and five blocks-including four in the fourth quarter.
Examond was the difference maker for UMass Dartmouth. The senior recorded a double-double of 22 points and 10 rebounds on an efficient 8-12 shooting from the field 6-8 from the free throw line. She became the first player in program history to record 1,000 career points and 1,000 career rebounds, when she ripped down an offensive rebound with 8:45 to play in the first half.
Ashley Brown picked up the scoring load with Examond on the bench for much of the third quarter. She chipped in eight of her 16 points in the third and tacked on seven rebounds and three assists.
Off the bench, freshman Shaelyn Carreiro recorded nine key points.
The visitors took control of the game midway through the first quarter and extended their lead to as many as 14 points late in the second quarter. UMass Boston scored the final three points of the half to go into the break trailing 34-23.
UMass Boston looked like they were set to wrestle control of the momentum early in the third quarter, when they opened the half on a 4-0 run and Examond was forced to the bench with her third foul at 8:38.
Despite shooting 50 percent for the quarter and putting up 23 points, UMass Boston was only able to cut the deficit to eight in the third quarter. Brown and Carreiro combined for 15 of the Corsairs 20 points in the quarter to keep the hosts at bay.
The Beacons cut the deficit to five (46-41) with 3:07 to play in the third, after Grassi and Mazyck put together a 7-0 run. Brown immediately responded with an old-fashioned 3-point play and UMass Boston wouldn't get closer than six points the rest of the quarter.
UMass Boston turned up the pressure to begin the fourth quarter, as they held UMass Dartmouth without a point for the opening 3:43. The Beacons used that time to go on a 6-0 run to cut the deficit to 54-52. Jackson and Grassi each hit a pair of free throws and Quinones added a lay-in.
The Corsairs responded with back-to-back baskets to push their lead to 58-52 with 5:21 left.
After a long scoring drought for both teams, Mazyck hit a deep two from straight away to cut the deficit to six and Grassi hit a layup to make it 58-56 with 1:43 left.
Williams got the Beacons back within one on a free threw and Jackson gave UMass Boston their first lead since the opening minutes with a pair of free throws with 20 seconds left.
On the ensuing possession, Examond was able to get around a pair of Beacons defenders to hit a layup for her first basket of the half.
The Beacons put the ball back into the hands of Jackson on their next possession, but her runner was off the mark and UMass Dartmouth was able to dribble out of the clock.
UMass Boston posted their second-lowest field goal percentage of the season (29.3 percent) in the loss. The Beacons also did not hit a 3-pointer for just the second time this season (0-4). They made up for their shooting woes by hitting a season-high 25 free throws on 33 attempts (75.8 percent).
The Beacons earned a 42-40 edge on the second-best rebounding team in the conference and forced 21 Corsair turnovers.
UMass Boston hosted their "Think Pink" Game on Wednesday. The Beacons sold pink t-shirts and raffled off pink gear, with all of the proceeds going to the Play4Kay Foundations.
With the loss, UMass Boston saw their two-game winning streak against the Corsairs snapped. UMass Dartmouth leads the all-time series 53-28.
UMass Boston held UMass Dartmouth to six points in the fourth quarter (13-6).
Mya Thompson (Billerica, Mass.) recorded five points and five minutes in 12 minutes for the Beacons.
Williams' five blocks marked a new career-high. Ten of her 64 career blocks have come against the Corsairs.
UMass Boston is ranked 12th in this week's NCAA Division III Northeast Rankings. The Corsairs sit seventh in the rankings, with fellow LEC side Eastern Connecticut State in 11th-place.
UMass Boston will travel to Rhode Island College on Saturday at 1 p.m. for their regular-season finale. The Beacons can clinch the third-seed in the upcoming LEC Tournament with a win or a University of Southern Maine loss at Western Connecticut State University. Either way, the Beacons will be hosting an LEC Quarterfinal Game on Tuesday night at 7 p.m.
University of Massachusetts Boston
100 William T. Morrissey Blvd. Boston, MA 02125 (617) 287-7801
PrestSports
Tue, 02/19 | Women's Basketball vs. Rhode Island College L, 66-44 (Final) RC | BX | V
Sat, 02/16 | Women's Basketball at Rhode Island College L, 63-52 (Final) RC | BX | V
Wed, 02/13 | Women's Basketball vs. UMass Dartmouth L, 60-59 (Final) RC | BX | V
Wed, 02/06 | Women's Basketball at Plymouth State University W, 65-53 (Final) RC | BX | V
Sat, 02/02 | Women's Basketball at University of Southern Maine W, 58-49 (Final) RC | BX | V
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Tag Archives: Rosemead
Indian School – “The Cruelest Kind” [NEW MUSIC]
Posted on September 26, 2011 by Chris | 3 comments
I was late to embrace Audio Karate, one of the fieriest bands to come out of the late 90s/early-aughts pop-punk scene. By the time I was getting into their kind of raw, full-throated, vocals and live, loud, imperfect production, the band was almost broken up. I had no idea that was the case when I stumbled across “Nintendo 89” on a Warped Tour compilation, and if I had, I would’ve begged them not to. Listen to this beast:
The first thirty seconds are one of the most epic builds in pop-punk. The guitar tones are perfect, the drums won’t stop, and when it all drops out to introduce those main power chords – ugh. There’s more energy in those thirty three seconds than a six-pack of Red Bull. I can only imagine the reaction it got live.
Anyway, these dudes went their separate ways around ’05 and left the world with two albums, Space Camp, and Lady Melody. Buy ’em, love ’em, play ’em loud, and then check this out:
They came back! They have a piano player, mainlined The Strokes and changed their name, but the songwriting and singer Arturo Barrio’s distinct pipes are as solid as ever. I miss the throat – rupturing rawness of their earlier work, but hey, that’s growth. Space Camp didn’t have a single instance of saloon style piano playing either, but “Elvis” features it heavily and it works. It’s a give and take.
Whip-crack opener “Rob Your House” comes closest to capturing the groups free-wheeling energy of old, with the titular phrase serving as an anarchic refrain that’s gonna feel good to shout out with a group of drunken buddies at a show or before a night of debauchery. At the same time, it also sounds the most “Strokes”y, complete with synths and – unless I’m crazy – a hint of a vocal effect.
The middle pair of tracks, “High Low” and “Wind You Up” form the backbone of the new sound: slower tempos, catchy choruses, and the addition of some acoustic strumming and clean piano sounds. EP closer “Elvis” is the track that sounds the least likely to work on paper, but is executed with aplomb. The aforementioned saloon piano kicks in early in the track and is mixed low, but shines in the chorus.
Over the course of the four tracks, the moment I keep going back to, the one that draws the line in the sand is two and a half minutes into “Wind You Up.” Like the opening of “Nintendo 89” it’s another beat where everything drops away, but instead leaving space for the hell-raising guitar from that track, it’s just Art’s vulnerable croon and a piano. Does it make me want to pogo my way into a pit Not really, but it makes me damn excited for what Indian School does next.
UPDATE: Thanks to Eric and Lucy for pointing out I overlooked a fifth track that can be found here: http://soundcloud.com/indianschool/tracks Enjoy!
Chris Cullari | Beat-Play Ambassador Los Angeles |@Chris_Cullari | Music Without Labels & Beat-Play, LLC |
Posted in FREE DOWNLOAD, Music, New Music
Tagged audio karate, catchy, growth, maturity, melodic, New, pop-punk, Punk, raw vocals, rock, Rosemead, The Strokes
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We Glow
By Apartment613 on June 22, 2013
Review by Allison Vanek
70 min | Comedy | R
Fringe shows are generally very simple affairs. Most are are low-budget and be can easily adapted to fit any space. But once in a while, a show comes to Fringe and sets up at a BYOV as if it had explicitly been conceived and created with that space in mind.
We Glow is one of those shows. The story is set predominantly in a boardroom, and thus the Tabaret Hall Senate Chambers is an absolutely perfect fit. The boardroom set is already there without the company having to do anything, complete with an excellent use of video projection and a very long wooden table that doubles as a raised stage. The production even creatively made use of the audience, seating 16 audience members around the long table, dressing them in suit jackets, and having them read scripted lines at certain points during the show as the board to whom the actors are presenting.
The actors themselves, Emily Pearlman and Brad Long, perform the show with a continuous intensity and a tremendous amount of energy. They seem to have no fear, throwing themselves headlong into every scene with complete commitment, whether it be a quiet intimate moment between the two characters or an outlandish bit of physical comedy, they do it all. They play off each other well and the final product is a team effort. While at times overpowered by his more engaging co-star, Long’s comedic timing is always right on point, and Pearlman’s physicality and expressions had me in stiches without her even having to say a word.
The story itself is at once both a modern-day love story and, as the program promises, a satirical send-up of corporate ladder climbers. The story is timely and relevant, creating discussions about whether women can in fact have the ideal work-life balance. The jokes landed so well because the audience could often relate. While I didn’t love the ambiguous ending, the story’s non-linear narrative structure and surprises twists made for a very enjoyable and engaging performance. Add another 20 minutes on the back end, and throw in a 15 minute intermission, and this is a show I would pay $50+ to see performed off-Broadway.
We Glow is playing at BYOV-F Tabaret Hall at 550 Cumberland St. in the Senate Chambers, room 0083 at 20:00 on Saturday June 22nd, Sunday June 23rd, Monday June 24th, Wednesday June 26th Thursday June 27th, Friday June 28th and Saturday June 29th, as well as 14:00 on Sunday June 30th.
Brad Long,
Emily Pearlman,
Theatre 4.669
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A Show Too Kind For The World – Hinamatsuri Mid-Season Review
You may have heard of us discussing this season and some of the gems we’ve found. My personal favorite one is a pseudo-supernatural/magical girl slice of life called ヒナまつり or Hinamatsuri. The show was sold to me by @cmdrcluckcluck as a comedy that was right up my alley. What I got was something far beyond what I expected. Hinamatsuri starts out fairly simply enough with Yakuza under boss Yoshifumi Nitta admiring his rather expensive vase collection in his rather expensive apartment. Relaxing in his chair, a metal pod magically appears in his ceiling dropping a deadpan girl rolling around. Feeling this is a dream, he ignores her pleas to press a button on her back to release her. Waking up in the morning he finds it is in fact, not a dream and proceeds to fee the girl, who he finds is named Hina.
She then displays great telekinetic power that she uses to hold Nitta’s vases hostage so that she can obtain rather expensive toys and clothes to great effect but Nitta takes it all in stride. He even pseudo adopts her as his supposed daughter and enrolls her in school at Hina’s behest in exchange for no longer using her telekinesis. After finding out she explodes when she doesn’t use her power, Nitta then takes her to a field to carry out a construction contract to her heart’s content. Upon returning to town, he offered to treat her to her favorite dish of salmon roe. However it turns out his outfit’s boss was shot and he is sent to handle the issue, even though he is nothing along the lines of a fighter and really just a clever businessman. Hina picks up on this and accompanies him and offers to handle the opponents. She does this to amazingly non-lethal results, destroying the building and swiftly defeating all opponents and alluding to the fact that she had been used in the past to such ends.
We then are introduced to probably one of my absolute favorite characters in anime, Anzu, who serves as a rival to Hina and sent via pod to obtain Hina and return her to their handlers. During a fight of rock-paper-scissors and then attempting to make the opponent look in a specific direction, Hina’s power is demonstrated and Anzu is swiftly defeated. Taking a lock of Hina’s hair, Anzu prepares to depart and is unable to do so as her pod device was damaged by being washed. We then find Nitta has been subconsciously spending more time with Hina and as such less women have been vying for his attention. He then shifts his focus from inadvertently being a great father to Hina to going out and having fun with random chicks. Hina then convinces him to take her to a cabaret club and have a blast of a time including ordering a champagne tower from a different cabaret club, poured by Hina’s powers.
The next two episodes are where Hina and especially Anzu begin to earn their place in my heart as characters far too good for this world. Anzu starts the episode stealing from the different stores in the area and the Yakuza are finally called in to try and track Anzu down, with Nitta realizing the issue that could happen if Anzu lost her shit and went crazy. Homeless individuals finally get Anzu and begin to explain to her how to survive being homeless and help her live with them in the park. Eventually Nitta finds Anzu searching through garbage to find cans to recycle and offers her 40,000 yen, which she eventually takes to be taken from her in turn by the local bartender and friend of Nitta, Utako. The homeless comfort Anzu that they would have squandered that money on alcohol and that she can now start anew.
After this we jump to Hina’s classmate, Hitomi Mishima (not those Mishimas) is blackmailed by Utako to serve as a fantastic bartender in her bar. Nitta also explains Anzu being homeless, yet surviving and he comments that Hina switching places with Anzu would be preferable. Hina then tries to clean and be helpful but destroys the a vase and ruins parts of the apartment, leading to Nitta disowning her and kicking her out of the apartment. This leads to Hina living with Anzu for a few days and driving even her to insanity, and Nitta being berated and scolded by friends and colleagues for kicking out his “daughter.”
Of course, Hina eventually warms her way back to Nitta’s life and we find more heartwarming moments with Anzu. I’m going to basically stop on the detailing of the show and just kind of talk real with you. This show is too good for me, and this world, and maybe even you if you are anything like myself or any of the other BAYOG members. The characters aren’t the most detailed or tragic, but that’s what makes them lovable, especially with Anzu. Hina and Nitta’s life is also heartwarming and rather interesting but personally I’m sold on the Anzu train because you follow her innocence and the way she handles being homeless and living off 600 yen (about $8) a day. More things happened, especially this last episode and we grow to feel for her and the small homeless community that helped this young girl stay alive in a strange world. Other than all this, I really enjoy the show and can’t help but recommend you not take my word for it, but watch at least past episode 3. The 3-episode test on this show simply does not do it justice. It’s definitely something that has gotten better the more I watch it and not since certain arcs of Gintama have I seen a gag anime get me this close to feeling human emotion. So give it a shot and let me know what you guys think of this sweet show!
Genuine reaction for many people.
2 Replies to “A Show Too Kind For The World – Hinamatsuri Mid-Season Review”
negativeprimes says:
Yeah, this is my favorite show of the season. Not ashamed to admit I cried at various points in the last TWO episodes!
Rokutsu says:
Same here, I really felt this show was getting to me and I haven’t had that sort of reaction to a show since Golden Time and that was 4-5 years ago. Glad to hear someone else is really digging the show!
Throwback Thursday| Studio Ghibli and Soundtracks
First Impressions | Aggrestuko
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Home News Circle CEO: Zuckerberg Is ‘Betting on Decentralization’ With Facebook’s Libra
Circle CEO: Zuckerberg Is ‘Betting on Decentralization’ With Facebook’s Libra
It comes as no surprise that Facebook’s new cryptocurrency Libra is causing a stir—especially with increasing privacy concerns and government scrutiny of the company.
While politicians in Washington and Europe alike expressed concerns over the prospective digital currency, blockchain insiders are looking ahead to Libra’s applications—and not just as another cryptocurrency.
“Everybody’s been focused on how do you build a third-generation blockchain. Libra is a take on that,” said Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, a mobile payments platform, at the Fortune Brainstorm Finance conference in Montauk, N.Y., on Wednesday.
But since Facebook’s announcement on Tuesday, Clovyr CEO Amber Baldet wants to know what the project’s ultimate purpose is.
“It’s not entirely clear to me whether they’re attempting to compete in the cashless payments space or in the public cryptocurrency space, which are really two very different things,” said Baldet.
But Allaire doesn’t see Libra as merely a pure-play cashless payments service at all. In fact, he thinks “payments is an initial use case,” but a “much more decentralized, private way to exchange information” is the end goal.
The field is increasingly moving toward more sophisticated, so-called third-generation blockchains. The first-generation blockchain wave was led by Bitcoin; the second by slightly more capable blockchains like Ethereum; and the third will feature massive, decentralized infrastructures with seemingly endless applications.
In fact, according to a PwC survey published in 2018, some 84% of companies are already involved in blockchain.
“The reality is that this is the next major infrastructure layer of the Internet,” Allaire said. “And if you actually study it closely and understand what blockchains are, they’re the fundamental new architecture for how data, identity, financial transactions, lots of things are going to happen. You’re going to reconstruct the way services work on the Internet on public blockchains.”
Allaire suggests regulators on Capitol Hill will need to wake up to the reality of third-generation blockchain’s burgeoning domination of financial services.
“Billions of people are going to be able to transmit value with each other instantly, at no cost. They’re going to be able to move value between economies, between individuals and businesses frictionlessly, and I think there’s been a lot of … denial about whether that would happen and it’s very clear that is happening,” he said.
Internet companies like China-based Tencent are already capitalizing on this new push—even partnering with insurance companies to develop blockchain solutions for the health care industry. Allaire sees Facebook’s move with Libra to be in line with this push.
“I actually think this is a little bit like Bill Gates in 1995 saying, ‘We’re going all in on the open Internet,’ and betting on the open roads. … I think that this is a little bit of [Zuckerberg] doing the same thing, saying, ‘We’re betting on decentralization,’” Allaire said.
The “broadband moment” of cryptocurrency
Much like how broadband was a key factor in early Internet adoption, the Circle CEO suggests third-generation blockchain is “the broadband moment of cryptocurrency” in creating an architecture to support billions of users.
If all goes to plan, Facebook’s currency will go live in 2020, according to company executives. It is still up in the air if the social media giant will actually launch its proposed product, but if it does, its impact could be significant.
“If it launches, which is a big question right now, I believe it will go down in history as being the catalyst that brings digital assets to the global, mass-consumer audience,” said Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency Group.
How will banks respond?
Although Libra itself may not threaten the broader banking industry too much initially, experts say it is clear that blockchain’s full-steam-ahead mentality and widespread applications could soon compete with bank products.
Allaire believes it’s possible to imagine even large Internet companies (not just fintechs) “delivering financial products and services to hundreds of millions or billions of people” in the next five years, in a way that would be “pretty dramatic in terms of the ultimate impact to banks.”
With a global recession and rocky interest rates, Silbert estimates “banks that were built on brick-and-mortar infrastructure … [will] have to figure out how to reinvent themselves to cater toward a mobile-first, digital consumer base.”
But it’s not just banks that will have to reckon with Facebook’s prospective platform—other tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Apple are going to have to respond as well, says Silbert.
Baldet, on the other hand, isn’t so sure.
“Until you can unbundle not just privacy but credit markets, decentralized finance, and everything else, I don’t think that we’re at any risk of the larger-scale banking system going anywhere,” she said.
Regardless of the success of Libra’s launch, blockchain bulls are clear about one thing: Decentralization is the future, and banks need to get on board.
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Barnes&Noble.com - $54.00 and up
Crime Culture: Figuring Criminality in Fiction and Film
Bran Nicol, Eugene McNulty, Patricia Pulham
Bloomsbury Academic, Jan 13, 2011 - Literary Criticism - 237 pages
Bran Nicol,Eugene McNulty,Patricia Pulham
Bran Nicol is Reader in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His books include Stalking (Reaktion, 2006), Iris Murdoch: The Retrospective Fiction (2e, Palgrave, 2004) and The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction (forthcoming). Eugene McNulty is Lecturer in English at St Patrick's College (Dublin City University), Ireland. His publications include Ulster Literary Theatre and the Northern Revival (Cork University Press, 2008). Patricia Pulham is Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She is author of Art and the Transitional Object in Vernon Lee's Supernatural Tales (Ashgate, 2006), and co-editor of stories by Lee, Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales (Broadview, 2006) and of Vernon Lee: Decadence, Ethics, Aesthetics (Palgrave, 2006).
Title Crime Culture: Figuring Criminality in Fiction and Film
Continuum literary studies
Editors Bran Nicol, Eugene McNulty, Patricia Pulham
Publisher Bloomsbury Academic, 2011
Literary Criticism / Mystery & Detective
Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism
Social Science / Criminology
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Pacific Rift
Hodder & Stoughton, Jan 3, 2013 - Biography & Autobiography - 128 pages
This light-hearted look at business relations between Japan and the West follows the fortunes of two cultural transplants - Bob Collins, a forthright American insurance executive who lives and works in Tokyo, and Shuji Tomikawa, a Harvard-educated Japanese working for Mitsui Real Estate in New York City.
Through his meetings with these men, the author is able to draw some surprising conclusions about current Japanese business practices, both in relation to foreigners attempting to trade with them, and in terms of their own headlong rush into overseas markets, from the Ginza bars of Tokyo to the wino gangs of Times Square.
An inquiry into sociological divergences that, for all its apparent artlessness and deceptive brevity, goes a long way toward explaining precisely what strains the commercial ties that still bind the ... Read full review
While a bond salesman for Salomon Brothers, Lewis ( Liar's Poker , LJ 9/1/89; The Money Culture , LJ 9/15/91) noticed that when one Japanese bought, they all bought. Their money seemed to move in ... Read full review
Pacific Rift: Why Americans and Japanese Don't Understand Each Other
Michael Lewis is a former banker who worked at Salamon Brothers in the height of Eighties boom. He writes regularly as a journalist and is the author of several books, including the international bestseller, LIAR'S POKER.
Title Pacific Rift
Author Michael Lewis
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton, 2013
Biography & Autobiography / Business
Business & Economics / Economics / General
Business & Economics / International / General
Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social
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Group Theory in Solid State Physics and Photonics: Problem Solving with Mathematica
Wolfram Hergert, R. Matthias Geilhufe
John Wiley & Sons, 20 aug. 2018 - 377 sidor
While group theory and its application to solid state physics is well established, this textbook raises two completely new aspects. First, it provides a better understanding by focusing on problem solving and making extensive use of Mathematica tools to visualize the concepts. Second, it offers a new tool for the photonics community by transferring the concepts of group theory and its application to photonic crystals.
Clearly divided into three parts, the first provides the basics of group theory. Even at this stage, the authors go beyond the widely used standard examples to show the broad field of applications. Part II is devoted to applications in condensed matter physics, i.e. the electronic structure of materials. Combining the application of the computer algebra system Mathematica with pen and paper derivations leads to a better and faster understanding. The exhaustive discussion shows that the basics of group theory can also be applied to a totally different field, as seen in Part III. Here, photonic applications are discussed in parallel to the electronic case, with the focus on photonic crystals in two and three dimensions, as well as being partially expanded to other problems in the field of photonics.
The authors have developed Mathematica package GTPack which is available for download from the book's homepage. Analytic considerations, numerical calculations and visualization are carried out using the same software. While the use of the Mathematica tools are demonstrated on elementary examples, they can equally be applied to more complicated tasks resulting from the reader's own research.
Part One Basics of Group Theory 9
Basics Abstract Group Theory
Discrete Symmetry Groups in SolidState Physics and Photonics
Representation Theory
Symmetry and Representation Theory in kSpace
Generalization to Include the Spin
Solution of MAXWELLs Equations
TwoDimensional Photonic Crystals
ThreeDimensional Photonic Crystals
Group Theory of Vibrational Problems
Landau Theory of Phase Transitions of the Second Kind
Appendix B Remarks on Databases
Electronic Structure Calculations
Group Theory in Solid State Physics and Photonics: Problem Solving with ...
Wolfram Hergert,R. Matthias Geilhufe
angle applied atoms band structure basis functions BRILLOUIN zone character table classes CLEBSCH-GORDAN Co(k coefficients command constructed coordinate cosets crystal field cubic database decomposition Definition denotes density direct product representation discussed double group eigenvalue electronic energy example given GOVerbose group G group theory GTCharacterTable GTInstallgroup GTIrep GTPack Hamiltonian IC2a IC2x icº improper rotations Inſ3 Inſt2 installed invariant subgroup inversion irreducible representations KGaA lattice vectors linear magnetic master equation Mathematica matrix elements matrix representation modes molecule Mulliken nanotubes notation parameters PAULI equation permittivity photonic band photonic band structure photonic crystal plane waves point group quaternion real-space representation matrices right cosets rotation axis rotation matrix SCHRöDINGER equation Section shown in Figure SHUBNIKOV space group spherical harmonics spin spin–orbit coupling symmetry elements symmetry group symmorphic space groups tight-binding Hamiltonian tion transformation translation unit cell verified WILEY-VCH Verlag
Wolfram Hergert, extraordinary professor in Computational Physics, is member of the Theoretical Physics group at University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Main subjects of his work are solid state theory, electronic and magnetic structure of nanostructures and photonics. Prof. Hergert has experience in teaching group theory and in applying Mathematica to physical problems. He has published in renowned journals, like Nature and Physical Review Letters, and edited a books on Computational Materials Science and Mie Theory. He is also coauthor of a book on Quantum Theory.
Matthias Geilhufe studied physics at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany) with specialization in theoretical and computational physics. From 2012-2015 he was employed as a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle. In 2015 he obtained his PhD at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Currently, he is working at the Nordita Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. His work is based on the investigation of electronic and magnetic properties of complex materials. For his research, methods based on group theory or density functional theory are applied.
Titel Group Theory in Solid State Physics and Photonics: Problem Solving with Mathematica
Författare Wolfram Hergert, R. Matthias Geilhufe
Utgivare John Wiley & Sons, 2018
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36 year-old stars, talent and visual all together
2012/03/08 | 5575 views | Permalink | Source
Who is 36 years old in the entertainment business?
A post recently came up on an online community website of actors Kang Ji-hwan, So Ji-sub, Won Bin, Ji Sung and other stars born in the year 1977. They are all born in the same year of the Snake and have beautiful visuals despite the age over mid-30.
Kang Ji-hwan who debuted with the 2004 musical "Grease", covered up his late debut with dramas "Capital Scandal", "Hong Gil-dong" and others. So Ji-sub, Korea's representative 'chic guy' can say "Sorry, I Love You" is one of his best dramas yet. The two also starred in the movie "Rough Cut" together as well.
Won Bin achieved popularity closer to a syndrome with the drama "Autumn in my Heart" and placed himself as a talented actor with the movies "The Man From Nowhere" and "Mother - 2009". Ji Sung did an outstanding job in the dramas, "New Heart" and "Royal Family".
Those who have seen the pictures say, "What happened in the year 1977", "They are all so good looking and talented", "They are stars indeed" and more.
Source : news.nate.com/view/20...
Copy & paste guideline for this article
Always put a link back to the source and HanCinema permalink
"36 year-old stars, talent and visual all together"
by HanCinema is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work from this source
(로열 패밀리 - 2011)
The Man From Nowhere
(아저씨 - 2010)
Mother - 2009
(마더 - 2009)
Rough Cut
(영화는 영화다 - 2008)
New Heart
(뉴하트 - 2007)
Capital Scandal
(경성 스캔들 - 2007)
Sorry, I Love You
(미안하다, 사랑한다 - 2004)
Autumn in my Heart
(가을동화 - 2000)
"Untouchables" with the F4
F4 or 4 handsome boys appeared at the VVIP stars and friends movie premiere for the French movie ",...More
Eugene and Ki Tae-young's street date
Eugene personally made chocolates for her husband Ki Tae-young on Valentine's Day. KBS 2TV "Star ,...More
Park Yoo-chun gets slapped in the face by stalker fan
JYJ member Park Yoo-chun was slapped in the face by a stalker fan according to a video. In a vide,...More
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Tuesday, Sep 13 2016
Clinton’s Pneumonia Raises Questions About Her Overall Health As Well As Campaign’s Transparency
A narrative has persisted throughout the campaign that there is something direly wrong with Hillary Clinton health-wise. So, whereas other candidates in the past could shake off any concerns about a sick day, Clinton's has provided fodder for Republicans. Meanwhile, several media outlets take a look at the history of transparency and presidential candidates.
The Wall Street Journal: Hillary Clinton To Release More Medical Records After Pneumonia Diagnosis
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said she was feeling much better after a pneumonia diagnosis and promised to release additional medical records this week, moving to contain concerns about her well-being and forthrightness after she stumbled exiting a 9/11 ceremony. The pneumonia diagnosis, belatedly disclosed by her campaign Sunday, has taken Mrs. Clinton off the road and off-message just as her campaign was working to focus on her agenda. (Meckler, 9/13)
Los Angeles Times: Pneumonia: What Does Clinton's Affliction Say About Her Health?
On Sunday, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s bout with pneumonia put this common, and commonly dangerous, infectious disease in the spotlight. When we posed some questions about pneumonia to physicians who specialize in lung health, primary care and women’s health, some surprising facts came to light. (Healy, 9/12)
Los Angeles Times: How Much Do Presidents And Candidates Need To Tell The Public About Their Health?
How much should presidential candidates tell the public about their health?Hillary Clinton, 68, was recently diagnosed with pneumonia, and the public didn’t know about it until two days later, when she abruptly left a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony feeling unwell and needing to be helped into a vehicle. If Donald Trump, 70, were elected, he would be older than any previous president at the start of his first term — and, like Clinton, he hasn’t released detailed records about his health beyond a doctor’s letter. Both candidates promised Monday to release more detailed medical records soon. (Pearce, 9/13)
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Warrant to seize Stenger’s cell phone details other crimes he could have been charged with
St. Louis County executive wants to end ‘predatory’ fees for people leaving jail
Impact of rugby fields up for debate on golf course site
Affton NewsCrimeFeatured ArticlesMissouri NewsNewsSt. Louis County NewsWeb Exclusive
Pictured above: Former St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, left, and Stenger’s lawyer, Scott Rosenblum, right, exit the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse Friday, May 3, after Stenger pleaded guilty to three counts of theft of honest services, bribery and mail fraud. A sentencing hearing will be held Aug. 9. Stenger faces to three to four years in federal prison. Photo by Erin Achenbach.
A warrant unsealed Tuesday to seize former St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger’s cell phone provides more detail on how federal agents built the corruption case that brought down Stenger’s administration in county government and could send him to federal prison.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Shirley Mensah authorized federal agents to unlock and access Stenger’s silver iPhone X by pressing his fingers to the touch ID sensor or holding the phone up to his face to unlock it with the Face ID feature.
The warrant was issued at 5:02 p.m. March 20, the day before a wide-ranging subpoena was handed to county government to provide documents, text messages and records related to every county contract and deal since Stenger took office Jan. 1, 2015.
Federal agents included this photo of Steve Stenger in a warrant to seize his cell phone.
“The person to be searched is Steven Stenger,” FBI Special Agent Andrew Ryder wrote in a 27-page affidavit outlining probable cause for the search, describing Stenger’s height and weight and attaching a photo familiar to readers of The Call — Stenger’s campaign photo dating back to when he was a 6th District County Councilman. Ryder is the chief of the white-collar crime division in the St. Louis FBI office.
But it was not the first warrant taken out by the FBI in the yearlong investigation: Ryder says that courts had already ordered a “pen register” on Stenger’s phone that recorded all phone numbers he dialed. By logging his calls, the FBI found that “Stenger has regular telephone conversations and text messaging with a number of political donors who have current contracts with St. Louis County and the St. Louis County Port Authority.”
The warrant authorized federal agents to search Stenger and seize his iPhone before April 3. It does not specify when that search happened, although Ryder noted that the cell phones of two of Stenger’s co-conspirators in the case, former St. Louis Economic Development Partnership CEO Sheila Sweeney and businessman John Rallo, had already been forensically searched.
Ryder noted that criminals often use their phones to commit their crimes and can keep years of information on phones. In Stenger’s case, the iPhone in question had 256 gigabytes of storage and had been purchased July 22, 2018, to replace another iPhone.
Ryder asked the judge for the ability to “image” Stenger’s phone, or make a forensic copy to analyze later. Examining the phone could take hours and might have to be done in the FBI’s laboratory, he noted.
Stenger, a Democrat, pleaded guilty last week to bribery, theft of honest services and mail fraud in a plea deal with a recommended sentence of three to four years for a sweeping corruption scheme that permeated county government, as he commanded department heads and the head of the city-county joint economic development agency to steer county contracts to his campaign donors so that he could stay in power.
The county executive, 47, resigned five days before he pleaded guilty in “United States of America v. Steven V. Stenger” May 3, acknowledging that everything federal prosecutors alleged in the 44-page indictment was true. (Read his plea deal.)
FBI was looking into Stenger for other crimes
As part of Stenger’s plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to charge him with any crime they currently have evidence of that happened between Oct. 23, 2014, and May 3, 2019. The warrant indicates other charges that Stenger might have faced if he had not cut a deal: Ryder wrote on the warrant application that he was investigating Stenger for the three charges Stenger ultimately pleaded guilty to, along with “theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds,” wire fraud and violating the Hobbs Act.
Wire fraud can include using email or the internet to commit fraud. The Hobbs Act is a 1946 anti-racketeering federal law that outlaws anyone interfering with commerce through robbery or extortion or who “threatens physical violence to any person or property” involved in commerce. Violations of the Hobbs Act can carry up to a 20-year sentence.
The warrant only asked to seize one of Stenger’s cell phones. At the April 2 council meeting where the council voted to release the subpoena to the public, 7th District Councilman Mark Harder, R-Ballwin, said that Stenger carries multiple cell phones.
That is confirmed by the warrant. A partially blacked-out sentence says that someone, possibly Rallo, told the FBI that “one of the phones carried by Stenger was an Apple device.”
The warrant redacts the cell phone number of the exact phone sought by federal agents, but Stenger’s primary phone is an iPhone. He has used that same phone number for more than 12 years, since he first ran for office.
Weeks before the warrant was issued, Stenger noted to The Call just how available he is through his cell phone, in response to the County Council contending he was inaccessible as county executive.
“I have a cell phone and everyone’s free to call me or text me any time, and they know that,” Stenger said.
Agents were authorized to seize information from that phone dating back to Oct. 23, 2014, the night Rallo and Stenger met. The judge authorized them to forensically search the phone and retrieve information along with any deleted information including call logs, saved usernames and passwords, documents, browsing history, internet browsing history and IP addresses used, photos and videos having anything to do with the crimes, contact lists, address books, including deleted ones, text messages, emails, and financial information including bank records, credit card bills, account information and other records.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith said that the yearlong investigation was kept undercover to not interfere with either of Stenger’s elections last year.
Prosecutors accuse Stenger of five schemes violating the public trust, all centering around Sweeney and her roles as CEO of the Economic Development Partnership, executive director of the Port Authority and board member of the Land Clearance Redevelopment Authority. Four of the schemes revolve around businessman John Rallo, who over four years repeatedly pestered Stenger to give him county contracts in exchange for Rallo’s $10,000 a year in campaign donations. Overall, Stenger set a record for fundraising in a county executive race by amassing more than $4 million in his campaign account for county executive for last year’s races against Democrat Mark Mantovani, then Republican Paul Berry III.
Rallo and Sweeney both appeared to cooperate in the investigation against Stenger, with their conversations and text messages appearing in the indictment.
Stenger ‘rarely came to the office’
After a large redacted section, the warrant states that “Stenger rarely came to the office in the months leading up to the Nov. 6, 2018 county executive election.”
After defeating Mantovani in the August Democratic primary, Stenger faced Republican Paul Berry III in the general election.
Stenger lives in Clayton less than five minutes away from the county Government Center. On Sept. 17, his Chief of Staff Bill Miller went to Stenger’s house for a meeting, possibly with federal agents listening in through a wire. Goldsmith said at Stenger’s guilty plea hearing that the FBI had recorded conversations at Stenger’s home and office.
Miller had several questions about St. Louis County issues, the warrant states, but when he asked his boss a question, Stenger yelled, “I’m over here trying to run an election, trying to f—ing raise money.” He said he had “gotten calls all f—-ing day” from donors.
One of those donors was pressing Stenger on a “rezoning issue” with the Port Authority, but the warrant blocks out information on who that donor is or what the issue was. The donor had given Stenger $78,000.
Miller repeatedly offered to handle what the warrant describes as a “bribe payment,” but “Stenger declined the offer, saying he would handle it himself,” the warrant states.
Agents used Stenger’s cell phone bill to find a series of text messages and a phone call to Stenger that day, presumably from the angry donor.
Ultimately, the rezoning issue was halted when the County Council appointed its own Port Authority to try to oust the original one, which the council saw as being unduly influenced by Stenger.
More details on Stenger’s schemes
The warrant provides new information on the pay-to-play schemes that could send Stenger to prison, beyond the details in the original indictment.
The warrant confirms that the friend who introduced Rallo and Stenger at a dinner at Sam’s Steakhouse in Affton in October 2014 is Sorkis Webbe Jr. His name was abbreviated as “S.W.” in the indictment.
At that dinner, before Stenger took office as county executive, Stenger told Rallo that he could ensure Rallo’s insurance company, Cardinal Insurance, could land a lucrative county insurance contract because the employees involved in approval “are under me.”
Rallo told Stenger that he was tired of donating money to politicians without getting anything in return, and Stenger replied, “That won’t happen with me.” Rallo wrote Stenger two campaign checks totaling $5,000, handing them to the incoming county executive at the dinner table.
When Stenger’s efforts to award Rallo the insurance contract failed for various reasons, he concocted a plan for a $100,000 “payback contract” through Sweeney and the Port Authority, outside of the oversight of the County Council.
The warrant seems to quote Rallo admitting that his bid for that marketing contract was “complete bulls—“ because he had no marketing background. Supposedly, he and his friend, talk show host Montel Williams, would help rehab public relations for the county post-Ferguson.
The warrant paraphrases someone whose name is redacted who told investigators that “the best time to ask Stenger for a contract or other benefit was immediately after giving Stenger money.”
And Rallo repeatedly gave Stenger money: He was a member of the “$10,000 Club,” Stenger told Sweeney — donors who gave him more than $10,000 annually.
Sweeney had to do what Stenger wanted or encounter his ‘wrath’
In a section on Stenger’s dealings with Sweeney, the warrant outlines what appears to be Sweeney’s assessment of their relationship.
“She quickly learned that any projects that came to the Port Authority had to be run by Stenger before deciding on them,” according to the affidavit. “Stenger saw the Port Authority money as the perfect place to avoid the St. Louis County Council. If Sweeney did not consult with Stenger before making a decision, the ‘wrath’ of Stenger would come down on Sweeney…. There were very few contracts or grants at the Port Authority that Stenger didn’t personally direct. In many of these instances Stenger told Sweeney the contract/grant was for a political donor.”
When Post-Dispatch reporter Jacob Barker started asking for comment about the Montel Williams contract, Stenger told Sweeney not to respond until they could talk.
“Nothing good can come of talking to him,” Sweeney texted Stenger.
In a group text after the article published online but before it appeared in print, someone raised the idea that the article was a “campaign piece” for Stenger’s Democratic primary opponent, Mark Mantovani.
Stenger agreed, saying the article was “basically defamatory.”
Then-Partnership Vice President of Communications Katy Jamboretz weighed in on what to send the newspaper, suggesting sending the reporter a certain email that “would substantially help our case.”
[Andrew Ryder], [County Executive Steve Stenger], [Economic Development Partnership], [FBI], [Gloria Lloyd], [Hal Goldsmith], [John Rallo], [Katy Jamboretz], [Mark Mantovani], [Montel Williams], [Sheila Sweeney], [Sorkis Webbe Jr], [St. Louis County Port Authority], [St. Louis Economic Development Partnership], [Steve Stenger], [Steve Stenger Corruption], [Steve Stenger Guilty], [Steve Stenger Indictment], [United States of America v. Steven V. Stenger]
Third grader codes math program
Sheila Sweeney pleads guilty to covering up Stenger's pay-to-play scheme
Should there be rugby fields at Sunset Hills Golf Course?
St. Louis County executive wants to end ‘predatory’ fees for people leaving jail July 17, 2019
Impact of rugby fields up for debate on golf course site July 16, 2019
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Cannabis Innovators: Angela Brown and Brian Cusick
Dec 11, 2018 | December 2018 Issue |
By Beth Waterfall
College sweethearts Angela Brown and Brian Cusick are on a mission to elevate cannabis edibles and concentrates. In October 2017 Cusick, a medical marijuana patient and experienced commercial project manager, and Brown, a business development executive experienced in the technology startup, seafood and manufactured food products industries, founded T. Bear, Inc. (TBI) to create a marquis marijuana products brand that consumers trust—and demand.
But great ideas often require great preparation and patience. And for Brown, operating a cannabis business of any kind had never crossed her mind. “Even though Brian was a medical marijuana patient, I was very against it,” she said.
It wasn’t until she heard a woman speak at a book club event about the success she’d experienced in treating her digestive and sleep issues with medical marijuana, that Brown dove into researching how it might help her own similar issues. “When I finally used cannabis for the first time at almost 30 years old, the relief was something I’d never experienced. I wanted to share that with others somehow.”
Throughout their relationship, the couple has often talked about and bonded over entrepreneurial dreams. After the successful passage of Massachusetts ballot Question 4 in October 2016—and twelve years after first meeting as students at Fitchburg State University—the couple experienced an “aha” moment together and set out on their journey with Brian’s father, Donald Guzzetti, to create TBI.
“I was attending networking events designed for cannabis entrepreneurs, and I met other people like us who shared our goals,” Cusick explained. “I told Angela, ‘you have to come meet these like-minded professionals who are not only working in and creating these cannabis businesses but really leading the industry’.”
“Attending that first event together changed the course of our lives,” added Brown. “A light bulb went off and I saw that we could not only get involved, but we could be real market leaders in the legal cannabis industry.”
From there, the couple devoted their spare time to researching the industry, attending Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) meetings, working with cultivators and processors to gain hands-on experience, and exploring various product formulations and possibilities for their own cannabis business plan. As regulations unfolded in Massachusetts, Cusick and Brown grew confident to pursue a manufacturing license from the CCC for TBI to create a variety of high-quality cannabis products using organic, all-natural ingredients.
The next challenge was determining a location for the business, which, due to widespread bans and moratoria across the Commonwealth, could have been a difficult task. But Brown and Cusick had their eyes on Wareham, which is welcoming licensed cannabis businesses to meet its need for a resurgence of local business activity and jobs. In May 2018, TBI secured the required Community Host Agreement and an 8,000 square-foot facility on Cranberry Highway in Wareham.
“This will be a win for all our neighbors with the improvements TBI will make to the site and the jobs we’ll create for local families,” Cusick said. “We’re grateful to the town of Wareham for supporting us as real contributors to the local business community.”
TBI has already onboarded its first full-time employee, an experienced medical marijuana facility operator from Connecticut. But as the company moves full-steam ahead, the Cannabis Control Commission recently announced that they will be heavily scrutinizing all packaging, naming, advertising and ingredient details associated with edibles and other marijuana products in an effort to ensure that the products and their packaging do not appeal to children.
TBI is prepared. And after being awarded a provisional license from the CCC on the same day that adult-use sales commenced in the Commonwealth, they’re also energized to continuing their fundraising efforts and commence construction on the Wareham facility.
“Compliance, integrity and our commitment to creating an enduring line of products that our customers can rely on are at the core of every decision we make,” said Brown. “We’re building T. Bear to be a standard-setter for the cannabis industry and food manufacturing industry in Massachusetts and beyond.”
TBI’s product line includes various gourmet edibles, a high-end vaporizer cartridge, and concentrates, including rosin and ice water hash. Online cannabis research community Weedmaps defines marijuana concentrates as “products made from the cannabis plant that have been processed to keep only the most desirable plant compounds (primarily the cannabinoids and terpenes), while removing excess plant material and other impurities.”
To learn more about T. Bear, Inc. visit www.tbearinc.com.
PreviousA Culture of Learning: Stewart Painting focuses on operations, employees, to reach growth goals
NextMaking a Difference: How the business community partners with local nonprofits
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Horror · Reviews
Gore Galore: Takashi Miike’s Audition
Gary Morris
This is one audition you may want to skip
Reports from the front lines of early cinema suggest that many viewers during the ‘teens and before were terrified by the larger-than-life trains, horses, people, etc. that seemed to be coming at them from the screen. That feeling of cinema as edge spectacle blurring the line between object and audience resurfaces with a vengeance in Takashi Miike’s Audition (Odishon). The film, shot in 1999 but not exactly a multiplex staple, is notorious mostly from festival screenings that resulted in both awards and mass walkouts, as at the Rotterdam Film Festival. To get some idea of its impact, think of Audition as a cozy fit with such films as In the Realm of the Senses, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, or any of the over-the-top gay movies of the past few years with terse titles like Bone, Frisk, or Hard. If these works upset you, you might consider skipping this one. Hardier souls will get their reward.
Audition differs from its peers in seeming to be two quite different films. For close to an hour it has the look and feel of a classic Japanese family drama a la Ozu, with a middle-class man and his son quietly getting on with their lives after the death of his wife. These scenes are so understated that one can imagine some viewers falling asleep or walking out in boredom.
But Miike’s purpose becomes painfully clear when the film switches gears. All that quiet, even schmaltzy family stuff is part of his strategy of quietly seducing the viewer into an increasingly credible world. Just past midpoint everything changes: the film bails on the narrative, intertwines dream sequences and reality so densely there’s no telling what’s real, and pushes the gore and grue to a limit rarely seen outside the cheesy cinematic bloodbaths of 1960s schlocksters like Herschell Gordon Lewis or Al Adamson. Of course, it’s hard to take those films seriously except perhaps as a twisted, naïve personal vision. Miike’s careful brickbuilding gives surprising heft to what follows, engaging and repelling the viewer in equal measure but also making it all seem disturbingly real.
TV producer Aoyama Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) is the aforementioned middle-class man, Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki) his teenage son. His friend, movie producer Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura), has the perfect palliative for Aoyoma’s loneliness: test out a number of possible new wives by holding a phony movie audition. The clueless Shigeharu eagerly agrees, and he and Yoshikawa hold interviews marked by questions about sex that seem to have little to do with acting. Aoyama eventually settles on tall, otherworldly waif Asami (played by ex-model Eihi Shiina). The more seasoned Yoshikawa senses that something’s not quite right with Asami; he investigates and finds many a hole in her story. And Asami’s ghostly presence and grim pronouncements about the death of hope don’t foretell a life of party hearty. To say much more would be to spoil the film’s unpleasant surprises.
Miike’s visuals manipulate the film’s multiple worlds with tense authority. He brazenly juggles time and space, using machine-gun editing and exotic color filters to unhinge viewers, though this game of what is real and what isn’t gets so hyper that it runs the risk of bewildering undercaffeinated audiences. He elicits fine performances from the entire cast. Ishibashi brings a calm nobility to the role of pathetic Everyman, even as he’s subtly indicted as a user. Shiina, dressed in shimmering white, is superb in a difficult role, moving in and out of the film’s dreamy ambiences with commanding power. Kunimura registers nicely as the vaguely creepy producer, while newcomer Sawaki is coolly credible as Aoyama’s son.
Miike has been compared to any number of style-heavy goremeisters, most notably Dario Argento of Suspiria fame. This is unfair to Miike, given Argento’s feeble grasp of narrative and general air of tedium. (Miike dispenses with narrative, but it’s obvious he’s capable of rendering it; and the film is ultimately far from tedious.)Audition has been the subject of widespread commentary, praise, and attack, interpreted as a feminist revenge movie, a screed against Japanese society’s objectification of women, a protracted exercise in sex ‘n sadism, a neo-gore film, and a dark farce. To say that it feeds all these interpretations to varying degrees is not a criticism, but evidence of the film’s disturbing riches. Audition would make an ideal “midnight movie,” except that it would be 2 a.m. when you left the theater, in the dark.
— Gary Morris
Gary Morris founded Bright Lights Film Journal as a print publication in 1974; it became a web-only magazine in 1996. He is the author of the monograph Roger Corman (Twayne Publishers, 1985) and the editor of Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran (Anthem Press, 2009).
Previous story Mr. Belvedere Joins the Scouts: Mister Scoutmaster’s Man-Boy Love
Next story Mondo Tranny: Monika Treut’s Gendernauts
Three Films by Edgar G. Ulmer: Bluebeard, The Strange Woman, and Moon over Harlem April 1, 2000
“An Oasis of Glamor in a Sea of Mediocrity”: Vegas in Space (1991) September 1, 1996
George Kuchar’s Secrets of the Shadow World April 1, 2000
The Tao of Poverty Row January 9, 2009
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes, Buffy-centric episodes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3, Joyce-centric episodes
Dead Man's Party
Air date October 6, 1998
Written by Marti Noxon
Directed by James Whitmore Jr.
"Anne" next
"Faith, Hope & Trick"
Charisma Carpenter Cordelia
David Boreanaz Angel
Seth Green Oz
Kristine Sutherland Joyce
Nancy Lenehan Pat
Armin Shimerman Principal Snyder
Danny Strong Jonathan
Jason Hall Devon
Paul Morgan Stetler Young Doctor
Chris Garnant Stoner #1
Uncredited
Heath Castor Party Guest
Scott Duthie Zombie
"Dead Man's Party" is the second episode of the third season of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the thirty-sixth episode in the series. It was directed by James Whitmore Jr. and written by Marti Noxon. It was originally broadcast October 6, 1998.
Buffy struggles with life back in Sunnydale. Her problems with Angel, combined with the anger and distance of her friends and mother, only make things more difficult. However, everyone is eventually brought back together when a Nigerian mask that Joyce has acquired causes an army of zombies to rise up all over Sunnydale.
Joyce is hanging up a Nigerian mask given to her by a friend at the gallery while Buffy finishes unpacking. She reluctantly allows Buffy to go to find her friends, who are coordinating a vampire hunt via walkie-talkies. Buffy stumbles upon the Scoobies and assists them in staking. They're shocked at her sudden and unannounced return. Everyone heads to Giles' apartment, where he puts on the usual 'stiff upper lip' when he sees that Buffy has returned. Later, everyone discusses the news that Buffy is no longer wanted for Kendra's murder and also speculate on where Buffy went during the summer while, unseen by the others, in the kitchen Giles nearly cries from the relief that Buffy has returned safely.
The next day, Joyce takes Buffy to see Principal Snyder, who takes vindictive pleasure in keeping Buffy from re-entering Sunnydale High despite the fact she no longer has criminal charges against her. Joyce then discusses the idea of sending Buffy away to school (with the obvious intent of getting her out out of harm's way in Sunnydale) before dropping her off at a coffee shop for a scheduled meeting with Willow, who does not show up. Buffy goes home and meets Pat, a book club member of Joyce's who does not hesitate to comment about Buffy's recent behavior and its impact on Joyce. While fetching fancy "company" plates for a dinner with her friends that Joyce arranges, Buffy finds a dead cat in the basement. Buffy and Joyce bury it, but later that night, the Nigerian mask's eyes glow red, and the dead cat crawls its way out of its grave.
Buffy has another nightmare involving Angel. The next morning, while she and Joyce are discussing her schooling options in the kitchen, Joyce suggests that Buffy should not be so secretive and tell a few people such as Principal Snyder and the police that she is the Slayer. The dead cat surprises them. Giles comes over to remove it in a cage. Buffy waves him in and says, "Welcome to the Hellmouth Petting Zoo." He notices the mask before leaving for the library, and Buffy gets ready to head there with him, but Giles stops her, as she is no longer allowed on school grounds. Later in the library, the gang are discussing various "welcome back" dinner scenarios for Buffy ("Is it a gathering, or a shindig, or a hootenanny?"), but convince themselves that a big party would be more appropriate. Giles, who is doing research on Buffy's reanimated cat, is distracted by the discussion and overlooks a page in his book showing Joyce's Nigerian mask.
Dingoes Ate My Baby soon arrives at Buffy's house without notice, along with many "guests" from school that Buffy barely knows. Overwhelmed by all of the partygoers, Buffy tries to talk to Willow, who pretends to be distracted so that she doesn't have to talk to her. Buffy then tries to talk with Xander and Cordelia Chase, but finds that they're too busy kissing each other to be bothered. Meanwhile, Joyce is telling Pat in the kitchen how much it means to her to have Buffy back, though it has been harder on her than expected. Overhearing only the end of Joyce's statements and misinterpreting them, Buffy goes upstairs and decides to pack her things again.
At the library, Giles is horrified by what he finally uncovers about the mask. He tries to phone Buffy's house, but the partygoers who answer the phone fail to properly relay his message, or even understand it, with Dingos Ate My Baby playing at full volume ("There's no 'Buddy' here! You've got the wrong house, 'Mr. Belvedere!'").
Willow, having decided to try and make things up with her friend, finds Buffy in the bedroom and is visibly angry that her best friend is thinking about leaving again. The two then get into an argument, as Willow accuses Buffy of just giving up on Sunnydale and for not being there for her during a summer when she needed her help as Willow's life developed (due to dating Oz and dabbling in magic). Willow also accuses Buffy of being so worried about people being angry with her that she didn't bother to ask anyone else how they were doing.
Giles decides to drive to the party, angrily talking to himself about how dumb Joyce was to hang a cursed mask as decoration ("Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the dead"). On the way, Giles accidentally hits a man standing in the road. He gets out of his car and discovers that the man is a reanimated corpse. Giles barely escapes oncoming zombies as other dead bodies rise all over Sunnydale.
Joyce walks in on Buffy packing to run away again, finds out what's happening and, regardless of the fact that people are watching, decides to have it out with Buffy, furious that her daughter is willing to put her through the misery of not knowing where she is again. As party guests quickly leave the awkward situation, Xander also decides to vent at Buffy about how selfish her running away was, while Cordelia takes Buffy's side and Oz tries to keep everyone calm. Just as they're about to come to blows, the newly reanimated zombies crash through the windows and doors, causing the Scoobies to immediately drop their argument and band together to combat the threat. Several guests are killed. Oz and Cordelia hide in a downstairs closet, while Buffy and others rush upstairs with a gravely-injured Pat. In the bedroom, Willow checks Pat's pulse, only to find that she is dead.
Giles arrives to tell Oz and Cordelia about the mask containing the powers of the zombie demon Ovu Mobani, which means "Evil Eye." Whichever zombie puts it on becomes the demon incarnate, which Pat does. Other zombies cower down while Buffy soon realizes that the demon's gaze hypnotizes whoever is looking at it when its eyes flash (like a camera flash). Buffy pushes the newly demonized Pat out of the window shortly before it could kill Willow. Oz tries to tell Buffy about how to kill it, when he is hypnotized. Buffy uses this opening to plunge a shovel into the Pat demon's eyes, depowering and killing it. It vanishes along with all the other zombies.
With the demon's defeat, Joyce and the Scoobies are unable to bring themselves to spite Buffy any longer, and the entire group embraces.
The next day, Giles tries to convince Snyder to let Buffy return. When Snyder refuses, Giles warns him that he will take things up with the state supreme court and make life very difficult for him, professionally. When Snyder still resists, Giles physically intimidates him into giving in. Meanwhile in the coffee shop, Willow tells Buffy about her dabbling in magic and the two, once again best friends, bond by trading playful insults.
Buffy has reconciled with her friends. She now must deal with herself.
This is the first episode where we see downtown Sunnydale, a street with several shops, most notably the Espresso Pump. In Season 5 it's revealed that the name of the street is Maple Court.
When Buffy meets Xander in the alley while out patrolling, he is holding a stake. Buffy jokes that it is all fun and games until someone loses an eye. In season seven Xander does in fact lose an eye in a fight against Caleb.
It's revealed that despite what Snyder believed about the police's competence, they did in fact clear Buffy of Kendra's murder in "Becoming, Part One", but he still refuses to let Buffy back into school. However, Joyce gets the school board to overrule him in the next episode.
The scene with Giles hot wiring his car is censored in British releases because it's an "imitatible act."
This episode hints again about Principal Snyder's connections with The Mayor (when Joyce and Buffy are in his office). The Mayor will eventually become the Big Bad of this season.
Willow makes references to her dabbling in magic since she restored Angel's soul. She eventually grows into an extremely powerful witch.
Snyder recommends Buffy apply to Hot Dog on a Stick as an alternative to her education after he refuses to re-admit her to Sunnydale High. Buffy later worked a dead-end job as a fry cook in a local fast food chain.
The concept of reanimated people being controlled by magic is revisited in the Angel episode "The Thin Dead Line" where zombified policemen are controlled by an idol. Both episodes feature a zombie assault on the stronghold of the heroes. Unlike this episode, however, the zombies in a "The Thin Dead Line" are capable of speech and their bodies' decay has been undone. It also features Anne Steele, aka Lily Houston from the previous episode.
At the beginning of the zombie invasion of the Summers' residence, the zombie who grabs Willow looks very similar to the character of Daryl Epps, a reanimated football player seen in "Some Assembly Required".
This is the first time zombies appear like monsters-of-day in the Buffyverse. Zombies appears also in Nightmares only in background at the hospital just before the Scooby-Gang eliminates the Ugly Man and wake Billy Palmer.
Angel (In a dream)
Rupert Giles
Alexander Harris
Ovu Mobani
Willow Rosenberg
Principal Snyder
Buffy Summers
Joyce Summers
Organizations and titles
Dingoes Ate My Baby
1630 Revello Drive
Sunnydale High School
Sunnydale High School library
Weapons and objects
A vampire, dusted by Buffy
Patches, the dead cat, became a zombie
A group of Sunnydale citizens, become zombies
Unidentified man, killed in a car accident, became a zombie
Unidentified man, died of extensive burns, became a zombie
Unidentified doctor, killed by a zombie
Unidentified nurse, killed by a zombie
Unidentified young man, neck snapped by a zombie
Pat, killed by a zombie
Ovu Mobani, killed with a shovel to the eyes by Buffy
All zombies, automatically destroyed with Ovu Mobani
Joyce describing Snyder was cut:[1]
Joyce: "Have you ever noticed his teeth? They're like tiny rodent teeth - horrible gnashing little teeth. You just want to pull them out with pliers."
Goofs, Bloopers & Continuity Errors
When the zombies break into the house, Buffy wasn't sure if they were vampires, but she knew already that vampires can't enter a home without permission. Anyway, though being strong and heroic and a Slayer, it was and it will be stated that she's not the most clever person in the World, or in the Scoobies, to say the least.
At the Bronze the sign behind the band says "Darling Violetta" referring to the band.
Even thought Buffy was no longer wanted for the murder of Kendra, she had still committed other crimes that the police should have arrested her for, such as resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.
French: Le masque de Cordolfo (Cordolfo's mask)
German: Die Nacht der lebenden Toten (Night of the living Dead)
Portuguese: A Festa dos Mortos (The Party of the Dead)
Four Star Mary - "Never Mind" (Played at Buffy's party.)
Four Star Mary - "Pain" (Played at Buffy's party.) (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Album)
Four Star Mary - "Sway" (Played at Buffy's party.)
Christophe Beck - "The Mask Theme"
Christophe Beck - original score
During the scene where the zombies shuffle through the playground, a zombified Sunnydale High cheerleader can be seen in the background.
In 2002 Kristine Sutherland starred in the English language version of the Japanese animated film 'The Cat Returns'. She played the single mother of a teenage schoolgirl who has a series of wild adventures after discovering she has magical powers (albeit the ability to speak to cats rather than martial arts).
Buffy - (after catching Xander with a stake) "Didn't anyone ever warn you about playing with pointy sticks? It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye."
Xander - "You can't just bury stuff, Buffy! It'll come right back up to get you..."
Buffy - "I got in a few hours ago, but, I went to go see my mom first."
Giles - "Yes. Yes, of course. H-How did you find her?"
Buffy - "Well, I pretty much remembered the address."
Willow - "Y'know, I'm having all sorts of... I'm dating, I..I'm having serious dating with a werewolf. A.. And I'm studying witchcraft and killing vampires, and I didn't have anyone to talk to about all this scary life stuff."
Giles - "Would you like me to convince you?"
Giles - "Unbelievable! 'Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the dead!' Americans!"
Giles - (hotwiring a car) "Like riding a bloody bicycle."
Joyce - "You know what? I don't care. I don't care what your friends think of me, or you for that matter, because you put me through the wringer, Buffy. I mean it. And I've had schnapps. Do you have any idea what it's been like?"
Buffy - "Mom, this isn't the time—"
Joyce - "You can't imagine months of not knowing. Not knowing whether you're lying dead in a ditch somewhere or, I don't know, living it up—"
Buffy - "But you told me! You're the one who said I should go! You said if I leave this house, don't come back! You found out who I really was, and you couldn't deal! Don't you remember?!"
Xander - "So where were you? Did you go to Belgium?"
Buffy - "Why would I go to Belgium?"
Xander - "I think the relevant question is why wouldn't ya? Belgium."
Joyce - (about the zombies) "What do we do if they get in?"
Xander - "I kinda think we die!"
Xander - (to Joyce) "Generally speaking, when scary things get scared: not a good thing."
Oz - (comes out to tell Buffy how to defeat the demon) "Buffy!" (Ovu Mobani stuns him)
Buffy - "Hey, Pat!" (the demon turns and Buffy impales it through the eyes with a shovel) "Made you look!" (the demon and zombies disappear)
Oz - "Never mind."
Joyce - (after a zombie invasion) "So, is this a normal day at the office?"
Buffy - "No, this was nothing."
Buffy - "Fine. Okay. I'm the bad. I can take my lumps... for a while."
Willow - "Alright. I'll stop giving you a hard time... runaway."
Buffy - "Will!"
Willow - "I'm sorry...quitter."
Buffy - "Whiner."
Willow - "Bailer."
Buffy - "Harpy."
Willow - "Delinquent."
Buffy - "Tramp."
Willow - "Bad seed."
Buffy - "Witch."
Willow - "Freak."
Willow - "No, Let 'em go Oz. Talking about it isn't helping, we may as well try some violence!" (Zombies crash in through window) "I was being sarcastic!"
↑ Nancy Holder. The Watcher's Guide, Vol. 2, 2000.
Retrieved from "https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/Dead_Man%27s_Party?oldid=196822"
Joyce-centric episodes
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MyCENTA
CENTA STANDARDS
Teaching Professionals' Olympiad
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CENTA
Opportunities for Teachers
TPO Winners
Schools Wall of Fame
‘Accredit’ means ‘to recognize as outstanding’
We believe the most important determinant for improving education is positive recognition, rewards and career opportunities for teachers.
Founded in 2014, Centre for Teacher Accreditation (CENTA) works to empower teachers and catalyze their professional development through CENTA Certification and Micro-Credentials, a market-driven certification of competencies rooted in high standards, which connects outstanding candidates to great opportunities in recognition, career and professional development.
CENTA Certification, comprising of five Micro-Credentials, is based on the CENTA Standards, a well-accepted and internationally-benchmarked set of competencies for teachers. Our methodology is scientific, research-backed and fact-based, supported by an advisory board of eminent leaders.
CENTA also conducts the annual Teaching Professionals’ Olympiad (TPO), a unique national competition in the format of an objective, multiple-choice test based on the CENTA Standards and which is highly practice-oriented. It brings a host of relevant and coveted rewards, recognition and opportunities for teachers. CENTA TPO is held on the second Saturday of every December.
CENTA’s Teaching Quotient (TQ) for teacher recruitment is a high-quality assessment that leads to a TQ Score which any graduate interested in teaching can carry on the resume and which schools can use as a benchmark in recruiting. Based on the globally-benchmarked CENTA Standards, TQ Score combines the most important competencies for teacher recruitment.
More than 60,000 teaching professionals from 10,000+ schools in 2000+ cities, towns and villages across India and UAE are part of CENTA's endeavour to connect teachers with career opportunities and professional growth.
CENTA Certification and Micro-Credentials will help identify outstanding teachers and teacher candidates and create great opportunities for them by serving as a signal of quality for schools, teacher training institutes and employers. Through this catalysing role, we hope to motivate a larger population of teachers to improve their competencies, and see teaching becoming a more aspirational profession – which will help improve the quality of school education in a fundamental, sustainable and market-driven manner.
In 2017, CENTA was named a ‘Top 60 Social Enterprise in Asia’ by Development Bank of Singapore and National University of Singapore. While the CENTA Standards have been appreciated by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, NITI Aayog and other government institutions, CENTA TPO has received the support of multiple state governments including Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
CENTA is part of the Global Alliance on Teachers, alongside Harvard Graduate School of Education, National Institute of Education Singapore and University of Helsinki Finland.
Address: #22, 3rd Floor, HAL 3rd Stage, 80 Ft. Road, Indiranagar, Bengaluru - 560075.
Whatsapp: +91-7349662401
Helpline: +91-7328903660
Email: team@CENTA.org
Disclaimer Of Liabilities
Terms and Conditions For Candidates of TPO 2019
2018 © CENTA. All Rights Reserved.
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charlotte seley
poet. writer. editor. creative consultant.
Navigation home poetry professional writing readings about
OUT NOW FROM SPUYTEN DUYVIL PUBLISHING:
art by ivan cheung
"There is a concern for our living bodies I look for in poetry and Charlotte Seley gives us the resonating conversation of the world through skin on every brilliant page! She gets me feeling the terrestrial simultaneously calculated as cosmic in the everyday everywhere!" - CAConrad, author of While Standing in Line for Death
"Dear World, Congratulations! The book you are holding in your hands is infected with the infectious poetry of Charlotte Seley. Your temperature will rise. Your brain will wrinkle. Your palpitations will palpitate. Seley breaks her heart to break yours. She is “jealous / of the states you live in / the orange slices you share / the words we don’t have…” World, read Seley. Get ill and 'Expand your palette & ride out the whispering blue wind.'" - Peter Jay Shippy, author of A Spell of Songs and How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic
"The World Is My Rival is a streetwise catalogue of heartbreak, a record of the daily aggravation of being a mind trapped in a body like a man in a whale or a wreck in the ocean: 'I can’t comprehend how live forever / and never die are the same.' Modeled on the pop tradition of the lost-love song, this book is for anyone who’s had the 'majestic blues' of thwarted desire and gone back for more: 'Come and get me, stupid light.'" - Elisa Gabbert, author of The Self Unstable, L'heure Blue, or the Judy Poems, and The French Exit
"The poems in Charlotte Seley’s The World Is My Rival strike as quickly and brightly as lightning and illuminate not only the landscape but the interiors of buildings and the private lives of those within. I dare anyone to find a poet with more linguistic energy and insight. I am thrilled for all who have waited for this book, and for those who won’t know what hit them when they read it." - John Skoyles, author of Suddenly, It's Evening and Inside Job
"I'm writing you from the event horizon of the whole world. It's somewhere inside Charlotte Seley's poems. What happened was, I read The World is My Rival, and the book, a body into which grief and celestial ennui have drilled, pulled itself into its own hole. That is, her book swallowed itself, and I went with it. Charlotte Seley stayed behind, lamenting the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. She wants to see everything at the same time: the angora sweater she is wearing and also the angora rabbit before it molted. She maintains that her map is not the territory, but you will follow it anyway, all the way to Beard Island, where the bewhiskered beloved lives, even as Seley warns you: 'love/is unoriginal/when it's me and I'm making it.' Her jealousy however is intense and wholly (holy) original. She wants every cell that her body has ever sloughed off, every other possible life, mode, and thought--and those of her lover's. She is driving herself out of her mind. Which thankfully makes more room for us there." - Darcie Dennigan, author of Animal Land and Palace of Subatomic Bliss
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Can Umpires Really Do Anything They Want?
by Sheryl Ring
There’s a saying in my profession that “the law is what the court says it is.” That’s a paraphrase of a famous line from Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison that “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” The point is that the law is open to interpretation, even if the words on the page are unchanging. Your interpretation, my interpretation, even Meg Rowley’s interpretation – none of that matters. The only interpretation that matters at the end of the day is that of the person wearing the robe.
When it comes to baseball, the judges are the umpires – as the recent Rangers-Astros series shows. Our saga begins in a rather ordinary fashion – with a questionable strike call. Per Chandler Rome at the Houston Chronicle:
In the next half-inning, [umpire Ron] Kulpa called a borderline first pitch strike against Tyler White. The entire Astros dugout charged toward the railing and erupted with vitriol toward Kulpa. Kulpa removed his mask and yelled back. [Astros Manager A.J.] Hinch came out to diffuse the situation and, at that point, no one was ejected.
[Houston coach Alex] Cintron did not cease his criticism. Kulpa tossed him as Hinch returned to the dugout. A pitch later, while Kulpa still stared into the Astros’ dugout, Hinch began to bark back. Kulpa ejected him.
Here’s video if you’d rather see for yourself:
It's a little chilly out, but things are running hot on the field.
The Astros get 2 people tossed, including manager AJ Hinch, after arguing balls and strikes.#TogetherWe pic.twitter.com/ArITqYTarl
— FOX Sports Southwest (@FOXSportsSW) April 4, 2019
But there’s more to this story. Evidently, Kulpa subscribes to the Marbury v. Madison school of umpiring power.
What happens when an umpire has a full blown meltdown? Just watch Kulpa. After Hinch returned to the dugout the second time, Kulpa kept looking over there, most likely waiting for a player or coach to make another comment. Hinch gave him what he wanted. He yelled “You can’t keep doing this!” at Kulpa, who immediately ejected Hinch, leading to an on-field screaming match and Kulpa shouting in Hinch’s face “I can do anything I want!”
Notably, Hinch wasn’t arguing balls and strikes when Kulpa ejected him.
Before even one more pitch was thrown, the umpire leered into the Houston dugout, essentially daring the players to say something. Hinch had to once again take the field to kindly ask the neutral game official to stop staring down his players. The mics picked up Hinch’s words to Kulpa: “There’s nothing to see. There’s nothing for you to see. Look out there. Look right there.”
And just to prove the point that he really, truly, could do anything he wanted, Kulpa proceeded to make himself the center of the spectacle, including initiating physical contact with catcher Max Stassi.
Also, @MLB more absurd behavior from Ron Kulpa. Antagonizing the pitcher, physically pushing the catcher, and interrupting the pitcher warming up. Insane behavior. pic.twitter.com/hKKdLRYLvC
— Tyler Applegate (@t_applegate) April 4, 2019
There’s a lot to unpack here, most notably, Kulpa’s assertion that, as an umpire, he can do anything he wants. But before we get there, we have to explain something.
By far the most common question I get from clients in my day job is “can s/he do that?” And my answer is always the same. The law isn’t a magic force that uses midichlorians to prevent a person from killing or stealing. A person can – in the sense of physical capability – do whatever they want. The only laws that can stop them are the laws of biology and physics.
What the law can do is punish people for doing those things. In essence, the law is a gigantic set of incentives and disincentives. The same applies to the rules of baseball and Ron Kulpa. Gandalf won’t appear to stop Kulpa from transgressing some rule on umpire conduct. So what we’re looking at here is not whether Kulpa is right in the literal sense, but rather whether there are limits in place that, were Kulpa to transgress them, provide for some kind of consequence.
The kind of power Kulpa is claiming is called plenary power, and we discussed it earlier this year in the context of commissioner Rob Manfred. Plenary power is “[p]ower that is wide-ranging, broadly construed, and often limitless for all practical purposes.”
But while the terms of the Major League Constitution grant the commissioner that kind of unlimited authority, there’s no such similar grant for umpires. Umpire duties are covered by Rule 4.01 of the Official Major League Rules, which includes things like ensuring alternate regulation baseballs are available, inspecting baseballs, and ensuring compliance with equipment specifications. In fact, to the extent the umpire’s power is delineated by a list of duties, essentially the entire baseball rulebook is a list of what the umpire can and should do. Nearly every rule tells the umpire what to do, because it’s the umpires who enforce the rules. If case law and statutes are an instruction manual for judges, then the Major League Baseball rulebook is an instruction manual for umpires.
But this is a non-exhaustive list, and it doesn’t say what an umpire can’t do. For that, we need Article 8.00, conveniently entitled “The Umpire.” In Rule 8.01, we learn what the umpire’s authority is.
8.01 Umpire Qualifications and Authority (a) The League President shall appoint one or more umpires to officiate at each league championship game. The umpires shall be responsible for the conduct of the game in accordance with these official rules and for maintaining discipline and order on the playing field during the game.
(b) Each umpire is the representative of the league and of professional baseball, and is authorized and required to enforce all of these rules. Each umpire has authority to order a player, coach, manager or club officer or employee to do or refrain from doing anything which affects the administering of these rules, and to enforce the prescribed penalties.
(c) Each umpire has authority to rule on any point not specifically covered in these rules.
(d) Each umpire has authority to disqualify any player, coach, manager or substitute for objecting to decisions or for unsportsmanlike conduct or language, and to eject such disqualified person from the playing field. If an umpire disqualifies a player while a play is in progress, the disqualification shall not take effect until no further action is possible in that play.
(e) Each umpire has authority at his discretion to eject from the playing field (1) any person whose duties permit his presence on the field, such as ground crew members, ushers, photographers, newsmen, broadcasting crew members, etc., and (2) any spectator or other person not authorized to be on the playing field.
Based on this, Ron Kulpa is partly right. As the personification of Major League Baseball on the field, the umpire does indeed have vast authority for “maintaining discipline and order.” And note that the umpire has authority to eject a person merely for objecting to a decision, and not only for unsportsmanlike conduct. The umpire can even eject a player in the middle of a play! This is, frankly, a poorly written rule; as written, the umpire can theoretically eject a manager who asks for a replay review; by asking for that review, the manager is, by definition, objecting to a ruling. And, most notably, Rule 8.01(c) basically says that where the Rules don’t cover something, the umpire has discretion to make up a rule.
This is obviously really broad authority, and, for the most part, the rest of Article 8.00 doesn’t get any less so. Rule 8.02, which governs appeals of umpire decisions, allows those appeals only to the umpire who made the decision in the first place. Under Rule 8.03, the umpire-in-chief (as in, the home plate umpire; this is not the same as the crew chief) has even more authority; he can “[a]nnounce any special ground rules, at his discretion.” (In this context, a “ground rule” is one that the umpire “thinks are made necessary by ground conditions, which shall not conflict with the official playing rules.”) In other words, if Ron Kulpa wanted to announce a Rule that any ball that hit the roof of Tropicana Field was a home run, he could do that. The umpires do have a lot of power.
If this were all there was in Article 8.00, Kulpa would probably be right. But there’s one more part of Article 8.00, entitled “General Instructions to Umpires.” They are, essentially, the rules that umpires are supposed to follow. Here are some excerpts.
Be courteous, always, to club officials; avoid visiting in club offices and thoughtless familiarity with officers or employees of contesting clubs.
When you enter a ball park your sole duty is to umpire a ball game as the representative of baseball. Do not allow criticism to keep you from studying out bad situations that may lead to protested games. Carry your rule book. It is better to consult the rules and hold up the game ten minutes to decide a knotty problem than to have a game thrown out on protest and replayed.
Keep the game moving. A ball game is often helped by energetic and earnest work of the umpires.
You are the only official representative of baseball on the ball field. It is often a trying position which requires the exercise of much patience and good judgment, but do not forget that the first essential in working out of a bad situation is to keep your own temper and self-control.
Each umpire team should work out a simple set of signals, so the proper umpire can always right a manifestly wrong decision when convinced he has made an error. If sure you got the play correctly, do not be stampeded by players’ appeals to “ask the other man.” If not sure, ask one of your associates. Do not carry this to extremes, be alert and get your own plays. But remember! The first requisite is to get decisions correctly. If in doubt don’t hesitate to consult your associate. Umpire dignity is important but never as important as “being right.”
Most important rule for umpires is always “BE IN POSITION TO SEE EVERY PLAY.” Even though your decision may be 100% right, players still question it if they feel you were not in a spot to see the play clearly and definitely.
Finally, be courteous, impartial and firm, and so compel respect from all.
Based on these instructions, there are things that Ron Kulpa can’t do. For one thing, he can’t be discourteous; he must be courteous “always.” He is supposed to keep a game moving. He is supposed to maintain his temper and self-control. And he is supposed to elevate being right above his own dignity.
And believe it or not, Major League Baseball really does enforce these rules. That is, the commissioner – who, remember, really does have plenary power – enforces these rules. Some umpires have been suspended or fined for misapplying rules or allowing teams to engage in rule violations. In fact, umpires get disciplined all the time.
Now, it’s true that the commissioner’s office has considerable latitude when it comes to disciplining umpires. In fact, the men with the chest protectors are chastened “frequently,” according to one source.
Some umpires are forced to sit because of poor performance. Just like a slumping slugger.
The difference is that, under the collective bargaining agreement between the umpires’ union and Major League Baseball, and unlike the players’ CBA, most discipline and disputes between the league and union are confidential. That’s why it was a big ruckus when umpires staged a brief protest, wearing white armbands to signify opposition to comments made by Ian Kinsler regarding Angel Hernandez. MLB immediately stated that the protest violated the umpires’ Collective Bargaining Agreement.
So Ron Kulpa can do whatever he wants; that’s true. And players and managers can’t do anything about it. But Major League Baseball can, and, often, does. Being an umpire is a difficult job. But omnipotence, it seems, doesn’t actually come with the territory.
We hoped you liked reading Can Umpires Really Do Anything They Want? by Sheryl Ring!
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Sheryl Ring is a litigation attorney and General Counsel at Open Communities, a non-profit legal aid agency in the Chicago suburbs. You can reach her on twitter at @Ring_Sheryl. The opinions expressed here are solely the author's. This post is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice.
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I, for one, welcome our new robot umpire overlords.
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Category Archives: Assessment
Assessment, Collections, Projects
June 14, 2019 Angela Zoss 1 Comment
The ongoing tensions between academic institutions and publishers have been escalating the last few months, but those tensions have existed for many years. The term “Big Deal” has been coined to describe a long-standing, industry-wide practice of journal bundling that forces libraries to subscribe to unwanted and unneeded publications rather than paying more for a limited number of individual subscriptions. This is a practice you see in other industries – for example, cable packages that provide hundreds of channels, even if you only want one or two specific channels.
What is especially problematic in higher education is that academics produce and review the content that gets published in the journals (for free), and then the universities have to pay the publishers a subscription fee to access the content. Imagine if YouTube required a subscription fee to watch any videos, including the ones you had posted. It’s a system that makes research harder to access and inhibits global scientific progress, all so publishers can earn an enormous profit margin.
Right now, academic publishing is controlled by five publishers (the “Big Five”) – a monopoly that makes it very difficult for libraries to negotiate better deals. Only very large organizations or consortia, like the University of California, have been able to start pushing back against the system. It will likely take large shake-ups like this for any large changes to take hold, but it in the meantime there may be ways to situate ourselves for making better purchasing decisions.
At Duke, we often review our usage of specific journal titles as we prepare to make purchasing decisions. Usage data comes in a variety of forms, but the most popular are counts of Duke views and downloads that come directly from the publishers and the number of times Duke authors publish in or cite a particular journal. There are many other kinds of data that might be of interest, however, including Duke participation on editorial boards, usage differences across disciplines, and even whether or not the journal is fully open access. Blending various data sources and optimizing the search decisions for a given budget cycle can be overwhelming.
Last fall, Duke University Libraries decided to propose a project for Duke’s Data+ summer program – a summer research experience in data science for undergraduate students. Our project, “Breaking the Bundle: Analyzing Duke’s Journal Subscriptions“, focuses on Duke’s subscriptions to journals published by Elsevier. The program is in its third week, and our team of two incredibly-sharp undergraduates has been hard at work building and blending our datasets. Our goal by the end of summer is to have a proof-of-concept dashboard that lets collection managers adjust the weights of various usage measures to generate an ideal collection of journals for a particular budget.
It is still very early in the process, but the students have been hard at work and have made great progress. We decided it would be best to develop the analysis software and dashboard using R, a statistical computing project with a rich history and many helpful development tools. In addition to publisher-provided views and downloads, the students have been able to use websites and APIs to collect data on journal open access status, editorial boards, numbers of publications, and numbers of citations. All Data+ teams present publicly on the projects twice during the summer, and we hope to schedule a third talk for a library audience before the end of the program on August 2.
Just one of many files of R code generated for the project so far.
We look forward to seeing what the summer will bring! While this project is just one small step, automating the collection and analysis of journal usage will position us well, both for responsible purchases and for a hopefully-changing publishing landscape.
Assessment, Technology, User Experience
Is there an app for that? The seemingly endless quest to make discovery easier for users
Image April 18, 2019 Emily Daly
Contributed by Assessment & User Experience Department Practicum Students Amelia Midgett-Nicholson and Allison Cruse
Duke University Libraries (DUL) is always searching for new ways to increase access and make discovery easier for users. One area users frequently have trouble with is accessing online articles. Too often we hear from students that they cannot find an article PDF they are looking for, or even worse, that they end up paying to get through a journal paywall. To address this problem, DUL’s Assessment and User Experience (AUX) Department explored three possible tools: LibKey Discovery, Kopernio, and Lean Library. After user testing and internal review, LibKey Discovery emerged as the best available tool for the job.
LibKey Discovery is a suite of user-friendly application programming interfaces (APIs) used to enhance the library’s existing discovery system. The APIs enable one-click access to PDFs for subscribed and open-source content, one-click access to full journal browsing via the BrowZine application, and access to cover art for thousands of journals. The tool integrates fully with the existing discovery interface and does not require the use of additional plug-ins.
According to their website, LibKey Discovery has the potential to save users thousands of clicks per day by providing one-click access to millions of articles. The ability to streamline processes enabling the efficient and effective discovery and retrieval of academic journal content prompted the AUX department to investigate the tool and its capabilities further. An internal review of the system was preceded by an introduction of the tool to Duke’s subject librarians and followed with a preliminary round of student-based user testing.
Current DUL discovery interface
LibKey discovery interface
One-Click Article and Full Journal Access
Both the AUX staff and the subject librarians who performed an initial review of the LibKey Discovery tools were impressed with the ease of article access and full journal browsing. Three members of the AUX department independently reviewed LibKey’s features and concluded the system does provide substantial utility in its ability to reduce the number of clicks necessary to access articles and journals.
Streamlined Appearance
The tool streamlines the appearance and formatting of all journals, thus removing ambiguity in how to access information from different sources within the catalog. This is beneficial in helping to direct users to the features they want without having to search for points of access. The AUX department review team all found this helpful.
LibKey Discovery’s APIs integrate fully into the existing DUL discovery interface without the need for users to download an additional plug-in. This provides users the benefit of the new system without asking them to go through extra steps or make any changes to their current search processes. Aside from the new one-click options available within the catalog’s search results page, the LibKey interface is indistinguishable from the current DUL interface helping users to benefit from the added functionality without feeling like they need to learn a new system.
LibKey Discovery carries a relatively hefty price tag, so its utility to the end-user must be weighed against its cost. While internal review and testing has indicated LibKey Discovery has the ability to streamline and optimize the discovery process, it must be determined if those benefits are universal enough to warrant the added annual expenditure.
Inconsistency in Options
A potential downside to LibKey Discovery is lack of consistency in one-click options between articles. While many articles provide the option for easy, one-click access to a PDF, the full text online, and full journal access, these options are not available for all content. As a result, this may cause confusion around the options that are available for users and may diminish the overall utility of the tool depending on what percentage of the catalog’s content is exempt from the one-click features.
LibKey Discovery User Testing Findings
An initial round of user testing was completed with ten student volunteers in the lobby of Perkins Library in early April. Half of the users were asked to access an article and browse a full journal in the existing DUL system; the other half were asked to perform the same tasks using the LibKey Discovery interface.
Initial testing indicated that student users had a high level of satisfaction with the LibKey interface; however, they were equally satisfied with the existing access points in the DUL catalog. The final recommendations from the user testing report suggest the need for additional testing to be completed. Specifically, it was recommended that more targeted testing be completed with graduate-level students and faculty as a majority of the original test’s participants were undergraduate students with limited experience searching for and accessing academic journal issues and articles. It was concluded that testing with a more experienced user group would likely produce better feedback as to the true value of LibKey Discovery.
LibKey Summary
LibKey Discovery is a promising addition to Duke’s existing discovery system. It allows for streamlined, one-click article and full journal access without disrupting the look and feel of the current interface or requiring the use of a plug-in. Initial reviews of the system by library staff have been glowing; however, preliminary user testing with student participants indicated the need for additional testing to determine if LibKey’s cost is sufficiently offset by its utility to the user.
Kopernio is a free browser plug-in which enables one-click access to academic journal articles. It searches the web for OA copies, institutional repository copies, and copies available through library subscriptions. The tool is designed to connect users to articles on and off campus by managing their subscription credentials and automatically finding the best version of an article no matter where a user is searching.
Given the potential of this tool to help increase access and make discovery easier for students, the AUX department initiated an internal review process. Four members of the department independently downloaded the Kopernio plug-in, thoroughly tested it in a variety of situations, and shared their general and specific notes about the tool.
OA Content + Library Subscription
By its design, Kopernio has an advantage over other plug-in tools that serve a similar function (i.e. Unpaywall). When users first download Kopernio they are asked to register their subscription credentials. This information is saved in the plug-in so users can automatically discover articles available from OA sources, as well as library subscriptions. This is an advantage over other plug-ins that only harvest from freely available sources.
Kopernio sign-in page
Kopernio has highly visible and consistent branding. With bright green coloring, the plug-in stands out on a screen and attracts users to click on it to download articles.
Kopernio is advertised as a “one-click” service, and it pays off in this respect. Using Kopernio to access articles definitely cuts down on the number of clicks required to get to an article’s PDF. The process to download articles to a computer was instantaneous, and most of the time, downloading to the Kopernio storage cloud was just as fast.
Creates New Pain Points
Kopernio’s most advertised strength is its ability to manage subscription credentials. Unfortunately, this strength is also a major data privacy weakness. Security concerns ultimately led to the decision to disable the feature which allowed users to access DUL subscriptions via Kopernio when off-campus. Without this feature, Kopernio only pulls from OA sources and therefore performs the same function that many other tools currently do.
Similar to data privacy concerns, Kopernio also raises copyright concerns. One of Kopernio’s features is its sharing function. You can email articles to anyone, regardless of their university affiliation or if they have downloaded Kopernio already. We tested sending DUL subscription PDFs to users without Duke email addresses and they were able to view the full-text without logging in. It is unclear if they were viewing an OA copy of the article, or if they were seeing an article only meant for DUL authenticated users.
Sharing an article through Kopernio
Running the Kopernio plug-in noticeably slowed down browser speed. We tested the browser on several different computers, both on campus and off, and we all noticed slower browser speeds. This slow speed led Kopernio to be occasionally buggy (freezing, error messages etc.).
Buggy screen while using Kopernio
Many Features Don’t Seem Useful
When articles are saved to Kopernio’s cloud storage, users can add descriptive tags. We found this feature awkward to use. Instead of adding tags as you go along, users have to add a tag globally before they can tag an article. Overall, it seemed like more hassle than it was worth.
Kopernio automatically imports article metadata to generate citations. There were too many problems with this feature to make it useful to users. It did not import metadata for all articles that we tested, and there was no way to manually add metadata yourself. Additionally, the citations were automatically formatted in Elsevier Harvard format and we had to go to our settings to change it to a more common citation style.
Lastly, the cloud storage which at first seemed like an asset, was actually a problem. All articles automatically download to cloud storage (called the “Kopernio Locker”) as soon as you click on the Kopernio button. This wouldn’t be a problem except for the limited storage size of the locker. With only 100MB of storage in the free version of Kopernio, we found that after downloading only 2 articles the locker was already 3% full. To make this limited storage work, we would have to go back to our locker and manually delete articles that we did not need, effectively negating the steps saved by having an automatic process.
Lean Library is a similar tool to Kopernio. It offers users one-click access to subscription and open access content through a browser extension. In Fall 2018, DUL staff were days away from purchasing this tool when Lean Library was acquired by SAGE Publishing. DUL staff had been excited to license a tool that was independent and vendor-neutral and so were disappointed to learn about its acquisition. We have found that industry consolidation in the publishing and library information systems environment has lowered competition and resulted in negative experiences for researchers and staff. Further, we take the privacy of our users very seriously and were concerned that Lean Library’s alignment with SAGE Publishing will compromise user security. Whenever possible, DUL aims to support products and services that are offered independently from those with already dominant market positions. For these reasons, we opted not to pursue Lean Library further.
Of the three tools the AUX Department explored, we believe LibKey Discovery to be the most user-friendly and effective option. If purchased, it should streamline journal browsing and article PDF downloads without adversely affecting the existing functionality of DUL’s discovery interfaces.
Wrangling Messy Data with Airtable
March 14, 2019 Angela Zoss
The Assessment & User Experience department at Duke University Libraries keeps the libraries’ physical and virtual spaces responsive to user needs by constantly gathering feedback. In additional to our biennial user satisfaction survey, we run usability tests, hold focus groups, and host meetings of our student advisory boards, all in an effort to keep a finger on the pulse of the DUL patrons.
These activities can generate a lot of unstructured data! For example, in a typical meeting of our undergraduate advisory board, we might collect feedback from a dozen or more students, generating seven or more pages of notes and covering a range of topics. We review and act upon some of these comments immediately, but others may influence longer-term planning. As library staff, we know how important it is to store information in a way that promotes future access. This year we decided to pilot a new system for storing and describing our unstructured data.
Enter Airtable. If you’re not familiar, Airtable is a cloud-based database solution. Similar to Google Sheets, Airtable lets you enter and share data in your web browser, but it also offers more powerful features for projects that have messy data or interconnected components. There are many Airtable templates to show off the different features, including project trackers, event planners, and even product catalogs.
For our messy data, we built a simple spreadsheet that was general enough to collect data from a variety of sources. We included columns like basic demographics, the feedback provided, the original question or prompt, the date when feedback was provided, and how we collected the feedback. Then we took advantage of Airtable’s special features to create a column for topical tags. One of the column types in Airtable is called “multiple select“, which means you can add multiple tags to a single comment. Other spreadsheets can’t understand a list of tags in a single cell, but Airtable treats each tag separately and allows us to group and filter comments by each individual tag.
The ability to look at comments across different feedback channels in one central location has enormous potential. Instead of having to hunt through old Word documents or emails, we have a single database that can be searched, sorted, or filtered to explore trends in comments over time. When a question comes up about how patrons feels about a particular service or space, we can compile data much more easily, and we no longer have to rely on our memory of what feedback we’ve received and when.
Airtable’s free accounts have a limited number of rows allowed in each database, but they do offer a discount on paid plans to educational institutions. We’re only just starting to explore the potential of Airtable, but so far we’ve been happy with the ability to collect our messy data in one place and organize comments with tags.
Want to learn more? Take a look at our recent tutorial on using Airtable for coding survey data, originally offered at the Designing For Digital 2019 conference.
Assessment, User Experience
Find your haven at Oasis Perkins
December 7, 2018 Angela Zoss
(Thanks to Assessment and User Experience Intern Brenda Yang for this post and for her amazing work on Oasis Perkins!)
What if it was possible to unwind – color, do a jigsaw puzzle, meditate – without leaving the Libraries?
It is at Oasis Perkins! This high-ceilinged refuge is tucked into the fourth floor of Perkins in room 418. It’s a perfect place to escape any finals-related tension palpable in study spaces this time of year.
You’ll find:
Yoga mats and meditation cushions
A jigsaw puzzle table
Coloring books, logic puzzles, and sudoku pages
Origami paper and instruction books
A quiet nook
A white noise machine
Plenty of natural light (during the day)
And more to explore!
Unlike other fourth floor spaces in Perkins and Bostock meant for silent study, feel free to chat and connect with a friend or strangers, or simply sit and reflect quietly.
How did Oasis Perkins come to be?
One major motivation was direct feedback from students. Comments from our 2018 Student Library Satisfaction Survey made clear that while study spaces at the Duke Libraries are a keystone of many students’ academic lives, it can be a stressful place, especially during the exam season: “I love coming to the library during most of the semester… particularly during finals, there is an overwhelming sense of stress that emanates from the other students at the library.” A few students explicitly requested “a room to relax,” a place to have have a “refreshing study break without leaving the library somehow,” or a “stress-relief room.”
We hope that Oasis Perkins can serve as a dedicated place for students to nurture their well-being, fitting into the ecosystem of Oasis West and Oasis East (which are managed by Duke Wellness). However, Oasis Perkins is located, of course, right inside of Perkins Library – and its doors don’t close.
You’ll also find occasional events hosted in Oasis Perkins, from Koru Meditation classes to “Tea-laxation” events. Check out the Oasis Perkins webpage to stay up to date on events, or be in touch if your organization would like to host a relevant get together in this space!
You can find a smaller space on the second floor at the Prayer and Meditation Room in Perkins 220.
Other Wellness Resources at Duke
For other tips and events to help you end the semester strong, check out the Duke Libraries End of Semester Survival Guide. There are also a number of resources right on Duke’s campus to support your mental health, which include:
Duke Wellness Center – There are a lot of wonderful activities that happen with the Wellness Center each week to help support and de-stress students!
Duke’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) – Free counseling on campus for students. Explore this website for how to get it started.
Women’s Center – Explore services for all to promote a campus culture of agency and self-determination.
Duke’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity (CSGD) – Learn more about the events and programming put on by the CSGD. Allies are also encouraged to participate and learn.
Duke’s Center for Multicultural Affairs – Learn more about how the CMA aims to empower students and their organizations to create a vibrant and inclusive community on campus!
Academic Resource Center – The ARC is here to help you be the best (and least stressed) student you can be. Free learning consultations and academic support provided.
Oasis Perkins has existed in its current form for only one short semester! Is there something that could change about the Oasis Perkins that would help you re-charge? Our team at the Libraries would love to make it better for you. Fill out a feedback from in the suggestion box in Oasis Perkins, or reach out to brenda.yang@duke.edu with your comments or suggestions.
Understanding the experiences and needs of 1G students at Duke
October 2, 2018 Joyce Chapman 1 Comment
How can the Duke Libraries support the needs of first-generation (1G) college students at Duke?
A team of library staff became interested in this question after noticing that 1G students’ responses to a survey question about the Libraries were different from those of continuing-generation students. While many 1G students are successful in and out of Duke classrooms, we wondered how their experiences might differ from those of continuing-generation students.
To begin our project, we read existing research on academic libraries’ support of 1G students and spoke with offices on campus that support 1G students, such as the Duke Office of Access & Outreach. Then, we conducted six focus groups with 1G students, in addition to analyzing responses from the Libraries’ 2018 user survey (which included 2,381 student responses) for 1G and continuing generation students. Our full report discusses this process and our findings in more detail, including concrete recommendations for improving library services.
While the experiences of 1G students are not monolithic, we identified nine core findings, which speak to challenges students experience and suggest specific points for intervention and support. One important overall finding is that 1G challenges are student challenges: support or expansions of campus and library services targeted toward 1G students will help all students succeed.
Finding 1. 1G students perceive a dearth of academic and social information capital.
We asked all focus group participants the following, “Have you ever felt like other people around you know things about college that you don’t know about?” Each time, the response from the group was an overwhelming expression of, “Yes, of course, all the time.” One student captured the experience of her continuing-generation:
“Who told you that? Have you been told your whole life you have to do this? Was there an info session I missed?”
Students repeatedly referred to Duke’s demanding academic environment and the abrupt transition from their high school habits to the expectations of Duke classrooms. At times Duke staff may also take for granted how much knowledge incoming students have.
Information capital is not limited to classrooms; it is also used in social contexts and in navigating college life. 1G experiences are diverse: while some students reported feelings of isolation, others described feeling supported through orientation programs and a lively community on Duke’s East Campus, where many undergraduates live.
While 1G students perceive that continuing generation students are able to rely on family to guide them through the myriad of informational and financial challenges encountered in college, 1G students do not have access to this information from their parents. In addition, they sometimes feel unable to share the stress of college with their parents.
“You have the pressure of pretending ‘I’m okay.’ My parents are so proud of me that I can’t tell them what’s really going on.”
Finding 2. Finances are stressful, and an early source of feeling unwelcome.
Our past research suggested that feeling that one doesn’t belong is a global concern for first-years adjusting to life on a college campus, and one particularly poignant for 1G students. Duke is no exception. Several focus group participants shared comments they received from their peers after revealing that they were the first in their families to attend college:
“Oh you’re smart for a first-generation student. I never would have known!”
First-year focus group participants quoted other early encounters with roommates or colleagues that continued to sting. Many of these comments reflect the fact that financial security is one of the starkest differentiators between many 1G students and their peers at Duke.
“There’s definitely a mentality that exists at Duke that middle class is poor and lower class is even worse. Not that everybody is like that, but it certainly exists.”
When 1G students reveal aspects of their own financial circumstances to their peers, they receive blowback in several ways. For example, a few students shared that their financial aid was stigmatized, with other students suggesting that those who receive aid are very “lucky” to pay so little, or stating explicitly their own significant costs of attendance, possibly to engender shame or guilt. These experiences are formative, alienating, and angering.
Finding 3. An ecosystem of supportive offices and people on campus is critical, but knowledge of and willingness to access resources takes time.
The landscape described above is important to understand because it is the one 1G students step into when they arrive at Duke. However, peer attitudes and financial impediments are difficult intervention points. In contrast, faculty, older peers, and staff are better positioned to be support systems native to the institution:
“When you go to Duke resources, people are more than happy to help you. Adults at Duke are much more receptive and much more understanding of our issues as first-generation students.”
In general, students spoke warmly of the many services, programs, and offices offered on campus. This included the Office of A&O, resident assistants (RAs), peer advisors, a close community on East Campus as freshmen, pre-orientation, the Women’s Center, the Financial Aid office, Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS), Duke Reach, and cultural student groups.
Word cloud of campus spaces that 1G focus group respondents identified as safe and welcoming
The staff in the Office of A&O were mentioned frequently. Students praised staff members, citing their open door policy, knowledge, and willingness to offer genuine and consistent support.
Unfortunately, some students reported feeling stigmatized by others when they were known to have used campus resources such as CAPS, the Academic Resource Center (ARC), the Women’s Center, and identity centers.
Finding 4. The cost of textbooks is a special pain point.
In most focus groups, students shared the challenge, stress, and fear of purchasing expensive textbooks. This anxiety about textbooks rests on top of an ongoing concern about finances. Students described extensive efforts to find affordable copies, taking great pains to maintain their workbooks so they could re-sell them at the end of the semester, and to locate upper-level textbooks that were not available through Textbook on Reserve.
“[Laughter] I’ve never researched so hard as when I’m looking for a digital version of a textbook!”
Students who knew about and utilized the Libraries Textbooks on Reserve made special note of its impact and importance in alleviating some financial burden.
“The textbook rental program has been really important and impactful for me… To get them here and be able to rent them out for 3 hours has been perfect. It’s really important to have that.”
Results from the Libraries biennial student survey also support the idea that the Textbooks on Reserve program is particularly important for 1G students.
Finding 5. 1G challenges are challenges common to many Duke students.
Broadly speaking, 1G students’ responses to our 2018 survey did not differ from those of continuing-generation students. Both groups are generally confident in their ability to use library resources and report that they have successfully used the library and/or the library website to find research articles and books for class assignments. They find the website easy to use, believe that the library is welcoming, that library staff are helpful, and that the library is an important part of their experience at Duke.
1G students were more likely to report that expansion of the Textbooks on Reserve program and the device-lending program (for borrowing equipment such as laptops or cameras) would improve their library experience a great deal.
Overall, the four areas in which more than 50% of all undergraduates responded that expanded services would improve their library experience “a lot” include:
More spaces for quiet/individual study
More textbooks to check out for my classes
Additional specialized spaces for honors researchers, graduate students, or other student populations
More spaces for collaborative study
Survey data indicated a few differences between the services that 1G and continuing generation students believe to be important to their academics. The chart below shows services that 1G students more frequently listed as “important” than continuing generation students.
Survey responses of services that are important to students. Items shown are those that reflect a greater than 10%-pt difference between 1G and continuing generation students
Finding 6. It is sometimes hard to find existing resources at the Libraries.
When asked about services they wish they had known about earlier, our 1G focus group participants mentioned the Textbooks on Reserve program, library workshops (e.g., Matlab workshops), subject librarians, lockers available for short-term use, and the ability to reserve study rooms. Students described numerous library resources they have discovered seemingly by chance or long after their first semester at Duke. At multiple points during the focus groups students expressed that important services are not adequately marketed or shared with all 1G students. First-year 1G students reiterated the feeling of “unknown unknowns”: of understanding that many resources are available, but often finding it difficult to locate specific points of access.
Finding 7. Getting help from experts at the Libraries is important, but difficult.
1G students indicated that reaching out to library staff can be intimidating or even frightening. They described an initial barrier to asking for help, even while knowing it is likely the best way to receive assistance. Students noted feeling that their questions are “silly,” and they believe they have “gaps” in their knowledge. Students also reflected that it would be helpful for the person providing guidance to understand students’ lack of familiarity with library resources and services.
“We have a librarian for an English department, and for the Linguistics department… but it would be awesome to have a 1G librarian. Just someone who already knows that we don’t know anything, and it’s okay.”
Finding 8. Checking out books using call numbers is daunting.
Focus group participants frequently noted difficulty finding and checking out books using call numbers. 1G students did not pin this difficulty on library staff, but rather on their own lack of knowledge.
“The assumption is that we’ve been in libraries before. They [library staff] were helpful after I admitted I didn’t know my way around.”
The stacks are an understandably daunting environment, especially for those unfamiliar with academic libraries. Students reported feeling supported once they made their confusion clear. Previous assessments have shown that the difficulty of understanding call numbers and finding materials in the Libraries is one experienced by many students, regardless of 1G status.
Finding 9. While students generally view the Libraries as a safe space, 1G students feel less strongly that this is true.
Some of the most striking differences in responses between 1G and continuing-generation students relate to the survey question asking the extent to which both Duke Campus and the Libraries feel like a safe space. For the purposes of the user survey, a “safe space” was defined as a place in which people can feel safe from discrimination, harassment, and any other emotional or physical harm.
Only 20% of 1G students “strongly agree” that Duke Campus is a safe space for them, compared to 36% of continuing-generation students. While it is a small percent, four times as many 1G students (4% compared to 1%) “strongly disagree” that campus is a safe space for them. Duke University has some work to do before all students, and especially 1G students, feel that it is a safe space.
Both 1G and continuing generation students feel strongly that the Libraries are more of a safe space than Duke University. This is encouraging, as a major goal of the Libraries is to provide a welcoming space for all. Differences in feelings about the Libraries as a safe space between 1G and non-1G are less stark but still present: 52% of 1G students “strongly agree” that the Libraries are a safe space compared to 61% of continuing-generation students.
First-generation students are resilient and successful members of the Duke community. The early years on campus, which involve finding the right communities for support and learning new academic skills, can be a difficult transition for some. While all students experience challenges in college, 1G students may not have access to certain sources of information capital and can have significant financial stressors that are difficult for many peers to understand. The Duke University Libraries are well poised to support the success of 1G students on campus. Library staff can help reduce the burdens associated with transitioning from high school to college by making academic and research support known to students early and often, providing access to cost-prohibitive textbooks, and continuing to make the Duke Libraries a welcoming space for all students.
These findings became the basis of the 19 recommendations outlined in the research team’s full report. For example, one important recommendation was to expand the Textbooks on Reserve program. Though the library already had a pilot program, it became clear that all students would benefit from expanding the program to include more textbooks and increasing marketing of the program. This fall the program expanded to include textbooks from the 100 largest courses on campus, and the Libraries has already seen an increase in student use of these books. There was also a recommendation that a librarian be designated as a 1G Student Success Librarian as a way to build the ecosystem of supportive offices and people described in focus groups. Arianne Hartsell-Gundy is currently serving in this role as a way to coordinate the libraries’ efforts, make connections with other programs and departments providing support, and serve as a point of contact for 1G students.
Additionally, The Libraries formed a 1G Study Recommendations Implementation Team (headed by the 1G Student Success Librarian) to prioritize recommendations and work across the Libraries to improve services, library instruction, and marketing/outreach to 1G students. One of the team’s first projects was to increase the library presence during the Rubenstein Scholars summer program. In addition to providing a library instruction session and one-on-one appointments with the students in this program, librarians attended a poster session and a mixer as a way to increase their presence. Also, the team is engaging with the staff dedicated to working on our service desks to find ways to help students feel more comfortable asking questions and navigating our book stacks. The team is pleased with their progress thus far and looks forward to finding new ways to connect with and support 1G students.
By: Joyce Chapman, Brenda Yang, Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Emily Daly
Textbooks and Bean Bags: The 2018 Student Library Satisfaction Survey
This spring, Duke University Libraries conducted the 2018 biennial user satisfaction survey, a large survey of students and faculty at Duke. The goal of the survey is to gauge overall user satisfaction and to gather specific ideas for improvements to DUL materials, services, and spaces. In this post, we’ll share some of the trends within the student responses.
Survey methodology
Since 2013, DUL has created custom surveys rather than use generic survey products, allowing us to customize questions to different patron groups and even different parts of the campus libraries system. Developing and analyzing the results of a customized survey, however, is no small feat! The survey is run every two years, in part because the full cycle of survey development, dissemination, analysis, and follow-up takes the entire two years.
The 2018 survey was deployed in January 2018. A sample of students and faculty received personal invitations over email, but the survey was also advertised on the DUL website and open to anyone. We received responses from 2,610 students. We don’t have full demographic information for everyone, but approximately 54% of the students for whom we have demographics were undergraduates. The survey took approximately five to seven minutes to complete.
After the survey closed, a group of seven staff at DUL divided up approximately 3,600 free-text responses and manually coded them for topic and, where appropriate, whether they were a request for a new service or change in existing policy or a compliment. The survey data have been visualized in a series of public dashboards. To gather additional information about some of the results, the Assessment & User Experience department also hosted several follow-up focus groups with both students and faculty. The focus group results, while not incorporated into the survey dashboards, have been incorporated into summary reports and recommendations.
“I think the library is one of the places of greatest mutual respect on campus. There is less social stratification and freer flow of interaction. I enjoy my time in the library quite a lot.”
The survey included questions that everyone answered and questions that were specific to different libraries. All survey participants identified which library they visited most frequently. For students, 77% selected Perkins & Bostock as their primary libraries. Only 3% (76 students) reported that they don’t physically visit a library.
The libraries are considered an important part of the Duke experience by over 80% of participants. Focusing on the students who picked Perkins & Bostock as their primary libraries, we can look at usage of and satisfaction with the library. Of the 1,978 students who responded, over 80% visit Perkins & Bostock at least once a week. And by and large, students are quite satisfied with Perkins & Bostock. Less than 1% of responses fall in the “not satisfied at all” or “not very satisfied” categories, and the vast majority are very satisfied.
The Duke University Libraries value diversity of thought, perspective, experience, and background and are actively committed to a culture of inclusion and respect. Beyond gauging user satisfaction, this year we also asked students about their impressions of Duke and DUL as safe spaces. (In the survey, “safe space” was defined as “a place in which people can feel safe from discrimination, harassment, and any other emotional or physical harm.”) We were excited to find that overall students agree that DUL is a safe space (92% respond with “agree” or “strongly agree”), even more than they agree that Duke University as a whole is a safe space (78% response with “agree” or “strongly agree”). Similarly, when asked if the library is a welcoming place, almost 90% agreed. Despite these encouraging numbers, we are committed to continuing to improve in this area wherever we can.
The So-So
“I use the libraries a lot to study (esp Bostock) with friends, which is both helpful for me academically and comforting for me socially. The libraries fills up pretty often during busy times, so I wonder if more chairs would help accommodate more students (not even more tables, just more seating). Thanks!”
Even though by-and-large students are satisfied with the libraries, they were not afraid to let us know what areas could be improved! They gave us their constructive criticism in a few ways. First, we asked students to offer their opinions on the possibility of expanding different types of library services. Next, we asked how important specific services, materials, and spaces were, as well as how they were meeting the students’ needs. Finally, we gave them the opportunity to offer additional comments about DUL and suggestions on how to make DUL more of a safe space.
When we asked students what services should be expanded, students were most likely to vote for more spaces for individual study, more spaces for collaborative study, and more textbooks to check out. A second tier of requests include better signage, delivery of items between campuses, lockers, and help with digital scholarship.
Looking at library-specific responses, we can find a bit more detail about these requests. When looking for services that are both important and not meeting students’ needs, we can see that reservable project/study rooms, a variety of seating options, adequate quiet study space, and textbooks on reserve all appear in the high quadrant for both importance and not meeting students’ needs.
While not every student followed up on these questions with free-text explanations, the analysis of the free-text comments are consistent with these results. Of the 769 student comments that included requests for new services or a change in policy (rather than compliments), the top code was study/research space, which accounts for approximately 12% of the total requests. The second most frequent code was noise (about 9.5% of the requests), clarifying some of the complaints about “adequate quiet study space.” Requests often include a desire for the Libraries’ quiet space policies to be better enforced. The third most frequent code was atmosphere/sense of welcome – e.g., how inviting the library feels, feelings of “stress in the air.” This code was applied to just over 8% of the requests.
Security, furniture, advertising, and signage also ranked highly among requests. Students seem especially desirous of “comfortable” seating; write-in comments mention several types of comfortable seating by name, including couches and bean bags.
“Having taken this survey, I have realized that there are many things which the Duke University Libraries offer which I am not currently taking advantage of…”
While student needs and reactions change over time, one thing remains the same: they unknowingly request services we already offer. Sometimes the survey itself alerts students to particular services.
When we ask students how certain services are meeting their needs or which services should be expanded, we offer a choice labelled “I didn’t know the the library provided this.” Here are some of our most pressing “marketing opportunities,” according to the number of people who were unaware of the service.
For each service, there are two values – one for the students who marked the service as important and another for those who didn’t. As might be expected, awareness is always lower among students who don’t find the service important, but there are also services that have lower awareness overall. Services like support analyzing data, self-checkout stations, meetings with library staff, and reservable interview rooms may be good candidates for increased marketing. (If you look at the previous scatterplot, you’ll see that reservable interview rooms also had a high value for students whose needs weren’t being met, even though it’s not rated very highly on importance.)
Another good indicator of marketing opportunities is our analysis of the students’ free-text comments. Some of the major requests from students actually match up well with some of our existing but possibly under-advertised services.
We already know that students are always on the lookout for quiet study spaces. This need is especially pronounced for graduate students, who seem to feel outnumbered by undergraduates, who need quiet space for long periods to work on independent research projects, and who don’t always have private office space elsewhere on campus. When we asked students about services they would like us to expand, we offered them the opportunity to comment on “Additional specialized spaces for honors researchers, graduate students, or other student populations.” Out of 281 total comments on additional specialized spaces, 142 (or almost 51%) mentioned graduate students. In analyzing the comments and in follow-up focus groups with graduate students, however, it appears that many are not aware of either one or both of the dedicated graduate student spaces in Perkins Library.
Riess Graduate Student Reading Room
The graduate reading room is a shared reading space for graduate students on the 2nd floor of Perkins. It has a key pad entry code that can be obtained from the Library Service Desk. The room is has good natural lighting and is an “absolutely quiet” zone. Some of the requests indicate that students would like more individual desks, however, so some students may be unsatisfied with this as the only dedicated space open to all graduate students.
Graduate Research Commons
In the spring of 2016, a large room on the second floor of Perkins was converted into the Graduate Research Commons. The space has 27 individual cubicles of two different heights, adjustable sit-stand desks, and dedicated lockers for all users. The room also includes a technology center with an e-Print terminal, a scanner, and a desktop computer with the Adobe software suite.
Unlike the Graduate Reading Room, however, students must apply for access to the Graduate Research Commons. Despite its many features, the space has been underutilized, and it appears that many students are not familiar with it and have never tried to apply for access. A review of this space could reveal ways to market and set policies for the space.
To determine the most needed and feasible improvements for follow-up, the Assessment & User Experience department will host a DUL-wide staff workshop in July to review the results and make specific recommendations to improve the experience of all of our users. Contact us if you would like information more about this workshop.
We look forward to sharing more of our progress on this and other assessment projects for DUL in the future!
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Database | Open | Published: 14 January 2014
GIANT: pattern analysis of molecular interactions in 3D structures of protein–small ligand complexes
Kota Kasahara1,4 nAff4 &
Kengo Kinoshita1,2,3
BMC Bioinformaticsvolume 15, Article number: 12 (2014) | Download Citation
Interpretation of binding modes of protein–small ligand complexes from 3D structure data is essential for understanding selective ligand recognition by proteins. It is often performed by visual inspection and sometimes largely depends on a priori knowledge about typical interactions such as hydrogen bonds and π-π stacking. Because it can introduce some biases due to scientists’ subjective perspectives, more objective viewpoints considering a wide range of interactions are required.
In this paper, we present a web server for analyzing protein–small ligand interactions on the basis of patterns of atomic contacts, or “interaction patterns” obtained from the statistical analyses of 3D structures of protein–ligand complexes in our previous study. This server can guide visual inspection by providing information about interaction patterns for each atomic contact in 3D structures. Users can visually investigate what atomic contacts in user-specified 3D structures of protein–small ligand complexes are statistically overrepresented. This server consists of two main components: “Complex Analyzer”, and “Pattern Viewer”. The former provides a 3D structure viewer with annotations of interacting amino acid residues, ligand atoms, and interacting pairs of these. In the annotations of interacting pairs, assignment to an interaction pattern of each contact and statistical preferences of the patterns are presented. The “Pattern Viewer” provides details of each interaction pattern. Users can see visual representations of probability density functions of interactions, and a list of protein–ligand complexes showing similar interactions.
Users can interactively analyze protein–small ligand binding modes with statistically determined interaction patterns rather than relying on a priori knowledge of the users, by using our new web server named GIANT that is freely available at http://giant.hgc.jp/.
Elucidating molecular mechanisms in the selective recognition of small molecules (or ligands) by proteins is a central issue in biology. Structure data of protein–ligand complexes deposited in Protein databank (PDB) [1] are a very informative resource because the data contain direct information of molecular interactions between proteins and ligands at the atomistic scale. Structural biologists and medicinal chemists can obtain implications and knowledge through visual inspection of 3D structures of protein–ligand complexes. However, visual inspections by scientists are subjective and may focus on only some particular well-known interactions, e.g. hydrogen bonds. A more objective and comprehensive view is required for the interpretation of molecular interactions from 3D structure data.
Toward more objective analyses, a promising strategy is taking advantages of statistics of molecular interactions on PDB. Due to recent rapid increase in 3D structure data, this strategy has been become more attractive, and the statistics of protein–ligand interactions have been extensively studied [2]. Many secondary databases of PDB focusing on protein–ligand complexes with various annotations have been constructed [3–7]. Relibase [8], CREDO [9] and PLI [10] particularly focus on atomic contacts between proteins and ligands. They store information of protein–ligand interactions at the atomistic level and provide catalogues of many types of interactions, such as hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic contacts and interactions of π-systems. While they provide fruitful information about protein–ligand interactions, analyses with these existing databases are limited to well-known, preliminarily defined atomic contacts. However, it is considered that the selective molecular recognition is accomplished by combinations of not only such typical interactions but also a huge variety of atomic contacts. Comprehensive knowledge about various kinds of atomic contacts is required.
Previously, we reported a comprehensive classification of spatial arrangements of ligand atoms around molecular fragments of proteins that were defined as three covalently linked atoms [11]. We analyzed statistically preferred geometries of the atomic contacts, or interaction patterns, as mixtures of Gaussian functions. These interaction patterns were obtained from every atomic contact observed in PDB using an unsupervised pattern recognition approach [12]. We found 13,512 interaction patterns in PDB and interactions in these patterns were more enriched in native complex structures than in docking decoys.
On the basis of the classification of interactions, we present a new web server for analyzing molecular interactions in the 3D structure of protein–ligand complexes, named “GIANT”, which stands for “Gaussian mixture model-based Interaction ANalyzer focusing on Three-atom fragments”. GIANT provides a web browser-based user interface for visual inspection of protein–ligand interactions in 3D structures. Users can investigate how statistically overrepresented each atomic contacts in the PDB, and what protein–ligand complex uses similar interactions, for any kind of atomic contacts rather than well-known predefined types of interactions.
Construction and content
As in the previous paper, the dataset consists of 3D structures of 66,654 protein–ligand binding sites from 23,040 PDB entries. These entries were chosen from a snapshot of PDB on Sept. 25th, 2010 using following criteria: (1) structures had been determined by X-ray crystallography with resolution ≤2.5 Å, (2) receptor proteins had ≥30 amino acid residues, and (3) bound ligands have the molecular weight between 80 and 800 Da, contained >5 atoms, and had < 0.6 relative accessible surface area. For each protein in the dataset, amino acids residues were decomposed into fragments consisting of three covalently linked atoms (Figure 1A). Ligand atoms were classified on the basis of Tripos force field [13]. In the dataset, there were 565 types of protein fragments and 27 types of ligand atoms. From the complex structures, interacting pairs of protein fragments and ligands atom were collected, and the spatial distributions of interacting ligand atoms relative to the protein fragments were considered (Figure 1B). Then, a pattern recognition technique was applied to infer parameters of Gaussian mixture models with the best fits to the spatial distributions, and 13,519 interaction patterns (i.e., Gaussian functions) were found (Figure 1C) for 8,022 types of combinations of the protein fragment and ligand atom. When the Mahalanobis distance between an interaction pattern and a position of atomic contacts, was ≤2.5, the interaction pattern was annotated onto the contacting pair. 63.4% of ligand atoms in our non-redundant dataset were recognized by at least one interaction pattern; for each complex, more than half of ligand atoms recognized with at least one interaction pattern for the cases of 70.5% of complexes. See our previous paper for details about the statistics and the methods [11].
Methods for defining interaction patterns. (A) As an example of fragmentation of amino acid residues, the case of alanine is illustrated, where eight fragments were obtained: N-CA-CB, C-CA-CB, C-CA-N, O–C-CA, and the fragments with the reverse orders. (B) Contacting pairs of a protein fragment and a ligand atom were collected from the dataset. When the distance between the first atom of the fragment and the ligand atom was less than the criterion (the sum of van der Waals radii plus the offset value 1.0 Å), the pair was sampled. Sampled contacting pairs formed a 3D spatial distribution on the basis of reference coordinates defined by the three atoms in the protein fragment. Three arrows indicate the axes of the reference coordinate system, “CA-C-O” is a protein fragment, and “C3” in circles denote positions of interacting ligand atoms observed in the dataset (“C3” means a type of ligand atom i.e., a sp3 carbon atom). (C) A pattern recognition technique was applied to each 3D spatial distribution. Interaction patterns were defined as Gaussian mixture distributions.
On the basis of the analyses, we constructed a web-based application called GIANT, which consists of two main components: “Complex Analyzer” and “Pattern Viewer”. The former provides functionality to perform visual inspection of protein–ligand interactions on the basis of annotations of interaction patterns, and the latter shows a summary of each interaction pattern.
Utility and discussion
We show two examples of analyses of protein–ligand interactions. In the first example, a brief analysis of binding modes of the dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) and methotrexate (MTX) complex [PDB:3dfr] [14] was described in a tutorial-style whitch instructs basic usage of GIANT. The second one is a practical case that compares interactions of two similar inhibitors recognized with the same binding mode by identical cycline-dependent kinase (CDK) [PDB:2r3j, 2r3k] [15].
Tutorial with a DHFR–methotrexate complex
We show a tutorial-style example for analyzing interactions of a DHFR–methotrexate complex. In this example, it is assumed that users want to know the molecular mechanisms of methotrexate recognition by DHFR. We here aim to study what kinds of statistically preferred interactions are working on the recognition of the pteridine ring and what other complexes apply similar interactions, by using GIANT.
Users should first specify a query complex by designating a PDB-ID with a ligand 3-letter code or by uploading a flat file in PDB format with specifying ligand 3-letter code. Our example employs the former method. In this flow, users should open the page “Complex Analyzer” at the top page and input a PDB-ID with a ligand 3-letter code such “3dfr_MTX” (Figure 2A). Following this, users can observe the complex structure in the Jmol (http://jmol.org/) applet (Figure 2B) by clicking the ‘load’ button (Figure 2A).
Screenshots of GIANT consisting of the two parts: complex analyzer (A-E) and pattern viewer (F-I). (A) Query input box. (B) 3D structure viewer for a query protein–ligand complex. (C) List of interacting residues. (D) List of interacting ligand atoms. (E) List of interactions. (F) 3D viewer for spatial distribution of interaction patterns. The red contour is the interaction pattern that is specified in Complex Analyzer by users. (G) List of interaction patterns. The row shown in red corresponds to the red contour in the 3D viewer. (H) List of ligands recognized with a user-specified interaction pattern. (I) List of protein–ligand complexes using a user-specified interaction pattern.
On the right side of the window, there are three tables: a list of interacting amino acid residues (Figure 2C), interacting ligand atoms (Figure 2D) and interacting pairs of a protein fragment and a ligand atom (Figure 2E). Users can view interactions in the Jmol viewer by clicking check boxes in the tables. For example, they can focus on interactions of the 2′ amino group in the pteridine ring in MTX by filling the corresponding check box (Atom-ID = 3) in the table of ligand atoms. Amino acid residues recognizing the specified atom will then appear, and interactions will be depicted as lines between atoms (Figure 2B). Furthermore, the table of interaction collectively shows a list of interactions of the specified atom. In this case, the nitrogen atom composing the amino group is recognized by three residues: Ala6, Asp26 and Thr116. The interaction with Asp26 is a bifurcated hydrogen bond. This interaction pattern (Pattern-ID = 18713) was widely observed in the dataset, i.e., 952 interactions in 63 protein families (defined by a single-linkage cluster of amino acid sequences within 25% sequence identity with ≥50% sequence coverage) were assigned to this pattern. These values are described in the column “Freq.” and “Family” in the table of interactions. Users can also see the competence of this interaction to a probability distribution by checking the value in the column “Prob.” that denotes the probability density of this data point in the Gaussian mixture distribution. In contrast to that the interaction pattern of Asp26 with the nitrogen atom that is a common feature in a wide range of protein families, the interaction with Thr116 was observed only in five protein families. This interaction pattern is almost specific to the DHFR family (This residue recognizes the ligand via an intermediate water molecule. Although GIANT does not have information about water molecules, it shows such interactions as direct contacts provided distances between contacting atoms are below a threshold, calculated as sum of van der Waals radii and 1.0 Å).
While “Complex Analyzer” provides information about assignments of atomic contacts to interaction patterns for user-specified complexes, it is still difficult to interpret the nature of each interaction pattern using only this component. The alternative component “Pattern Viewer” helps analyses by providing graphical information about the 3D spatial probability distribution of each interaction pattern. Users can jump to this component by clicking “Pattern-ID” in any row of the table of interactions. To see the interaction patterns with Asp26, click “18713” (the seventh column) of the row with Interaction-ID = 101 (the first column) in the table of interactions. The “Pattern Viewer” page will be opened and will show the spatial distribution of each interaction pattern as 3D meshes (Figure 2F). Three covalently linked atoms centered in the viewer represent a fragment of proteins. The regions inside of the meshes are statistically preferred positions of ligand atoms for interaction with the fragment. The contour of the pattern specified in the “Complex Analyzer” is highlighted in red. Clicking “C” in the right table (Figure 2G) provides a list of ligands (Figure 2H) and that of protein–ligand complexes (Figure 2I) with the same interaction patterns. This information may be useful for seeking complexes with similar interactions to the query.
Comparing interactions of two CDK inhibitors
Subtle structural differences in a compound can drastically change its binding affinity to a target protein without disruption of hydrogen bonds and such well-known interactions. Since the complexity in structure–activity relationships is a major barrier in drug discovery projects, understanding preferences of interactions in each atom is important. GIANT provides some clues to that from the statistical perspective. As an example, we show analyses on differences between two similar ligands binding with an identical target protein, CDK. The structures of these two ligands were shown in Figure 3A [PDB: 2r3j] and B [PDB: 2r3k] (they were not in the pre-calculated dataset thus users need upload the PDB files). Although the differences in chemical structures between these ligands were only two atoms, that marked as I and II in Figure 3A and B, IC50 value of the ligand in 2r3j was 10-fold lower than that in 2r3k [15]. What makes this significant difference in binding affinity is unclear, because these atoms did not make hydrogen bonds with the binding sites and there was no significant structural change in amino acid residues in binding sites.
Differences in interactions between two similar compounds bound with an identical target protein, CDK. (A, B) Screenshots of Complex Analyzer for [PDB: 2r3j] and [PDB: 2r3k]. Circles I and II indicate altered atoms between these two ligands. Three amino acid residues interacted with these two altered atoms, i.e., Ile10, His84, and Leu134, were shown as a stick model. Pink and Cyan arrows emphasizes interactions in patterns, and they corresponds to the panel (C, D) and (E), respectively. (C, D, E, F) Screenshots of Pattern Viewer about the interactions of Leu Cδ-Cγ-Cβ fragments with aromatic nitrogen atoms (C) and with aromatic carbon atoms (D), and those of His O-C-N with aromatic carbon atoms (E) and aromatic nitrogen atoms (F).
While one of the two altered parts in the ligands had similar interactions between 2r3j and 2r3k, the other one had distinct interactions. In the position I, that was an aromatic nitrogen atom and aromatic carbon atom in 2r3j and 2r3k, respectively, interacted with Leu134 residue by a CH–π interaction. The spatial distributions of aromatic nitrogen and carbon atoms interacting with Leu Cδ–Cγ–Cβ fragment were similar (Figure 3C and D, respectively), and both of patterns used in these atoms (shown as red contours) were widely shared in many protein families (89 and 174 families shares the patterns for aromatic nitrogen and aromatic carbon atoms, respectively). On the other hand, the position II, that is an aromatic carbon atom in 2r3j and an aromatic nitrogen atom in 2r3k, contacted with Ile10 side-chain and His84 main-chain. While interactions between Ile10 and the position II was in a pattern for the both complexes, that between His84 and the position II were in a pattern only for the complex 2r3k (position II was an aromatic carbon atom) despite of there was no significant structural changes (interatomic distance between the His84 backbone oxygen atom and the contacting ligand atoms were 3.7 Å and 3.6 Å in 2r3j and 2r3k, respectively). In contrast to the spatial distribution of aromatic carbon atoms around His O–C-N fragment (Figure 3E), that of aromatic nitrogen atoms preferred only one configuration of interactions (Figure 3F). This result implies that this loss of the statistically preferred interactions with His84 main chain causes 10-fold gain of IC50 value in 2r3k complex from 2r3j, and the position II should be a carbon atom rather than a nitrogen atom for higher affinity. This should be a helpful information for medicinal chemists.
Future perspective
Although the scope of GIANT is limited to the direct contacts between proteins and small molecules in the current version, the basic concept of GIANT is applicable to other various kinds of molecular interactions such as water-mediated interactions. In the future developments, we are planning taking statistics of interactions with metal and water molecules that play important roles for molecular recognitions. In addition, while the interaction patterns defined in GIANT focuses on the relative positions between a protein fragment and a ligand atom, and does not consider the combination of the elements interactions (or the “environment” around the contacting pair). The information about environment should be an important factor in the ligand recognition, we will take some statistics of co-occurrences of the interaction patterns in a future work.
The web-server GIANT shows the statistical preferences of each atomic contact in user specified 3D structures of protein–small ligand complexes. This function provides an objective perspective for visual inspections of binding modes on the basis of results of the survey of interactions reported in the previous paper, and provides many implications for structural biologists and medicinal chemists. For example, when medicinal chemists perform lead optimization with 3D structure data of protein–compound complexes, GIANT suggests parts of compounds where chemical moieties without statistically overrepresented interaction patterns should be replaced to gain binding affinities. Although this process has usually been performed by experts using their a priori knowledge and intuition, GIANT supports it with statistical, objective information and assists in realizing the concept of so-called rational drug-design.
Availability and requirement
GIANT is freely available at the following URL: http://giant.hgc.jp/.
DHFR:
Dihydrofolate reductase
MTX:
CDK:
Cyclin-dependent kinase.
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Meslamani J, Rognan D, Kellenberger E: sc-PDB: a database for identifying variations and multiplicity of “druggable” binding sites in proteins. Bioinformatics. 2011, 27: 1324-1326. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btr120.
Reddy AS, Amarnath HSD, Bapi RS, Sastry GM, Sastry GN: Protein ligand interaction database (PLID). Comput Biol Chem. 2008, 32: 387-390. 10.1016/j.compbiolchem.2008.03.017.
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Kasahara K, Shirota M, Kinoshita K: Comprehensive classification and diversity assessment of atomic contacts in protein–small ligand interactions. J Chem Inf Model. 2013, 53: 241-248. 10.1021/ci300377f.
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This work was supported by the ‘HD-Physiology’ Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (22136005). The super-computing resource was provided by the Human Genome Center (University of Tokyo). A tool for visualization of density maps of Gaussian mixture distributions was provided by Dr. Takeshi Kawabata.
Kota Kasahara
Present address: Institute for Protein Research, Osaka University, 3-2 Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan
Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, 6-3-09 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8597, Japan
& Kengo Kinoshita
Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization, Tohoku University, 2-1 Seiryo-cho, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8573, Japan
Kengo Kinoshita
Institute of Development, Aging, and Cancer, Tohoku University, 4-1 Seiryo-cho, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8575, Japan
Search for Kota Kasahara in:
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Correspondence to Kengo Kinoshita.
K Kasahara performed researches and implemented the web-server. K Kasahara and K Kinoshita designed this work, and wrote the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Molecular recognition
Ligand binding site
Protein–ligand interactions
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Challenge of conducting a placebo-controlled randomized efficacy study for influenza vaccine in a season with low attack rate and a mismatched vaccine B strain: a concrete example
Jiří Beran1,2,
Veronika Wertzova1,
Karel Honegr2,
Eva Kaliskova4,
Martina Havlickova3,
Jiří Havlik1,
Helena Jirincova3,
Pascale Van Belle5,
Varsha Jain6,
Bruce Innis6 &
Jeanne-Marie Devaster5
Our aim was to determine the efficacy of a trivalent inactivated split virus influenza vaccine (TIV) against culture-confirmed influenza A and/or B in adults 18 to 64 years of age during the 2005/2006 season in the Czech Republic.
6203 subjects were randomized to receive TIV (N = 4137) or placebo (N = 2066). The sample size was based on an assumed attack rate of 4% which provided 90% power to reject the hypothesis that vaccine efficacy (VE) was ≥ 45%. Cases of influenza like illness (defined as fever (oral temperature ≥37.8°C) plus cough and/or sore throat) were identified both by active (biweekly phone contact) and passive (self reporting) surveillance and nasal and throat swabs were collected from subjects for viral culture.
TIV was well tolerated and induced a good immune response. The 2005/2006 influenza season was exceptionally mild in the study area, as it was throughout Europe, and only 46 culture-confirmed cases were found in the study cohort (10 influenza A and 36 influenza B). Furthermore among the B isolates, 35 were identified as B/Hong Kong 330/2001-like (B/Victoria/2/87 lineage) which is antigenically unrelated to the vaccine B strain (B/Yamagata/16/88 lineage). The attack rate in the vaccine group (0.7%) was not statistically significantly different from the attack rate in the placebo group (0.9%).
Due to the atypical nature of the influenza season during this study we were unable to assess TIV efficacy. This experience illustrates the challenge of conducting a prospective influenza vaccine efficacy trial during a single season when influenza attack rates and drift in circulating strains or B virus lineage match can be difficult to estimate in advance.
Clinical trial registery: NCT00197223.
Influenza is a highly contagious infectious disease resulting in acute respiratory illness in people of all ages. Annual epidemics occur worldwide and cause substantial morbidity and mortality [1, 2]. Influenza poses a particular risk to the elderly and also to people suffering from conditions such as chronic heart or pulmonary disease. The causative agents are influenza A and influenza B viruses and the main virulence factors are the virus surface coat proteins hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). There are several antigenic forms of HA and NA for influenza A which is classified into subtypes based on different combinations of these antigens [1, 3, 4]. Only a few of these influenza A subtypes have ever been associated with human disease and the subtypes currently in circulation in human hosts are H1N1 and H3N2 [5]. The influenza B virus currently belongs to two evolutionary lineages that are distinct at the genetic and antigenic levels and which are represented by B/Yamagata/16/88-like and B/Victoria/2/87-like viruses that have co-circulated in the population since the mid-1980s [5–8]. In order to evade the host immune system, the HA and NA proteins of both influenza A and influenza B viruses undergo continuous mutation and by this mean evade the host immune system. This is known as antigenic or genetic drift [1, 5, 9, 10].
Influenza vaccination has been employed for many years as the primary tool to prevent influenza virus infection and its complications [2]. As recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), vaccines are trivalent containing two influenza A strains (H1N1 and H3N2) and one influenza B strain [1]. However, to ensure efficacy against new drift variants the vaccine strains must be updated on an annual basis for both the Northern and the Southern hemisphere [11]. Based on epidemiology and phylogenetic analysis of HA and NA sequences of the circulating human strains detected though a global influenza surveillance network, WHO recommends the three strains that are anticipated to become dominant during the next influenza season [11]. Although in most years the recommendations accurately predict a close antigenic match between the vaccine and circulating strains, occasionally a predominant circulating strain turns out to be antigenically different from the corresponding vaccine strain. As two influenza B virus lineages co-circulate, the current recommendation to include only one lineage in each year's TIV poses a particular risk for a mismatch. Vaccine strain mismatch can have a negative impact on vaccine efficacy [9, 10, 12, 13].
In this paper we describe an efficacy study conducted with a trivalent inactivated split-virus influenza vaccine (TIV) manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals which has been available since 1987 and is now used in over 100 countries [4, 14, 15]. As for other inactivated influenza vaccines, the ability of TIV to induce HA antibody levels (as measured in hemagglutination-inhibition (HAI) assay) that meet regulatory authority criteria has been accepted as a surrogate marker for efficacy [4, 14, 15]. Recently, this TIV vaccine was approved under the United States' accelerated approval regulation [4, 15]. To fulfill the requirements of this regulation, post-approval demonstration of clinical benefit in an adequate and well-controlled clinical trial is required.
We designed a placebo-controlled randomized efficacy study with a primary clinical endpoint based upon rates of culture-confirmed influenza A and/or B disease in a target population of healthy adults with a broad age range of 18 to 64 years. All influenza vaccine efficacy studies are subject to the unpredictable nature of the intensity of the influenza season in which they are conducted as well as the extent of the antigenic match between the circulating and vaccine strains [16]. As illustrated by the outcome of this present study, these factors can have a substantial negative impact on the assessment of vaccine efficacy.
Study design and participants
This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with two groups conducted in the Czech Republic in the 2005–2006 influenza season (Clinical trial registery: NCT00197223). The protocol and study documents were approved by the University Hospital Hradec Kralové Ethics Committee (Sokolska, 581; 50005 Hradec Kralové, Czech Republic). Our primary objective was to evaluate the efficacy of TIV (2005/2006 Northern Hemisphere formulation) compared with placebo in the prevention of culture-confirmed influenza A and/or B disease in adults. A secondary objective was to assess the efficacy of TIV to prevent influenza like illness (ILI) during the influenza season (which was defined as starting the first week with two culture-confirmed cases in the study area, and ending the last week with one culture-confirmed case in the study area). Other secondary objectives were the assessment of the safety and also, in a subset of subjects, the assessment of vaccine reactogenicity and immunogenicity.
Eligible participants were self-referred clinically healthy male or female volunteers aged between 18 and 64 years at the time of vaccination who provided written informed consent. A randomisation list was generated by the sponsor by SAS program and used to number the vaccine and placebo treatments (which were indistinguishable in appearance). A randomization blocking scheme (2:1) was employed to ensure that balance between treatments was maintained. The randomization algorithm used a minimization procedure that accounted for prior influenza vaccination, vaccine lots, and agreement to participate in the immunogenicity/reactogenicity subset. Blinding to treatment assignment was maintained until study analysis.
Vaccinations and blood sampling
Volunteers were randomized to receive one dose of TIV (Fluarix™, a trade mark of GlaxoSmithKline group of companies (GSK)) or placebo at the first study visit (study Day 0) by intramuscular injection into the non-dominant deltoid muscle. Each 0.5-ml dose of TIV contained 15 μg each of the hemagglutinin antigens of A/New Caledonia/20/99 (H1N1) IVR-116 virus as an A/New Caledonia/20/99-like strain, A/New York/55/2004 (H3N2) X-157 virus as an A/California/7/2004-like strain and B/Jiangsu/10/2003 virus as a B/Shanghai/361/2002-like strain. Placebo consisted of saline for injection.
Blood samples for the assessment of immunogenicity were obtained from the planned randomly selected subset of volunteers just prior to vaccination and at 21 days following vaccination.
Case definitions
Culture-confirmed influenza (primary endpoint) was defined as an episode of influenza like illness (ILI) occurring after the administration of the study vaccine for which a nasal and throat swab specimen yields influenza virus A and/or B in cell culture.
ILI (secondary endpoint) was defined as fever (oral temperature ≥ 37.8°C) plus cough and/or sore throat [17]. An ILI episode was defined as the period from the first day of ILI symptoms until the last day of ILI symptoms. A new episode was taken into account only after the complete resolution of the previous one. Between two ILI episodes, there had to be at least 7 days free of any symptoms.
Follow up of subjects
From the day of vaccination all subjects were instructed to report any ILI symptoms to the investigator via a toll free line (passive surveillance for ILI). Active surveillance for ILI began 2 weeks after the administration of the study vaccine until study end (April 2006). This involved biweekly telephone contact of the subjects to remind them to notify the investigator at the onset of ILI symptoms, to identify ILI episodes which may have been unreported, and to collect information on the occurrence of medical visits and possible serious adverse events.
For each case of suspected ILI, a study nurse visited the subject, (as far as possible on the same day) and collected a nasal and throat swab sample (comprised of a swab of both nasal cavities and a second swab of the throat) for culture. Subjects were each provided with a calibrated thermometer to measure temperature and a diary card to record temperatures and symptoms during the influenza like illness episode. All samples were to be obtained, if possible, before antimicrobial/influenza antiviral therapy was started.
A randomly selected subset of subjects were assessed for reactogenicity using diary cards to record the presence and intensity of injection site solicited adverse events (pain, redness and swelling) and general solicited adverse events (fatigue, fever, headache, muscle aches, shivering and joint pain) experienced during the first 4 days after vaccination. The diameters of any injection site redness or swelling and daily body temperature were recorded. The intensities of other adverse events were recorded according to a standard 0 to 3 grade scale: "absent", "easily tolerated", "interferes with normal activity" and "prevents normal activity". Data were also collected on the occurrence and intensity of any spontaneous unsolicited signs or symptoms occurring within 21 days following vaccination. These diary cards were reviewed during the blood sampling visit at Day 21. Collection of data on serious adverse events (SAEs) began at the receipt of vaccine/placebo and continued until the end of the study.
At the end of the study the investigator made a study conclusion contact with all subjects.
Laboratory assays
Serum samples were stored at -20°C until blinded analyses were conducted at GSK Biologicals SSW Dresden, Germany. All samples were tested in a validated micro-titer hemagglutination-inhibition test using chicken red blood cells with the three virus strains present in the TIV used as antigens as previously described [14]. The serum titer was expressed as the reciprocal of the highest dilution that showed complete inhibition of hemagglutination.
Nasal and throat swab samples were stored at 2–8°C and transferred within 24 hours to the National Reference Laboratory for Influenza (NRL, Prague, Czech Republic) for conventional influenza virus culture in Madin Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) cells as described elsewhere [18, 19]. Cell culture supernatants were tested for the presence of influenza virus by hemagglutination assay with turkey and guinea pig erythrocytes [18, 19]. Hemagglutination inhibition was used to identify virus type, subtype and drift variant [18, 19]. Cell culture supernatants were also tested by a direct immunoperoxidase assay using anti-influenza A and anti-influenza B nucleoprotein antibodies [20].
The sample size for the primary endpoint was estimated on the basis of an assumed influenza attack rate of 4% of culture-confirmed influenza disease (type A and/or B) among placebo recipients, a vaccine efficacy (VE) of 70%, and 90% power to detect vaccine efficacy with a lower limit of the 95% CI for efficacy >45% with alpha = 0.025 (1-sided). A sample size of 5591 evaluable subjects was required to allow the rejection of the null hypothesis that the vaccine efficacy against culture-confirmed influenza illness was ≤ 45%. To account for an assumed dropout rate of 10%, we planned to enroll a minimum of 6213 subjects. According to the planned 2:1 treatment allocation approximately 4142 and 2071 subjects were to receive TIV and placebo respectively. Based on the assumptions of attack rate and vaccine efficacy a total of 119 culture-confirmed influenza illness episodes were anticipated with approximately 75 episodes in the placebo group.
All data analyses were conducted according to a pre-specified plan prepared by GSK and submitted to the United States Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). The vaccine efficacy against culture-confirmed influenza A or B was defined as 1 minus the relative risk of culture-confirmed influenza among the TIV group versus the placebo group and calculated using the classical formula of Greenwood and Yule [21] with the 95% exact confidence intervals (CI). The attack rate was the number of subjects experiencing at least one episode of culture-confirmed influenza A or B within the observation period divided by the total number of subjects in the group. Analysis of vaccine efficacy against culture-confirmed influenza A or B was performed on the total cohort for efficacy (Figure 1) while analysis of vaccine efficacy against ILI during the influenza season was performed on the according to protocol (ATP) cohort for efficacy in the influenza season (Figure 1).
Flow of participants through the clinical trial.
Baseline characteristic
The total cohort for efficacy and safety (N = 6203 subjects) included 4137 subjects vaccinated with TIV and 2066 subjects vaccinated with placebo (Figure 1). The demographic profiles of the TIV and placebo groups in this cohort were comparable with respect to mean age (35 ± 13 years in both groups), gender (55.3% and 54.2% female in the TIV and placebo groups respectively) and racial distribution (99.8% white Caucasian in both groups). In both groups the majority of subjects (91.5% and 91.7%) had no history of influenza vaccination within the last 3 influenza seasons prior to enrolment.
During the study surveillance period (September 2005 to April 2006), 814 episodes of ILI were evaluated with the peak incidence occurring between November 2005 and March 2006 (110–125 cases per month). Swab specimens were obtained from all cases within 5 days of the onset of ILI with the majority (742/814, 91%) collected by Day 2. There were 46 culture-confirmed cases, 10 positive for influenza A and 36 for influenza B (Table 1) which occurred between January and April 2006. Seven of the ten influenza A isolates were identified by hemagglutination inhibition titration and characterised as being antigenically related to the H1N1 or H3N2 vaccine strains (Table 1). Of the 36 influenza B isolates, 35 were identified by hemagglutination inhibition titration and characterized as B/Hong Kong 330/2001-like (from the B/Victoria/2/87 lineage) which is antigenically distinct to the B strain from the B/Yamagata/16/88 lineage contained in the vaccine. No mixed influenza infections were identified.
Table 1 Culture confirmed influenza episodes identified by immunoperoxidase staining or by hemagglutination inhibition titration
As indicated in Table 2 the attack rate for culture-confirmed influenza A or B in the placebo group was 0.9% which was well below the assumed attack rate of 4% on which the sample size was based to offer 90% power to reject the null hypothesis that VE was ≤ 45%. The attack rate in the vaccine group (0.7%) was not statistically significantly different so the null hypothesis could not be rejected and the efficacy of TIV against culture-confirmed influenza A or B could not be demonstrated (estimate of efficacy of 22.3% with 95% CI of -49.1% to 58.5%). The attack rate for culture-confirmed influenza A in the placebo group was very low at only 0.2%. For culture-confirmed influenza B (Table 2), the attack rates were 0.7% in the placebo group and 0.5% in the vaccine group and the lower limit of confidence for the estimate of 21.5% efficacy was again a negative value (95% CI -65.9% to 61.6). Similarly the attack rates for clinical ILI episodes during the influenza season were not statistically different between the vaccine (6%) and placebo (5.6%) groups and so efficacy against clinical ILI episodes could also not be demonstrated (Table 3).
Table 2 Attack rates and TIV efficacy for culture confirmed influenza in adults (total cohort for efficacy)
Table 3 Attack rates and TIV efficacy for ILI during the influenza season* (ATP cohort for efficacy)
Safety and reactogenicity
The percentage of subjects reporting an SAE was the same (2.3%) in each group. No SAEs were reported as being related to vaccination.
Vaccination with TIV was associated with a higher incidence of solicited injection site reactions, in particular pain at the injection site (Figure 2). The majority of these reactions in TIV recipients were mild to moderate in intensity. No events were classified as preventing daily activities and the incidences of local redness and swelling reactions above 50 mm diameter were low (1.7% and 2.3% respectively). All resolved without sequelae. Rates of solicited general symptoms also tended to be higher in the TIV group (Figure 3). Fatigue was the most common solicited general symptom reported as related to vaccination in both groups (TIV 23.4% and placebo 15.9%). The majority of reactions in TIV recipients were mild to moderate in intensity, there were no reports of fever >39°C and the highest incidence of symptoms preventing daily activities and reported as related to vaccination was 0.5% (fatigue and headache). Rates of spontaneously reported symptoms were similar in both groups both overall (TIV 11.1% and placebo 10%) and reported as related to vaccination (TIV 1.4% and placebo 1.6%).
Incidence of solicited injection site symptoms during the first four days following vaccination (Total cohort subset for reactogenicity; trivalent inactivated split virus influenza (TIV) N = 640, Placebo N = 320).
Incidence of solicited general symptoms during the first four days following vaccination (Total cohort subset for reactogenicity; trivalent inactivated split virus influenza (TIV) N = 640, Placebo N = 320).
Table 4 demonstrates that TIV elicited an antibody response (as assessed by hemagglutination-inhibition) against all three vaccine strains which exceeded the required Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) [22] and CBER [23] criteria for seroconversion and seroprotection rates.
Table 4 Hemagglutination-inhibition antibody response at 21 days following vaccination (ATP cohort subset for immunogenicity)
This paper describes the outcome of a placebo-controlled randomized efficacy study with a trivalent inactivated split virus influenza vaccine (TIV) in healthy adults aged 18 to 64 years. The immunogenicity of TIV was consistent with previous studies in adults [4, 15] and seroprotection rates exceeded regulatory authority criteria. Despite this, the vaccine efficacy was not confirmed.
Influenza vaccine efficacy in a particular region depends on the nature of the influenza season. This can vary from year to year and as it cannot be predicted in advance, poses a particular challenge for the conduct of a prospective efficacy study. The optimal circumstances in which to evaluate the efficacy of influenza vaccines are i) high viral circulation (i.e. high attack rate) and ii) when the vaccine strains are antigenically-matched to the circulating virus types [16, 24]. The 2005–2006 influenza season in the Czech Republic was exceptional in that both of these factors turned out to be suboptimal for the conduct of an efficacy study.
The first issue faced by the study was the very low attack rate. The study was powered based on the assumption that the attack rate of culture-confirmed influenza in the placebo group would be 4% while the actual attack rate during the study was 0.9%. Literature data are limited on the attack rates of culture-confirmed influenza cases in an unvaccinated adult population and serology has been very often used alone or combined as a diagnostic tool to confirm the influenza virus etiology of a clinical case. The attack rate of 4% was hence selected as a conservative estimate based upon data from randomized placebo influenza vaccine studies in healthy adults with laboratory (by serology or a mixture of serology and culture) confirmed endpoints reviewed in the Cochrane data base [3]. These indicated an attack rate range of 6% to 16% in the placebo groups. More recently, prospective placebo-controlled trials have reported rates of culture-confirmed cases in the adult setting [25, 26] as well as in children [27]. These studies clearly confirmed the high year-to-year variability of documented influenza cases.
The low number of culture-confirmed influenza cases found during our study was unlikely to be due to inadequate monitoring of prospective cases, as active surveillance for ILI involving contact of subjects by phone on a biweekly basis was employed. Also, all nasal and throat swab specimens were transported to the laboratory with an adequate cold chain within 24 hours to avoid false culture negatives due to loss of virus viability. Furthermore, the low attack rate observed in the study area in 2005–2006 was confirmed by the European Influenza Surveillance Scheme (EISS) [28]. Specific data for the Czech Republic demonstrate that the weekly morbidity rates for both acute respiratory infections [29] and for ILI [30] were lower in the 2005/2006 influenza season compared to both the previous 2004/2005 season and also the following 2006/2007 season. The EISS also reported that the circulation of influenza B virus in the winter 2005–2006 was exceptional compared with European data accumulated during the last decade, as it was the only season in which influenza B viruses were dominant [28]. It is possible that this may have contributed to the low attack rate of clinical illness as influenza B is known to cause milder disease than influenza A [28, 31].
The significant impact that a lower attack rate can have on a clinical trial to evaluate influenza vaccine efficacy has previously been illustrated in a clinical trial conducted by Hoberman and colleagues in young children over two consecutive influenza seasons in Pittsburg [27]. In the first season (1999/2000) when the attack rate for culture-confirmed influenza was 15.9% in the placebo group, vaccine efficacy was estimated to be 65% (95% CI 34% to 82%) while in the second season (2000/2001) when the attack rate for culture-confirmed influenza was 3.3% in the placebo group, vaccine efficacy was estimated to be -7% (95% CI -247% to 67%). A similar finding was recently reported in a study conducted over 2 years in an adult population in Michigan [25, 26]. The attack rate of culture-confirmed influenza in the placebo group was reported to be 5.8%, whereas in the second year, a rate of 1.8% was found. The VE estimates for the inactivated influenza vaccine were found to be 77% (37% to 92%) in year 1 and 23% (-153% to 73%) in year 2. The latter result appears to be similar to the outcome of our study in adults where with an attack rate in the placebo group of 0.9% for influenza A and/or B cases and 0.2% for influenza A cases, the respective estimate of efficacies were 22.3% (95% CI -49.1% to 58.5%) and 25.1% (95% CI of -260.9% to 82.2%).
These data indicate that the possibility of a lower than predicted attack rate needs to be factored into the design of influenza vaccine efficacy studies. Apart from increasing the sample size or allowing for an extension of the study over more than one influenza season, another factor to be considered is the clinical case definition used. There is no universally accepted clinical case definition of influenza [32, 33]. We employed a definition from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) US based on the presence of fever plus either cough or sore throat, [17]. This combination of symptoms is recognized as having a high positive predictive value for influenza but is not very sensitive [34]. For seasons with low attack rates it may be preferable to improve case capture by using less restrictive clinical criteria particularly when culture confirmation is being employed to confer specificity. The use of reverse polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays techniques, which have been shown to be more sensitive than culture, may also improve detection of influenza virus in nasal/throat specimens [35, 36]. Serological analysis of acute and convalescent sera, which is also often used to confirm influenza cases, would however have specific limitations in a vaccine efficacy study. In the vaccine group, the presence of vaccine-induced antibodies could mask differences between paired sera in levels of antibodies induced by infection, thereby introducing a bias s in favor of the study vaccine.
The low attack rates encountered in the adult population during some influenza seasons may raise the question about the need for adult vaccination. It should be kept in mind that currently the main target populations for adult vaccination (apart from the elderly persons, which are outside the scope of this study) are adults who have medical conditions that place them at risk for complications from influenza and also, in order to limit influenza virus transmission to those at risk in all age groups, health-care personnel or caregivers [2]. As the attack rate for any coming influenza season is unpredictable at the time of annual influenza vaccination, it is not feasible to modify vaccination routines and put susceptible people at risk.
The second issue faced by the study was a mismatch between the dominant circulating influenza strain and the vaccine strains. The majority of culture-confirmed cases detected in our study were caused by an influenza B strain that was of a different lineage to the vaccine influenza B component which was from the B/Yamagata/16/88-lineage. This mismatch was confirmed by the EISS who reported that 90% of the characterized influenza B viruses in Europe during the influenza season 2005–2006 were similar to the B/Victoria/2/87 lineage of influenza B viruses [28]. As a consequence, the World Health Organization (WHO) substituted a virus from the B/Victoria/2/87 lineage in the 2006–2007 vaccine recommendations [37].
The co-circulation of these two antigenically distinct B lineages which form distinctly divergent genetic groups based on their hemagglutinin genes where there are some 27 amino acid differences [8] has raised the question of whether they should both be represented in the annual influenza vaccine formulation [38]. To date, this option has not been considered due to the constraints it would impose on an already limited influenza antigen manufacturing capacity. Also, although there is no hemagglutinin cross reactivity between the two B lineages in ferrets [7] or unprimed children [39], serological evidence from WHO [37] and another recent study [40] indicates that vaccine B/Yamagata/16/88-lineage components may provide reduced protection against the B/Victoria/2/87 lineage. Furthermore, reassortment between the two influenza B lineages has led to practically all B/Victoria-lineage viruses containing a B/Yamagata-lineage neuraminidase which may also provide some cross protection [13, 38]. Other workers have managed to demonstrate vaccine efficacy for influenza B despite mismatch between vaccine and circulating strains [13, 25]. In the Michigan study, Ohmit et. al demonstrated efficacy against influenza B during a mismatch of B strains in the 2004/2005 season [25]. However, the attack rate for culture-confirmed influenza in the placebo group in that study was considerably higher (5.8%) than in the study reported here and also a greater proportion of the influenza B isolates did match the vaccine strain (7 out of 18).
Although the exceptional nature of the influenza season in which this study was conducted did not allow us to establish the efficacy of TIV it is likely that, as demonstrated by Ohmit et al for another inactivated vaccine [25], TIV efficacy could be demonstrated under more typical influenza season conditions.
Due to the exceptionally low attack rate during the 2005/2006 season in the Czech Republic and the predominance of a circulating B strain of a different lineage to the vaccine strain, our study was unable to demonstrate the efficacy of TIV in healthy adults. This experience illustrates the challenge of conducting an influenza vaccine efficacy trial during one season when variations in disease attack rates and circulating strains cannot be predicted in advance.
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We are grateful to the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC, UK) for providing the vaccine virus strain. The authors are indebted to the participating clinicians, nurses and laboratory technicians at the study site and the sponsor's project staff for their support and contributions throughout the study. We also want to thank the study volunteers. We would like to thank the laboratory staff for their excellent, sedulous immunological laboratory work and Dr Christian van Hoecke for his substantial involvement during the set up phase of the study. Finally we would like to thank Miriam Hynes (independent, UK) for her assistance in preparing the manuscript and Isabelle Camby for coordination.
This study was supported by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Biologicals, Rixensart, Belgium.
Role of the funding source
GSK Biologicals was the funding source and was involved in all stages of the study conduct and analysis. GSK Biologicals also took in charge all cost associated to the development and the publishing of the present manuscript. The corresponding author had full access to the data and had final responsibility to submit for publication.
The Vaccination and Travel Medicine Center, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic
Jiří Beran
, Veronika Wertzova
& Jiří Havlik
Department of Infectious Diseases, University Hospital, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic
& Karel Honegr
National Institute of Public Health, National Reference Laboratory for Influenza, Praha, Czech Republic
Martina Havlickova
& Helena Jirincova
GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Praha, Czech Republic
Eva Kaliskova
GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Rixensart, Belgium
Pascale Van Belle
& Jeanne-Marie Devaster
GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, King of Prussia, USA
Varsha Jain
& Bruce Innis
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Correspondence to Jiří Beran.
The following authors are employed by the GlaxoSmithKline Group of Companies:
Jeanne-Marie Devaster, Bruce L Innis, Varsha Jain, Eva Kaliskova, Pascale Van Belle
The following authors hold stock options in GlaxoSmithKline:
Jeanne-Marie Devaster, Bruce L Innis, Varsha Jain
The following authors received reimbursements or fees or funding from GlaxoSmithKline: Jiří Beran, Martina Havlickova, Jiří Havlík, Helena Jirincova
The following authors have no conflict of interest: Karel Honegr, Veronika Wertzova
All authors participated in the design, implementation, analysis and interpretation of the study. JB and JMD were involved in all phases of the study. JB was the co-ordinating and principal investigator. VW and KH led the clinical team respectively at the Vaccination and Travel Medicine Center and at the Department of Infectious Diseases assisted by JH. MH and HJ managed the team responsible for handling and processing of the ILI samples. BI and JMD led the clinical team at GSK Biologicals assisted by VJ and EK. PVB conducted the data analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Vaccine Strain
Attack Rate
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Category Archives: paper
[paper] Perception and Painting: A Search for Effective, Engaging Visualizations
Christopher G. Healey and James T. Enns [PDF]
Scientific visualization represents information as images that allow us to explore, discover, analyze, and validate large collections of data. Much of the research in this area is dedicated to the design of effective visualizations that support specific analysis needs. Recently, we have become interested in a new idea: Is a visualization beautiful? Can a visualization be considered a work of art?
One might expect answers to these questions to vary widely depending on the individual and their interpretation of what it means to be artistic. We believe that the issues of effectiveness and aesthetics may not be as independent as they might seem at first glance, however. Much can be learned from a study of two related disciplines: human psychophysics, and art theory and history. Perception teaches us how we “see” the world around us. Art history shows us how artistic masters captured our attention by designing works that evoke an emotional response. The common interest in visual attention provides an important bridge between these domains. We are using this bridge to produce visualizations that are both effective and engaging. This article describes our research, and discusses some of the lessons we have learned along the way.
Multidimensional Visualization
Work in our laboratory has studied various issues in scientific visualization for much of the last ten years. A large part of our effort has focused on multidimensional visualization, the need to visualize multiple layers of overlapping information simultaneously in a common display or image. We often divide this problem into two steps: (1) the design of a data-feature mapping M, a function that defines visual features (e.g., color, texture, or motion) to represent the data, and (2) an analysis of a viewer’s interpretation of the images M produces. An effective M generates visualizations that allow viewers to rapidly, accurate, and effortlessly explore their data.
One promising technique we have discovered is the use of results from human perception to predict the performance of a particular M. The low-level visual system identifies certain properties of what we see very quickly, often in only a few tenths of a second or less. Perhaps more importantly, this ability is display size insensitive; visual tasks are completed in a fixed length of time that is independent of the amount of information being displayed. Obviously, these findings are very attractive in a multidimensional visualization context. Different visual features can be combined to represent multiple data attributes. Large numbers of these “multidimensional data elements” can be packed into an image. Sequences of images are then rapidly analyzed by a viewer in a movie-like fashion.
Figure 1: Two examples of visualizing weather conditions: (a) traditional visualizations for each attribute composited into a single image; (b) simulated brush strokes that vary their color and texture to visualize the data
Fig. 1 shows two example visualizations of multidimensional weather data. The first image was constructed by taking traditional visualizations of each attribute, then compositing them together. Hue represents temperature (yellow for hot, green for cold), luminance represents pressure (bright for high, dark for low), directed contours represent wind direction, and Doppler radar traces represent precipitation. The second image was built using simulated brush strokes that vary their perceptual color and texture properties to visualize the data. Here, color represents temperature (bright pink for hot, dark green for cold), density represents pressure (denser for lower pressure), stroke orientation represents wind direction, and size represents precipitation (larger strokes for more rainfall). Although viewers often gravitate towards the first image due to its familiarity, any attempt to perform real analysis tasks leads to a rapid appreciation of the careful selection of colors and textures used in the second image. Experiments showed that viewers prefer the second image for the vast majority of the tasks we tested.
The use of perceptual guidelines can dramatically increase the amount of information we can visualize. We cannot take advantage of these strengths with an ad-hoc choice of M, however. Certain combinations of visual features actively mask information by interfering with our ability to see important properties of an image. A key goal, therefore, is to build guidelines on how to design effective visualizations, and to present these findings in a way that makes them accessible to other visualization researchers and practitioners.
An image that is seen as interesting or beautiful can encourage viewers to study it in detail.
Nonphotorealistic Visualization
explore in two directions:
nonphotorealistic rendering in computer graphics, and
art history and art theory discussions of known painterly styles.
We observed that many of the painterly styles we discovered seemed to have a close correspondence to visual features from our perceptual visualizations. For example, color and lighting in Impressionism have a direct relationship to the use of hue and luminance in visualization. Other styles like path, density, and length have partners like orientation, contrast, and size in perception. This suggested the following strategy to produce a visualization that is both effective and aesthetic:
Produce a data-feature mapping M that uses the perceptual color and texture patterns that best represent a particular dataset and associated analysis tasks.
Swap each visual feature in M with its corresponding painterly style.
M now defines a mapping from data to painterly styles that control the visual appearance of computer-generated brush strokes; apply this mapping to produce a painted representation of the underlying dataset.
Although our initial experiments showed that our painterly visualizations are effective, we still had no evidence of their aesthetic merit. We ran a new set of experiments designed to investigate this property. These experiments studied three important questions:
How artistic do viewers judge our painterly visualizations, relative to paintings by artistic masters?
Can we identify any fundamental emotional factors that predict when viewers will perceive an image as artistic?
Can we categorize individual viewers as preferring different types of art (e.g., realism or abstractionism), and how do these preferences impact the emotional responses that predict artistic rankings?
Figure 5. Example displays from the aesthetic judgement experiment: (a) a painterly visualization of weather conditions; (b) a nonphotorealistic rendering of a photograph of Lake Moraine in Banff, Canada
Our experiments asked viewers to order 28 images on a scale from 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest). We presented seven images from four different categories: master Impressionists (impressionism), master Abstractionists (abstractionism), nonphotorealistic renderings (nonphotorealism), and painterly visualizations (visualization).
An example of the painterly visualizations we tested is shown in Fig. 5a. Although real weather conditions are being visualized (temperature is represented by color, wind speed by coverage, pressure by size, and precipitation by orientation), no explanations were provided to our viewers about what was being depicted. We were careful to zoom in to a point where viewers would not interpret the image as part of a map. These images were classified as abstract in nature, since they had no obvious relationship to a real-world object or scene. They were paired against seven real paintings by master Abstractionists: one painting each by de Kooning, Johns, Malevich, Mondrain, and Pollock, and two by Kline.
http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/HTML_papers/NPV/NPV.html
Posted in Art, paper
Tags: paper, papernote
Engagement Mobile Media
relevant + connected + involved
While only a small slice wants to blog, a far larger swath is eager to make friends and contacts, to exchange pictures and music, to share activities and ideas. — 2008
Consumers can no longer be considered ‘the audience’ – they are simultaneously readers, editors and marketers, especially the younger demographics. —by IBM institute for Business value, 2009
How do we consume multimedia?
The mobile phone has transcended its original role as a means of communication by serving a multitude of purposes.
How do you currently use your mobile?
What do you like about it? What do you
hate about it?
Has the mobile changed your life? If so, how?
Have you ever switched your provider and, if so, why?
What are the imperfections or disadvantages of the mobile lifestyle?
How do you spend your commuting time? If you use your phone while commuting, how do you use it?
What would you like to be able to do with your phone that you currently cannot?
Typical usage comprises voice conversation and short messaging. The most popular ‘nontraditional’ uses are gaming, listening to radio, multimedia messaging and Internet access.
Staying in touch with their social network is their prime concern.
Ubiquitous availability is challenged primarily by cost, imperfect coverage, “Bad reception defeats the point of a mobile”, short battery life, and losing the phone.
70 percent of UK participants have payas-you-go (non-contract) phones. Many chose their provider according to their social circle’s preferences in order to control and minimise costs.
Changes in life style
Mobile Users’ Needs and Expectations of Future Multimedia Services [pdf]
Challenges in delivering multimedia content in mobile environments 1999 [pdf]
3 Es of social media
The act of using social influencers, social media platforms and online communities for marketing, publication relations and customer.
Posted in 计算机与 Internet, ｚｚ, paper
Tags: mobile media engament, multimedia consumption, papernote
【paper】Rendering Parametric Surfaces in Pen and Ink
rendering parametric free-form surfaces in pen and ink：
This paper extends the pen and ink illustration algorithms from Winkenbach et al. 1994 to parametric surfaces. The main difference between this approach and the previous is that the texture and tone cannot be defined on a planar map, but instead must allow for curved surfaces. Controlled density hatching is introduced to maintain tone levels across parameteric surfaces by adjusting the thickness of the strokes used to create the tone and texture. In addition, methods for creating outline strokes and shadows are modified to be used with free-form surfaces.
Art and Cultural Heritages
Content-based search of art image database (1995-1999, 2002- )
Georges Winkenbach and David H. Salesin. “Rendering Parametric Surfaces in Pen and Ink”. In In Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 1996,ACM Press / ACM SIGGRAPH, pp. pp. 469–476, 1996. [html]
Posted in computer vision, ｚｚ, paper
Tags: illustration, papernote, pen-ink, rendering
[paper]Fast Multiresolution Image Querying
User may paint on a “canvas” of any aspect ratio. However, the painted query is internally rescaled to a square aspect ratio and searched against a database in which all images have been similarly rescaled as a preprocess.
how a user-specified aspect ratio might also be used to improve the match?
To evaluate our image querying algorithm, we collected three types of query data:
The first set, called “scanned queries,” were obtained by printing out small 1/2×1/2 thumbnails of our database images. 270: 100 were reserved for evaluating our metric, and the other 170 were used as a training set.
The second set, called “painted queries,” were obtained by asking 20 subjects, most of whom were first-time users of the system, to paint complete image queries, in the non-interactive mode, while looking at thumbnail-sized versions of the images they were attempting to retrieve. 270
The third set, called “memory queries,” without being able to see the image directly. 100 queries only for evaluation
To see if painting from memory would affect retrieval time: 3 subjects
Each subject was then asked to paint the 10 images from the first set while looking at a thumbnail of the image, and the 10 images from the second set from memory
median query time increased from 18 seconds when the subjects were looking at the thumbnails, to 22 seconds when the queries were painted from memory.
Users will typically be able to sketch all the information they know about an image in a minute or less, whether they are looking at a thumbnail or painting from memory.
If the query fails to bring up the intended target within a minute or so, users will typically try adding some random details, which sometimes help in bringing up the image.
If this tactic fails, users will simply give up and, in a real system, would presumably fall back on some other method of searching for the image.
benefits of painting queries interactively:
the time to retrieve an image is generally reduced because the user simply paints until the target image appears, rather than painting until the query image seems finished.
the interactive mode subtly helps “train” the user to find images more efficiently, because the application is always providing feedback about the relative effectiveness of an unfinished query while it is being painted.
Multiresolution Query by Image Content
The key to the algorithm is the establishment of an effective and efficient metric capable of computing the distance between a query image Q and a potential target image T. The chosen metric use the YIQ color space and the Haar wavelet.
Wavelet decomposition:
few coefficients provides a good approximation of the original image retaining information from existing edges;
presents relative invariance to resolution changes;
it is fast to compute, running in linear time in size of the image;
spatial localization of the frequencies.
Compute Haar wavelet transform For each image, truncating and quantizing its coeffecients. Those remaining coeffecients represent the image signature.
A painting its truncated and quantized wavelet decomposition with 2000 coefficients
(Y color channel) the actual decomposition used with 60 coefficients
(Y color channel)
Improvement:
To use a low-resolution database, and also use a low-resolution version of the image provided for querying. This speeds up the process substantially and gives essentially the same results since the continuous wavelet transform is invariant under change of scale and almost all of the largest m coefficients are located in the low resolution.
We implemented an estimated perceptual of approximation between the query image and the images in the data base.
We also tried to use another Haar decomposition, which is faster than the one used by Salesin et al.. The results were good, in spite of using the same weights of the Haar initially used.
Stackoverflow：I implemented a very reliable algorithm for this called Fast Multiresolution Image Querying. My (ancient, unmaintained) code for that is here.
What Fast Multiresolution Image Querying does is：
split the image into 3 pieces based on the YIQ colorspace (better for matching differences than RGB).
Then the image is essentially compressed using a wavelet algorithm until only the most prominent features from each colorspace are available.
These points are stored in a data structure.
Query images go through the same process, and the prominent features in the query image are matched against those in the stored database.
The more matches, the more likely the images are similar.
The algorithm is often used for “query by sketch” functionality. My software only allowed entering query images via URL, so there was no user interface. However, I found it worked exceptionally well for matching thumbnails to the large version of that image.
Much more impressive than my software is retrievr which lets you try out the FMIQ algorithm using Flickr images as the source. Very cool! Try it out via sketch or using a source image, and you can see how well it works.
http://cnx.org/content/m11694/latest/?collection=col10223/latest
person has a coarse-scale idea of what the Mona Lisa, for instance, looks like. This information should be fairly useful for finding an actual image of the Mona Lisa, but given current techniques, searches for visual data break down as effective strategies when the database size increases to even a small fraction of the number of images on the World Wide Web.
Our algorithm should also be well suited to matching coarse-scale versions of images to high detail versions of the same image. Users should be able to sketch an image in a simple drawing application where a lot of detail is not easy to add to the query image. They should also be able to enter images that have been digitized by the use of a scanner, which we assume introduces blurriness and additional noise such as scratches, dust, etc, to the extent that they would find it highly useful to search for a higher-resolution version of the image online.
Ideally, we would also like our algorithm to be able to handle affine transformations, such as translation, rotation, and scaling. It is unreasonable to expect a user to be able to draw parts of an image in exactly the same region that they appear in the original image. While these three transformations are all important components of an image querying system, we made the decision to focus on translation because it seems like the most likely type of error that a user would make.
The primary drawback of FMIQ is that the approach is ineffective for detecting shifts of an image since the separable discrete wavelet basis is not shift-invariant. Therefore, we propose the use of the complex discrete wavelet basis which possesses a high degree of shift-invariance in its magnitude. When coupled appropriately with the two-dimensional Discrete Fourier Transform, the two-dimensional Complex Discrete Wavelet Transform allows us to match shifted versions of an image with a significantly higher degree of certainty than does the approach of Jacobs, et al.
The signatures are computed as follows:
Compute the discrete wavelet transform of the image.
Set all but the highest magnitude wavelet coefficients to 0.
Of the remaining coefficients, quantize the positive coefficients to +1 and the negative ones to –1.
These +1’s and –1’s correspond to the feature points in an image, and basically characterize the image structure. Jacobs et al. concluded, after some experimentation, that on their database, considering the top 60 magnitude coefficients worked well for scanned images, while the top 40 coefficients gave best results for hand-drawn images.
The signatures in our implementation were compared using the generic L1 norm of the difference between signature matrices. Jacobs et al. use the non-intuitive “Lq” norm, which somehow weights the coefficients corresponding to different scales differently. This idea definitely carries some merit, but Jacobs et al. do not provide a very good explanation of this scheme, and we don’t believe that it will improve the performance of their querying algorithm significantly.
Wavelets (also, see notes part 1, notes part 2); nice application: Fast multiresolution image querying using wavelets, SIGGRAPH 95.
Tags: fast multiresolution, image query, papernote, wavelet
【paper】Detecting and Sketching the Common
Given few images containing a common object, detect the common object and provide a simple and compact visual representation of that object, depicted by binary sketch.
Posted in paper, sketch
Tags: common shape, duplicate, duplicated shape, papernote, shape, sketching
hand-drawings as model
hand-drawings are simpler, less informative
class variability: variations among instances within an object class
Chamfer matching methods can detect shapes in cluttered images, but they need a large number of templates to handle shape variations, e.g. 1000, and are prone to produce rather high false-positive rates
a powerful point-matching method based on Integer Quadratic Programming: computational complexity
Besides, [1] uses real images as models, so it is unclear how it would perform when given simpler, less informative hand-drawings.
[2] based on edge patches
Contour Segment Network
dealing with highly cluttered images,
allowing intra-class shape variations and large scale changes,
working from a single example,
being robust to broken edges, and
being computationally efficient
brittleness of edge detection – contour is often broken into several edgel-chains
segment the contour chains of the model, giving a set of contour segment chains along the outlines of the object
functionality of pure shape matchers – takes a clean shape as input, support matching to cluttered test images
Simple decomposes the hand-drawing into PAS, then uses these PAS for the Hough voting stage, and the hand-drawing itself for the shape matching stage.
representative shape context
shape context of which point should represent the image?
pixel density based sampling – promote point with higher or lower density?
uniformly
sampled shape context of the shape may contain redundant information
Mori et al. [3] tested the representative shape context method on the Snodgrass and Vanderwart line drawings.
Queries were distorted versions the original
Embed objects into some clutter:
find the outline of the object, construct a binary mask for it, and using logical operations (AND à OR) to copy the clutter around the object.
Finding the outline of objects is done using a method similar to flood-fill.
Pseudocode for original Representative Shape Context
PRE-PROCESSING:
% Compute shape contexts for known shapes
PRUNING:
SCquery = shape contexts for r random pointsforeach known shape Si
for j = 1 : r
dist(Squery; Si)+ = minu( 2(SCj query; SCui ))
% Sort dist and truncate to return a
% shortlist.
A query of a hand-drawn shape is successful if the corresponding known shape is included in the set of retrieved candidate shapes.
‘Shape Context and Chamfer Matching in Cluttered Scenes’ – only a single template shape
paper From Images to Shape Models for Object Detection [pdf]
Hierarchical Matching of Deformable Shapes[pdf]
[3] Mori, G., Belongie, S., & Malik, J., (2001) Shape Contexts Enable Efficient Retrieval of Similar Shapes, CVPR.[pdf]
[4] Recognizing hand-drawn images using shape context [pdf]
Posted in computer vision, paper
Tags: hand-drawn, papernote, shape
Shape Template Scaling and Rotation
When the user draws the sketch that will be used as a template, it is in an arbitrary scale and, in general, has an unknown relation with the scale of the objects it has to match.
If we cover the image with a coordinate system (x, y), each interesting objects can be identified by its minimum enclosing rectangles (MER), with sides parallel to the coordinate axes and lower left and upper right corners {(x1, y1), (x2, y2)}. We consider the aspect ratio of the rectangle:
p=(y2-y1)/(x2-x1)
The sketch is similarly enclosed in its MER with extrema{(X1,Y1),(X2,Y2)} which has an aspect ratio:
We can assume that the user, while making a query, draws an object approximately with the same aspect ratio of the object he wants to retrieve.
For this reason, we can mark as nonmatched all those objects in the image whose aspect ratio is not such that:
1/k<P/p<k (where k is a fixed threshold)
All the interesting rectangles that pass this sieve are candidates for matching.
To speed up this checking, aspect ratios are organized into a binary tree index structure.
Each node of the tree includes pointers to image rectangles with that aspect ratio.
Matching is improved
if we normalize the sizes of both the template in the
sketch and the shape in the image.
In practice, it is almost impossible for the user to reproduce object mutual orientations exactly as they are in the searched image.
To cope with this inherent imprecision of the user query, given an object oi its orientation with respect to oj was evaluated
by considering the position of the oi centroid with respect to the oj boundaries.
In the very general case of sketches composed of multiple templates, a candidate image is retrieved if and only if:
1) it has two—or more—areas of interest in the same spatial relationships as the templates drawn on the screen;
2) the shapes contained in the areas of interest match the templates of the sketch within a certain degree.
Elastic matching is applied only to images that pass a composite filtering mechanism, based on spatial relationships matching (for multiple templates) and aspect ratio checking (for each template).
A threshold k = 2 has been used for the aspect ratio filtering.
The average number of steps of the deformation
process depends on how much the image and the
sketch shapes are similar.
After 20 steps, the match parameter
M is compared with a fixed threshold.
The neural network that derives the similarity ratings,
was a three layered 5–12–1 back propagation net.
Tags: papernote, shape rotation, shape scaling, shapematching
deformation process of a sketched template
different steps of the deformation process of a sketched template roughly representing a horse, over one of the two horse shapes in the blurred edge image.
The right Graphs are also shown reporting the values of strain energy, bend energy, and match in the deformation process.
the effects of increasing the values of a and b during the deformation process:
The template starts to warp in a somehow irregular manner, in order to adjust itself to the horse boundary.
Deformations which should
determine a too large expense of strain and bend energy,
such as the adaptation to the rider contour or to the horse
legs are not exploited.
In the final steps, higher values of a
and b impose the template to regularize its deformation on
the horse shape and, as a consequence, the values of strain
and bend energy decrease.
After a template reached convergence over an image shape, we need to measure how much the two are similar.
Similarity is a fuzzy concept, and to measure it we need to take into account a number of things:
A first thing to be taken into account is the degree of overlapping M between the deformed template and the gradient of the image.
Another factor to be considered is how much the template had to warp to achieve that match in terms of strain energy S and bend energy B.
Parameters S, B, and M alone are not enough to operate a good discrimination between different shapes:
the values of S and B are somehow depending on the nature of the template shape
for each example, the template, the original image and the original image with the deformed template superimposed are shown.
It can be noticed that the deformation of the horse template over the horse shape image Fig. 2a is characterized by values of S and B which are fairly the same as those corresponding to the deformation of the circular template over the coffee-pot image Fig. 2c.
A good match of a complex shape can require high values for S and B, a noncomplex shape can reach a good match with very low values of elastic deformation energy.
A reliable solution is to consider a measure of the template shape complexity, in addition to the parameters of the deformation process.
the complexity of the template is measured as the number N of zeroes of the curvature function associated with its contour.
When N is low, as in the case of the circular template, we expect to have low values of S and B for a correct deformation
while if N is high, as in the case of the horse template, we consider good values of deformation also values
of S and B which, otherwise, should be discarded.
S and B give only a quantitative measure of the template deformation
while to estimate the similarity between the template and the image shape we must give also a qualitative measure of the deformation.
the correlation C between the curvature function associated with the original template and that associated with the deformed one.
All these five parameters (S, B, M, N, C) are classified by a back-propagation neural network subject to appropriate training.
For each input array, the neural classifier gives one output value ranging from 0 to 1, which represents the similarity between the shape in the image and the shape of the template.
Tags: deformed shape, shape, sketch, sketched template, template matching
【paper】Perceptual Distance and Effective Indexing for shape similarity
via this paper in 2000
The use of global attributes presents limitations in modelling perceptual aspects of shapes, and poor performance in the computation of similarity with partially occluded shapes.
More effective solutions have employed local features, such as edges and corners of boundary segments.
They are based on the partition of the shape boundary into perceptually significant tokens.
Petrakis and Milios have approximated shapes as a sequence of convex/concave segments between two consecutive inflection points. points are indexed using an R-tree.
Grosky and Mehrotra have approximated shapes as polygonal curves:
for each vertex, a local feature is defined by considering the internal angle at the vertex, the distance from the adjacent vertex, and the vertex coordinates.
A fixed number
of these local features is extracted from each shape.
A shape is thus represented by an attributed string.
Similarity between two shapes is computed as the editing distance between the two strings of the boundary features
Mehrotra and Gary have developed
a retrieval technique known as Feature Index-Based Similar Shape Retrieval.
a polygonal approximation of the shape boundary, which is represented by an ordered finite collection of boundary features, each collection represents one segment of the shape boundary.
segments are defined with a fixed number of adjacent vertices
Boundary feature vectors are organized in a kdB-tree
The matching of one or more features doesn’t guarantee full shape matching
once shapes with similar features are retrieved, shape similarity is checked by overlaying each retrieved shape on the query shape and evaluating the amount of overlap between them
similarity based on polygonal approximation and Euclidean distance between boundary features has little relation with perceptual similarity and cannot be employed for generic shapes.
polygonal shapes of man-made objects
sensitivity to small deviations of feature values is critical to retrieval.
If the features at the root of two subtrees placed on the same level of the index have a very small difference, and a slightly different version of one of them is compared with both, the wrong path might be chosen, thus leading to incorrect retrieval.
To cope with both these requirements two distinct distance measures have been defined: a token distance and a shape distance.
The token distance is a metric distance and is used to provide a measure of the similarity between two tokens.
The shape distance is a nonmetric distance, defined as a combination of token distances, and is used to derive a global measure of shape similarity which fits humans’ perception.
Shape distance does not depend on the ordering of tokens along the curve. This can determine retrieval of false positives.
Indexing is performed at the token level, by exploiting the metric properties of token distance.
SHAPE INDEXING USING A MODIFIED M-TREE
In that a generic token is modelled as a point in the two-dimensional (2-D) feature space of curvature and orientation, the
representation of a generic shape results to be a set of points in this space.
Shape tokens are stored in an M-tree index.
M-tree organizes tokens as a hierarchical set of clusters, each of which is identified by a routing object, (i.e., the center of the cluster), and a covering radius, which determines the maximum distance between the routing object and each tokens included in the cluster
Tags: papernote, perceptual indexing, perceptual shape matching, shape matching
【paper】Elastic Matching of User Sketches
via this paper
Retrieval by shape similarity, given a user-sketched template is particularly challenging, owing to the difficulty to derive a similarity measure that closely conforms to the common perception of similarity by humans.
Matching by shape is complicated by the fact that a shape does not have a mathematical definition that exactly matches what the user feels as a shape.
Well-known distance measures commonly used in mathematics are not suitable to represent shape similarity as perceived by humans
Human perception is not a mere interpretation of a retinal patch, but an active interaction between the retinal patch
and a representation of our knowledge about objects.
QVE system: evaluating the correlation between a linear sketch and edge images in the database (High values of correlation require user-drawn shape close to the shape database)
shapes are represented as
an ordered set of boundary features.
Each boundary is coded as an ordered sequence of vertices of its polygonal approximation.
Features are collections of a fixed number of vertices.
roughly evaluate
similarity as the distance between the boundary feature
vector of the query and those associated with the target
Boundary features of objects in database images are
organized into a quite complex index tree structure.
QBIC system:
Shape representation based on global features such as area, circularity, eccentricity, major axis orientation and moment invariants
shape similarity is evaluated as the weighted Euclidean
distance in a low dimensional feature space.
there is no warranty that our notion of perceptive closeness is mapped into the topological closeness in the feature space.
Elastic matching promises to approximate human ways of perceiving similarity and to possess a remarkable robustness to shape distortion.
the sketch is deformed to adjust itself to the shapes of the objects in the images.
The match between the deformed sketch and
the imaged object, as well as the elastic deformation energy
spent in the warping are used to evaluate the similarity
between the sketch and the image.
The elastic matching is
integrated with arrangements to provide scale and partial
rotation invariance, and with filtering mechanisms to prune
THE ELASTIC APPROACH TO SHAPE MATCHING
an image I, its luminance at every point normalized in [0,1], we search for a contour with a shape similar to that of sketched template.
in general, the image will contain no contour exactly equal to the template.
It is not just a matter of noisy images, which we can, to a limited extent, model and cope with. The image and the template
can be different to begin with. This makes traditional template matching brittle.
To make a robust match even in the presence of deformations, we must allow the template to wrap. This takes into account two opposite requirements:
it must follow as closely as possible the edges of the image Ie.
the deformation of the template – elastic deformation energy for template, which depends only on the first and second derivatives of the deformation.
In order to discover the similarity between the original shape of the template and the shape of the edge areas on the image, we must set some constraints on deformation.
Elastic matching is one of the pattern recognition techniques in computer science.
Elastic matching (EM) is also known as deformable template, flexible matching, or nonlinear template matching.
Elastic matching can be defined as an optimization problem of two-dimensional warping specifying corresponding pixels between subjected images.
Application(signature recognition):
Two categories of methods and tools for the analysis of dynamic signatures are presented.
The first, measure analysis, is introduced and used to show how imitations can be differentiated unambiguously from genuine examples.
The second category of elastic matching of signatures is believed to follow the type of mechanism which our visual cortex might use when we examine a pair of signatures.
Imagine the reference signature traced onto a transparent elastic sheet. If this is then placed over the reference signature and stretched, they superimpose. A feature specifying the degree of similarity is then the elastic energy contained within the elastic sheet.
A complementary feature measures the degree to which the two signatures overlap after the stretching process, the local correlation. The elastic matching method works from these two features.
The linkages between points on two authentic signatures found by elastic matching.
The extracted circular arcs from two static authentic signatures and their linkages chosen by elastic matching.
Face Recognition using Elastic Bunch Graph Matching (EGBM) fisherface
object recognition by elastic graph matching (dynamic link matching): L. Wiskott, J.-M. Fellous, N. Krueger and von der Malsburg C.(1997) Face recognition by elastic bunch graph matching.IEEE PAMI 19: 775–779.
Eckes C, Triesch J, von der Malsburg C. (2006) Analysis of cluttered scenes using an elastic matching approach for stereo images. Neural Comput. 18(6):1441-71.
Face Recognition: An Introduction
Tags: elastic shape matching, papernote, shapematching
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Many Zambians 'have nothing to eat,' so bishops raise money
Women drawing water from a well in Zambia. Hanay [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
Mwansa Pintu
LUSAKA, Zambia - Zambia's bishops have launched a campaign to raise $9 million for food to be distributed in remote parts of the country hit by drought and floods.
Many households "have nothing to eat and are surviving on wild fruits or are getting by without any food," Bishop Evans Chinyemba of Mongu told a June 19 media briefing in the capital, Lusaka.
"This will certainly compromise the nutrition and health status of most people, especially the children, and if nothing is urgently done, we may begin to experience deaths from hunger," he said.
Government statistics show nearly 419,000 households affected by the lack of rain in Zambia and, in the places visited by church representatives, "79% of the crops were affected by drought, 13% by floods, while 4% were affected by both drought and floods," he said.
People are "suffering from hunger and lack of clean water" and some households do not have enough food to see them through the rest of the year, said Bishop Chinyemba, who is the bishops' director for Caritas Zambia and whose diocese is one of the worst-affected areas.
Zambia's "Southern, Western and some parts of Eastern, Central and Lusaka provinces experienced total crop failure," the bishop said. "Households in these areas did not harvest anything that would help them to sustain their livelihoods up to the next agricultural season" and are already experiencing serious hunger, he said.
There are reports from Gwembe district in southern Zambia "that people are sharing water with animals," Bishop Chinyemba said.
The church gathered information from affected households through interviews, observation and other means, he said.
There is no evidence that the government is offering enough food aid to affected areas, he said, noting that in places where food is being distributed, the amount "is so little that households are failing to meet their food requirements."
The bishops' conference, through Caritas Zambia and other church relief agencies, aims to alleviate the situation through targeting 42,000 households "in dire need of help," he said.
Bishop Chinyemba appealed to the government to speed up help by declaring the hunger situation in parts of the country a disaster; he urged politicians not to take advantage of people's desperation for food.
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LISA RENEE: “5G Wireless”
“The hidden interior of dark cabal, military complex and breakaway civilizations that actively oppose a full disclosure event, are in collusion with the NAA and lunar groups. They are being strategically manipulated through the artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that are given to them by the negative entities, such as the Zeta groups that continue to skillfully exploit their greed for power. These dark groups are imbedded in a variety of divide and conquer agendas being targeted against human ascension and planetary freedom, and thus are rolling out their next generation of frequency blocking technologies. Ultimately, these artificial technologies have been gradually implemented to continue the NAA plan of full domination over global resources, by creating both an obedient and internally warring population that does not notice their personal freedoms and liberties are being stolen.”
5G, the latest method of faster wireless transmission technology is being aggressively implemented worldwide as a public utility service, when it is actually a military based technology that is being weaponized for surveillance and population control. Wireless carriers are setting up millions of towers across the United States, which are needed to facilitate the faster speeds 5G connectivity will feature. A few of the many corporations involved include Samsung, Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia, Huawei, Ericsson, ZTE. This is a global operation, and many governments are backing the push. 5G will make use of a type of encoding called OFDM, a method of encoding digital data on multiple carrier frequencies and is likely to rely on a network of cells as small as household routers rather than on huge towers radiating over larger distances. 5G uses a much shorter wavelength, transmitters will have to be erected every 500 feet. This means that such transmitters will appear everywhere, which means we may be exposed in an EMF zone continually, unable to escape its effects.
Multiple studies have confirmed a link between EMFs and cancer, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disorders and other chronic, debilitating diseases. This is serious, especially when you consider that at least 50 percent of the U.S. adult population now has one chronic debilitating disease, while some have multiple such illnesses.
The International Association of Firefighters, began opposing installing cell towers on fire stations in San Francisco, after firefighters began exhibiting health problems.
“The firefighters developed symptoms,” says Dr. Gunnar Heuser, who orchestrated a pilot study on firefighters at a station with cell towers. “The symptoms included problems with memory, problems with intermittent confusion, problems with weakness.”
Dr. Heuser believed their (firefighters) brain scans showed that even low-level RF exposure can trigger cell damage. Dr. Heuser’s studies even prompted him to begin advocating for a bill that would prevent cell towers from being installed on institutions like fire stations.
In addition, over 230 scientists from 41 countries signed an International EMF Scientist Appeal, which discusses grave concerns regarding increased EMF exposure, based on recent scientific publications that examine correlations between low wireless radiation levels and health problems.
Airport Security Scanners
The masses have been groomed to become acclimated to the millimeter 5G AI signal through stages of gradual exposure to hidden technologies, one such example is the airport security scanner machines which use a similar technology compared to 5G in milli to nano scale transmissions. 5G antennae’s are the designed to work in companionship with assorted Controller agendas in order to lock down the frequency net, maintain mind control of the 3D narrative, and work in alignment with other genetic modification artificial technologies that are designed to damage human DNA and Mitochondria. The 5G design is being instituted to further breakdown the healthy functioning of the human immune system, attacking the healthy electromagnetic balance in the Consciousness of the human body and spirit. This is an direct attack made against consciousness energy, to prevent Expanding Consciousness. Additionally, the targeting of the immune system instigates assorted diseases, whereby sending masses of people into the medical, pharmaceutical, vaccination and bio-technology route for guiding them back into the Transhumanism agenda.
Scientists Warn of Serious Health Effects
“We the undersigned, more than 180 scientists and doctors from 35 countries, recommend a moratorium on the roll-out of the fifth generation, 5G, for telecommunication until potential hazards for human health and the environment have been fully investigated by scientists independent from industry. 5G will substantially increase exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) on top of the 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, etc. for telecommunications already in place. RF-EMF has been proven to be harmful for humans and the environment. 5G leads to massive increase of mandatory exposure to wireless radiation.” For full document dated 9-13-17 go to: 5G Appeal
Space Fence
What is the Space Fence?
Although the USAF and Lockheed Martin tell us that the purpose of the Space Fence is to detect, track and catalog space debris, we must acknowledge that the MIC (Military Intelligence Complex) is at the helm of the New World Order and is routinely engaged in Psychological Operations against the rest of the population.
The Space Fence is the answer to the prayers of a control-freak conspiratorial class. It will have the capacity to surveil everything on Earth. Like Skynet in the fictional Terminator films, it could become surveillance beyond comprehension.
How? The Space Fence is designed to operate in LEO (Low Earth Orbit). It is designed to be one big interconnected machine, run by AI and joined to current (weaponized) technology by interacting with cell phone towers, Gwen Towers, Nexrad Towers, metal particulates and more to create a giant wireless network that manipulates us through the ionization of our atmosphere.
According to Elena Freeland, author of Chemtrails, HAARP, and the Full Spectrum Dominance of Planet Earth who is soon to release a book on the topic, the Space Fence will eventually develop into a conductive Saturnian ring around the Earth’s equator.
From there, it could be used to facilitate a complete lockdown on planetary communications (including our DNA communications, since we are electrical creatures), in line with the MIC’s C4 objectives (Command, Control, Communications and Computers).
Freeland states that the Space Fence will have the power to totally transform the entire environment of the planet. It thus is a tool of the AI and Transhumanist agenda to merge man into machine.
The hidden interior of dark cabal, military complex and breakaway civilizations that actively oppose a full disclosure event, are in collusion with the NAA and lunar groups. They are being strategically manipulated through the artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that are given to them by the negative entities, such as the Zeta groups that continue to skillfully exploit their greed for power. These dark groups are imbedded in a variety of divide and conquer agendas being targeted against human ascension and planetary freedom, and thus are rolling out their next generation of frequency blocking technologies. These include the securing of artificial networks and satellites for building a Skynet type of space fence. Skynet’s manifestation was that shown to the masses in the Terminator movie series, of predictive programming, which is an overarching, global, artificial intelligence hierarchy exclusively performed by servers, mobile devices, drones, military satellites, war-machines, androids and cyborgs, and a wide range of other computer systems.
Looking Glass time travel technology, AI Quantum computers, frequency fences, consciousness sweeps, and holographic inserts are being used for scrambling human brain wave patterns, as well as achieving the brain mapping of the collective race consciousness in order to build a series of artificial neural networks.
Through the collection of massive amounts of data contained in the earth inhabitants’ mental matrices and consciousness imprints, this data is collected for uploading into artificial intelligence networks being used for the prediction and manipulation of future timelines. This technology is being used to forecast and manipulate timelines and is being used by both covert human groups and NAA groups. Ultimately, these artificial technologies have been gradually implemented to continue the NAA plan of full domination over global resources, by creating both an obedient and internally warring population that does not notice their personal freedoms and liberties are being stolen.
Dr. Cousens Warns 5G Effects
5G Appeal
War Over Consciousness
5G, Awareness, Crimes Against Humanity, Enslavement, Environment, Environmental Hazards, Health, Health Alert, Health Hazards, Mind Control, Negative Alien Agenda, New World Order (NWO), Truth 5G, 5G Health Hazards, 5G Health Risks, 5G Radiation, 5G Technology, Agenda 2030, Agenda 21, AI, AI (Artificial Intelligence), AI Mind Control Matrix, Alien Implants, Alien Technology, Anubian Black Heart, Archon Controllers, Archons, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Awakening to the Truth, Awareness, Bi-Wave, Bi-Wave Consciousness, Bio-Engineering, Bioengineering, Biological Hazards, Black Heart, Brain Damage, Brain Health, Brain Mapping, Cancer Risks, Cell Phones, Cell Towers, Cellular Phones, Chemtrails, Controllers, Covert Military Operations, Crimes Against Humanity, Dangerous Technology, Depopulation Agenda, DEW (Directed Energy Weapons), Directed Energy Weaponry, Directed Energy Weapons, DNA Damage, Earth, Elana Freeland, Electromagnetic Energy, Electromagnetic Field, Electromagnetic Fields, Electromagnetic Frequencies, Electromagnetic Hazards, Electromagnetic Signaling, Electromagnetic Signals, Electromagnetic Weaponry, Energy Weaponry, Energy Weapons, Enslavement, Environmental Hazards, Environmental Threats, Frequency Fence, Frequency Fences, GWEN, HAARP, Harmful Radiation, Health, Health Alert, Health Awareness, Hidden Dangers, Lisa Renee, Military Alien Technology, Military Intelligence Complex, Mind Control, Mind Control Agenda, Mind Control Matrix, NAA, NAA (Negative Alien Agenda}, Negative Alien Agenda, Negative Alien Technology, Negative Aliens, Nephilim Reversal Grid, Nephilim Reversal Grids, Neural Network, Neurological Damage, New World Order, Planetary Grid Network, Population Control, Psychological Operations, Psychotronic Weaponry, Raising Awareness, Reversal 55 Grid, Scary Technology, Space Fence, Surveillance, Technology, Thothian Leviathan New World Order, Toxic Environment, Transhuman Agenda, Transhumanist Agenda, Truth, Truther, Wake-Up Call, War on Consciousness, War on Humanity, War Over Consciousness, War over Humanity, Warnings, Weaponized Technology, Weaponry, Wi-Fi, Wireless Cellular, Wireless Radiation, Wireless Signals, Wireless Technology, Zeta Greys, Zetas 1 Comment
UNQUOTABLE QUOTES ~ Donald Trump on 5G
“I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard.”
~President Donald Trump – 2/21/2019
~via https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1098581869233344512?s=20
5G, Quote 5G, 5G Agenda, 5G Health Hazards, 5G Health Risks, 5G Radiation, 5G Technology, Agenda 2030, Agenda 21, AI, AI (Artificial Intelligence), AI Mind Control Matrix, Alien Implants, Alien Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Awakening to the Truth, Biological Hazards, Brain Damage, Brain Health, Brain Mapping, Cancer Risks, Cell Phones, Cell Towers, Cellular Phones, Chemtrails, Controllers, Covert Military Operations, Crimes Against Humanity, Dangerous Technology, Depopulation Agenda, DEW (Directed Energy Weapons), Directed Energy Weaponry, Directed Energy Weapons, DNA Damage, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Endorses 5G & 6G, Donald Trump's Role in the New World Order, Electromagnetic Energy, Electromagnetic Field, Electromagnetic Fields, Electromagnetic Frequencies, Electromagnetic Hazards, Electromagnetic Signaling, Electromagnetic Signals, Electromagnetic Weaponry, Energy Weaponry, Energy Weapons, Enslavement, Environmental Hazards, Environmental Threats, Famous Quotes, Frequency Fence, Frequency Fences, GWEN, HAARP, Harmful Radiation, Health, Health Alert, Health Awareness, Hidden Dangers, Luciferian New World Order, Military Alien Technology, Military Intelligence Complex, Mind Control, Mind Control Agenda, Mind Control Matrix, NAA, NAA (Negative Alien Agenda}, Negative Alien Technology, Neural Network, Neurological Damage, New World Order, Planetary Grid Network, Population Control, Psychological Operations, Psychotronic Weaponry, Quotation, Quotations, Quote, Quote For The Day, Quotes, Raising Awareness, Reversal 55 Grid, Scary Technology, Space Fence, Surveillance, Technology, Toxic Environment, Transhuman Agenda, Transhumanist Agenda, Truth, Truther, Unquotable Quotes, Wake-Up Call, War on Consciousness, War on Humanity, War Over Consciousness, War over Humanity, Warnings, Weaponized Technology, Weaponry, Wi-Fi, Wireless Cellular, Wireless Radiation, Wireless Signals, Wireless Technology 0 Comments
‘UNPLEASANT TRUTH’ FOR THE DAY ~ Jeremy Naydler: “5G — The Final Assault”
“In November last year (2018), the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorised the rocket company SpaceX, owned by the entrepreneur Elon Musk, to launch a fleet of 7,518 satellites to complete SpaceX’s ambitious scheme to provide global satellite broadband services to every corner of the Earth. The satellites will operate at a height of approximately 210 miles, and irradiate the Earth with extremely high frequencies between 37.5 GHz and 42 GHz. Not one inch of the globe will be free of radiation. Given the scale of the project, it is surprising how few people are aware of the enormity of what is now just beginning to unfold all around us. Very few people have even heard about the 20,000 new satellites that are due to transform the planet into a so-called ‘smart planet,’ irradiating us night and day.”
~Jeremy Naydler
Please read full article:
5G: The Final Assault
~via WakeUp-World.com
Ascension Avatar note: This has all been happening as the ‘Trumpers’ were busy worshipping “The Donald” and ‘QAnon’ (too hypnotized by his New World Order hand signals to notice the fact he’s been pushing for 6G?) and while the ‘New Agers’ were oohing over the latest fake ‘Archangels’, ‘Ascended Masters’, ‘Galactic Federation’ and ‘Ashtar Command’ messages broadcast by the NAA, numbing them even further. Lisa Renee says:
“Spiritual Bypassing is generally an ego defense mechanism used by people that identify as lightworkers or on the Ascension path, who are unwilling to see negativity or look at unpleasant truths happening around them. They consider these unpleasant truths to be negative energy that lowers their personal vibration, so they choose to ignore them and pretend they don’t exist. As an example, it can be assumed that children being used as sex slaves for SRA* have karmic reasons for being killed. Therefore, they don’t have to do anything about it, because they need to maintain their high vibration and all is in divine order.”
*Satanic Ritual Abuse (the worst offenders being Galactic Federation, on AND off-planet)
On a final note, I have observed the biggest denial of all in the ‘spiritual’ and ascension communities is while people are beginning to realize they have been and still are mind-controlled sleeper-hosts for the NAA (as there are many fully-aware and willing participants too), I haven’t seen much change lately and don’t expect to, unless critical steps are taken by them to become completely implant-and-entity cleared, until the ‘remote control’ that had been navigating their ‘self-driving car’ or ‘pilot-less plane’ no longer has access to their God-Sovereign-Free Being!
Here is a great place to start…
Step One: The Agreement and Request for Intercession
5G, Agenda 21, Crimes Against Humanity, Health, Health Alert, Health Hazards, Truth 5G, 5G Health Hazards, 5G Health Risks, 5G Radiation, 5G Technology, Agenda 2030, Agenda 21, Awakening to the Truth, Awareness, Biological Hazards, Brain Damage, Brain Health, Cancer Risks, Cell Phones, Cellular Phones, Dangerous Technology, Depopulation Agenda, DEW (Directed Energy Weapons), Directed Energy Weaponry, Directed Energy Weapons, DNA Damage, Donald Trump's Role in the New World Order, Editorial, Electromagnetic Energy, Electromagnetic Field, Electromagnetic Fields, Electromagnetic Frequencies, Electromagnetic Hazards, Electromagnetic Signaling, Electromagnetic Signals, Energy Weaponry, Energy Weapons, Enslavement, Environmental Hazards, Environmental Threats, evil, Harmful Radiation, Health, Health Alert, Health Awareness, Hidden Dangers, Luciferian New World Order, Mind Control, Mind Control Matrix, Neural Network, Neurological Damage, New World Order, Opinion, Population Control, Raising Awareness, Scary Technology, Spiritual Bypassing, Technology, Thothian Leviathan New World Order, Toxic Environment, Truth, Truther, video, Wake-Up Call, War on Humanity, Warnings, Wi-Fi, Wireless Cellular, Wireless Radiation, Wireless Signals, Wireless Technology 0 Comments
JIM SATNEY: “Parents Say 5G Cell Tower Causing Cancer In School Children — And The District Is Taking Kickbacks”
San Joaquin County Parents believe radiation from a 5G cell tower is causing cancer in school children. Doctors have diagnosed at least four kids from the county’s elementary school system. Parents believe that one specific cell tower poses the biggest health concern.
“We had a doctor tell us that it’s 100 percent environmental, the kind of tumor that he has,” said Monica Ferrulli.
Ferrulli’s son, Mason, is one of the children diagnosed with cancer. The 5G cell tower is located on a path Mason walked on a daily basis prior to his diagnosis. Mason recently relapsed and is currently undergoing brain cancer treatments.
Joe Prime’s son, Kyle, was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2016.
“It just seems like coincidence is no longer a reason for all this illness,” Prime told the network.
“Kids shouldn’t be guinea pigs and we shouldn’t be taking chances with the children’s lives,” he went on.
The district claims the towers are safe, however, some experts disagree. Concerns over 5G and cancer health risks are not new.
“I wouldn’t send my kids there at all. It is absolutely dangerous,” said Eric Windheim, an electromagnetic radiation specialist.
“Children are still developing and their cells are still being divided. It’s the worst possible time in their life to be exposed.”
Windheim says that the tower transmits dangerous wireless frequencies. Those wireless frequencies travel upwards of 30 miles.
Parents are pushing to have the cell tower removed, but the district is defiant. The parents claim the district receives $2,000 [monthly] for allowing the tower.
The district sent letters to parents stating that the electromagnetic frequencies are “below federal standards.”*
~via PrepForThat.com
*Most trust ‘federal standards’ like they trust the President pushing for deadly 5G, and 6G networks. IS Donald Trump a puppet-mouthpiece for the New World Order?
5G, Health, Health Alert, Health Hazards 5G, 5G Cell Tower Radiation, 5G Cell Towers, 5G Health Hazards, 5G Health Risks, 5G Radiation, 5G Technology, Awakening to the Truth, Biological Hazards, Brain Damage, Brain Health, Cancer, Cancer in Children, Cancer Risks, Cell Phones, Cell Tower Hazards, Cell Towers, Cellular Phones, Childhood Cancer, Children with Cancer, Dangerous Technology, Depopulation Agenda, DEW (Directed Energy Weapons), Directed Energy Weaponry, Directed Energy Weapons, DNA Damage, Electromagnetic Energy, Electromagnetic Field, Electromagnetic Fields, Electromagnetic Frequencies, Electromagnetic Hazards, Electromagnetic Signaling, Electromagnetic Signals, Energy Weaponry, Energy Weapons, Enslavement, Environmental Hazards, Environmental Threats, Harmful Radiation, Health, Health Alert, Health Awareness, Hidden Dangers, Mind Control Matrix, Neural Network, Neurological Damage, Population Control, Raising Awareness, Scary Technology, Technology, Toxic Environment, Wake-Up Call, War on Humanity, Warning, Wi-Fi, Wireless Cellular, Wireless Radiation, Wireless Signals, Wireless Technology 0 Comments
May 28, 2019 Video
DAVID ICKE: “The Evil of 5G Technology”
~via London Real
5G, Awareness, Health Alert, Health Hazards, Truth, War on Humanity, Whistleblower 5G, 5G Health Hazards, 5G Health Risks, 5G Radiation, 5G Technology, Agenda 2030, Agenda 21, Awakening to the Truth, Awareness, Biological Hazards, Brain Damage, Brain Health, Cancer Risks, Cell Phones, Cellular Phones, Dangerous Technology, David Icke, Depopulation Agenda, DEW (Directed Energy Weapons), Directed Energy Weaponry, Directed Energy Weapons, DNA Damage, Editorial, Electromagnetic Energy, Electromagnetic Field, Electromagnetic Fields, Electromagnetic Frequencies, Electromagnetic Hazards, Electromagnetic Signaling, Electromagnetic Signals, Energy Weaponry, Energy Weapons, Enslavement, Environmental Hazards, Environmental Threats, evil, Harmful Radiation, Health, Health Alert, Health Awareness, Hidden Dangers, Mind Control, Mind Control Matrix, Neural Network, Neurological Damage, Opinion, Population Control, Raising Awareness, Scary Technology, Technology, Toxic Environment, Truth, Truther, video, Wake-Up Call, War on Humanity, Warnings, Wi-Fi, Wireless Cellular, Wireless Radiation, Wireless Signals, Wireless Technology 0 Comments
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Home » Class 10 » Heredity and Evolution » Evolution and Speciation
Evolution and Speciation
February 13, 2019 By Mrs Shilpi Nagpal 1 Comment
Question 1 Define speciation? Explain mechanism of speciation?
Question 2 Define evolution?Why are traits acquired during the lifetime of an individual not inherited?
Question 3 What is organic evolution and inorganic evolution?
Question 4 What is genetic drift? Give its significance in evolution?
Question 5 What is variation?
Question 6 What are inherited and acquired traits?
Question 7 What are the various ways of reproductive isolation?
2 Natural Selection
3 (1) Inherited traits
4 (2) Acquired traits
5 Speciation
6 Reproductive isolation
6.1 (1) Temporal Isolation
6.2 (2) Behavioural Isolation
6.3 (3) Physiological Isolation
6.4 (4) Mechanical Isolation
Evolution refers to a gradual change from one form to another. Such a change in elements with time is called inorganic evolution. Gradual change in living organisms with time since the beginning of life is termed organic evolution.
The concept of organic evolution was first given by Charles Darwin .The present-day complex organisms have originated from the earlier simpler forms of life during the course of ages by the process of gradual change.
So, evolution is the constant process of gradual change occurring in the organisms since the origin of life that has given rise to enormous variety of complex organisms on this earth.
Let us imagine that a group of 12 red beetles live on green leaves of some bushes. These beetles have the natural tendency to increase in numbers by sexual reproduction and consequently generate variations. The crows are the natural predators of these beetles. The crows regulate the population of beetles by eating them and, therefore, fewer beetles are available for sexual reproduction.
Situation 1 : Let us assume that beetles develop colour variation during reproduction.In the progeny, one beetle develops green body colour instead of normal red colour. This beetle can inherit this variation in colour on to its progeny so that all its offsprings are green in colour. Crows can not locate green-coloured beetles on the green leaves of bushes but continue to eat red beetles which are easily located on green leaves by them. As a result, number of green beetles in beetle population increases in each generation.
Situation 2 : Colour variation arises in beetles during sexual reproduction and in the progeny, one beetle develops blue body colour instead of normal red. This beetle can also pass this colour variation to its progeny so that all its offsprings are blue coloured beetles. Crows can detect both red and blue coloured beetles easily on green leaves of bushes and eat them regularly. As the population of beetles expands, initially there are few blue coloured beetles among the majority of red coloured beetles. At this point, an elephant comes by and stamps on the bushes where the beetle live.Most of the beetles get killed. By chance, most of the survived beetles are now blue coloured.This population again slowly expands and will contain mostly blue coloured beetles over a period of time.
In situation 1, natural selection is exerted by the crows. More the crows are there, more red coloured beetles would be eaten and more will be the proportion of green beetles in the population.Natural selection is directing the evolution in beetle population in this situation. Green coloured beetles in the population are adapted to fit better in their environment than the red beetles.
Natural selection is the phenomenon wherein nature, in the wild, selects traits favourable to the species in its environment.
In situation 2 colour variation in beetles gave no survival advantage to them in the existing environment as crows could easily detect and eat both red and blue beetles on green leaves. A simple accident (stamping by an elephant foot) killed majority of the red coloured beetles from the population. Survival of more blue beetles in the population changed the colour characteristic from normal red to blue over a period of time. Had the beetle population been very large, the accident would not have caused such major havoc. In small population accidents can change the frequency of some genes in a population, even if these give no survival advantage to the possessors.
The elimination of the genes of certain traits from the small population when a section of the species population dies of natural calamity or migrates to other region is called genetic drift. It alters the gene frequency of the remaining population.
In situation 3 as the beetle population starts expanding by sexual reproduction, a plant disease spreads resulting in decrease in the amount of leaf material in the bushes. Expanding population of beetles is now poorly nourished.The average weight of adult beetles decreases compared to what it used to be when leaves in the bushes were in plenty. After a few years time and a few beetle generations of such scarcity, the plant disease is eliminated. Now, more leaves of bushes are available as food for the beetles.
We find that there are two kinds of traits in every organism:
(1) Inherited traits
These traits are controlled by specific genes and are passed on from one generation to another. Any alteration in the DNA will be passed on, through germ cells, to the progeny resulting in variations in them.
(2) Acquired traits
Certain traits are acquired by organisms in their life time.It involves changes in the non-reproductive tissues caused by environmental factors. It will not bring any change in the DNA. Therefore, even if some of the generations of beetles are low in weight because of starvation, this trait can not be inherited by the progeny over generations.
Origin of new species from the existing one is called speciation.
Microevolution means that small but significant variations appear in individuals that simply change the common characteristics (traits) of a particular species only.
Let us consider a situation that the bushes on which the beetles live are widely spread over a mountain range and over a period of time beetle population becomes very large.
In the large beetle population, individual beetles normally do not travel far. They continue to feed on few nearby bushes only throughout their life time. Thus, the large population of beetles, is divided into sub-populations called demes in neighbourhoods. Most of the male and female beetles reproduce sexually only within the respective demes.
Rarely an adventurous beetle might go from one sub-population to another or alternatively it is picked up by predator crow from one site and dropped in the other site without being eaten. In either case, the migrant beetle gets an opportunity to reproduce with local inhabitant of this sub-population. As a result, genes of migrant beetle enter into the gene pool of this sub-population. Such kind of gene flow happens between sub-populations that are only partly separated.
After few generations, genetic drift will accumulate different variations in each of the two geographically separated sub-populations. Natural selection may also operate simultaneously in a different way in these geographically isolated sub-populations.
For instance, in one geographical region, crows are systematically killed by eagles whereas in the other geographical region no such change occurs and number of crows is very high. Consequently, green body colour variation will not be selected at the first geographical region while it will be strongly selected at the other geographical site. In this way, both genetic drift and natural selection make these geographically isolated sub-populations to become more and more different from each other.
Reproductive isolation occurs between individuals of these two groups. As a result, they are unable to reproduce even if they happen to meet somehow.
Reproductive isolation refers to the mechanisms which check the populations of two different groups from interbreeding.
Reproductive isolation may happen in a number of way:
(1) Temporal Isolation
It is the failure of two groups of individuals to interbreed because they breed at different times (seasons) of the year.
(2) Behavioural Isolation
It prevents interbreeding of two groups due to differences in courtship and mating behaviour.
(3) Physiological Isolation
It is the functional incompatibility in mating, or in production and survival of gametes.
(4) Mechanical Isolation
It is the difference in size or structure of genitalia (i.e., mismatched genitalia) between two groups that make interbreeding difficult or impossible.
Filed Under: Class 10, Heredity and Evolution
Ruhani says
Your’s notes r very helpful for us ☺
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No “attacks” in Cabo Delgado, just “crimes”, say police – Mozambique
File photo / “When a person picks up a gun, goes onto the streets and starts shooting, and steals goats and grain, that’s not an attack”, Dina claimed.
The General Command of the Mozambican police on Tuesday declined to confirm the occurrence of three further attacks by islamic fundamentalists in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.
The usually well-informed newsheet “Mediafax” had reported the attacks, two of which took place in Mocimboa da Praia district and one in the neighbouring district of Palma.
Mocimboa da Praia has been the epicentre of the islamist insurgency. It was here that the first attacks, against three police units, occured on 5 October last year.
“Mediafax” said that last Friday the terrorist group returned to Mocimboa da Praia, attacking the village of Diaca Velha. The attackers stole food and other goods, and killed an unspecified number of people.
On Saturday, the islamists attacked Mangwaza village in Palma district, where they killed one person, burnt down four houses and stole more food. On Sunday, the group returned to Diaca Velha, and the local population abandoned their homes, fleeing to the nearby village of Awassi.
But at his weekly press briefing, the spokesperson for the General Command, Inacio Dina, dismissed these reports. “Yes, there have been criminal cases in Mocimboa da Praia”, he said, “but these are not attacks similar to those that occurred on 5 October”.
Three Islamist attacks reported over weekend
“We want to make it clear that Cabo Delgado is a province like any other”, said Dina. “Criminal cases happen. In Cabo Delgado criminal cases happened. Public order has been completely restored”.
“When somebody commits a crime with a firearm, we have to understand his motives, before we call it an attack”, he added. Dina was thus trying to restrict the term “attack” for events involving large numbers of raiders and with police units as the target.
He insisted that the events of the weekend could not be compared with what had happened in October. “When a person picks up a gun, goes onto the streets and starts shooting, and steals goats and grain, that’s not an attack”, Dina claimed.
Wednesday’s issue of “Mediafax” accused Dina of simply resorting to a linguistic artifice, and rebranding the islamist raids as isolated criminal acts.
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Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
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Training the world’s youngest brain scientists
May 24, 2018 by CNLM
Young students embrace science at UCI’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Story by Cathy Lawhon
Neuroscientists are accustomed to defining problems, developing experiments, testing hypotheses and analyzing and defending their findings. But the three research teams appearing recently before a review board from the Brain Explorer Academy were shaking in their lab coats. Penetrating questions and thoughtful critiques were thrown at them by a panel of 8- to 14-year-olds, and it was clear these future scientists had done their homework.
The Brain Festival and Live Review was a feature of the 2018 International Conference on Learning and Memory (LEARNMEM™2018), which celebrated the 35thanniversary of UC Irvine’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. More than 950 professors, researchers, post docs and graduate students from around the world attended the five-day event, which provided a forum for presenting neuroscience breakthroughs and work in progress and assessing the future of the field. If the Brain Explorer Academy kids are any indication, the future looks bright.
“These students meet Saturday mornings to learn about the brain,” says Manuella Yassa, CNLM director of outreach and education. “They’ve studied brain anatomy and function. They’re learned about animal research, ethics, evolution, and careers in science. They worked closely with our science mentors for several months and have built strong relationships with them.”
Academy members were chosen mostly from Orange County schools on the basis of recommendations from teachers and principals and the students’ own short essays about why they wanted to be involved. A balanced mix across genders, age, and schools was also ensured.
The program is free to the young explorers and is supported by the CNLM through foundation grants and private philanthropy.
“We’re putting a face to science,” says Mitch Farrell, a second year doctoral student in neurobiology and one of the science mentors.
“We hope it will lead to broader community engagement with science,” adds fellow mentor Noora Siddiqui, a first year doctoral student in the Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology Program.
Academy participants also learn about what happens once scientists finish their experiments and make discoveries.
“There is no point to doing science if you don’t communicate it to the world,” Yassa says. “The explorers learn about the review process by actually critiquing scientific papers. It took them a while to understand that their comments would be incorporated into the final article. The hope is that they become savvy science consumers.”
At the conference, it was clear that this approach worked. Accomplished neuroscientists mingled with more than 600 parents and their children as the young brain explorers aided them in handling sheep brains and human brains (with the requisite protective gloves) and participating in a mind-bending mirror drawing exercise.
Following the open house, students immediately got to work, evaluating presentations for possible publication in Frontiers for Young Minds, the non-profit open-access journal for youths age 8-15. The journal’s founder, UC Berkeley’s neuroscience professor Robert Knight, explained that all articles must be peer-reviewed and can be aimed at under-12 or over-12 audiences. It’s a useful exercise for scientists, Knight says, because, “You have to truly understand your research in order to write about it in a way a 5thgrader will grasp it.”
Jessica Lin and Vlad Senatorov from UC Berkeley presented their paper, Stress: As We Age, the Shield that Protects the Brain Gets Leaky. Their findings showed that the blood-brain barrier becomes inefficient with age, allowing a protein called albumin to escape and incorrectly bind with receptors in the brain. This causes neurons to misfire and results in cognitive decline. A drug that inhibits that interaction could help, they said. The student panel got it, but had a few suggestions.
“Would there be any side-effects to such a drug?” asked Arkhil, 12, who wants to be a rocket scientist. The panel also asked for a better explanatory graphic. In the end, the paper was recommended for publication with some revisions.
Before the review session began, Tejal Kavkatt, 10, and Shazneen Shaik, 9, said they were most looking forward to the UCI team of Jim McGaugh and Navid Ghaffari who were presenting on People Who Rarely Forget. Tejal called the title “a good hook” that accurately describes the study of people with highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM, who remember almost every detail of their lives.
“My knees are trembling,” said the veteran McGaugh, taking the podium after another team had endured a particularly grueling review calling for major revision.
Ghaffari presented findings from 18 years of research, explaining that HSAMs have a widened pathway between two regions of the brain that seems to allow storage and recall of an unusually large bank of autobiographical memories. The panel was intrigued.
“Why is this important to study if so few people have it?” (The team has verified only 100 HSAM subjects.)
“Look at it this way,” Ghaffari said. “If your car breaks down, you can’t fix it until you know how it works. HSAM is the key to solving how memory works.”
“How do you get HSAM, or are you born with it?”
“We think people are born with it,” Ghaffari answered, “but most don’t realize they have it until they’re in their teens. That’s when they seem to realize they’re different from other people.”
McGaugh and Ghaffari breathed a bit easier when, in the end, the paper was accepted with few revisions.
“Thank you for participating in this,” McGaugh told the children. “And thank you to your families. This is a wonderful program to help children engage in science and it will mean a much better future for us all.”
Yassa, agreed, saying a second session of Brain Explorer Academy will launch in fall 2018 with ambitions to add a summer program in 2019.
For this group of brain explorers though, the conference marked the grand finale of their first neuroscience experience. Except for one last thing, said Tejal: “After this, we get a pizza party.”
Cathy Lawhon served as senior director of media relations at University of California, Irvine, sharing the research and teaching success of the campus with journalists worldwide, before retiring in 2017. Her prior experience included 30 years as a reporter and editor in the local media market.
Click here to learn more about the Brain Explorer Academy
Click here to contact Manuella Yassa, Director of the Brain Explorer Academy
The Brain Explorer Academy and all outreach activities of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory are free to participants and are supported by contributions from our community. If you are interested in learning more about how to support the Brain Explorer Academy and similar programs at the CNLM, please click here.
The Live Review at the 2018 International Conference on Learning and Memory was a partnership between the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory‘s Brain Explorer Academy and the Frontiers for Young Minds Journal. To learn more about this scientific open access journal for kids please click here.
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Rob Galloway adds oversight
Updated: June 26, 2019 at 8:11 am
Rob Galloway became general manager of Swift Communications; Sierra Nevada Media Group. last week, the Nevada Appeal reports. Galloway, publisher of the Tahoe Tribune in South Lake Tahoe since 2016, also oversees The Record-Courier in Gardnerville and The Lahontan Valley News in Fallon.
Don Blount is GateHouse regional editor
GateHouse Media has named Don Blount, editor of The Record in Stockton, as California editor, The Record reports. Blount has been editor since 2017 and previously was managing editor. While continuing to oversee Stockton’s news efforts, he will coordinate coverage for GateHouse’s 10 California properties, including five daily newspapers.
Kristin Roberts to Vice President/News at McClatchy
Kristin Roberts began this week as vice president of News for Sacramento-based McClatchy, The Sacramento Bee reports. Roberts had been one of four regional editors and will continue to be based in Miami. She will have oversight of the company’s 30 newsrooms across 14 states, its corporate news operations and McClatchy Studios, which produces documentaries.…
Michael Ellis Langley leaves Tracy Press
“Michael came to us with no experience in newspapers, but a wealth of local news management experience in TV and radio,” Publisher Will Fleet said of the Tracy native. “He turned out to be the ideal local newspaper editor who brought to us a great deal of energy and commitment.” Michael Ellis Langley, editor since…
Robert Sterling retiring at Marin Independent Journal
Robert Sterling, top editor since 2013 at the Marin Independent Journal, retires this week. He joined The I-J staff in 2000. “I’ve been willing to be lucky, and that has made all the difference,” he writes in a final column.
Moves elsewhere …
Paul Mauney, a former publisher of the Porterville Recorder, becomes general manager of The Greenville (Tenn.) Sun and chief revenue officer for Adams Publishing Group’s Tennessee/North Carolina/Virginia region. Rich Macke, a onetime circulation director at the Santa Maria Times and Lompoc Record, is now group publisher for BH Media’s Star-Herald, Gering Courier and Hemingford Ledger…
Garth Stapley is opinions editor at The Modesto Bee
Garth Stapley began this week as editorial-page editor at The Modesto Bee, the newspaper reports. He had been a reporter in Modesto since 1993. Stapley has a journalism degree from Sacramento State and a Master’s degree from Stanislaus State, where he studied international relations. He succeeds Mike Dunbar, who retired after 31 years at The…
Chuck Leishman heads North Coast Journal
Chuck Leishman is now publisher of the North Coast Journal in Eureka, Judy Hodgson told readers recently. Hodgson founded the weekly newspaper in 1990 and will stay on as CEO. Leishman, who had been general manager since 2012, previously worked in advertising at the Chico News & Review and Sacramento News & Review, and was…
Frank Pine adds Bay Area oversight
Frank Pine becomes executive editor of Digital First Media’s Bay Area News Group, The Mercury News reports. He will continue to oversee the 11 titles in the company’s Southern California News Group. “In uniting the Bay Area and SCNG newsrooms under Frank’s leadership, we are strengthening our already formidable news teams and creating new opportunities…
Deborah Petersen is top editor at San Francisco Media Co.
Deborah Petersen last fall became editor in chief of San Francisco Media Co.’s San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly. She has worked for the Hartford (Conn.) Courant and The Mercury News. Most recently, she was editorial director at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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n : a thought process in which ideas suggest other ideas
Do you care who gets appointed to the Supreme Court?
Neil Gorsuch - Getty Images
So a simple question: "Do you think our government, and your elected officials - you know, the ones you voted for - care what we, their constituents, think and further that they pass laws that we support?"
In a word, no. Not even close.
I read and follow politics at an almost obsessive level. Here is my perspective on this topic.
We are not represented in our government, well, unless you happen to be in the top 1% of earners in the country.
Money drives our elected officials. Watch the video link at the end of this post, if you don't believe me. Given the inordinate power that money has on distorting our "representative Democracy", we have laws to keep money from distorting public policy right?
Well, we did.
But the Supreme Court ruled on this topic in 2010 in a case called "Citizens United" (a funny name since the citizens in question are not the 99% of us). Anyway, that case was being argued by the group, Citizens United, that these laws limiting money in politics were unconstitutional. That's right, the Supreme Court decided in their ruling essentially that money is a form of free speech and therefore can be given in any amount and secretly in most cases. This ruling overturned 100 years of laws written by your lawmakers in order to try to keep politicians from being influenced by monied interests, and make the representatives we elect, listen to our opinions.
The ongoing hearing in the Senate that's going on right now (today March 23 and the last couple of days) is for Neil Gorsuch, a nominee to fill the empty Antonin Scalia Supreme Court seat. Scalia died a year ago. So, why didn't Obama replace the empty seat? He did, but Republicans, who control the Senate thanks to people (like some of you) who voted for some Republicans, would not allow Obama's moderate replacement for Scalia, to even have a hearing like the one going on today - no hearing, no vote. That Obama nominated replacement was named Merrick Garland, and he waited 10 months for a hearing which never came.
Wait, you say, can they do that? Well yes, although no Senate in our 240 year history to that point, had ever done such a thing. Wait you say, so that means the Republican-controlled Senate stole that vote and gave it to Trump? Yup. So who is this Neil Gorsuch guy?
Well, no surprise I guess, he's a Conservative Republican because he was nominated by Trump - although no one knows what Trump is, as he's hard to pin down on his ideology (mostly it's whatever gets people to cheer at rallies). So what does that mean for the future if Gorsuch gets appointed to the empty seat? You probably know that many Supreme Court decisions in the last decade have been decided 5-4. Five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices vote one way, and the four Democratic-appointed justices vote the other way. Citizens United was a 5-4 decision.
If you're unhappy about that... If you think the Senate should not steal seats... If you think 5-4 decisions are not in the best interest of the views and desires of the country as a whole - you need to call your Senators today (1844-241-1141) and tell them not to vote for Gorsuch, or to vote "no" and replace that nominee with the rightful nominee, Merrick Garland. I hate to tell you it is mostly a lost cause, as Gorsuch is almost certainly going to get approved by the Republican Senate and 5-4 rulings in favor of the rich, and against the wishes that most Americans would prefer, will continue.
Think about all that next time you go to the polls.
Here's that video
But it's bigger even than Citizens United. A way to solve this problem, is in a bipartisan way. Here's how.
So get after it - by going here and joining!
Parsing the meaning and logic of the Comey and Rogers hearing today Watching the hearings on CNN today, I am struck that one of two things is true: A substantial problem exists with relation to Trump and Russia and is being investigated There is no provable problem with relation to Trump and Russia and is still being investigated We will not know, of course, which is true today, as neither Comey nor...
Podcast Review: Sam Harris, Forbidden Knowledge Having never gotten through a couple of attempts to read Charles Murray's book, The Bell Curve, I - like many I suspect - formed my opinion about him as a likely racist from popular press. You will recall the terrible treatment he got at Middlebury College recently, when trying to discuss his new book. Listening to him discuss The Bell...
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Archive for Graham Greene
Posted in FILM with tags Andrew McCarthy, Bill Conti, Dick Cavett, Graham Greene, James T Aubrey, John Frankenheimer, John Williams, Sharon Stone, Star Wars, The Third Man, Year of the Gun on February 6, 2016 by dcairns
Another day, another bad John Frankenheimer movie. But he directs the shit out of all of them, I have to say — total commitment.
YEAR OF THE GUN. A film about Italy’s Red Brigade, made from an American perspective with a British screenwriter and producer seems an odd proposition, especially in 1991. The film is set in 1978 but is petrified of seeming like a period movie — the seventies didn’t come back into style until the late nineties so there are lots of students with short hair in this. The only obvious attempt at evoking period is to have the protags take shelter in a cinema showing STAR WARS — composer Bill Conti, he of the cheesy synths, attempts a tinny paraphrase of John Williams in the lobby, which is hilarious.
The British input may account for the hero’s lack of heroism — harking back to Graham Greene, we like our American heroes baffled and impotent. But Holly Martins in THE THIRD MAN is also funny and sweet. Here we have Andrew McCarthy, whose character isn’t dumb like Holly, but isn’t endearing either. McCarthy doesn’t burn with screen charisma, and looks like a baby potato, but may be underrated as an actor — he does extremely good outrage. He just doesn’t pull us in, and the script gives us no reason to care — we have to wait for Sharon Stone to turn up, which takes ages, and then things do get a bit more exciting. Seeing this, I wonder she didn’t really get noticed earlier. Frankenheimer responds to her ferocity.
No dutch tilts in this one, but some extreme deep focus and wide angle lenses and slomo and a lot of sweeping camera moves. None of which redeems the lacklustre and unfocused narrative — I don’t think the script is underdeveloped, I suspect it’s been overcooked with too many notes and rewrites. The sex scenes are awful — Frankenheimer applies himself with gusto, but they have no plot role to serve, they’re like the potter’s wheel interludes on old TV, only with tits.
Frankenheimer movies either end with violence — like, BANG! bad guy dead The End — or they end with television. Like a man obsessed, Frankenheimer couldn’t help returning to his first medium, which he had been forced out of by James T Aubrey. This one has Dick Cavett turn up at the end to interview the protagonists, a pointless and distracting bit of gimmickry, accompanied by Frankenheimer’s favourite device, the frame-within-a-drame TV set…
Close in on TV screen. Static. Everything always comes back to white noise with Frankenheimer — the roar of emptiness.
Casanova in Greeneland
Posted in FILM, literature with tags Fellini, Fellini Casanova, Graham Greene, Joseph L Mankiewicz, Robert Krasker, Ruggiero Mastroiannai, Satyricon, The Quiet American, William Hornbeck on October 1, 2014 by dcairns
I’ve been looking at Mankiewicz, Joseph L, as the New York Film Fest is doing a retrospective and I was asked to write something for The Forgotten, which you can read about on Thursday. As part of my viewing, I was startled to discover that Fellini stole the opening of CASANOVA from Mankiewicz’s THE QUIET AMERICAN.
TQA is a Graham Greene adaptation set in Viet Nam, photographed by Robert Krasker (THE THIRD MAN) in inky b&w, whereas CASANOVA is a carnivalesque biography of the Italian libertine, poet, diarist and spy, so the two would seem pretty far apart. But both begin with celebrations, and what Mankiewicz and his team make of Chinese New Year in Saigon seems to have strongly influenced Fellini’s take on the Venice Carnival. Obviously, both events have certain elements in common — Mankiewicz centres his scene on a canal (he loved Venice, and filmed there), and there are masks and fireworks and bells and singing and chanting. It’s not surprising that the Fellini scene would contain all those features.
And it is POSSIBLE that the way veteran editor William Hornbeck fragments Mankiewicz’s scene, with near-subliminal flash-cuts of firecrackers exploding against the night sky, suggested itself to Fellini and his editor, Ruggiero Mastroianni independently. And the jumbled, jangled soundtrack, so very reminiscent, certainly owes something to what these celebrations naturally sound like, though Fellini’s is more elaborately layered and stylised.
But when a Chinese dragon’s head fell from a bridge and floated down the canal, I felt a distinct deja vu. The image of Venus rising from the waters like Martin Sheen in APOCALYPSE NOW has a precedent in Fellini’s work — the top half of a vast statue’s head is carried through the streets in a moment in SATYRICON, so it was a partial image in the maestro’s mind already. But I think the combination of similarities is fairly overwhelming — nothing is proven, you understand, but direct influence seems to me more likely than not.
And I’m still surprised — Mankiewicz influencing Fellini?
Pinky on Parade
Posted in FILM, literature with tags Graham Greene, James Mason, Lionel Atwill, Lucie Mannheim, Steven Geray, The 39 Steps, The High Command, Thorold Dickinson on September 17, 2011 by dcairns
Lionel “Pinky” Atwill displays his enantiodromic approach to acting.
Interest in Thorold Dickinson seems to be on a continual rise, which is a good thing in my book. Now we have his first feature as solo director available, THE HIGH COMMAND. Produced by Fanfare Films, a fly-by-night outfit who ceased trading after their single movie, it’s a military mystery/courtroom drama starring Lionel “Pinky” Atwill as a general with a shady past, Lucie Mannheim (THE 39 STEPS) as the rich wife of pathologically jealous Steven Geray, and a young, skinny James Mason as a dashing officer who romances her. It all comes to a head when a sleazy British military doctor is murdered, and the events take place in a West African colony on the Gold Coast.
Despite a meagre budget, Dickinson insisted on grabbing some authentic location shots, and he folds them into the studio stuff with cunning, if transparent artifice. His background as an editor reveals itself with jokey use of sound and snazzy transitions, and if the plot is a somewhat contrived affair (last-minute re-writes were required to appease the censor, who objected to anything showing British officers in a bad light), it’s consistently entertaining.
Otto (PEEPING TOM) Heller’s cinematography produces some striking moments, and even the sequence where documentary shots of a firelit native ceremony is intercut with studio closeups of the Brit stars is reasonable effective. The trouble is, of course, that the location material has unavoidable rough edges, which nobody would dream of replicating in the studio material, so a certain clash of styles is inevitable. One appreciates the effort, though, and Dickinson’s foreign travel opened his eyes to the realities of colonial life, which fed into the film’s lightly satiric attitude.
In particular, Graham Greene’s review singled out a scene where a colossal gust of wind blasts through the colonial club while the national anthem is being played, and nobody can close a window or suppress a billowing tablecloth as everybody’s too bust standing to attention. My Dad reports than in the ‘forties, during his film-going youth, the national anthem was played at the end of every programme at the local Odeon, and there’d be a stampede by the audience to get out before it started, otherwise you’d be stuck standing to attention for the full six verses. It’s fascinating: everybody knew it would be disrespectful not to stand, but it was considered perfectly respectful to elbow your way out of the auditorium at high speed to avoid standing.
These Britons are crazy.
Buy THE HIGH COMMAND here: The High Command [DVD]
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Links: 2008-10-31 [del.icio.us]
By Edward Harrison On Nov 1, 2008
Our News Feed
Many Homeowners Think They’re Immune to Price Declines – Real Time Economics“We’re seeing a fascinating distinction in consumer psychology — on the one hand, homeowners appear to understand the reality of today’s economy and are curbing their household spending, but on the other hand they still arent ready to admit that these woes might extend to their own homes,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics. “There’s clearly still some denial.”
RIM BlackBerry Bold 9000 – PC WorldThe BlackBerry Bold 9000, Research in Motion’s formidable contender in the 3G market, has finally arrived.
How Long Does it take for an Home Computer to Break your Password – Digital InspirationIf you like to know how long will it take for an average home computer to guess your password, try the Hackosis calculator. Just type in the count of various characters (lowercase, uppercase, numbers, etc.) and the tool will give you a time estimate.
Spain on brink of recession as GDP shrinks – FTSpanish economic output contracted 0.2% in the third quarter from the previous three months and slowed 0.9% year-on-year, according to provisional data that suggested the country is on the brink of recession
U.S. consumers’ mood posts record drop – ReutersNEW YORK (Reuters) – Consumer confidence suffered its steepest monthly drop on record in October, a survey showed on Friday, as the worst financial crisis in generations continued to take its toll.
Blogonomics: The Cost-Benefit of Bloggers – Felix SalmonIf you are going to invest in your own editorial content, bloggers are often a very smart way to go. They’re lean, since they need very little editing and often work from home. They build a reliable readership: in a world where loyal readers are defined as those who visit five times a month or more, blogs often get readers coming back more than once a day.
Volkswagen Says `Worst May Be Yet to Come’ for China Car Market – BloombergOct. 31 (Bloomberg) — Volkswagen AG, the biggest overseas carmaker in China, said the “worst may be yet to come” for the country’s auto market after industrywide sales dropped for the first time in three years.
Mirable Dictu! Wall Street May Start to Rein in Compensation – Yves SmithJohn Whitehead, former co-chairman of Goldman, who with John Weinberg, presided over the firm when it went from being a commercial paper dealer and institutional equity broker to a top investment bank, decried Wall Street compensation levels in a Bloomberg interview.
New Mortgage Recuse Proposal to Kick Can Down the Road a Few Years – Yves Smith
Referendum on Trickle-Down – E.J. Dionne, Washington PostFor all of the McCain campaign’s relentless use of guilt-by-association techniques, the 2008 campaign is concluding on a remarkably substantive argument. It is a debate about what constitutes social fairness and whether a top-down or a bottom-up approach to economic growth will define the country’s future.
Naomi Klein: The Bush gang’s parting gift – a final, frantic looting of public wealthIf you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700bn bail-out out the door. “How much of it do you think may be actually spent by January 20 or so?”
ECB cash helps banks regain confidence as Euribor rates are cut – Irish InependentEuribor, the euro rate that banks charge each other for three-month loans, fell more than 3 basis points to 4.79pc, the lowest level since last April, according to the European Banking Federation.
Our banks need to be recapitalised at once, says top businessman – Irish IndependentSenior Irish businessman Philip Lynch said Irish banks “need to be recapitalised immediately” so they can begin lending again and shore up the economy, which has fallen into recession.
Motorola cuts 3,000 jobs and delays spin-off – FTMotorola is cutting 3,000 jobs and delaying the spin-off of its loss-making mobile phone business after suffering a $397m loss in the third quarter amid a dramatic fall in handset sales
Australia, New Zealand Dollars Set for Worst Month Since 1980s – BloombergOct. 31 (Bloomberg) — The Australian and New Zealand dollars were set for the biggest monthly declines since the mid- 1980s after concern the global economy will slip into recession prompted investors to dump the nations’ higher-yielding assets.
Tenneco to Eliminate 1,100 Jobs, Close Four Factories – BloombergOct. 29 (Bloomberg) — Tenneco Inc., the world’s largest maker of automobile exhaust systems, said it will cut 1,100 jobs and close four North American plants and an engineering center in Australia to reduce costs.
Pension fund gap hits $100bn – FTU.S. companies will need to inject more than $100bn into their pension funds to cover market losses, putting them in a cash squeeze at a time when it is difficult to raise money.
Seumas Milne: U.S. elections – those who want real change will have to fight to get it – GuardianWe’ve got so used to the idea, it’s easy to discount it. But if Barack Obama is elected U.S. president on Tuesday, the symbolic impact at least can hardly be overestimated.
UK consumer confidence worst in 34 years – Irish IndependentU.K. consumer confidence dropped in October close to the weakest level since at least 1974 as the financial crisis spooked British shoppers, GfK NOP said.
ECB lending surges to record $1 trillion for second day running – Irish IndependentThe European Central Bank’s lending to financial institutions surged to a record, breaching the $1 trillion mark for a second day, after it pumped extra cash into the banking system to ease a funding gridlock.
Mortgage lending growth at 22 year low – Irish IndependentIrish mortgage lending advanced at the slowest pace in 22 years in September as falling house prices deterred buyers and the credit crunch restricted access to funds.
GM, Chrysler merger on hold as aid hopes fade: sources – ReutersNEW YORK/DETROIT (Reuters) – A deal to merge General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC has hit an impasse after the Bush administration ruled out funding for it, three people with direct knowledge of the talks said.
Oil sinks towards $63, set for record monthly slide – ReutersLONDON (Reuters) – Oil fell more than $2 to below $64 a barrel on Friday and in line with other markets was on track to post its biggest monthly fall yet.
Rate cut from Japan, Barclays seeks funding – ReutersLONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan cut interest rates for the first time in seven years on Friday, expecting severe stress in the global economy to persist, while UK banking giant Barclays said it was raising $12 billion in capital.
We’re All Bankers Now. So Why’s the A.T.M. Still Charging Us $2? – Deal BookAccording to the back of the envelope calculations of The New York Times’s Clyde Haberman, each taxpayer in this country has a $1,785.71 ownership share in the banks of America. This figure is based on the $250 billion that the Treasury Department is investing in banks to prod them to start lending again.
Eurozone inflation falls to 3.2% – BBC NewsInflation across the 15 nations that share the euro fell to 3.2% last month, data shows,
Reverse carry trade borrowing is deadly
Fifth Third takes on assets of Freedom Bank
Tech News: 2014-06-04
Tech links: 2013-06-04
Wag the Dog says 11 years ago
I’m shocked! Shocked! That you didn’t include the most important intevention in the economy this week. A christian group prays to God for the US economy. Unfortunately they chose to do so around the bronze bull on Wall Street. Not sure how God’s gonna interpret this, but I don’t fancy spending the next few decades wandering around a financial desert.
Oil Company says 11 years ago
i know many people are shocked by the oil price drop. some experts say don’t worry about oil shortages, while others say a crisis is on the horizon.
we’re doing our part by drilling along the gulf coast. best of luck to us all in finding enough oil on American soil.
Links: On price stability, mobile competition and the…
News Links: Will Spain spark an EU anti-austerity crusade?
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DFS College Football Week 11
November 9 | 7:51 am
I had a great time this past weekend at the Florida/Georgia football game, but still missed following along with all of the action all day long Saturday. There were people “making love” in the ocean, girls in thongs on the beach (**cough here’s an idea for the banner, boss. cough***) editors note: this is a family website, Chris. We cannot post pictures of girls in thongs, children are reading…continue…, never ending drinking games, and even a few rational football fans to talk to. But there was a part of me that was missing 200+ pound dudes scoring touchdowns and making big tackles. I’m not sure what that says about me to be honest, but I’ll move along and hope my head is okay.
This past week’s top CFB plays seemed to go off really well, so I think I’m going to do the same this week. I’m not going to sit here and tell you to play Johnny Football or Marcus Mariota each week because those are just obvious plays. Anyone could tell you that. I’m starting to look more at value plays and give you the guys I think have tremendous upside. Think of my top 10’s more as the ten players you need to take a deeper look at this week OR are just too good to avoid, no matter if they’ll be 75% owned. Variance can be your friend and finding those sneaky plays is what ultimately will push you into having a big weekend.
**DraftKings pricing on all selections for DFS College Football Week 11
1. Clint Chelf Oklahoma State $4,750– Chelf is coming off a huge 35 fantasy point game against Texas Tech. That Red Raiders defense is a lot better than ones in the past; so don’t shrug off this performance. Against Kansas, he’ll face a much worse defense and a better matchup. The Jayhawks give up 32 points per game this season. This Kansas defense isn’t the worst against passing offenses lately only giving up 6 TDs through the air in their last three games, but Chelf will provide value on the ground as well. For under 5k, I can’t find a safer QB play to get 20 points than Chelf.
2. Tyler Murphy Florida $3,250– This is not a typo. I like Tyler Murphy this weekend against Vanderbilt. They are giving up 30 points per game and have given up 9 passing TDs in the last 3 games. Yes, Aaron Murray was blanked against them, but have you seen the UGA WRs? I don’t think Murphy is going to break out for the Gators and go Clint Chelf on us, but do I see 15-20 points this weekend? Yes. The Gators running backs haven’t impressed me at all and I think Vandy is just good enough to force them to have to pass the ball.
3. Nathan Scheelhaase Illinois $5,750– I don’t usually use Scheel, but against Indiana it’s hard to pass up a guy like him. He has had some very good games this season (4 TDs against Cincinnati and 5 TDs against the Miami Redhawks). I think he can easily repeat that against the Hoosiers who are giving up almost 38 points per game and given up at least 42 points in 4 of their last 5 games. Scheel is a dual threat and although he lost his best WR, he wasn’t a big enough threat to hamper Scheel’s value Saturday.
4. Joshua Dobbs Tennessee $2,500– I have Dobbs as my top bare minimum QB and I think he’s good enough to just forget about Patton Robinette of Vandy. Last weekend against Missouri, he threw for 240 yards and ran for another 45. He had two interceptions, and still was able to put up 11 fantasy points. I think that’s the minimum he’ll get against Auburn who will not be as effective as Missouri was at stopping the UT run game. Rajion Neal should be much better than 8 carries for 8 yards which should allow Dobbs to be more effective.
5. Brandon Allen Arkansas $3,000– Ok, so most weekends there is little reason to put Allen in my top 10, but this weekend I’m thinking real outside the box. He’s almost bare minimum and although faces an average defense I think he’ll do better than people think. He has been banged up this season, but is nowhere near as banged up as Ole Miss is. Ole Miss is currently looking at 10 defensive players hurt from their last game and all are currently questionable for the game against Arkansas. They aren’t all starters, but some of their bigger names are banged up and this should be a good thing for Allen.
6. Brett Hundley UCLA $9,000– For a second you thought I was going crazy didn’t you? No, I didn’t forget about the big boys this weekend. Hundley is super consistent and faces Arizona who just gave up a nice game to Jared Goff of California. This game should be decently tight which should mean a full game for Hundley. UCLA is having trouble with their run game giving Hundley more chances for TDs from the run game. He has 3 TDs on the ground in the last two games and I expect at least one more this weekend.
7. Daniel Sams Kansas State $6,250– In the last two games, KSU has gone away from what made Daniel Sams a potent fantasy threat. Against Texas Tech, the Wildcats will have to get back to the same offensive gameplan that they used to play Baylor tight. They will have to give Sams the ball 20+ times and try to play keep away. This is a fairly risky play, but one that could pay off big if they can keep the game close. If they get behind early then we will see more of the passing threat. I think Sams should be pretty effective running the ball due to guys like Clint Chelf (6/88/2), Blake Bell (9/44/0) and S.B. Richardson (11/49/0) all being moderately effective and worse runners than Sams.
8. Bo Wallace Ole Miss $6,500– Bo Wallace’s value really hinges on the availability of Ole Miss’ two offensive weapons on Saturday. Backup QB and also goal line threat Barry Brunetti and Jeff Scott are both questionable to play against Arkansas. If those two play then there will be less pressure on Wallace and the ball will be spread around more. If these two are out then Wallace will see more goal line carries and more chances to score TDs. He has thrown for 2 TDs and/or 300+ passing yards in 3 of his last 4 games.
9. Dak Prescott Mississippi State $9,000– Dak finds himself with a great matchup against Texas A&M on Saturday, but beware of his surrounding situation. His mother passed away of cancer on Monday and there is no word yet on if he’ll play. I had no idea he was playing so well this season with a mother who was sick. I just found myself a new favorite player. If Prescott does play this weekend he’ll play a TAMU defense that has given up 30 points per game this season and has struggled against other dual threat QBs. Nick Marshall had a brilliant game against the Aggies scoring 4 TDs and 41 fantasy points.
10. Taysom Hill BYU $8,750– Hill has been magnificent in his last two games and his price shows that. If you have the money to spend on him then you should feel pretty safe doing that. He has 89 fantasy points in his last two games, and has a 51 fantasy point game earlier this season. Against Wisconsin should pose a decent threat to a third straight 40 fantasy point game, but in the last 4 games he has really stepped up his game. In the first 4 games of the season, he had 1 TD pass and a game high of 260 yards passing. In the last 4 games though, he has 11 TD passes and a game low of 244 passing yards with a high of 417 yards. He’s hot right now.
1. Tre Mason Auburn $8,250– Mason stepped up big against Arkansas and saw a heavier workload with Nick Marshall seeing less touches on the ground than usual. This is a big thing for Mason because if he keeps getting 32 carries there’s no way he doesn’t have a great game. He has a TD in 8 of 9 games this season, and has 13 total TDs on the season. With Mason going for 22+ fantasy points in 6 of the last 7 games, I consider him the safest play of the day with a high upside.
2. David Cobb Minnesota $3,750– I have a really hard time going against Cobb this weekend. Yes, Penn State’s rushing defense has been pretty good this season, but it doesn’t mean Cobb won’t be successful. When picking a RB, I’m really looking for touches and probability of a TD. Normally against PSU, the RBs I’m looking at don’t get the carries that Cobb will or the goalline touches either. Cobb has averaged 26 carries per game in his last three games, and has a TD. Do I expect Cobb to go for 34 fantast points on Saturday? No, but I do see 20 points for a guy who is less than 4k.
3. Andre Williams Boston College $7,750– I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a big Williams fan. His TD numbers were just too low for me besides his monster game against Army. His last two games though have turned me into a believer. He went for 25 and 31 fantasy points in those two games, and obviously put up impressive numbers. He has run for 338 yards and 3 TDs in those two games and faces a New Mexico State team that is one of the worst in the land. They give up 46 points per game and Williams is clearly what makes Boston College go.
4. Desmond Roland Oklahoma State $4,750– Roland is having one heck of a run during his first two starts this season. He has gone for 27 and 48 fantasy points in those two starts and faces an even better matchup when he goes up against Kansas. Roland has 7 TDs in his last two games and a 3 game TD streak. Oklahoma State has always had a thing for trying to be able to run in the red zone and when they face Kansas they’ll be facing a team that has given up 8 rushing TDs in their last two games and 13 in their last 5.
5. Melvin Gordon Wisconsin $6,000– I think a lot of people are going to be off of Gordon this weekend. The fact that James White outperformed his last week will probably make casual fans think Gordon’s amazing run is over. I’m here to say that this was just a bump in the road. Gordon has a past with Iowa and was getting taunted all day. So, he has a hard time with that kind of adversity. Well, last time I checked Mormons don’t have a reason to hate him, so that means I’m not scared of using him.
6. Tevin Coleman Indiana $6,250– It’s hard not to like a guy that’s going to get 20 touches against Illinois this weekend. The Indiana offense has been putting up some big points lately (42 or more in 4 straight games) and has given up 38 points a game this season. This has the making for a total of 80 points. Coleman has gone for double digits in every game and has 4 games of 25+ fantasy points this season.
7. Bishop Sankey Washington $9,750– Sankey is a stud and there is no other way around it. He has 7 TDs in his last 4 games and faces a team that gave up 23/119/4 to Ka’Deem Carey who is not as talented as Sankey. He has carried the ball at least 27 times in 4 of the last 5 games, so if you can use Sankey this weekend then do so confidently.
8. Javorious Allen USC $4,500– With the news that Silas Redd is undergoing surgery on his knee, Allen’s stock jumps way up. He’s the only RB that they have left at this point really with their top 3 out with injuries. He had a huge game against Oregon State rushing for 3 TDs and 133 yards. He’s going up against a Cal defense that is terrible and weak in all faucets of the game. Allen will be counted on big time due to Kessler not being a big time QB that is able to capitalize on a terrible defense.
**NOTE: Conflicting information being tossed around on Silas Redd. Here are my thoughts so that you are aware as we move towards the weekend. Use caution and stay up to date on his status:
8. Silas Redd USC $5,250– The thought that USC is going to completely tear up Cal only in the air is funny to me. I don’t trust Kessler at all to do anything like that. He’s going to need Redd to run the ball well for a USC win. Since returning from injury, he has been running it very nicely, but he hasn’t found the end zone. It looks like Madden is out, but Allen is another RB who will take some snaps from Redd. On two games on the road, he has 41 carries for 252 yards and 1 TD.
9. Josh Ferguson Illinois $6,500– When looking for someone to replace one of Illinois’ top WRs, I think we forget the fact that Ferguson has good hands. He had 6 catches in his last game and honestly his rushing yards per game lately has been brutal. He has done a lot of damage though through the air and finding the end zone. He has 4 TDs in his last 4 games and is coming off a 2 TD game. Ferguson is going up against Indiana and one of the worst defenses in the Big Ten on Saturday.
10. Bill Belton Penn State $4,500– Like David Cobb, Bill Belton is going to get a ton of carries in the Minnesota/Penn State game on Saturday. He has 85 carries in his last 3 games and it doesn’t seem like Penn State wants to put a lot of pressure on their freshman QB. In what should be a tight ball game, I think Belton will get 25 carries and plenty of action inside the 5. Zach Zwinak is no longer a threat to the running game and it has shown in the last few weeks.
WRs
1. Deontay Greenberry Houston $7,500– Greenberry has had a very successful last 3 weeks scoring 6 TDs during that time and recording 23 catches. He is clearly the #1 WR on the team and is going to see a ton of targets week in and week out. I think most people will be on the players I’ve listed below and forget about Greenberry. Allen Robinson went for 9/143/1 against this same UCF defense, so I can expect Greenberry to do well against them as well.
2. Marquise Lee USC $6,250– Lee hasn’t been his normal self this year due to injuries and QB troubles, but now he’s healthy(ish) and his QB doesn’t suck (as much as early on in the season). He faces one of the worst teams against the pass when he faces Cal on Saturday. On the season, the Golden Bears are giving up 43 points per game. I think at worst we’re looking at a 20-point game from Lee with a ceiling of 40 points. I’ll take risk on most nights.
3. Tyler Boyd Pittsburgh $4,750– Remember when Tyler Boyd was 7-8k and we were using him? Well, a rough few weeks has dropped his price to this level and he’s not a lock anymore. Last week he went for a big game catching 11 passes for 118 yards and a TD. I honestly think Boyd is fine and should be great this weekend. He had a TD against Navy, a bad game against ODU, and then a really bad game against VT. Playing against VT is one of the toughest things a young WR can go through so that’s a pass for me. Notre Dame can be vulnerable against the pass as seen against ASU, Oklahoma, and Michigan where they gave up 34 points or more.
4. L’Damian Washington Missouri $5,250– This play gains more traction to me if James Franklin ends up playing on Saturday. Mauk has been good to him, but Frankling and Washington had a really good thing going when he got hurt in that UGA game. Even with Mauk, Washington has a TD in every game but 2 this season. In the 4 games before Franklin’s injury (including UGA) Washington had 6 TDs on 21 catches and eclipsed 65 receiving yards in each game.
5. Allen Robinson Penn State $7,750– Robinson has been electric this season and especially lately. He is averaging the second most receiving yards per game on the season and has 6 TDs on the season. In his last 4 games, he has eclipsed 11 catches and 165 yards in each of them. Yea, you could say that’s impressive. Against Minnesota you’ll see a slower game, but that has never stopped Robinson. Even in a huge blowout against Ohio State he went for 12/173/1. He seems to be matchup proof these days.
6. Spencer Harris Illinois $3,500– Harris is one of my sneakiest plays on the day. He had 10 catches last game and has gone for double digits in each of his last 3 games. I’m sure nobody is talking about him, so make sure to roster him if you’re looking for an outside of the box play. Scheelhaase has to throw to someone against an Indiana team that is giving up 38 points per game. I suspect Harris will see a lot of targets on Saturday to make up for Lankford being injured.
7. Mike Evans Texas A&M $7,750– Evans is one of those guys that consistently scares the crap out of me when I use him. He was nonexistent basically in the first half against UTEP and then out of nowhere he catches a TD pass and then goes back into hibernation. He has the ability to go for a huge game as we have all seen, and against Mississippi State, I think TAMU will be challenged more than people think. The reason why I have him ranked this low is more because of the consistency of players that are priced around him than his potential or talent.
8. Paul Richardson Colorado $6,000– Richardson is a consistent target for Colorado’s QB and he has 22 catches in 3 games since Sefo was named the starting QB. He has a TD in each game and 2 big plays (75 and 60 yard catches). Washington is struggling in their last few weeks and Richardson is going to get plenty of looks. $6,000 is a nice discounted price for him and people are kind of off of him these days.
9. Jameon Lewis Mississippi State $5,000– Lewis has been getting consistent catches (7 catches in 3 of his last 4 games), but he’s not getting a lot of yardage. His production relies on red zone targets and the rushing attempts he gets each week. He has 8 carries in his last 3 games which isn’t too bad and against TAMU I suspect Mississippi State to do some funky things on offense. I think they’ll do pretty well offensively and Lewis has 30+ point potential with how bad TAMU’s defense can be.
10. Shane Wynn Indiana $4,750– Wynn is not a high catch guy (3 straight games of 4 catches), and he doesn’t get yardage so why is he listed here? Well, he has 3 TDs in his last two games and faces Illinois in a game that should have 80 points scored in it. Wynn has 16 fantasy points or more in each of his last 4 games and has found the end zone 5 times during that span. I like his ability to score in what should be such a high scoring game.
1. Jace Amaro Texas Tech $7,000– This guy is a beast. That is all.
2. Jacob Pederson Wisconsin $3,500– Pederson has 2 TDs since his return from injury 3 games ago. His price has run up a decent bit, but he’s still averaging just over 12 fantasy points per game since his return. He seems like a lock for 3 catches and 30 yards which isn’t much, but with all of those red zone targets he seems to get there’s a good chance for another TD Saturday.
3. Maxx Williams Minnesota $2,500– Williams has been great in 2 of his last 3 games and Nelson/Leidner are starting to look his way more. He is coming off one of his better games last weekend against Indiana where he put up a 4/78/1 stat line. Nelson looks to have taken over the starter role and the majority of snaps which is great for Williams because he’s the better passer.
Got something in mind you want to add to this College Football DFS Week 11 discussion? Why not throw it up and bring it to the table in the most active DFS College Football Forum on planet Earth? We want to hear from you!
Insider Fantasy
The Silas Redd/Allen situation is weird. Keep an eye on it, but for now it SEEMS like they are splitting carries (not that that’s THAT bad of a thing).
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Geofencing API
Provide useful information to your users when they are near an area of interest.
Provide contextual experiences when users enter or leave an area of interest
Sometimes users want to use a particular app when they are in a specific type of location, such as an airport, or a supermarket. However, users have to navigate to that app and then take a specific action within it while they are near the area of interest.
The geofencing API allows you to define perimeters, also referred to as geofences, which surround the areas of interest. Your app gets a notification when the device crosses a geofence, which allows you to provide a useful experience when users are in the vicinity.
For example, an airline app can define a geofence around an airport when a flight reservation is near boarding time. When the device crosses the geofence, the app can send a notification that takes users to an activity that allows them to get their boarding pass.
The Geofencing API intelligently uses the device sensors to accurately detect the location of the device in a battery-efficient way.
Receive notifications when users trigger your geofences
Easily create and start monitoring geofences
You can create a list of geofence objects by setting the latitude, longitude, radius, duration, and transition types of each geofence. The transition types indicate the events that trigger the geofence, such as when users enter or exit a geofence.
Once you have a list of geofences, you can add it to a geofencing request. When it's time to start monitoring the geofences, add the request to a geofencing client along with a PendingIntent object, which tells the API how to deliver the geofencing events to your app.
Perform an action when users trigger a geofence
The Geofencing API delivers the events to an IntentService in your app, which removes the need to have a service running in the background for geofencing purposes. The service is only invoked when there's relevant information.
Your service receives the geofencing event from the Intent, including the list of geofences triggered. You can specify your own logic to decide what actions to take.
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Presented By: Meridian Capital Group
Meridian’s NY Institutional Investment Sales Team to Sell Madison Ave Retail Condominium
Meridian team to market 189-199 Madison Avenue, a retail condominium leased to a diversified roster of neighborhood tenants with potential upside
By Meridian Capital Group January 9, 2019 12:07 pm
189-199 Madison Avenue
Meridian Capital Group announced today that its Institutional Investment Sales Group, led by Helen Hwang, has been tapped to sell the retail condominium located in base of the luxury 166-unit Goodhue House at 189-199 Madison Avenue and 43 East 34th Street. Encompassing over 17,000 square feet, including approximately 11,000 at grade, the retail condo offers an investor both the potential for upside from below market rents and stability from long-term leases, as well as the potential for upside from below market rents in a submarket poised for near-term growth. 189-199 Madison Avenue is 100 percent leased to seven service-based tenants, including FedEx Kinkos, Chocolat Michel Cluizel and Eden Wok.
SEE ALSO: Meridian’s Investment Sales Team to Market Value-Add Murray Hill Rental Building
Offering an outstanding 150 feet of avenue frontage, 189-199 Madison Avenue is situated in an area that is rapidly evolving as a result of transformative high-end condominium and office developments. With an average tenant tenure of over 17 years, and over four years remaining on the in-place leases on average, 189-199 Madison Avenue offers a stable cash flow in a dynamic and desirable retail corridor that is outperforming Manhattan retail overall.
“The opportunity to control nearly an entire block front of retail space on Madison Avenue is such a rarity,” said Helen Hwang, Senior Executive Managing Director and Head of Meridian’s Institutional Investment Sales Team.
Helen Hwang, Senior Executive Managing Director of Meridian’s Institutional Investment Sales group can be reached at (212) 468-5930 or hhwang@meridiancapital.com.
Founded in 1991, Meridian Capital Group is America’s most active debt broker and one of the nation’s leading commercial real estate finance advisory firms. In 2017, Meridian closed over 3,000 loans totaling more than $32 billion in transaction volume with 243 unique lenders, equating to $123 million per business day. Since inception, the company has closed more than $300 billion in transactions with the full complement of capital providers, including local, regional and national banks, CMBS lenders, agency lenders, mortgage REITs, life insurance companies, credit unions and private equity funds. Meridian arranges financing for many of the world’s leading real estate investors and developers and the company’s expansive platform has specialized practices for a broad array of property types including office, retail, multifamily, hotel, mixed-use, industrial, healthcare, student housing and self-storage properties. Meridian is headquartered in New York City with offices in New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Florida and California. www.meridiancapital.com
Keywords: 189-199 Madison Avenue, Chocolat Michel Cluizel, Eden Wok, Fed Ex, Helen Hwang, Investment Sales, Kinkos, Meridian Capital Group, New york city, Retail, sales, Sponsored, sponsored-link
Sales · Office
Onni Group Buys Huntington Beach Office Tower for $97M
By Chava Gourarie
Leases · Sales
Bolour Buys Burger King in Koreatown and Signs 15-Year Tenant
Sales · Mixed Use
Real Estate Investment Firm Buys Warehouse for $25M
By Alex Appel
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2014: Make It Happen!
Google Chrome’s inspiring video from 2011 still rings true. Make it happen! I’ll see you next year.
Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with 2014, Google, Google Chrome, Make It Happen
Internet Explorer Beckons Children Of The ’90s
It’s 2013, and ’90s nostalgia is in full effect. Internet Explorer, once the top web browser worldwide until being overtaken by Google Chrome (and challenged by Firefox), is getting in on the mood with this sentimental video. It’s been garnering a lot of buzz around the Internet, with more than 4,000,000 views on YouTube in three days. The ad taps into wistful memories of us ’90s children, what with Oregon Trail, Super Soakers, L.A. Lights, Hungry Hungry Hippos, and Pogs. The message: you’ve changed and so has Internet Explorer. There’s even a site which takes the Domino’s-esque route of “we know we sucked, but now we’re good.” So will it work? Probably not. Both IE 9 and 10 have gotten positive reviews, but there seems little incentive to change once one is happy with a web browser. It’s a nice try though.
Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with Firefox, Google Chrome, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Internet Explorer, L.A. Lights, Nostalgia, Oregon Trail, Pogs, Super Soakers, The 90s
Google Chrome’s inspiring video from last year still rings very true. Make it happen!
The 2012 Joshys: Part II
The WTF? Award: The commercials that I watched numerous times to figure out what just happened.
Winner: Brad Pitt and Chanel No. 5
Ridiculous and pretentious. Brad Pitt’s wistful acting is decidedly not Oscar-worthy. And primed for parodies.
Honorable mentions: Henry and Aaron’s Central Institute of Technology: This Aussie video is WTF? worthy for an entirely different reason. It’s just awesome and totally unexpected. Probably a great recruiting tool for kids who would want to go to tech school.
Oxy’s Exploding Pimples: Yeah, it’s disgusting. And yeah, these are probably cysts which are more serious and should get medical attention. But the juvenile side of my personality is quite amused.
The “Aww” Award: Simply put, commercials that will make you say “aww.” A decent amount of overlap with The Field of Dreams Award.
Winner: Google Chrome’s “Jess Time”
Google can really pull at the heartstrings. Here, a father and daughter help each other adjust to life’s changes. Sweet, genuine, and just nice.
Honorable mentions: Subaru’s Rainbow and 200,000 Miles: Both ads from Subaru’s “Love” campaign, which seems like it could be a constant contender in this category. The rainbow commercial (titled “Looking for Gold”) captures a father and young daughter in a whimsical and adorable moment. “200,000 Miles” is also cute, but has a deeper meaning about random events and how they can change our lives.
Nike Free “I Would Run To You”: This one had some mixed reviews, as many thought it relied on the formula of an incompetent man (who reminds me of myself) and a super-competent woman. But personally, I find it cute, romantic, and funny. Love will make people do silly and irrational things…maybe even run cross-country. The song is very catchy too.
Purina’s Rain Rescued Cat: If you love cats, you’ll love this one.
The Beautiful Award: Most beautiful visuals in an ad.
Winner: Getty Images “From Love To Bingo”
Sometimes the best stories don’t need any words at all. Love it. From Brazil.
The Explosions in the Sky Award: The most epic of the year. And yeah I know, “epic” is totally overused now. Sorry.
Winner: Audi’s “Ahab”
The first time I saw this commercial, I was like “Well, that was cool, but I feel like I’m missing something.” Then I realized that the whole ad is an homage to Moby Dick (it is called “Ahab” after all). The wide-open vastness of the landscape and lonely narration of the forlorn truck driver makes this one a winner. Manly as hell, too.
Honorable mention: Canadian Paralympics “Unstoppable”: Unstoppable is the right word.
Filed under The Joshys Tagged with Audi, Brad Pitt, Chanel No. 5, Getty Images, Google Chrome, I Would Run To You, Jess Time, Nike, Subaru, The Joshys
Google Chrome’s Sweet “Jess Time” Spot
I usually love Google’s videos, but I wasn’t a fan of Google Chrome’s lame Mark Potter commercial. Judging from the fact that I got clobbered in the comments section, a lot of people did like it though. Luckily, Google is back on their game with this one. “Jess Time” tells the story of a daughter (Jess) and her father (Elliott). We learn that the mother in the family has recently died. Losing a parent seems like an incredibly tough matter…something I don’t want to think about. Even harder would be losing a parent soon before moving to college, a huge transition time. Through various Google Chrome applications, Jess and Elliott help each other adjust to life’s changes. Sweet, genuine, and just nice. The song is “Broken Chair” by Chris and Thomas. And Jess is played by Celeste Arias.
Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with Broken Chair, Chris and Thomas, Elliott, Google, Google Chrome, Jess, Jess Time
Google’s Mark Potter Needs To Let Go And Move On
I like most of Google’s commercials. They’re always sentimental, but they do a great job of showing the sometimes overlooked roles that Google plays in modern life. But this one for Google Chrome is just awkward and creepy. Some might think Mark Potter’s attempt to win back his old girlfriend is sweet, but it fails on a number of levels for me. It comes across as too private…dredging through personal events in their relationship. Why did he document so much of their relationship anyway? At the same time, broadcasting his desperate message to the whole world looks as lame as a Jumbotron marriage proposal. So…how about that coffee? Not this time, Google. And in case you were wondering, the song is “Porch Song” by The Meemies.
6/25 update: Heh, here’s Jen’s spoof response created by UCBComedy. Good stuff.
Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with Awkward, Coffee, Creepy, Google, Google Chrome, Mark Potter, Porch Song, The Meemies
Super Bowl Retrospecticus: Google’s “Parisian Love”
The Super Bowl is one of the few televised events that cuts across demographic boundaries. Unlike other sporting events whose television ratings largely depend on star/market power, the Super Bowl always gets a huge audience regardless of the teams involved. So it’s not a surprise that it’s the biggest (and most expensive) night of the year for advertising. With that in mind, I introduce the Super Bowl Retrospecticus, where I discuss notable commercials of Super Bowls past. I’m limiting this only to ads I actually remember.
Google was long known as a company who did not advertise. In 2010, they aired their first national commercial, “Parisian Love”, during Super Bowl XLIV.
“Parisian Love” was actually created months before the Super Bowl as part of Google’s “Search Stories”. These involved the intriguing, yet extremely simple concept that people search for things of current relevance to them, and when put together in linear fashion, the search terms tell a story. In the case of “Parisian Love”, it was the tale of a romance starting in Paris. The unseen guy is charming…he misspells Louvre, wants to find out about truffles and Truffaut, and searches for advice to cope with a long-distance relationship. Soft and inviting music plays throughout. We discover that the couple ends up getting married and the final search “how to assemble a crib” puts a heartwarming end to the story (with a baby’s giggle). Elegant, romantic, and beautiful, it was a hit which ranked #4 in ADBOWL 2010.
The success of “Parisian Love” led to Google stepping up its advertising. And Google has done a great job. There was a similarly heartwarming Search Story called “Graduation”. Last year’s “Dear Sophie” was a huge online hit for Google Chrome. The Muppets did a Google+ commercial, and who doesn’t love the Muppets? And I just saw the seriously inspiring “Make It Happen” spot. This is just a small sampling of Google’s awesome commercials/videos, and I’m looking forward to what they’ll have for the Super Bowl.
Filed under Super Bowl Retrospecticus Tagged with Dear Sophie, Google, Google Chrome, Graduation, Make It Happen, Parisian Love, Search Stories, Super Bowl, The Muppets
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ConservativeHome's Seats & Candidates blog
Jack LoPresti and other candidates news
A-Lister and Bristol Councillor, Jack LoPresti, was selected last night as our candidate for the new seat of Filton and Bradley Stoke. Of the seat Anthony Wells writes:
"A new seat in South Gloucestershire, based on a former part of the Bristol North West seat and parts of Kingswood and Northavon. The seat is likely to be quite a tight three way marginal. Notional 2005 result C 14,742 L 13,541 LD 11,243 Conservative Majority 1,201 (2.9%)"
As well as being a member of The Freedom Association, Councillor LoPresti apparently knows everything there is to know about General George Patton (see this pdf)!
Following Chris Heaton-Harris' selection for Daventry (universally applauded on this blog) there is an extra space on the Folkestone & Hythe shortlist and A-lister Simon Walker (as first reserve) will take it.
Dizzy reports that Michael Portillo will be interviewing the candidates at the Eltham constituency (in accordance with the new selection formats required by the party).
Jonathan Isaby of The Telegraph will be the interviewer for Saturday's York Outer selection. The three contenders are...
Kevin Hollinrake (A-List)
Julie Moody (A-list)
Julian Sturdy (Harrogate councillor).
June 29, 2006 at 12:16 in In brief | Permalink | Comments (19)
How much does it cost to be a candidate?
Publishing the A-list caused ConservativeHome's traffic to double. It was, of course, the list that nearly every Tory wanted to see. I always tell people, however, that the list of people who told me who was on the list would have been a more interesting one! I say this because I want to underline that I always respect the confidentiality of sources. Always.
If you are a candidate and are willing to share some insight into the costs of being a candidate... I'd be delighted to hear from you. Please email me if you can share information on the costs of being on the candidates list, on finding a seat and then on campaigning for a seat.
This will feed into a forthcoming post about ConservativeHome's campaign to help lower income people become Tory candidates.
Related links: Cash for quality candidates (by Katie Perrior) and Action is needed to help candidates meet the costs of standing for parliament (by Robert Halfon).
June 28, 2006 at 11:38 in Costs of being a candidate | Permalink | Comments (3)
Chris Heaton-Harris selected for Daventry
Christopher Heaton-Harris is a Tory MEP for the East Midlands region. Married with two daughters and a qualified football referee, Mr Heaton-Harris is the fifth A-lister to be selected in seven relevant selection meetings. He is a supporter of the campaign to reinstate Roger Helmer to full membership of the Tory group of MEPs.
June 28, 2006 at 07:22 in Daventry | Permalink | Comments (30)
Daventry shortlist: An MEP, a celebrity Doctor, and a local teacher
News has reached ConservativeHome of the shortlist for tomorrow night's selection in Daventry, a seat that last time had a majority vote share for the Conservatives. It includes local teacher Ben Jeffreys, who isn't on the A-list.
Chris Heaton Harris MEP - also on the Folkestone & Hythe shortlist
Dr David Bull - trained as a doctor before becoming a TV presenter, a high profile supporter of the British Red Cross and Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and co-founding the Incredibull communications agency
Ben Jeffreys - teacher at a local school, has encouraged other candidates left off the A-list not to resort to "hasty recriminations and tearful resignations".
F&H shortlist is all A-list
ConservativeHome has learnt that Folkestone & Hythe Conservative Association (Tory majority of 11,680) has drawn up a shortlist of six in the race to succeed Michael Howard. All six are A-listers:
Harriet Baldwin - fought Stockton North in 2005
Damian Collins - fought Northampton North in 2005
Chris Heaton-Harris - Eurosceptic MEP for the East Midlands *
Brandon Lewis - Leader of Brentwood Borough Council
Kulveer Ranger - Senior management consultant, who wrote about the A list here
Laura Sandys - Political consultant, involved with openDemocracy and the Centre for Defence Studies
* Selected for Daventry
June 26, 2006 at 15:59 in Folkestone and Hythe | Permalink | Comments (18)
1% swing will end Labour's majority
That's the view of an analysis of the finalised boundary changes in today's Times. If the new boundary changes had been in force at last year's General Election, "Labour’s 64-seat victory would have dropped to 44 with several more seats too close to call, The Times has learnt". "However," The Times continues, "the Tories will still need a swing of 9 or 10 per cent (down from 11 per cent) to win an outright majority, meaning that the parties may have to fight for Liberal Democrat support to be able to govern after the next poll." The opposition of Tory grassroots to co-operation with the LibDems was recently examined in a ConservativeHome poll.
June 26, 2006 at 00:33 in Boundary changes | Permalink | Comments (8)
Round up on candidates 25/6/06
This is the latest news that ConservativeHome has on the candidates' front:
A-LIST TOP-UP. The A-list top-up is likely to take place at the end of July (26th to 28th) and the main issues to be resolved are (1) the size of the top-up and (2) whether the names on the top-up will be announced. On (1) the top-up might be as large as 100 additional names. On (2) if the names are kept secret (which is, reportedly, not what Francis Maude wants) then ConservativeHome will have another busy week...
NEXT TRANCHES OF SEATS. 35 very different seats were released to A-listers in the first wave of selecting constituencies. Smaller tranches are expected to be released from now on, but more frequently.
A-LISTERS. Four A-listers have been selected so far: Mel Stride (pictured) in Central Devon (a horrible name for a beautiful constituency); Pauline Latham in Mid Derbyshire; Andrea Leadsom in Northamptonshire South; and Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones in Chippenham. Two women, one black man and a social entrepreneur is a good start for the A-list.
LOCAL CANDIDATES. CCHQ is to be congratulated on the way they are allowing local candidates to apply for first-tranche-seats. This flexibility has meant that seats like Selby and B&C have chosen non-A-listers but it has also avoided big constituency-v-CCHQ confrontations. The one fly in the ointment is the slowness with which certain would-be-local-candidates are getting to Parliamentary Assessment Boards. Without a PAB passport local candidates cannot apply to their local associations. ConservativeHome is aware of at least three people who have been 'excluded' from selections in this way. More associations should, perhaps, follow the lead of Truro and Falmouth whose Assn postponed their selection in order for six people with Cornish connections to have the time to attend PABs. All three final candidates for Lewes are non-A-list locals.
June 25, 2006 at 00:01 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Scottish regional list selection
The Scottish Conservative Candidates' Board and the Scottish Executive have decided on the rules for the List process in 2007.
Only constituency candidates, with a proven commitment to their constituency campaigns, are eligible for ranking in the regional lists. Party members in each of the seven regions will then rank them in a postal ballot.
However, candidates will again be highly restricted in their campaigning activities before and during the ranking period, despite some earlier assurances to the contrary. They are banned from soliciting support from members in any way other than with one A4 piece of paper, one hustings, and a CV sent out with the ballot papers. So members are allowed to have in a say in the rankings, but not to determine their vote by being canvassed or emailed.
This restriction on campaigning will help to entrench sitting regional MSPs who are already better known outside of their own constituencies. Most of the many young and able candidates fighting no-hope constituencies will have little chance of getting the top couple of regional rankings. These proposals have stirred some Scottish activists as much as the Vote blue, get red issue as Holyrood's Conservative group is often accused of having "gone native" and to be in need of new blood.
Brian Monteith MSP advocates a fresh approach to solve the problem:
"We have heard a great deal of tosh about a new Scottish politics that Holyrood would usher in - and it hasn't happened. Open primaries could be the harbinger of that change by working with the Scottish people's innate support for democracy, debate and giving people their say."
Open primaries would also give Conservative MSPs the personal electoral mandates that are lacking in the closed party list system.
Continue reading "Scottish regional list selection" »
June 21, 2006 at 08:57 in Scottish Parliament | Permalink | Comments (24)
Local businessman is selected for Selby & Ainsty
Local businessman and Conservative activist Nigel Adams (who fought Rossendale and Darwen in 2005) last night beat off tough competition to be selected for Selby & Ainsty - a new Lab/Con marginal constituency described as "notionally Conservative".
The seat had 16 initial applicants, at least 11 of whom were A-listers. The other three "finalists" were all A-listers:
Anne McIntosh MP - her Vale of York seat is being split up with true blue Ainsty moving to S & A. She decided to use her right to only enter the process at the final stage, which may have worked against her.
Mark Menzies - a Scottish marketing manager at Asda who fought the similar seat of Selby in 2005, bringing the majority down from 2138 to 467.
Julie Moody - described by the Yorkshire Post as "the wife of a York estate agent who has little campaigning experience but is thought of as a promising future prospect".
The A list provided three solid candidates here, but this became the first selection of the first 35 in which the constituency exercised its right to choose an exceptional local candidate instead.
June 17, 2006 at 19:09 in Selby & Ainsty | Permalink | Comments (25)
William Norton: Is the "A" list turning a corner?
The new A List/Gold List/Priority List has been, shall we say, just a shade controversial. There have been predictions of internal civil war/electoral meltdown/the end of civilisation if the Party either went ahead with the idea, or didn't. There has certainly been a degree of unease if not to say confusion at the constituency association level about how the system is meant to work: Priority List candidates cannot as yet be imposed, but CCHQ would appreciate it if members of the list were given special consideration.
The first few parliamentary selections under the new arrangements have now taken place and we are in a position to form an early view. It seems that there has been a dangerous outbreak of level-headed common sense.
BROMLEY & CHISLEHURST
Short-list: two A-Listers plus 1 local
Outcome: Bob Neil (local) selected
Short-list: 3 A-Listers
Outcome: Mel Stride (A-Lister) selected
MID-DERBYSHIRE
Long-list: 30 candidates, mainly A-Listers
Outcome: Pauline Latham (local A-Lister) selected
CHIPPENHAM:
Outcome: Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones (A-Lister) selected
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE SOUTH:
Outcome: Andrea Leadsom (A-Lister) selected
Continue reading "William Norton: Is the "A" list turning a corner?" »
June 15, 2006 at 08:23 in 'A' list | Permalink | Comments (13)
Mid-Derbyshire chooses local A-lister
Reports that Pauline Latham, a Derby Councillor, has been selected to fight Mid-Derbyshire have now been confirmed. She beat off thirty other candidates, the vast majority of whom also being "A-listers". Matthew Parris chaired proceedings, in a selection process that Pauline described as "rigorous".
UK Polling Report describes the new constituency as:
"An unusually shaped seat, snaking around the North-East of Derby and including the town of Belper. Likely to be a Conservative seat but with the potential of a Labour challenge."
This is perhaps further evidence of the first tranche of seats being tailored to match up with local A-list activists . Pauline fought the nearby seat of Broxtowe in 2001 (also in the first tranche of 35 seats), with a 0.78% swing against her, and the European seat of East Midlands in 1999.
June 14, 2006 at 10:57 in Mid-Derbyshire | Permalink | Comments (25)
Mel Stride is the first A-lister to be selected
All three of the finalists in last night's Central Devon selection meeting were A-listers - Ashley Gray, Hannah Parker and Mel Stride. I met Mel at the Manchester Spring Forum and was hugely impressed with him. Mel has a social entrepreneurial background and a deep commitment to social justice. I send my warmest congratulations to him and commiserations to Hannah, who is a personal friend and a credit to the Alist, and to Ashley Gray, who I don't know at all.
UK Polling Report's guide to boundary change effected seats says this of Devon Central:
"A large rural seat in the centre of Devon, although it will also include some of the outskirts of Exeter. The seat is likely to be a Conservative/Lib Dem marginal.
Notional 2005 result – C 20,474 L 4,980 LD 17,940 Oth 4,091 Conservative Majority 2,534 (5.3%)"
Kulveer Ranger: The A-list is built to last
Kulveer stood against Ian McCartney as PPC for Makerfield at the last general election. He is a senior management consultant, writes a weekly column for a national Asian newspaper and is happiest watching his beloved Tottenham Hotspur football team – especially last season!
There has been a lot of huffing and puffing with regard to the Conservative Party establishing what the media has christened an A-list of prospective parliamentary candidates. Each one of us has our own particular take on the subject and on the candidates who, after a rigorous review, have been identified as those who could lead the charge in key seats at the next general election. We realised that with the selection of David Cameron we advocated a modernising agenda. Well - it was either that or continue on a path that would lead to political oblivion for an increasingly marginalised party. We needed to catch up with and embody modern day Britain. But cometh the first real tangible test of our ‘change’ threshold and we long for the way things were.
It was never claimed or expected that those selected as priority candidates would be universally acclaimed and accepted by the broader membership, especially since there is always a healthy dose of suspicion in the grass roots whenever the central office ‘know-it-alls’ meddle in their selection process. Raised voices have been heard about the criteria for selection, the aptitude of those assessing and the judgement of the new leader who has instigated such a process.
But it was the membership that gave David Cameron his mandate to ‘change’ the party and is now basking in the glow of a ten point lead in the polls and the best local election results since 1992. Mr Cameron has been unflinching is his statements since becoming leader that he expects the ‘change’ within the party to be deeper and wider if it is to be considered genuine and accepted by those outside of the party. Crucially, those voices that have raised concerns have done so with little justification, accept that they are not happy with the names on the list. No opportunity has been given for the so called A-list to prove their worth or even demonstrate their capability. Yes, things have not gone smoothly. The process for applying for the first batch of seats has not gone according to plan. However, this does not mean that the concept is flawed, only that the execution needs to be better managed.
I am proud to say that I am a priority candidate. The gauntlet has been thrown down to me and my colleagues to demonstrate that we embody the spirit of the Conservative Party, not just that of the present ‘change’ agenda but also the core values that all Conservatives hold dear. Some of us may fall short of the mandatory twenty years political experience and some may not even be barristers! But each one of us believes in our ability and we must continue to demonstrate that we have the talent, the passion and the commitment to lead this party to success at the next general election and beyond. We are all determined and focused to ensure that local associations do not consider that they are choosing a priority candidate but the right candidate – the one they want! Associations can still select a ‘local’ candidate if he or she is the right person for the job.
The list is by no means a panacea. It will evolve and grow but I believe it has the potential to deliver what all party members what; a generation of candidates that will be central figures in the future of the Conservative party, the forming of the next government and capable of dealing with the fundamental challenges that our country will face. For my part I am ready, willing and able to represent my party, my constituency and my country.
If you want to respond to this message please note that comments left on this GoldList blog will only be published after they have been checked by the Editor or Deputy Editor.
What next for the A list?
The party’s Priority or A-list of candidates has the worthy aim of increasing the number of women and ethnic minority Conservative MPs. Unfortunately, however, at a time when gross incompetence has become the hallmark of this Labour Government the party’s management of the whole A-list process has failed to inspire confidence.
Fortunately Francis Maude and Bernard Jenkin have begun to show tactical flexibility in its implementation. The David Burrowes critique – that local candidates matter – was pre-empted and many local candidates have been given passports to apply for target seats. Bob Neill’s candidacy in Bromley and Chislehurst - and the fact that Mrs Forth was allowed to apply - most exemplify the party’s very welcome flexibility.
What next? How can full confidence be restored in the candidate selection process? Some back-of-the-envelope recommendations are made below. As always your comments are very welcome.
‘In the beginning’ we were told that local candidates could only apply for seats in exceptional circumstances. Exceptional circumstances have become the norm. The flexible inclusion of local candidates should be allowed to continue. This will ensure that there is no serious rebellion from local associations against the A-list.
The A-list should be doubled in size and the quotas dropped. A bigger A-list will reduce the likelihood of constituency associations receiving an inadequate number of applications. The experience of Telford, Lewes and Richmond Park – among others - was demeaning. Ending the 50/50 target will also restore confidence in the quality of the list. I have spoken to so many Association officers in the last month who believe that every man on the A-list must be of good quality but that some of the women on the A-list are only there to make up the quota. That unfair perception is disadvantaging the many very high quality women who are on the A-list. If the list is doubled to 200 and 75 of the extra 100 candidates are white men, so be it. Let’s just work to maximise the number of those white men who come from diverse regional, professional and educational backgrounds.
A-listers must be required to apply for seats but they must also get more information from CCHQ. Zac Goldsmith has famously failed to apply for any seat. A number of others have only applied for a couple of seats. When people joined the A-list they were told that being part of the list required serious commitment. This is an extract from their letter of ‘congratulations’:
“We are pleased to tell you that you have been appointed a priority candidate. Many congratulations. This does involve an immediate commitment on your part to apply for as many of the winnable seats as you feel able. Remember, being a priority candidate does not guarantee you a seat to fight, nor does it guarantee a place in Parliament. You will still have to go through the selection procedure and in the event of being selected as a Parliamentary Candidate, your commitment to your constituency will be monitored. You must be able to give the time and physical presence necessary in order to provide real leadership in the community and to build up the campaigning capacity of the Conservative Association. Priority candidates who fail to demonstrate commitment or who fail to apply for suitable seats without giving a good reason to the Candidates’ Team may regrettably have to be removed as a priority candidate.”
Why aren’t these requirements being enforced? A-listers have also complained to ConservativeHome that they are receiving very little information from CCHQ. Little guidance on what seats to apply for and little guidance on dealing with the media.
All approved candidates should be put on at least one list from which they can immediately start applying for seats. I would suggest regional lists so that long-standing west country residents can apply in their region and a special City seats list so new, younger candidates can cut their teeth in some of Labour’s urban heartlands. This will motivate the non-A-listers who have hardly received any feedback after ‘failing’ to be a part of the first tranche of A-listers and it will help to avoid more cancellation of selection meetings.
Start investing in serious talent spotting and talent development. My own personal view is that the A-list is of reasonably high quality. My top concern is the limited number of candidates from northern seats and unconventional backgrounds. The party needs a talent spotting academy – ideally based in a northern city – to find and develop the candidates of tomorrow.
Bursaries. Robert Halfon and Katie Perrior have both recommended financial help for lower income candidates. Bernard Jenkin has said that he is precoccupied with the importance of this issue.
Let’s move fast. David Burrowes’ excellent pamphlet had two messages: Pick ‘em local and Pick ‘em early. CCHQ needs to move fast to increase the size of the A-list and introduce regional lists. Only then will we have candidates selected soon – having the time to become central to the lives of their constituencies – and on track for victory. In order to “move fast” I think Francis Maude and Bernard Jenkin should be kept in place. They both have a passionate commitment to build a more representative Conservative Party. A change of personnel at this point could easily slow things down. They both deserve to finish the work that they have begun.
Bob Neill wins B&C selection
The London Assembly Member Bob Neill has been chosen to represent the Conservative Party in the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election. The selection of Mr Neill, who has led the Tory group on the assembly and represents Bexley and Bromley on the GLA, is a victory for the right of local associations to choose a local, non A-list candidate.
Although two A-listers of the highest quality reached the final three, there will be some disappointment at Central Office. CCHQ would have relished the prospect of a woman or an ethnic minority candidate (as telegenic as both Syed and Julia) representing the party in this first big parliamentary contest of the parliament.
Mr Neill will help to counter any suggestion by the LibDems that a candidate has been parachuted into B&C. Mr Neill's more positive view of European integration might, however, boost Nigel Farage, UKIP's candidate.
Your comment will only be published after it has been approved by the Editor or Deputy Editor.
June 03, 2006 at 21:40 in Bromley and Chislehurst | Permalink | Comments (125)
Final three in B&C
This is unconfirmed but ConservativeHome understands that the final three candidates for the Tory nomination for the seat of Bromley and Chislehurst are Bob Neill of the London Assembly and two A-listers: Syed Kamall MEP and Julia Manning. Confirmed at 1655.
8pm: The selection meeting began at 7pm. Martyn Lewis, the former newsreader, is hosting a Q&A style event. There is no big speech (in accordance with the new selection guidelines).
June 03, 2006 at 16:23 in Bromley and Chislehurst | Permalink | Comments (29)
What's on the GoldList blog?
David Cameron: Getting more women into Parliament remains top of my agenda
SELECTION BATTLES
Mrs Eric Forth wants to be B&C's next MP
Adam Rickitt is a contender for Folkestone & Hythe
A-list won't rule in Bromley & Chislehurst
Kensington & Chelsea
WHO IS ON THE PARTY'S A-LIST?
A ROLLING UPDATE HERE.
DISCURSIVE POSTS
Christina Dykes and Jo Sylvester: The Conservative Party must start equipping its A-listers and parliamentarians now for the challenges of governing competently
How many A-listers have applied to your local Association?
Most A-listers achieved below average results
A-listers turn their backs on tougher seats
The 'talent spotting' letter
Copy of the 'rejection letter'
Katie Perrior: Cash for quality candidates
Future GoldList candidates will be submitted by you!
Gerald Jones: 'Traditional' Conservatives should propose their 'must-include' A-List candidates
David McIvor is concerned about the speed of candidate selection
Iain Dale argues that the 'Priority List' should include a good number of older and wiser candidates...
Bernard Jenkin MP responds to your objections to an 'A-List' for parliamentary candidates
Robert H Halfon argues that action is needed to help candidates meet the costs of standing for parliament
Christina Dykes and Jo Silvester: To promote or not to promote - that is the question
Andrew Woodman has concerns with proposals for an "A" list of candidates for top target seats.
Theresa May MP argues that Conservatives need Women2Win
If you would like to nominate someone for ConservativeHome.com's GoldList please email [email protected].
June 02, 2006 at 13:56 | Permalink | Comments (3)
David Cameron responds to the controversies caused by his 'Priority List' of parliamentary candidates.
I’m not surprised that there’s a lot of debate about our Priority List. Change is never smooth or straightforward. So here’s my reaction to some of the comments that have appeared on this site and in the press.
Please don’t confuse means with ends. The objective is straightforward: to make the Conservative Party more representative of the country we seek to govern. It’s a total scandal that less than 10% of the Parliamentary Conservative Party is female. I made this point repeatedly in the leadership election and made clear that changing this situation and getting more Conservative women into Parliament was top of my agenda. Party members voted overwhelmingly for this change. Of course we can argue forever about the precise mechanism used to make the change that the Party voted for. No system is perfect. But anyone who believes in Party democracy should wholeheartedly support the drive to get more women and BME candidates selected in safe and winnable seats. We’ve been willing the end; it’s time we willed the means as well.
Please don’t insult the hard-working, dedicated people on the Priority List. This site has published the names of many of the initial selection of priority candidates. Have a look at them. Leaders of councils. Candidates who’ve stood in difficult seats in difficult times. Years of hard graft for our Party. Some with less experience in politics, but with great potential, who need to prove themselves. These people have all been through a Parliamentary Assessment Board or fought hard seats in the past, and then through a further selection process. There’s a wide range of people from a wide range of backgrounds. Our Party believes in opportunity, doesn’t it? Our Party believes in giving people a chance, whatever their background. People should not be criticised because they fail to fit a certain Tory stereotype.
This Priority List is not the end of the process. Many more candidates will be added as selections proceed, both from the existing Approved List and new additions to the Approved List. And we have explicitly provided for Associations to interview outstanding local candidates in addition to those on the Priority List. I know full well that to fight a marginal seat you need to be dug into the local community. You need to be local to begin with, or else you need to get deeply involved in local issues quickly. We need the best candidates to win our most challenging seats. But we also need candidates who when taken together reflect the face of modern Britain rather better than we currently do
Of course, there are many dedicated and loyal people who have not been appointed priority candidates - inevitably many more men than women. I am sorry for them - but I hope they will stay the course. Politics is sometimes a disappointing and brutal business, but it also requires perseverance and resilience. If you are really determined to make it, you are far more likely to succeed than if you despair of the system. Let's face it. Politics is competitive. The problem we had before was that the women were being crowded out by the men. At the last election, we had a list of 25 per cent women. Despite a real effort, we only got 19 per cent of target and Conservative-held seats to select women. Worse still, only 12 per cent of the new in-take were women. We have to accept that our previous processes were consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, discriminatory against women. This also put women off from even trying to become Conservative MPs. I am determined to correct this injustice, which was wrong in principle and bad for our party and for our country. This is about raising our game across the board. It can't be done by excluding so many talented women or people from black and ethnic minorities.
There’s actually been very little opposition from Associations currently selecting candidates. Our members mostly do understand and support what we’re trying to do. Nothing very surprising there. After all, they voted for change last December when they elected me as Leader. And change is what we’re going to deliver.
And incidentally, the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election was never going to be a "test of the 'A' list". Procedures for choosing by-election candidates are completely the same as before and rightly so. The only test of the new arrangements is if Conservative Associations in Conservative-held and target seats choose substantially more women.
If you want to respond to this message please note that comments left on this GoldList blog will only be published after they have been checked by the Editor or Deputy Editor. ConservativeHome's comments policy is posted here.
David Cameron's previous article for ConservativeHome was posted on his 100th day as Tory leader.
June 02, 2006 at 13:55 in 'A' list, Message from David Cameron | Permalink | Comments (62)
Caroll Forth, Eric's widow, is one of the surprise contenders for the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election. Mrs Forth is pictured on the right with Eric at a June 2005 event hosted by Conservative Way Forward. Her name is revealed in today's London Evening Standard (not online) after some good investigative reporting by Paul Waugh. Other contenders named in the LES are:
Colin Bloom, local councillor
Stephen Carr, local councillor
Michael Harris, chairman of association
Syed Kamall, London MEP
Mary Macleod, merchant banker
Julia Manning, optometrist
Bob Neill, leader of Tory group London Assembly
Colin Smith, local councillor
ConservativeHome has been told that former MP Tim Collins is also on the shortlist and has now been told he isn't (14.40).
Mrs Forth - only approved by CCHQ's parliamentary selection process yesterday - leads a strongly localist shortlist. She joins three local councillors and the Association chairman as representatives of the immediate area. The Evening Standard writes:
"Widows have succeeded their husbands as MP very rarely over the past century and Tories believe it would be first instance in their own party. Labour's Anne Cryer took on her husband Bob's former Keighley seat three years after he died in 1994. Labour MP Irene Adams took on Paisley in a 1990 by-election after husband Allen died. Her election would also neatly get Mr Cameron another woman into Parliament, although not through the route he wanted. Mrs Forth is also disabled, suffering from a muscular disease."
"Mrs Forth's lack of campaigning experience makes her an outside bet," according to The Standard. Forecasting constituency selection meetings is no science but the newspaper identifies Bob Neill and Michael Harris as favourites.
Related link: A-list won't rule in Bromley & Chislehurst.
Christina Dykes and Jo Silvester: The Conservative Party must start equipping its A-listers and parliamentarians now for the challenges of governing competently
Jo Silvester PhD is a Professor of Organisational Psychology and a partner of the partner of the Work Psychology Partnership. Christina Dykes MA (pictured) is Political Advisor to Dominic Grieve MP and was Head of Candidates at Conservative Central Office.
So far it has run the predictable political course.
After months of anticipation and much hype the priority list was produced. Its appearance was accompanied by relief for the lucky included, and mutterings of disbelief and disappointment by those excluded. Quickly came the dénouement; practical difficulties are becoming obvious, its validity is being queried and then there will be the pregnant pause as we wait to see whether it will be used by Conservative Associations or not.
Before this final scene plays out let us take stock of what the priority list represents or perhaps more importantly what it could represent. We welcome it as a sign that the Party continues to take the selection of its future MPs seriously. We welcome the fact that the Party (unlike its two main rivals) is prepared to experiment and to test imaginative but fair ways of promoting greater diversity on its Candidates’ list. We welcome that the Party has accepted that the best way of ensuring diversity in the next generation of MPs is on the basis of merit. In particular we welcome that the Party recognises that merit transcends gender and colour.
As a result there are many excellent candidates on the list who deserve to get the full endorsement of the Party as they go forward for selection.
No doubt Conservative Headquarters hope that this will be enough to ensure that they are selected. But will it? Those of us who are alarmed by the growing apathy for politics on the part of the electorate worry that one of the causes is the low esteem in which the public holds politicians. Competence or having the ability to do the job must play a part. We are all too aware that when politicians and, in particular, Ministers fail the fall out in the press is sensational. Look a the debacle in the Home Office at the moment or ask a farmer what he/she thought of Mrs Beckett’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – both good examples of the failure of political leadership to deliver the results the public could expect. Witness the ridicule in the press for John Prescott’s scandalous behaviour. If we are to restore people’s confidence in our political systems we must have politicians that can both deliver and be trusted to deliver.
Although the first step is for political parties to put forward candidates who can represent Britain as it is, the second step is to make certain that those selected and then elected to be MPs are equipped to lead. This means ensuring that they receive the necessary professional development to support them as their career grows. These days training and continuing professional development is central to career progression for most if not all professions. Indeed, for many a failure to comply results in the loss of qualifications and professional status. Yet, it seems that politicians - people who have enormous influence over other people’s lives - are expected by birth alone to be good at their jobs.
Continue reading "Christina Dykes and Jo Silvester: The Conservative Party must start equipping its A-listers and parliamentarians now for the challenges of governing competently" »
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Michael Parsons on Poll boosts Labour hopes of ousting Heather Wheeler MP on back of Siemens trains deal
'A' list
'One hundred Tory peers'
Aberavon*
Aberconwy*
Aberdeen Central*
Aberdeen Donside*
Aberdeen South and North Kincardine*
Aberdeenshire East*
Aberdeenshire West*
Airdrie and Shotts*
Almond Valley*
Alyn and Deeside*
Angus North and Mearns*
Angus South*
Antrim East
Antrim North
Antrim South
Arfon*
Argyll and Bute*
Ayr*
Ayrshire Central
Banffshire and Buchan Coast*
Bedford & Kempston
Bermondsey & Old Southwark
Berwickshire Roxburgh and Selkirk
Birmingham Edgbaston
Birmingham Erdington
Birmingham Hall Green
Birmingham Hodge Hill
Birmingham Ladywood
Birmingham Northfield
Birmingham Perry Barr
Birmingham Selly Oak
Birmingham Yardley
Blackpool North
Blaenau Gwent*
Brecon and Radnorshire*
Brentford & Isleworth
Bridgend*
Brigg & Goole
Brighton Kemptown
Brighton Pavilion
Caerphilly*
Caithness, Sutherland and Ross*
Camarthen West & South Pembrokeshire
Camberwell & Peckham
Camborne Redruth
Cambridgeshire North East
Campaign ideas
Candidate mentoring
Candidates' list
Cardiff Central*
Cardiff North*
Cardiff South and Penarth*
Cardiff West*
Carmarthen East and Dinefwr*
Carmarthen East and Dinfewr
Carmarthen West and Pembrokeshire South
Carmarthen West and Pembrokeshire South*
Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley*
Ceredigion*
Chatham & Aylesford
Chicken Watch
City of London and Westminster
City Seats Initiative
Clackmannanshire and Dunblane*
Clwyd South*
Clwyd West*
Clydebank and Milngavie*
Clydesdale*
Coatbridge and Chryston*
Constituency Associations
Cornwall North
Cornwall South East
Costs of being a candidate
Cowdenbeath*
Cumbernauld and Kilsyth*
Cunninghame North*
Cunninghame South*
Cynon Valley*
Dagenham & Rainham
Dale's Tours
David McIvor
Delyn*
Derbyshire NE
Devon North
Diary of a PPC
Diversity of candidates
Down North
Dulwich & West Norwood
Dumbarton*
Dumfriesshire*
Dunbartonshire East
Dunbartonshire West
Dundee East*
Dundee West*
Dunfermline*
Durham North
Durham North West
Dwyfor Meirionnydd*
Ealing Southall
East Kilbride*
East Lothian*
East Thurrock & South Basildon
Eastwood*
Edinburgh Central*
Edinburgh Eastern*
Edinburgh North & Leith
Edinburgh Northern and Leith*
Edinburgh Pentlands*
Edinburgh Southern*
Edinburgh Western*
Election Betting
Ellesmere Port & Neston
Erith & Thamesmead
Esher & Walton
Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire*
European election candidates
Falkirk East*
Falkirk West*
Fife Mid and Glenrothes*
Fife NE
Fife North East*
Finchley & Golders Green
Galloway and West Dumfries*
General candidates' news
General selection issues
Gillingham & Rainham
GLA selections
Glasgow Anniesland*
Glasgow Cathcart*
Glasgow Kelvin*
Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn*
Glasgow Pollok*
Glasgow Provan*
Glasgow Shettleston*
Glasgow Southside*
Gower*
Greenock and Inverclyde*
Greenwich & Woolwich
Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse*
Hampshire East
Hampshire North East
Harrogate & Knaresborough
Hastings & Rye
Headlining candidates
Holborn and St. Pancras
Hornchurch & Upminster
Hull East
Hull North
Hull West and Hessle
Inverness and Nairn*
Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey
Islwyn*
John Maples
Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley*
Kingston & Surbiton
Kirkcaldy*
Lancaster & Fleetwood
Leeds North-East
Leicestershire NW
Lewisham Deptford
Linlithgow & Falkirk East
Linlithgow*
Liverpool Riverside
Liverpool Walton
Liverpool Wavertree
Liverpool West Derby
Llanelli*
Londonderry East
Manchester Gorton
Manchester Withington
MEP selection
Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney*
Message from David Cameron
Midlothian North and Musselburgh*
Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale*
Mitcham & Morden
Monmouth*
Montgomeryshire*
Moray*
Motherwell and Wishaw*
Na h-Eileanan an Iar*
Neath*
Newark and Retford
Newport East*
Newport West
Newport West*
Next generation of MPs
Norfolk North
Norfolk South West
North Ayrshire & Arran
Ochil & South Perthshire
Ogmore*
Orkney Islands*
Oxford West & Abingdon
Paisley*
Penistone and Stockbridge
Perthshire North*
Perthshire South and Kinross-shire*
Plymouth Moorview
Plymouth Sutton
Pontypridd*
Preseli Pembrokeshire*
Promoting female candidates
Renfrewshire North and West*
Renfrewshire South*
Rhondda*
Rochester & Strood
Roger Evans' Selection Surgery
Rolling update
Rossendale & Darwen
Rutherglen*
SE Cornwall
Seat tranches
Selby & Ainsty
Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough
Sheffield Heeley
Sheffield SE
Shetland Islands*
Sittingbourne & Sheppey
Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch*
Somerset NE
Somerton & Frome
Southampton Itchen
Southampton Test
St Austell & Newquay
Stirling*
Stoke on Trent Central
Stoke on Trent North
Stoke on Trent South
Stratford on Avon
Strathkelvin and Bearsden*
Stretford & Urmston
STROUD, Philippa
Suffolk Central and Ipswich North
Surrey East
Sutton & Cheam
Swansea East*
Swansea West*
Swindon North
Swindon South
Thanet South
The best yet to be selected
Thirsk & Malton
Thornbury & Yate
Torfaen*
Truro & Falmouth
Tyrone West
Uddingston and Bellshill*
Ulster Mid
Vale of Clwyd*
Vale of Clywd
Vale of Glamorgan*
Wansdyke
Warwickshire North
Washington & Sunderland West
Welsh Assembly
Welsh Assembly selections
West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine
Who has been selected so far?
Wiltshire North
Wolverhampton NE
Wolverhampton SE
Wolverhampton SW
Wrexham*
Wyre & Preston North
Yellow to Blue
Ynys Mon
Ynys Môn*
Blog Choice
Anthony Wells (UK Polling Report)
Barker and Pickard (FT)
Coffee House (Spectator)
Con Coughlin (Telegraph)
Cranmer's Faith and Politics
Dan Hannan MEP (Telegraph)
Daniel Finkelstein (£) (Times)
Ed Staite
Janet Daley (Telegraph)
John Rentoul (Independent)
Katharine Birbalsingh
Mark D'Arcy's Parliament (BBC)
Melanie Phillips (Spectator)
Nadine Dorries MP
Norman Tebbit (Telegraph)
Paul Waugh (PoliticsHome)
The Staggers (New Statesman)
Three links for less frequent visitors
New Northern Ireland Conservative Party formed in challenge to UUP
Can Nick Boles and the new Tory generation help defeat the politics of envy?
Cameron today: Off the hook on the veto. On it over more IMF money.
Poll boosts Labour hopes of ousting Heather Wheeler MP on back of Siemens trains deal
Rob Hayward: The boundary reviews. What do we know?
Liberal Democrats poll 2% in yesterday's Inverclyde by-election
Anonymous Tory MP attacks the "sycophants and plain old careerists" in the new parliamentary intake
Rob Hayward: Casting further doubt on Democratic Audit's proposals for the new constituency boundaries
Just five candidates will contest the Inverclyde by-election
David Wilson set to be Conservative candidate at Inverclyde by-election
Rob Hayward: Today's suggested parliamentary boundaries from Lewis Baston are incoherent, full of oddities and far from impartial
James Arbuthnot becomes the first MP to announce his retirement at the next general election
New research suggests the Lib Dems will be hardest hit by boundary changes resulting from the reduction in MPs
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Austrian Federation
- Currently inactive -
The Austrian Federation (full Federal Republic of Austria) (german: Die Österreiche Föderation or Bundesrepublik Österreich, slovenian: Avstrijska Zveza or Zvezna Republika Avstrija) is a consociational federal republic in central Europe. It borders both the Fourth Reich and the Czech Republic to the north, New Lyon and Lichtenstein to the west, La Lega and Croatia to the south as well as Hungary and Slovakia to the east.
The Austrian Federation (Die österreichische Föderation)
Location.</font Former Austria and Slovenia as well as Trentino-Alto Adige
Common Name. The Federation (Die Föderation), Austria (Österreich), AF (ÖF)
Motto Vereint durch Brüderlichkeit (United by Fraternalism)
Anthem Freunde, von Brüderlichkeit hoch getrieben (Fellows, forced highly by fraternalism)
Official languages High German, Slovenian, Middle and South Bavarian as well as Allemannic Dialects (not written)
Minority languages Italian, Turkish, Serbian, Croatian (Burgenland Croatian), Hungarian, Czech, Romani
Form of government Consociationalism
Head of state The Federal Parliament
Representatives Markus Hehren, Jürgen Wesely, Gabrijel Rozak
Capital. Vienna (Wien)
Population. 11.360.812 (January 2009)
Official religion. none
Currency. New Austrian Schilling (Neuer Österreichischer Schilling) (NÖS, int. NAS)
Until the worldwide economic crisis, Austria was one of the ten richest countries in the world in terms of the GDP, due to highly-developed industry and international mass tourism. For more information: [1]
The Big Economic Crisis
As former Germany was the main trading partner of Austria, its economy crashed simultaneously with Germany's. In aprile 2001 the Austrian government under the Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel paused all economic connections to Germany, hoping that new worsenings could be prevented. But in fact that was the non-volitional death blow for Austria how it was. The economy crashed instantly due to lack of income (mainly the tourism industry broke apart). The government resigned definitely in october 2001 and handed the power to the several municipalities.
Founding of the Federation
In january 2002 first municipalities around Innsbruck banded together to refound a federal system allowing better political and economic connections. In 5 months the other municipalities of whole Austria decided to join that federation. The german-speaking South Tyrolean municipalities joined the federation in february and march 2002, the neighboring municipalities in Trentino in march 2002. On 23th june 2002 the Austrian Federation was proclamed by Thomas Kosza in Vienna. The first Federal Parliament was elected during the following week.
The Austrian Federation on june 23, 2002
In former Slovenia, the political situation was even worse than it was in Austria. The country had fallen into deep corruption, especially in the south, where Anton Beško ruled as warlord. After the proclamation of the Austrian Federation, many Slovene municipalities were interested in joining Austria. Heads of this movement were Viktor Mačič and Petra Rozak. In January 2003 the Federal Parliament passed a referendum in northern Slovenia asking for volition to join the AF, with the outcome that these northern Slovene municipalities became members of the AF. Anton Beško has seen his power decreasing and decided to go into exil in La Lega. Subsequently a second referendum was passed by the Federal Parliament with the outcome that even southern Slovenia now belongs to Austria.
The Government of the Austrian Federation is a kind of consociational democracy, i.e. parties of all political spectra are represented in both the Federal Parliament (Föderalparlament) and the several regional Landesparlamente (Sing. Landesparlament) in every Bundesland, and the aim of the government is finding a solution representating the opinions of all parties.
Role of the Representatives
The three Represantives (due to the number also called Triumvirate) are, as the name says, the represantatives of the Austrian Federation. They are voted by the citizens, the Landesparlamente and the Federal Parliament out of the three most powerfull parties represented in the Federal Parliament. They can introduce a draft bill, but are not able to enact or repeal a law. They have to confirm the Federal Court of Justice (Föderalgerichtshof) and can veto the decisions of the defense secretary. Also they are the only ones allowed to suspend the secretatries voted by the people.
The composition of the current Federal Parliament
Role of the Federal Parliament
The Federal Parliament builds on the one hand the legislative branch being valid for the whole Federation. The allocation of its 100 seats is made up of the proportional representation (at least 3%) of all parties represented in the Landesparlamente, that means that there aren't particular elections being valid only for the Federal Parliament. Its tasks are suggesting and partly passing laws (for passing laws the agreement of the Landesparlamente and the citizens are necessary, too) as well as suggesting the secretaries (Minister) and appointing the Föderalgerichtshof. Besides that, it also builds the main executive in such a rate that a particular head of state or governemt does not exist because the three representatives are working hardly actively, but passively by suggesting. Therefore its structure is partly similar to the Roman senate or the first soviets in the USSR.
The seat of the Federal Parliament is the Föderationshaus in Vienna.
The several Bundeslaender of the Austrian Federation (English names)
The Landesparlamente
The several regional Landesparlamente in every Bundesland have the same functions as the Federal Parliament has, but their decisions are valid only for the particular Bundesland, so they can suggest and partly passing laws (a referendum asking the citizens is needed, too) being valid for the particular Bundesland as well as suggesting the regional secretaries (Landesminister) and appointing the Regional Court of Justice (Landesgerichtshof). Their buildup is different, though: Every citizen being 16 years old and having an Austrian passport can offer himself/herself as a candidate running for represantive of the particular municipality in the particular Landesparlament during the elections, but he/she needs at least an election result of 10% voted by the citizens of the municipality he/she is native of; a membership in a party isn't needed for joining a Landesparlament, but often recommended because of financial support.
The Ministries
There are two types of ministries, the Federal Ministries (Föderalministerien) and the regional Landesministerien being valid only for the particular Bundesland. Their buildup though is the same: After the first elections when the several representatives in the Landesparlamente have been voted, the Federal Parliament ratified and the three Representatives declared, all parties represented in a parliament with at least 7% have to nominate 13 candidates each running for secretary of either one of the 13 Föderalministerien (as a party represented in the Federal Parliament) or one of the several Landesministerien (as a party only represented in a Landesparlament). These candidates have to campaign again and after 2 months second elections are held and the winners are inaugurated. During the hustings the old secretaries are still in office.
Retrieved from "https://conworld.fandom.com/wiki/Austrian_Federation?oldid=34437"
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Cast Shadow Illusions
Daniel Kersten1,2 and Pascal Mamassian3
1 Department
of Psychology, University of Minnesota
2 Department of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 136-713, South
3 CNRS & Université Paris Descartes, France
Shadows are everywhere, but they usually go unnoticed. We do, however, use their
consequences all the time. Figure 1A shows two pictures each with a green square in front of
a checkerboard background. The two pictures differ only in the cast shadows of the square.
Because of these differences, the right square appears to be further from the background
than the left square. By adding motion to the cast shadow, the effect on the perception of
depth can be made quite striking. Moving the shadow, leaving the square fixed in the image,
results in the square appearing to move in depth (see: http://youtu.be/ig2CV1TLn5A).
It is only with scrutiny that one is convinced that the square is not moving at all within the
picture frame. In particular, the square is not changing size, as it should if it was indeed
moving in depth. Shadows seem to create a paradox for the visual system. While on the
one hand they can be quite useful as cues for depth, their unobtrusiveness suggests that
there may be good reasons for a visual system to get rid of them.1
Cast shadows can be distinguished from “attached” or “form” shadows (see Mamassian et al., 1998;
Castiello, 2001). An attached shadow on an object is the darkened surface that faces away from the light
source. A cast shadow on a surface is the dark area created by an object blocking light onto that surface.
A cast shadow can also be created when part of an object blocks light onto another part of the same object.
For simplicity, in this chapter, the word “shadow” will usually refer to “cast shadow”.
To appear in: Oxford Compendium of Visual Illusions. Arthur G. Shapiro and Dejan Todorovic,
Editors.
Comments may be sent to the author at kersten@umn.edu. D.K. was supported by the WCU (World
Class University) program funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology through the
National Research Foundation of Korea (R31-10008).
OXFORD COMPENDIUM OF VISUAL ILLUSIONS 2
Figure 1. A. A cast shadow provides useful information for the depth of an object relative to the
background surface. One can produce the appearance of motion in depth of the unmoving square
by moving the shadow over a sequence of frames, see: http://youtu.be/ig2CV1TLn5A. B. Cast
shadows are most effective at conveying depth when they have typical properties (top panel). If
the shadows are above the object, or are sharp, they tend to be less effective (bottom three panels)
(Kersten et al., 1996). C. Information about depth from shadows can be placed in conflict with
information from stereo disparity. The stereo disparity provides information indicating that the
top square is further from the background, whereas the shadow indicates it is the bottom square
that is further away from the background. There are differences between people, and readers may
be able to judge for themselves which cue wins. To experience the stereo effect, the reader should
try to cross the two eyes so that the left and right images are seen by the right and left eyes,
respectively. An animated version of this demonstration, with moving shadows, can be viewed at:
http://youtu.be/d4KMLLSs1C0.
Shadows: Use them or lose them?
As visual animals, we typically need information about objects for the job at hand,
whether that be describing, handling, navigating around, or tracking them. It would make
sense that shadows go unnoticed because our attention is primarily directed towards the
tangible objects we need rather than towards their shadows. Depending on the task, it
might even make sense for the visual system to filter out shadows completely; for example,
when they fall on the very object of interest, making it difficult to detect the features
specific to the object (see Figure 2A; Cavanagh 1991; Lovell et al. 2009). The problem
of detecting object-specific features is part of a more general problem that the brain must
solve to reliably recognize objects. The images of an object (called its “appearances”) vary
Figure 2. A. Shadows cast from other objects create problems for visual recognition. Upper
and lower panels show the original gray level image and the output of a standard edge detector,
respectively. While cast shadow edges can, in theory, provide some information regarding shape,
they tend to be more trouble than they are worth. B. It isn’t easy to tell whether cast shadows
are physically correct, as illustrated by a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin
of John F. Kennedy (LIFE Magazine, February 21, 1964). Conspiracy theorists have argued that
Oswald’s claims that the photographs were doctored were supported by the supposed “fact” that
shadows cast by his nose and body, were not consistent with a single light source (Farid, 2009).
greatly from one instance to the next because of changes in both viewpoint and illumination.
Illumination gives rise to shading patterns that are affected by the object’s orientation
relative to the illumination sources and the viewpoint. And shadows, in particular, can
have a strong effect on appearances.
Given the confounding nature of shadows, it may not be surprising that we seldom
notice shadow inconsistencies in paintings or when artificially created in photographs (Ma-
massian, 2004; Ostrovsky et al., 2005; Cavanagh, 2005). Even with careful inspection we
are not very good at deciding whether a cast shadow is faithful to the laws of optics or
is faked (for example see the analysis of the Lee Harvey Oswald backyard pictures, Farid
2009; Figure 2B). Further, pictorial artists often eliminate shadows that might interfere
with interpretation (Jacobson & Werner, 2004; Gombrich, 1995). Human visual recogni-
tion can suffer in the presence of shadows (Tarr et al., 1998; Braje et al., 2000, 1998), and
considerable computer vision research has gone into detecting shadows in order to remove
them (G. Finlayson et al., 2006; Jacobson & Werner, 2004). Does their confounding effect
on recognition (Porter et al., 2010), together with the need to attend to objects imply that
shadows are more trouble than they are worth, and that the visual system filters them
out? Our illustration of depth from cast shadows suggests obviously not.
In fact, artists, photographers, animators, and lighting designers have long known
that shadows have positive as well as negative consequences for perception–their judicious
placement adds a sense of depth, realism, and evokes mood, whereas injudicious place-
ment of even optically correct shadows can be misleading or distracting. So while shadows
don’t have a starring role to play on the stage of conscious perception, the illusory motion
demonstration described above does suggest that they have a strong supporting role in
conveying information about depth. What kinds of parts do shadows play in depth per-
ception and just how strong are their roles? And what information does the human visual
system extract in order to use shadows?
The perceptual use of shadows
Because of their role in providing depth information, shadows can be useful for di-
verse tasks such as deciding whether two surfaces are touching (Thompson et al., 1998),
estimating the future trajectory of a flying object (Taya & Miura, 2010), determining the
structural form of patterns (Khuu et al., 2012), deciding whether one surface occludes
another (Tomonaga & Imura, 2010), and detecting differences in shape (Rensink & Ca-
vanagh, 2004). Infants as young as 5-7 months use cast shadows for depth (Yonas &
Granrud, 2006; Imura et al., 2006). Cast shadows improve perception of relative depth
in chimpanzees (Imura & Tomonaga, 2009). Shadow features, unlike specular highlights,
provide reliable surface features for stereo disparity, which in turn provides information for
Figure 3. Left panel. The absence of a strong true shadow of the man, together with a “good-
enough” substitute–the dark spot on the road– produces apparent levitation. Right panel. The
shadow of a flag appears to belong to the platform, creating the illusion that the speaker is elevated
with no visible means of support.
3D shape (Puerta, 1989). (For a general review of the role of cast shadows in perception,
see Dee & Santos (2011). For a historical and cultural treatment of shadows, see Casati
2004b.)
The role of cast shadows as a means to convey depth in drawings was recognized
long ago by Leonardo da Vinci (Fiorani, 2008). One aspect of his advice–the ability to add
“drop shadows”– is used everyday in graphics presentation and layout software (e.g. as a
text format option in Microsoft’s Powerpoint and Apple’s Keynote presentation software).
The strength of real-life drop shadows is illustrated below by putting them in conflict with
our daily experience that objects shouldn’t defy gravity.
How strong are cast shadow cues for depth?. A critical visual function is to know
where an object is on a ground plane. Cast shadows provide pervasive and strong cues
for contact between one surface and another, acting as a kind of “visual glue” (Thompson
et al., 1998). The information lies in the proximity of the image of an object and its
cast shadow, the sharpness of the penumbra, together with how local shadow and object
contours meet (Madison et al., 2001). When there is no visual glue, the depth of an object
becomes ambiguous. As an object rises above a plane, the shadow gets further from the
casting object, and the size of the penumbra increases.2
Apparent Levitation. Cast shadows are sufficiently powerful as a depth cue, that lack
of contact information can inveigle perception to believing that objects or people can defy
gravity, a trick used by street magicians. Here the magician raises one foot creating a dis-
placed cast shadow while using the same foot to hide the fact that the other foot is holding
his body up tiptoed (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balducci levitation).
Another trick is to take advantage of a gray day when the contact cue is weak,
increasing depth ambiguity. Viewing from just the right angle allows a distant wet spot
to assume the role of cast shadow, resulting in apparent levitation (left panel of Figure
3). Even on a bright day, an overhead sun can make an object’s true shadow hard to see,
reducing its role as visual glue, allowing a visually more salient shadow from another object
to become associated with the object of interest making it appear to float mysteriously
above the ground (right panel of Figure 3).
By creating variations of the green-square animation described earlier, one can show
that the strength of the apparent change in depth is stronger if 1) the light source appears
to come from above, 2) the cast shadow has a visible penumbra whose fuzziness grows
with relative depth, and 3) the shadow is dark rather than light (which is physically
impossible). These factors all suggest that the human visual system is sensitive to naturally
and frequently occurring properties of cast shadows in images (see Kersten et al., 1996;
Figure 1B). Recognizing these factors has practical consequences; for example, illumination
from above the camera improves the utility of cast shadows in endoscopy (Mishra et al.,
It is well-known that in addition to shadows, the human visual system uses multiple
sources of depth information, including stereo disparity, motion parallax, relative bright-
ness, and relative image size to produce estimates of relative depth (Bülthoff & Mallot,
1988; Landy et al., 1995; Cutting & Vishton, 1995). One can use computer graphics to
place different sources of information, or cues, in opposition. For example, Figure 1C shows
stereo disparity competing with cast shadows. Which cue wins depends on the weight an
individual’s visual system gives to the stereo over the shadow information.
In many cases, the percept experienced is the consequence of how these cues get
weighted based on their respective reliabilities (Jacobs, 1999; Ernst & Bülthoff, 2004; Clark
& Yuille, 1990). This suggests that as we make a visual cue increasingly strong and more
The size of the penumbra also depends on the angular size of the light source. On a sunny day, the
penumbra caused by the sun is quite small, the sun being far away, and only 1/2◦ in diameter. On a cloudy
day, the effective diameter approaches 180◦ , and penumbrae are all but invisible except for small depth
differences. And when there are multiple light sources, e.g. light filtering through the leaves of a tree, there
can be multiple shadows that have characteristic transparency-like properties where they overlap.
diagnostic of a relative depth change (vs. some other cause), one could make visual illusions
in which a stronger cue (e.g. the fuzziness of a shadow penumbra) overrides cues that say
otherwise. We’ve already seen this with the green-square demonstration in that the size
of the image of the green square doesn’t increase as it approaches the viewpoint, as it
normally would under perspective projection.
One way to increase the perceptual strength of shadows for depth is to move the
object in the image, while keeping the illumination and viewpoint constant. The left top
panel of Figure 4A shows the first frame of an animation sequence, and the middle and right
panels show two alternative endpoints of the ball’s shadow trajectory. While a comparison
of the middle and right-hand panels provides some sense of depth differences, the animated
versions are considerably more striking (see http://youtu.be/hdFCJepvJXU). When the
shadow travels horizontally in the image, the ball appears to rise above the checkerboard
floor, and when the shadow travels diagonally, the ball appears to recede in depth towards
the back of the box. The ball’s size, appearance, and trajectory are identical in the two
animation conditions. The lack of a change in size of the image of the ball presents a cue
conflict, which the visual system largely ignores. The bottom row of Figure 4A shows a
similar sequence, except that a yellow, solid slab is substituted for the shadow. As long
as the slab appears to stay on the floor, viewers typically see the ball rise above the floor
for the animation whose shadow endpoint corresponds to the bottom, middle panel; but,
remain on the floor for the end-point illustrated by the bottom right panel. One explanation
for the perception of the different trajectories with the yellow slab is that human vision is
sensitive to the correlated motion typical of objects and their shadows resulting from light
sources that do not move. This is called the “stationary light source” constraint (Kersten
et al., 1997). So even if the slab, ersatz shadow, lacks most of the properties of a shadow,
the visual system is equipped to perceive different trajectories as a consequence of the
differences in correlated motion. Other factors, such as matching sizes between casting
object and shadow, also play a role (Ni et al., 2004), but not as much as the correlated
motion.
Another demonstration of the effect of the stationary light source constraint, and
its impact on correlated motion, is illustrated in Figure 4B. The top row shows samples
of several successive frames in which a ball and its shadow alternately accelerate and
decelerate consistent with fixed light source from above. When all frames are shown in
a movie, the ball appears to bounce (see http://youtu.be/6Wbbx6Zi3g4). However, if
the ball has constant velocity (samples shown in bottom row of Figure 4B), the perceived
coupling between the ball and its shadow is lost, the shadow seems to have a life of its
own, and the ball no longer appears to bounce.
Figure 4. A. The images in the left column show the first frame, and the middle and right frames
show alternative endpoints of the ball’s shadow. The trajectory of the ball is the same in all
trajectories. Top panel. When the trajectory of the shadow is horizontal, the ball appears to rise
above the floor; when the shadow trajectory is diagonal, the ball appears to travel towards the back
of the box. See http://youtu.be/hdFCJepvJXU. The perception of the different trajectories in
depth relies on the visual system’s ability to detect correlated motion (consistent with a stationary
light source). Bottom panel: If the shadow is replaced by a yellow slab, the apparent difference
in trajectories can still be seen. In addition to correlated motion, treating the slab as a substitute
shadow relies on perceiving the slab to be on the floor. The coincidental alignment of one of
the primary axes of the slab with that of the floor encourages this. See: http://youtu.be/
TGX7153-Ccw. Figure from Kersten et al. (1997). B. See http://youtu.be/6Wbbx6Zi3g4 and
main text for an explanation.
The future of shadows
Despite their ubiquity, there are substantial computational, perceptual, and neuro-
science challenges to our understanding of the visual processing of shadows.
Computational challenges. While the potential usefulness of cast shadows in com-
puter vision was recognized many years ago (Waltz, 1972), the application to depth es-
timation has largely been neglected. This stands in contrast to substantial progress in
understanding and using other cues such as stereo disparity and motion parallax. To use
cast shadows, a visual system must effectively segment a scene into objects and shadows,
determine which object (or object part) goes with which shadow (or shadow part; i.e.,
the shadow “correspondence problem”, Mamassian 2004; Ni et al. 2004; Casati 2008), and
use this information in the context of the overall spatial layout (Figure 5). While there
have been a number of analyses of the information provided by shadows (Casati, 2004a;
Dee & Santos, 2011; Knill et al., 1997), the computational challenge will be to turn these
observations into useful algorithms.
Statistical constraints on shadow photometry can be used for shadow recognition. For
example, the color change across a shadow boundary is largely a change in luminance rather
than chromaticity (Kingdom et al., 2004; G. D. Finlayson et al., 2009). Similarly, texture
statistics tend to remain similar across shadow boundaries (Zhu et al., 2010). The global
shape of shadow contours have statistical regularities consistent with the shadow patch
laying on the surface receiving it. More specifically, shadow shapes follow the geometry of
double-projection: the shadow on a surface is the projection of the casting object by the
light source on to an oriented surface, and shadow’s image is the result of a projection of
the surface shadow onto the retina. One consequence of this is that it is not unusual to
have a long thin shadow in an image cast by a compact object (e.g. with the highly oblique
sun angles during sunrise or sunset). In contrast, a long, thin image is less likely due to a
compact object in the world (Brady & Yuille, 1984).
Perceptual challenges. A major problem in visual perception is understanding how
the visual system combines multiple cues for a task such as depth perception. One problem
in combining shadows with other depth cues is the commensurability of their information.
Some cues, like “looming”, the expansion of the size of an object’s image on the retina,
provide the visual system with information for distance between an object and the observer.
Rather than depth from the observer, cast shadows more directly provide an estimate
of the distance between two objects (the object casting the shadow and the receiving
surface; Schrater & Kersten, 2000). In addition, this distance is dependent on usually
invisible factors like the light source position. Thus, shadows should prima facie not be
OXFORD COMPENDIUM OF VISUAL ILLUSIONS 10
Potential ball locations shadow locations
Figure 5. The human visual system solves several problems when estimating depth from cast
shadows. Even if the “patches” representing an object and shadow are identified and paired, in
order to determine relative depth, their locations need to be localized in an appropriate frame of
reference (Schrater & Kersten, 2000). For example, while it is obvious that the shadow should be
on the ground, an algorithm needs also to determine the ground plane. From (Kersten, 1997).
considered as a metric depth cue like binocular disparity, and this makes it more difficult
to understand how these two cues can interact (e.g. Figure 1C). However, it is conceivable
that, given prior assumptions on the statistical structure of the environment, shadows
could be “promoted” to a metric depth cue. Such a reliance on the statistical structure
of natural scenes has been shown to promote the figure-ground convexity cue (an object
with a convex boundary tends to be seen in front) to a full metric depth cue (Burge et al.,
Neuroscience challenges. The dual nature of shadows reflects, in large part, two
different functional requirements of vision. A basic architectural aspect of the visual brain
is the division into two main pathways: the ventral (or temporal) and dorsal (or parietal)
streams, believed to be specialized for processing intrinsic object properties, and viewer-
object spatial relationships, respectively (Milner & Goodale, 2006). As discussed above,
on the one hand, to recognize objects, the visual system needs to filter out image features,
including those due to shadows, that are not intrinsic to the object. On the other hand,
to determine where objects are, we’ve seen that the visual system uses cast shadows in
addition to other depth cues. Bonfiglioli et al. (2004) argue that this functional distinction
underlies their finding that incongruent shadows had a significant impact on motor task,
but not on recognition performance. However, it has also been shown that cast shadows
can be relatively ineffective in the online control of pointing movements in depth (Hu &
Knill, 2011). Consistent with a role for the dorsal stream in processing depth from shadows,
neuroimaging results have found that the posterior portion of the medial parietal cortex is
activated when observers perceive depth from cast shadows (Katsuyama et al., 2011).
Shadows have been studied for millennia, yet there are always new and fascinating
observations to be made (Casati, 2012, 2010). Shadow illusions, in particular, raise signifi-
cant questions about how the brain processes them. Attempting to answer these questions
will insure that shadows continue to captivate artists and scientists alike for years to come.
Bonfiglioli, C., Pavani, F., & Castiello, U. (2004). Differential effects of cast shadows on perception
and action. Perception, 33 (11), 1291–1304.
Brady, M., & Yuille, A. (1984, March). An extremum principle for shape from contour. Pattern
Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on, 6 (3), 288–301.
Braje, W. L., Kersten, D., Tarr, M. J., & Troje, N. F. (1998). Illumination Effects in Face
Recognition. Psychobiology, 26 (4), 371–380.
Braje, W. L., Legge, G. E., & Kersten, D. (2000). Invariant recognition of natural objects in the
presence of shadows. Perception, 29 (4), 383–398.
Bülthoff, H. H., & Mallot, H. A. (1988, October). Integration of depth modules: stereo and shading.
Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 5 (10), 1749–1758.
Burge, J., Fowlkes, C. C., & Banks, M. S. (2010, May). Natural-Scene Statistics Predict How the
Figure-Ground Cue of Convexity Affects Human Depth Perception. Journal of Neuroscience,
30 (21), 7269–7280.
Casati, R. (2004a). The shadow knows: a primer on the informational structure of cast shadows.
Perception, 33 (1), 1385–1396.
Casati, R. (2004b). Shadows: Unlocking Their Secrets, from Plato to Our Time. Vintage.
Casati, R. (2008). The copycat solution to the shadow correspondence problem. Perception, 37 (4),
Casati, R. (2010). Impossible Cast Shadows in Ukyio-e Paintings. CARLS Series of Advanced
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Casati, R. (2012). Some varities of shadow illusions: Split shadows, occluded shadows, stolen
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Castiello, U. (2001, August). Implicit processing of shadows. Vision Research, 41 (18), 2305–2309.
Cavanagh, P. (1991). What’s up in top-down processing. In A. Gorea (Ed.), (pp. 295–304).
Representations of vision: Trends and tacit assumptions in vision research.
Cavanagh, P. (2005, March). The artist as neuroscientist. Nature, 434 (7031), 301–307.
Clark, J. J., & Yuille, A. L. (1990). Data Fusion for Sensory Information Processing Systems.
Cutting, J. E., & Vishton, P. M. (1995, June). Perceiving layout and knowing distances: The inte-
gration, relative potency, andcontextual use of different information about depth. In W. Epstein
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Ernst, M. O., & Bülthoff, H. H. (2004, April). Merging the senses into a robust percept. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 8 (4), 162–169.
Farid, H. (2009). The Lee Harvey Oswald backyard photos: real or fake? Perception, 38 (11),
Finlayson, G., Hordley, S., & Drew, M. (2006). Removing shadows from images. Computer
Vision—ECCV 2002 , 129–132.
Finlayson, G. D., Drew, M. S., & Lu, C. (2009, May). Entropy Minimization for Shadow Removal.
International Journal of Computer Vision, 85 (1), 35–57.
Fiorani, F. (2008). The colors of Leonardo’s shadows. Leonardo, 41 (3), 271–278.
Gombrich, E. E. H. (1995). Shadows : the depiction of cast shadows in Western art. London :
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Imura, T., & Tomonaga, M. (2009). Moving shadows contribute to the corridor illusion in a
chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 123 (3), 280–286.
Imura, T., Yamaguchi, M. K., Kanazawa, S., Shirai, N., Otsuka, Y., Tomonaga, M., et al. (2006,
March). Perception of motion trajectory of object from the moving cast shadow in infants. Vision
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Jacobs, R. (1999, October). Optimal integration of texture and motion cues to depth. Vision
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Jacobson, J., & Werner, S. (2004). Why cast shadows are expendable: Insensitivity of human
observers and the inherent ambiguity of cast shadows in pictorial art. Perception, 33 (11), 1369–
Katsuyama, N., Usui, N., Nose, I., & Taira, M. (2011, January). Perception of object motion in
three-dimensional space induced by cast shadows. NeuroImage, 54 (1), 485–494.
Kersten, D. (1997, August). Perceptual Categories for Spatial Layout. Philosophical Transactions:
Biological Sciences, 352 (1358), 1155–1163.
Kersten, D., Knill, D. C., Mamassian, P., & Bülthoff, I. (1996, January). Illusory motion from
shadows. Nature, 379 (6560), 31.
Kersten, D., Mamassian, P., & Knill, D. C. (1997). Moving cast shadows induce apparent motion
in depth. PERCEPTION-LONDON-, 26 (2), 171–192.
Khuu, S., Khambiye, S., & Phu, J. (2012, October). Detecting the structural form of cast shadows
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Perception, 33 (8), 907–914.
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Landy, M. S., Maloney, L. T., Johnston, E. B., & Young, M. (1995). Measurement and modeling
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for a while there was some doubt as to whether citrate was actually used in the
cycle, and the name was altered to tricarboxylic acid cycle. Both names are still
used. The cycle is sometimes called the Krebs cycle in honor of Hans Krebs,
although it is actually the second Krebs cycle (his discovery of the urea cycle was
several years earlier).
Net reaction for the TCA cycle
Note that, while running the TCA cycle, there is no change in the amount of carbon
in the cycle. For each two-carbon unit that enters in the form of acetyl-CoA, two
Copyright © 2000-2003 Mark Brandt, Ph.D. 59
carbons are lost in the form of CO2. The only change is the generation of one GTP,
one reduced flavin, and three reduced nicotinamide cofactors. In effect, the TCA
cycle intermediates act as coenzymes in the oxidation of acetyl-CoA, and are
neither produced nor consumed in the process.
The catalytic nature of the TCA cycle means that acetyl-CoA cannot be used to
synthesize TCA cycle intermediates. If more TCA cycle intermediates are necessary,
they can be obtained from amino acid breakdown or from pyruvate via the pyruvate
carboxylase reaction. (This latter reaction explains in part why acetyl-CoA
concentration regulates pyruvate carboxylase.)
Background (discovery)
Albert Szent-Györgyi and Hans Krebs and a number of other biochemists worked on
the pathway for oxidation of pyruvate. Szent-Györgyi found that adding certain
compounds stimulated the oxidation process in an apparently catalytic manner.
Krebs had invented the cycle concept in explaining the urea cycle in 1932; in 1937,
he proposed that pyruvate oxidative metabolism also involved a cycle.
Some details required additional work; Coenzyme A was not discovered until 1945,
and acetyl-CoA was not established to be the major starting material until the work
of Severo Ochoa and Feodor Lynen in 1951.
Reactions and enzymes
The diagram below shows the reactions of the tricarboxylic acid cycle. The enzymes
are numbered, and listed in the center of the cycle (note that aconitase and
isocitrate dehydrogenase each catalyze two of the steps shown in the diagram). The
enzymes in underlined black text (citrate synthase, isocitrate dehydrogenase, and
a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase) catalyze physiologically irreversible steps and
function as regulatory control points for the cycle.
Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle
CH3 C ~S – CoA
Acetyl-CoA
CH2 COO–
O C COO–
HO C COO–
CH2 COO– 1
Oxaloacetate CH2 COO–
HO CH COO– 8 Citrate H2O
CH2 COO– NADH CoA-SH CH2 COO–
Malate NAD 2
7 C COO–
CH COO– H2O CH COO–
1. Citrate Synthase
cis - Aconitate
CH COO– 2. Aconitase H2O
3. Isocitrate Dehydrogenase 2
FADH2
6 4. a-Ketoglutarate Dehydrogenase
FAD CH2 COO–
5. Succinyl-CoA Synthetase
CH2 COO– CH COO–
6. Succinate Dehydrogenase
CH2 COO– 7. Fumarase HO CH COO–
Succinate GTP Isocitrate
8. Malate Dehydrogenase
CoA-SH
GDP + Pi 3
CH2 COO– NADH
O ~
C S CoA
4 CH2 COO– 3 CH COO–
Succinyl-CoA
NADH CH2
NAD Oxalosuccinate
+ O C COO–
a-Ketoglutarate
Copyright © 2000-2003 Mark Brandt, Ph.D.
Citrate synthase catalyzes the condensation of acetyl-CoA and oxaloacetate to form
citrate. This reaction has a large –∆G´° (∆G´° = –31.5 kJ/mol), because it uses the
energy from the high-energy bond between the acetate and the CoA to drive the
condensation reaction.
Citrate synthase is one of three irreversible enzymes in the TCA cycle, and is
one of the control points for the cycle. The product, citrate, is an important
molecule: it is used to regulate glycolysis (it inhibits phosphofructokinase), and it is
required for fatty acid synthesis (it stimulates the activity of acetyl-CoA
carboxylase, the control enzyme for that pathway, and also acts as a source of the
cytoplasmic acetyl-CoA required as a substrate for the fatty acid synthesis
pathway).
The reaction mechanism for citrate synthase has been extensively studied. It has
been used as a model for understanding reactions involving carbonyls, and as a
system for studying general catalytic principles. The citrate synthase from pigs is
the only mammalian enzyme to be crystallized, and it is the basis of some the
discussion below.
Oxaloacetate binds the enzyme first (if oxaloacetate does not bind first, the presence
of acetyl-CoA will prevent oxaloacetate binding). The binding of the substrate is
thought to result in a conformational change that is required for catalysis, based on
analysis of crystal structures solved in the presence and absence of various
substrates, products, and substrate analogs. The conformational change upon
substrate binding is evident in the structures below. The blue structure was
crystallized in the absence of Coenzyme A, and has the open conformation. The
yellow structure has Coenzyme A bound, and is thought to reflect the catalytically
active conformation of the enzyme. (Although citrate synthase is a dimer, for clarity,
the structure shown is of one monomer.) The close-up view (on the right) shows the
active site of the enzyme. The two catalytically important histidine residues are
highlighted. Note that although His274 remains in a similar location, His320 moves
significantly following binding of the Coenzyme A molecule.
Once both substrates have bound, an essential aspartate (Asp 375 in the porcine
enzyme) abstracts a proton from the acetyl-CoA methyl group, allowing the methyl
group to perform a nucleophilic attack on the oxaloacetate carbonyl carbon. Some
studies have suggested that the acetyl-CoA forms an enol intermediate, with the
thioester carbonyl being protonated; more recent studies, however, have shown that
the process is probably concerted, and that His274 does not actually donate a proton
to the substrate. Note that the citryl-CoA intermediate product must obtain a
proton for its hydroxyl group; it abstracts a proton from an uncharged histidine
(His320), resulting in an unusual negatively charged histidine. The protonation of
the aspartate and the deprotonation of the neutral histidine illustrate some of the
pKa changes that are possible in the enclosed environment of an enzyme active site.
Once formed, the citryl-CoA is hydrolyzed to release free citrate and Coenzyme A.
Most studies suggest that the hydrolysis step is rate limiting for the overall
reaction; this step is also the physiologically irreversible portion of the reaction.
Citrate synthase is an allosterically regulated enzyme. Its regulation will be
discussed below.
Side note: Conformational changes and catalysis
The conformational flexibility shown above is thought to have a role in the actual
catalytic process (in addition to merely placing the active site residues in the correct
orientation). The bacterium Thermoplasma acidophilum prefers temperatures of
70°C. Its citrate synthase (unlike that of pigs or humans) must therefore be stable
at high temperatures. Studies on the T. acidophilum citrate synthase suggest that
it achieves its high thermostability by having a more rigid structure. The rigid
structure appears to have some drawbacks, however. The porcine enzyme, tested at
37°C, has a roughly 4-fold higher kcat than the T. acidophilum citrate synthase has
at 70°C. Normal chemical reaction rates increase by about 2-fold for every 10°C; the
fact that the bacterial enzyme exhibits a lower rate in spite of the higher
temperature suggests that it is less efficient than the porcine enzyme. The
bacterium therefore appears to have traded catalytic efficiency for enhanced
thermostability.
2. Aconitase
Aconitase catalyzes the reversible interconversion of citrate and isocitrate via an
intermediate, cis-aconitate, which does not appear to be released from the enzyme.
However, the cis-aconitate appears to rotate within the active site without
dissociating. Aconitase contains an iron-sulfur center prosthetic group. Iron-sulfur
centers are usually found in proteins involved in electron transfer processes;
aconitase is therefore unusual in that its reaction does not involve a redox
mechanism.
3. Isocitrate dehydrogenase
Isocitrate dehydrogenase catalyzes the second irreversible step in the pathway, the
decarboxylation of isocitrate to yield a-ketoglutarate. The process occurs in two
steps. The first step is the dehydrogenase reaction, which forms the reduced
nicotinamide cofactor and a six-carbon intermediate, oxalosuccinate. The
oxalosuccinate is then converted to a -ketoglutarate, in an irreversible reaction
driven by the loss of carbon dioxide. The isocitrate dehydrogenase reaction results
in formation of the first NADH. Isocitrate dehydrogenase is probably the most
important regulated step in the TCA cycle; its control allows the diversion of
citrate to other purposes.
The oxidation reaction of isocitrate dehydrogenase results in formation of a ketone b
to one of the carboxylates of the product oxalosuccinate. The as is true for many a-
keto- and b-ketoacids, oxalosuccinate is relatively unstable, and is readily
decarboxylated to produce a-ketoglutarate.
Most species have two isozymes of isocitrate dehydrogenase. The NAD-dependent
isozyme is normally considered to be the TCA cycle enzyme, while the NADP-
dependent enzyme is largely found in the cytoplasm, and is involved in production
of NADPH for biosynthetic reactions.
4. a-Ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex
The a -ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex is an enzyme complex similar to the
pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (it uses an identical E 3, and homologous E1 and
E2, and uses all of the same coenzymes as the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex).
The a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex catalyzes the oxidative decarboxylation
of a-ketoglutarate, and both forms the second NADH and forms the high-energy
bond present in succinyl-CoA. The reaction catalyzed by a-ketoglutarate
dehydrogenase is the third irreversible step in the TCA cycle. It is also the third
control point of the TCA cycle. The control of a -ketoglutarate dehydrogenase
allows the diversion of a-ketoglutarate to other purposes; a-ketoglutarate is used
for the synthesis of glutamate, and is crucial for both amino acid metabolism and
synthesis of a number of other biologically relevant molecules.
Succinyl-CoA synthetase catalyzes the conversion of succinyl-CoA to succinate and
free CoA-SH. The energy of the high-energy bond in the succinyl-CoA is conserved
in the substrate-level phosphorylation of GDP to form GTP. Because the reaction
GTP + ADP GDP + ATP has a ∆G´° of zero, the formation of GTP is
equivalent to forming an ATP.
Succinyl-CoA synthetase catalyzes a reversible reaction. The reaction mechanism
involves the transfer of high-energy bonds from one compound to another. This
transfer mechanism is necessary. If the first reaction, the loss of the coenzyme A,
occurred as a simple hydrolysis step, the formation of GTP from GDP would be
thermodynamically unfavorable. Instead, the energy of the succinyl-CoA bond is
conserved by replacing the thioester with an acyl phosphate.
Like thioesters, acyl phosphates are high-energy compounds. A comparison of the
structure of 1,3-bisphosphoglycerate (which is involved in the first substrate-level
phosphorylation step in the glycolytic pathway) and succinyl phosphate reveals
some significant similarities. The reaction mechanism of succinyl-CoA synthetase,
however, differs from that of phosphoglycerate kinase. Instead of directly
transferring the phosphate from the acyl phosphate to ADP, succinyl-CoA
synthetase first transfers the phosphate to an active site histidine side-chain,
releasing the succinate product, and forming another high-energy intermediate. It
is this phosphohistidine residue that acts as the phosphate donor for GTP
Succinate dehydrogenase contains a covalently bound FAD (this is somewhat
unusual; although FAD is normally a prosthetic group, it is typically non-covalently
associated with the enzyme). Succinate dehydrogenase is imbedded in the
mitochondrial inner membrane, and is the only one of the TCA cycle enzymes that
is not located in the mitochondrial matrix. Succinate dehydrogenase oxidizes
succinate to fumarate and reduces FAD to FADH 2. The succinate dehydrogenase
FADH2 transfers electrons directly to the electron transport chain. Succinate
dehydrogenase will be discussed further in the section on electron transport.
The term “fumarate” refers to the trans-form of the four-carbon double-bond
containing dicarboxylic acid. Maleate (the cis-form of the compound) is not a product
of the reaction.
7. Fumarase
Fumarase adds a water molecule across the double bond in fumarate to produce L-
malate. The precise mechanism for the fumarase reaction is still a matter for
Malate dehydrogenase catalyzes the “last step” of the TCA cycle, the conversion of
malate to oxaloacetate, with the production of the final NADH. This reaction has a
large +∆G´° (+29.7 kJ/mol), but operates at a ∆G close to zero under physiological
conditions. The malate dehydrogenase reaction in “reverse” allows the direct
conversion of oxaloacetate to malate; this is important because malate can be
transported out of the mitochondria, while oxaloacetate cannot.
The reactions catalyzed by malate dehydrogenase, fumarase, succinate
dehydrogenase, and succinyl-CoA synthetase are reversible and function at ∆G close
to zero under physiological conditions. This means that, depending on other
concurrent processes, these reactions may proceed clockwise (as drawn in the
diagram at the beginning of this section) or may proceed counterclockwise, resulting
in an energy-requiring conversion of oxaloacetate to succinyl-CoA. In many cases, it
is only the large negative ∆G of the citrate synthase reaction that allows the
pathway to proceed in the clockwise direction.
Glyoxalate cycle
Plants and some microorganisms can carry out a modified form of the TCA cycle.
This pathway, the glyoxalate cycle, allows the use of acetyl-CoA to form
oxaloacetate because it avoids the steps in which carbon dioxide is lost. The
glyoxalate cycle must also bypass two of the NADH-producing steps and the
substrate-level phosphorylation (Reactions 3-5 of the TCA cycle, shown in grey in
the diagram below).
To achieve the net synthesis of TCA cycle intermediates from acetyl-CoA, the
glyoxalate cycle uses two enzymes not present in the normal TCA cycle: isocitrate
lyase and malate synthase. Isocitrate lyase splits isocitrate to form succinate and
glyoxalate. Malate synthase then combines the glyoxalate with another molecule of
acetyl-CoA to form malate. Note that isocitrate is located prior to the CO2 loss steps,
while both succinate and malate are after those steps in the pathway; the glyoxalate
cycle therefore conserves both of the carbons in the acetyl-CoA that participates in
the citrate synthase reaction.
The net reaction of the complete glyoxalate cycle is:
2 Acetyl-CoA + 2 NAD + FAD Æ Oxaloacetate + 2 CoA + 2 NADH + FADH2
Note that this net reaction assumes that the succinate and malate formed both go
on to oxaloacetate. The glyoxalate pathway therefore generates some energy in the
form of reduced cofactors, although the amount of recovered energy is considerably
smaller than would have been true if the acetyl-CoA molecule had been processed in
the standard TCA cycle.
Animals cannot perform the glyoxalate cycle because they lack isocitrate lyase
and malate synthase. As a result, animals cannot use acetyl-CoA to synthesize
TCA intermediates or pyruvate.
Regulation of the TCA cycle
Substrate availability is a major regulator of the TCA cycle. Substrate availability
includes availability of acetyl-CoA, availability of NAD, and availability of TCA
cycle intermediates, especially oxaloacetate. Oxaloacetate and acetyl-CoA are
normally present at concentrations at or below their citrate synthase K m, and
therefore increases in the concentrations of these compounds directly affects the
rate of the TCA cycle.
Acetyl-CoA can be derived from several sources: breakdown of carbohydrates,
breakdown of amino acids, and breakdown of fatty acids. TCA cycle intermediates
have two main sources: breakdown of amino acids, and the conversion of pyruvate
to oxaloacetate by pyruvate carboxylase.
Pyruvate carboxylase
Reactions that increase the amount of TCA cycle intermediates are called
anaplerotic reactions (“anaplerotic” comes from the Greek for “filling up”; these
reactions “fill up” the cycle with intermediates). In the liver, the most important of
these reactions is catalyzed by pyruvate carboxylase.
As mentioned in the section on gluconeogenesis, pyruvate carboxylase is a biotin-
dependent enzyme; the biotin prosthetic group is covalently bound to the amino
group of a pyruvate carboxylase lysine side chain. The enzyme bonds carbon dioxide
(in the form of carbonate) to the indicated nitrogen on the biotin in an ATP-
dependent reaction; pyruvate carboxylase then transfers the carbonate to the
pyruvate to produce oxaloacetate.
Pyruvate carboxylase is activated by acetyl-CoA. The enzyme acts as a mechanism
for increasing the capacity of TCA cycle to metabolize acetyl-CoA. The reaction
catalyzed by pyruvate carboxylase therefore indirectly acts as an
accelerator of the TCA cycle by producing more oxaloacetate; the higher
concentration of oxaloacetate allows the TCA cycle to run at an enhanced rate.
Note, however, that if high levels of NADH inhibit other steps in the TCA cycle, the
oxaloacetate formed is converted to malate, which is transported out of the
mitochondria, and can be used for other purposes (primarily for glucose or NADPH
synthesis).
Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase
Many plants use a different enzyme, phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase, to
synthesize oxaloacetate from glycolytic intermediates. This enzyme uses the large
amount of energy inherent in the phosphoenolpyruvate to drive the carboxylase
reaction. Animals lack phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase. While the
phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase reaction could, in principle, result in
oxaloacetate synthesis, in most species, phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase has too
low an affinity for carbon dioxide to allow significant net synthesis of oxaloacetate.
Amino acid breakdown: glutamate dehydrogenase
Amino acid breakdown is a major source of both TCA cycle intermediates and
energy, especially in carnivores. In humans, amino acid breakdown is important
under some conditions, and is used by most tissues (other than the liver) to produce
TCA intermediates. Humans can convert all of the amino acids except lysine and
leucine to either pyruvate or a TCA cycle intermediate. One of the most important
reactions used for TCA cycle intermediate production is catalyzed by glutamate
dehydrogenase, which produces a-ketoglutarate from glutamate.
The glutamate dehydrogenase reaction is reversible, and in the reverse direction is
extremely important in amino acid synthesis.
Amino acid breakdown: AMP deaminase
Muscle cells lack pyruvate carboxylase, and have only small amounts of glutamate
dehydrogenase. Muscle cells tend to use a different pathway to generate TCA cycle
intermediates from amino acids.
The reaction catalyzed by AMP deaminase is ordinarily involved in nucleotide
breakdown. However muscle cells use the AMP deaminase reaction, followed by re-
synthesis of AMP to result in a net conversion of aspartate to the TCA cycle
intermediate fumarate.
The process requires aspartate and a GTP, and releases the excess nitrogen in the
form of ammonium (although ammonium is toxic, in most cases, the amounts
released are relatively small). The major advantage of this process is that it is
directly regulated by AMP. In muscle cells, if AMP levels are high, the cell is using
ATP, and will need to generate more via the TCA cycle. Since AMP acts as a direct
substrate for this pathway, it, in the presence of aspartate, allows the production of
increased amounts of TCA intermediates, and therefore, allows increased ATP
Allosteric regulation of the TCA cycle
In addition to regulation by substrate availability, three of the TCA cycle enzymes
are regulated allosterically. Citrate synthase is commonly thought of as the
gatekeeper for the TCA cycle, because acetyl-CoA enters via the citrate synthase
reaction. Because the TCA cycle is circular, and because compounds enter and leave
the cycle at various points, the citrate synthase reaction is not the only regulatory
step. In fact, it is clear that all three of the irreversible enzymes play important
roles in regulating the cycle.
Citrate synthase:
Citrate synthase is competitively inhibited by citrate, and by succinyl-CoA (the
product of the a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase reaction). Citrate synthase is also
inhibited by long-chain acyl-CoA, because high concentrations in the absence of
acetyl-CoA indicate decreased levels of fatty acid breakdown. In addition to its
regulation by competitive inhibitors, citrate synthase is also inhibited by ATP
and NADH acting at allosteric sites.
Citrate synthase is stimulated by NAD and ADP, and, as already mentioned, by
increased substrate concentration.
Isocitrate dehydrogenase:
Isocitrate dehydrogenase is inhibited by ATP and NADH. NADH exhibits
cooperative binding, so its effect changes dramatically over a fairly narrow range of
concentrations. Isocitrate dehydrogenase is usually the first of the TCA cycle
regulated enzymes to respond to elevated NADH levels, leading to an accumulation
of citrate.
Isocitrate dehydrogenase is stimulated by ADP and NAD.
a-Ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex:
The a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex is inhibited by NADH, ATP, GTP,
and succinyl-CoA. Note that, unlike the related pyruvate dehydrogenase complex,
the a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex is not regulated by phosphorylation.
The a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex is stimulated by calcium (at least in
some cell types).
Rationale for the TCA Cycle regulatory effectors
NADH and ATP inhibit all the control point enzymes for the TCA cycle. This is
logical: these compounds are produced directly (in the case of the three NADH and
the single nucleotide triphosphate produced in the TCA cycle) or indirectly (in the
case of the ATP derived from the NADH-dependent electron transport/oxidative
phosphorylation pathway). Thus, if ATP and NADH are present in high
concentrations, making more of these compounds is probably unnecessary. In
addition, producing excessive amounts of NADH may result in inhibition of other
processes due to lack of NAD.
Citrate synthase and a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase are both inhibited by succinyl-
CoA, the product of the a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase reaction. Succinyl-CoA is a
product of other reactions besides that catalyzed by the a-ketoglutarate
dehydrogenase complex; high levels of this compound is also an indicator that the
cell does not need to use up additional acetyl-CoA in the TCA cycle. In addition,
citrate synthase is inhibited by its product, citrate. Citrate builds up if NADH and
ATP levels rise due to inhibition of isocitrate dehydrogenase; the citrate can then be
transported to the cytoplasm where can interact with phosphofructokinase to
inhibit glycolysis and where it can act as the carbon source for fatty acid synthesis.
The TCA cycle intermediates a-ketoglutarate and oxaloacetate are used for other
purposes; utilization of both of these compounds is controlled by one of the regulated
enzymes (a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase and citrate synthase, respectively).
The cycle is stimulated by high levels of NAD and ADP, which act as signals of
energy depletion. In addition, both a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase and isocitrate
dehydrogenase are stimulated by calcium. Calcium is often used as a signal for
increased cellular energy requirements (especially in muscle, where it is a signal for
muscle contraction). It is therefore logical that calcium will also increase the ability
of the cell to produce the ATP required to deal with the increased energy
Finally, the pyruvate dehydrogenase reaction is tightly regulated, and contributes
to the regulation of the TCA cycle. If the pyruvate dehydrogenase reaction is the
only source of acetyl-CoA, its regulation will directly regulate the TCA cycle. In
most cells, however, the inhibition of pyruvate dehydrogenase simply functions to
force utilization of acetyl-CoA from sources other than pyruvate. One of the most
important regulators of pyruvate dehydrogenase is acetyl-CoA; high levels of this
compound indicate that other catabolic pathways are active and that pyruvate
should be conserved for gluconeogenesis.
TCA cycle regulatory enzymes
Enzyme Stimulators Inhibitors Comments
Pyruvate carboxylase Acetyl-CoA ADP Several hormones alter
the amount of this
enzyme:
Insulin Ø
Cortisol ↑
Glucagon ↑
Pyruvate CoA, NAD, Ca2+, acetyl-CoA, NADH, Effect of Mg2+: ATP
dehydrogenase Mg2+, pyruvate, phosphorylation and binds Mg2+ with
insulin ATP higher affinity than
ADP; high free Mg2+
means low ATP
concentration. Mg and
Ca activate the
phosphatase
Citrate synthase NAD, CoA, ADP Citrate, Long chain
High [oxaloacetate] acyl-CoA, ATP, NADH,
and [acetyl-CoA], succinyl-CoA
Isocitrate Ca2+, ADP ATP, NADH Isocitrate
dehydrogenase dehydrogenase is
probably the most
important regulatory
enzyme in the TCA
cycle.
a-Ketoglutarate Ca2+ NADH, succinyl-CoA
dehydrogenase
Entry and exit of carbon
Carbon removal
Malate is shuttled out of the mitochondria. One reason is to synthesize glucose via
the gluconeogenic pathway; another is to remove carbon from the TCA cycle. Fatty
acid synthesis requires citrate, although this citrate may not actually use up TCA
intermediates, because only acetyl-CoA is actually used in lipid synthesis (in the
cytoplasm, the citrate is cleaved to release acetyl-CoA and oxaloacetate; the
oxaloacetate can be used for more than one purpose, and may indirectly return to
the mitochondrion). Amino acids are produced from several of the TCA cycle
intermediates, including a-ketoglutarate and oxaloacetate. Succinyl-CoA is used for
heme biosynthesis.
All of these processes tend to decrease the amount of carbon present in the TCA
cycle. Unchecked, they could prevent the TCA cycle from occurring at all; under
normal conditions, these processes are regulated, and can act as a method for
modulating the activity of the TCA cycle.
Carbon entry
Carbon units can also enter the TCA cycle. Pyruvate carboxylase, which converts
pyruvate into oxaloacetate, was discussed above. The breakdown of amino acids
(also mentioned above) results in the formation of several TCA cycle intermediates.
Depending on the amino acid, degradation of amino acids can yield a-ketoglutarate,
succinyl-CoA, fumarate, oxaloacetate, and acetyl-CoA. All except the last result in
an increase in the amount of carbon in the TCA cycle.
Although the vast majority of fatty acids present in animals have an even number
of carbons, small amounts of odd-chain fatty acids are sometimes present (these are
found in some plants and microorganisms). The breakdown of odd-chain fatty acids
results in the production of one molecule of succinyl-CoA from each odd-chain fatty
Production of TCA cycle intermediates can increase the capacity to perform the TCA
cycle, or can act as a mechanism for converting one TCA cycle intermediate to
another to allow interchange of biosynthetic intermediates from one pathway to
another.
Pyruvate derived from glycolysis, and acetyl-CoA derived from a variety of sources
can be converted into energy and carbon dioxide in a mitochondrial pathway called
the citric acid cycle, the Krebs cycle, or the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA cycle). The
enzymes in the cycle combine the two carbons from acetyl-CoA with the four carbon
compound oxaloacetate; the citrate thus formed is converted back to oxaloacetate in
a series of steps that result in the formation of two carbon dioxide molecules, three
NADH, an FADH2, and a GTP.
The TCA cycle essentially uses oxaloacetate as a coenzyme; the cycle does not
change the amount of oxaloacetate present, but runs faster when the levels of
oxaloacetate are higher.
A modified form of the TCA cycle, the glyoxalate cycle, is performed by some plants
and microorganisms, but does not exist in animals. The glyoxalate cycle allows the
formation of oxaloacetate from acetyl-CoA, a reaction that animals cannot perform.
The TCA cycle is regulated at several steps: 1) the formation of acetyl-CoA (from
pyruvate or from other sources) is regulated in several ways depending on the
pathway, 2) three of the enzymes in the TCA cycle are allosterically regulated, and
3) the amount of oxaloacetate in the TCA cycle is regulated by either increased
synthesis, or increased utilization of TCA intermediates by other processes.
Pyruvic Acid
Adenosine Diphosphate
Metabolic Pathway
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WaterOz Product Catalog
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Carnegie-Collier Rotary organizes purchase of surgical gowns | TribLIVE.com
Carnegie/Bridgeville
Carnegie-Collier Rotary organizes purchase of surgical gowns
Dona S. Dreeland
Wed., November 26, 2014 2:54 p.m. | Wednesday, November 26, 2014 2:54 p.m.
Dr. Graham and Marilyn Johnstone of Franklin Park arrive in Niamey, Niger, in West Africa, for another medical mission. Niamey is Niger’s capital and the country’s largest city. As an orthopedic surgeon, Johnstone has visited the continent many times to perform operations. Only two of their seven bags were missing.
Doctors in Niger will be protected by surgical gowns recently acquired with help from the Carnegie-Collier Rotary.
The local Rotarians initially pledged $500 for surgical gowns to help protect Franklin Park doctor Graham Johnstone, 70, who is in the country this month performing surgeries. He’s taken 12 such trips over the past several years.
Ultimately, Allegheny General Hospital on Pittsburgh’s North Side covered the price of the gowns, Rotarian Dana Craig said. The gowns, valued at $2,500, were shipped on Nov. 4 by Brother’s Brother Foundation in North Side, and will arrive in two to three months.
Johnstone will serve the mission of Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons at the SIM Galmi Hospital. He and his wife, Marilyn, began a trip to Niamey on Oct. 27.
The Tyvek isolation gowns are fluid resistant and lightweight. A special coating will provide a shield against blood splatters and other fluid-borne illnesses, Craig said.
Johnstone is expected to perform nearly 50 orthopaedic surgeries during his month-long stay. Officials shipped fewer than 50 gowns, Craig said, though he could not provide an exact number.
“We were excited to be able to help provide ….the Carnegie Rotary Club with this advanced protective gear for delivery to those who need it so desperately,” said Dan Laurent, spokesman for Allegheny Health Network.
Before the doctor retired, he was affiliated with Greater Pittsburgh Orthopedic Associates in Wexford.
“Graham is charitably inclined, a model citizen, active in his church and community,” Craig said.
Dona S. Dreeland is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-388-5803 or [email protected].
Students write about life 100 years ago
Wildlife watching, fishing, hunting all powerful economic forces
12 local Pagans indicted in melee
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Episodes, Arrow episodes, Season 1 (Arrow)
Year's End
"I think there's someone else out there, someone who's more of a danger than the archer, and I am going to take him down."
—Oliver Queen to John Diggle
"Year's End"
Teleplay:
Colin Salmon as Walter Steele
Byron Mann as Yao Fei Gulong
Sebastian Dunn as Edward Fyers
Brian Markinson as Adam Hunt
John Barrowman as Malcolm Merlyn/Dark Archer
"Vendetta"
"Burned"
"Year's End" is the ninth and midseason finale episode of the first season of Arrow, and the ninth episode overall. It aired on December 12, 2012.
Oliver discovers that after he and his father went missing, the Queen family stopped celebrating Christmas. Determined to make up for lost time and restore a sense of normalcy to the Queen household, Oliver decides to throw the family a Christmas party. Meanwhile, Tommy asks Laurel to spend Christmas with him, but she points out that Christmas was also her sister Sara's birthday and she needs to be with her father. Tommy suggests changing things up might be the best way for everyone to heal, but Laurel isn't sure her father is ready for that. Meanwhile, John tells Oliver someone is murdering the people on his father's list with arrows, which sends Oliver off to face his toughest adversary yet.
Adam Hunt is on the phone trying to raise money for a deal despite the fact that he was recently taken down by The Hood. An unseen figure, who Adam seems to recognize, makes an unexpected visit. Adam asks the visitor if he is here to extract another pound of flesh. The intruder responds by firing three arrows into Adam's chest, killing him.
Oliver and John spar in the Arrowcave. John points out that Oliver has really thrown himself into his vigilante work since his breakup with Helena, having taken down three of the men on the list in a single week. He tells Oliver that he's taking his nephew to the mall for Christmas shopping and Oliver realizes that it's Christmas. He explains that on the island he was too busy trying to survive to keep track of things like holidays, and remembers how his father Robert, would put Christmas trees in every room of the manor. John tells Oliver that he deserves a break and to go spend time with his family on Christmas.
Yao Fei unseals the cave and is surprised that Oliver is still alive. He leaves Oliver a jug of water and a rabbit for food. When Oliver inquires as to where he has been Yao brings in a surprise prisoner, Edward Fyers. Oliver's first thought is to gain revenge on the man who tortured him, but Yao Fei tells him that he is more valuable to them alive, as they can use his private plane to return to civilization.
Oliver returns to Queen Manor and discovers Thea leaving their parents' dinner party. He asks about the lack of Christmas decorations and Thea hesitantly says that everyone was just too busy to bother. Oliver then joins the dinner party where Moira and Walter are hosting several rich and important guests, including Malcolm Merlyn and Police Commissioner Brian Nudocerdo. They discuss The Hood and whether his actions are justified. While Brian voices his disapproval of vigilantes, Malcolm notes that the crime rate has gone down for the first time in 5 years. Brian insists that his new departmental policies are responsible, but Walter suggests that The Hood has put the fear in the criminal element. Malcolm asks Oliver his opinion. Feigning neutrality, Oliver says the vigilante needs a better codename than "The Hood." Malcolm suggests "Green Arrow," which Oliver snidely dismisses. Their conversation is interrupted when Walter gets a call from Felicity. He takes it in the other room and she tells him that seven of the men on the list have been taken down by The Hood. Walter is not surprised by this, but Felicity quickly gets his attention by revealing that Dr. Doug Miller, the head of Applied Sciences at Queen Consolidated, is also on the list. Felicity suspects that Doug may be the Hood's next target. Meanwhile, Brian's aide whispers a message to him and he tells the guests that arrow has struck again and killed Adam Hunt, his first victim. Oliver fakes a call from a contractor and promptly excuses himself.
Quentin Lance arrives at Adam's apartment and meets with Brian Nudocerdo, while The Hood eavesdrops from a balcony. Brian suggests the vigilante is responsible, but Quentin disagrees; the arrows used to kill Adam were black instead of green, and The Hood had already shut down Adam's Ponzi scheme and left him a broken man, killing him now would make no sense. He suggests a copycat is responsible.
The next day, Oliver and John try to work out who killed Adam. Oliver points out the placing of the three arrows in Adam's chest and figures that the killer is an expert archer. He figures the archer used custom arrows that can be traced and tells John that they'll get one from the police. At the police station, Quentin receives a disposable cellphone, which begins ringing almost immediately after he picks it up. Using a voice distorter, Oliver tells Quentin The Hood is not a very good nickname for him. He then insists that he didn't kill Adam, but he needs Quentin's help to track the real killer. He insists that he can go places that the police can't Quentin isn't interested, but Oliver warns that the killer will likely strike again, and instructs him to call the pre-programmed number if he changes his mind.
Walter calls Dr. Doug into his office and tells him that security red-flagged him as someone The Hood might come after. Doug claims that he has no idea why the vigilante would want him.
Oliver and Thea are having lunch at Big Belly Burgers, and Oliver again inquires about the lack of Christmas celebration. Before she can answer, a young man named Shane Colvin comes in and asks if Thea wants to hang with him and his friends. She passes, explaining that she's with her brother. After Shane leaves, Oliver returns to the topic and Thea explains that after Oliver and Robert disappeared at sea, no one felt like celebrating Christmas. After that they just kept avoiding it for the next 4 years. Thea doesn't consider this a big deal, but Oliver clearly does.
Later, Oliver gathers his family and expresses his desire to resume the annual Christmas party. He went without Christmas during his time on the island, and he knows that he was the reason they stopped celebrating, so now, he can be the reason they celebrate it again. "I know that I haven't been the son, the step-son, or the brother that all of you deserve, especially lately, but this feels like the right moment to start making up for lost time". Moira agrees and Oliver tells them that he'll handle all of the arrangements. As the family leaves, Walter tells Oliver that he's a good man.
Yao Fei leads Edward and Oliver through the forest, and Edward tells Oliver that he can tell that he's a good man, since he suffered torture rather than betray Yao Fei. Edward asks Oliver what he knows about Yao and explains that Lian Yu was a prison. The Chinese army kept the prisoners there that were too dangerous to imprison anywhere else. When they shut down the island 8 years ago, they sent Edward and his men in to purge the facility. Only two prisoners were spared. Yao Fei and Billy Wintergreen. When Oliver points out that Edward had Wintergreen torture him, Edward says that he only did it to find Yao, who had "slaughtered dozens of people," and asks what Oliver would have done in his position.
Moira meets with Malcolm at a secret location. He tells her that Doug reported to him, and that Walter knows more than he should about the list. Moira suggests she talk with him, but Malcolm says they are past the point of conversation. He recalls how she blackmailed him into staying away from her family. He has honored that agreement, but now it seems her family isn't staying away from him. He wonders if they need to bring in their "associate" to clean things up. Moira nervously assures him that she will handle it.
A businessman, Nelson Ravich, is walking home when The Dark Archer kills him. Brian and Quentin arrive sometime later and close the crime scene. They know that The Hood terrorized Ravich into giving up his embezzlement funds a week ago. Brian tells Quentin to accuse The Hood of the two murders but Quentin refuses, pointing out that it doesn't match The Hood's normal pattern of leaving his victims alive once he gets what he wants from them. Brian takes Quentin off the case and leaves, while Quentin goes back to the station. After careful consideration, Quentin calls Oliver and tells him that he left one of the black arrows at a heating vent. However, he warns the Hood that he has until Christmas to find the killer, after that, he'll come after him, "copycat or not".
Oliver recovers the black arrow and goes over it with John. They confirm that it's a custom job and that The Dark Archer is deliberately trying to call Oliver out. Oliver takes the arrow to Queen Consolidated and asks Felicity if she can confirm the point of origin so he can order more for a friend. She does so, and discovers that the company holding the patent on the arrow is called Sagittarius, after the famous archer on the Zodiac calendar. Felicity locates the address of the shipment and gives it to Oliver, who wishes her a happy Hanukkah and departs.
When Laurel comes home, she finds her father listening to Brian's press statement on the news. She figures that The Hood isn't the killer, reminding Quentin that the Hood protected her during the prison breakout. Tommy arrives at the apartment and Quentin rebuffs his attempts to impress him. Laurel reminds Tommy that she wanted to be with her father on Christmas, but he says that Christmas is a time for people to be together, and points out that she's holding something back. When he invites her to the Queen holiday party, Laurel refuses and Tommy gives her his Christmas present and leaves. Quentin complains about how Tommy and Oliver are selfish and Laurel should stay away from both of them. She's surprised and touched to discover that Tommy's gift is an old photo of herself, Quentin, and Sara.
Oliver dons his Hood costume and goes to the address that received the black arrows. A single black arrow is rammed into a table and as Oliver examines it, the door slams shut behind him. A bomb lights off and begins a countdown, and Oliver blasts the door open with an explosive arrow and gets out just in time. He goes back to the manor where the party is in full swing and tells John what happened. As they talk, Shane comes in with flowers for Moira. Oliver has his family pose for a Christmas party and then Thea goes off with Shane, Moira tells Walter that they'll talk later and goes off. Tommy and Laurel arrive and Oliver goes to greet them. Tommy still thinks things are weird between Laurel and Oliver and goes off to get drinks.
When Walter finds Moira, she reminds him that he promised not to investigate any further. Walter reminds his wife that Robert was his oldest friend and that he had no intention of letting the murderers go free. He asks his wife if whatever she is protecting is worth the lies, and Moira explains that she salvaged the boat to use as leverage against the organization. Walter offers to help fight them, but Moira says that she is one of them, and that she hoped Walter's love could save her. He accepts her explanation for the moment and tells her that the time for lies is over, and Moira promises to tell him everything after the party.
Laurel and Oliver talk privately and she figures out that he's still uncomfortable with the fact that she's with Tommy. Oliver insists that he's fine and Laurel admits that since Oliver was declared dead, she hasn't been able to connect emotionally with anyone. She tells Oliver that Tommy is the first person that she has been with in 5 years, and Oliver assures her that he's happy for them.
Once Laurel leaves, Oliver goes to find Thea and discovers her in bed with Shane. He kicks Shane out and demands to know why Thea is skipping the party. She angrily explains that the party is something he's doing to make himself feel better and that all it's doing is digging up old memories that she rather forget. Oliver wonders why she wants to forget, and Thea tells him that things will never again be as they were before his disappearance. As she walks away, John comes in to tell Oliver that the copycat situation has escalated. They turn on the news and discover that The Dark Archer has captured five hostages and is holed up at an abandoned warehouse. One of the hostages reads a statement from The Dark Archer, accusing the police of lacking the will do what justice demands. He will execute one hostage every hour unless The Hood faces him alone. John suggests that the police handle it, but Oliver insists that it's his responsibility and assures his partner that he handled much worse on the island.
Yao Fei tells Edward to radio his troops and instruct them to bring the plane. Edward tells them that won't be necessary, as they should be arriving any minute. "Do you not think it convenient to capture me so easily"? As Yao and Oliver realize they've been lured into a trap, Wintergreen emerges from the jungle, flanked by two mercenaries armed with AK-74 assault rifles. As Wintergreen draws his ninjato, Yao engages him in melee combat while Oliver draws the gunmen away. Oliver manages to lose the gunmen, but Wintergreen overpowers Yao, who is forced to surrender as more troops arrive.
The police gather outside the warehouse but quickly discover that The Dark Archer has booby-trapped all of the doors. As Quentin arrives, the police see The Hood slide into the warehouse through a window. He quickly frees the hostages and gets them to the roof, and then goes down to find the archer. The Dark Archer, wearing a mask which disguises his voice, tells The Hood that he's eager to see which one of them is the better archer, and took hostages because he knew it would take something dramatic to lure him out. The two archers duel throughout the bowels of the warehouse. They seem to be evenly matched, but The Dark Archer catches him by surprise. The Hood is brought down by two arrows to the back. As he mercilessly kicks the vigilante in the ribs, The Dark Archer reveals that he knows about the list, and the man who wrote it wants "the Hood" dead. As The Dark Archer moves in to unmask his prey, the Hood stabs him in the leg with one of his arrowheads and knocks him out cold with a single punch as The Dark Archer flees shortly after that, Oliver radios John for help, and then passes out.
When Oliver wakes up, he's in the hospital with John at his side. John explains that he cleaned up the evidence and carried Oliver away. Oliver's injuries include a collapsed lung, a few cracked ribs, and a concussion. Walter, Thea, and Moira, arrive and John tells them that Oliver was in a motorcycle accident. They're all relieved to see that he's okay and they admit that they weren't at their best during the party. However, they're all there now for Oliver and that's what matters. Thea stays behind to apologize to Oliver, she realizes he is not the same person that he was 5 years ago, but neither is she. They agree to accept each other as they are now and share a hug.
The Dark Archer returns to his hideout and removes his mask, revealing his identity as Malcolm Merlyn.
Walter checks in at his office. After taking a call from Felicity, he gets into the elevator and the other passenger injects him with a sedative.
Moira demands a meeting with Malcolm, well aware that he's had Walter abducted. Malcolm promises that Walter won't be harmed and that he will never know that Moira is involved. When she complains, Malcolm reminds her that the Tempest Organization is only six months away from rebuilding the city to their dreams. Moira realizes that Malcolm feels nothing despite the fact that their plans will cost thousands of people their lives, but Malcolm tells her that he'll feel a sense of accomplishment, and Walter will be returned to her when it's over.
In the hospital room, Oliver admits to John that he failed the city, because he almost didn't win the fight, and he let The Dark Archer live, but John reminds him that he saved five lives. He figures that Oliver will capture The Dark Archer, but Oliver believes that the author of the list is the true threat, and resolves to find him.
Preparation ran from September 27 to October 5, 2012. Filming ran from October 9 until October 18, 2012.[1]
Youth Without Youth by Metric
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Schuyler Fisk
Christmastime by Kari Kimmel
The vent by O'Neil and Adams street are references to Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams , writer and artist (respectively) at DC who revamped Green Arrow and Green Lantern in the 1970s. Neal Adams is the artist responsible for Green Arrow's updated appearance featuring the new costume and blonde beard/mustache. This new look for Green Arrow first appeared in Brave and the Bold #85 (1969).
During a conversation about the vigilante, Oliver suggests giving him a better name than "the Hood". Malcolm Merlyn suggests "Green Arrow", which Oliver dismisses. This is a reference to the name of Oliver Queen's alter ego in the comics.
Later, in the fourth season episode "Green Arrow", Oliver takes the name "Green Arrow" to distinguish his identity of "The Arrow", who was dead in the public's eyes.
This is the first and only episode where Felicity Smoak made an uncredited appearance.
↑ Marc Guggenheim (@mguggenheim) - Twitter
Arrow season 1
"Pilot" • "Honor Thy Father" • "Lone Gunmen" • "An Innocent Man" • "Damaged" • "Legacies" • "Muse of Fire" • "Vendetta" • "Year's End" • "Burned" • "Trust but Verify" • "Vertigo" • "Betrayal" • "The Odyssey" • "Dodger" • "Dead to Rights" • "The Huntress Returns" • "Salvation" • "Unfinished Business" • "Home Invasion" • "The Undertaking" • "Darkness on the Edge of Town" • "Sacrifice"
Retrieved from "https://arrow.fandom.com/wiki/Year%27s_End?oldid=514596"
Arrow episodes
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Characteristics of Medalist study participants by DCCT categories of residual insulin production
Undetectable <0.03 nmol/l
Minimal 0.03–0.2 nmol/l
Sustained ≥0.2 nmol/l
N (%) 33.0 (126) 64.4 (246) 2.6 (10)
Male 42.6 (55) 50.2 (123) 52.9 (7) 0.4
A1C (%) 7.5 ± 1.0 7.1 ± 1.1 7.32 ± 0.7 0.005
Age (years) 67.5 ± 8.1 67.0 ± 7.2 71.7 ± 8.3 0.09
Age at diagnosis (years) 10.9 ± 6.8 10.9 ± 6.1 16.2 ± 8.6 0.02
Duration (years) 56.4 ± 6.0 56.1 ± 5.7 55.5 ± 4.1 0.7
BMI (kg/m2) 26.7 ± 2.8 26.0 ± 4.3 23.8 ± 3.6 0.5
Insulin dose (u/kg) 0.47 ± 0.2 0.5 ± 0.2 0.4 ± 0.2 0.5
Cholesterol (mmol/l) 4.2 ± 0.9 4.2 ± 0.9 4.2 ± 1.1 0.8
Calculated HDL (mmol/l) 1.6 ± 0.9 1.6 ± 0.5 1.7 ± 0.6 0.7
LDL (mmol/l) 2.2 ± 0.6 2.2 ± 0.6 2.2 ± 0.9 0.5
Triglycerides (mmol/l) 0.92 ± 0.5 0.89 ± 0.51 0.98 ± 0.65 0.9
Family history of diabetes†
Any diabetes 27.8 (35) 31.7 (78) 20.0 (2) 0.6
Type 1 diabetes 11.9 (15) 14.2 (35) 10.0 (1) 0.8
DR3† 33.6 (39) 43.8 (84) 57.1 (4) 0.03
DR4† 42.2 (49) 57.7 (112) 42.9 (3) 0.03
DR3/4† 44.8 (52) 36.6 (71) 14.3 (1) 0.14
DR3 or DR4 95.7 (116) 92.2 (177) 100.0 (7) 0.4
IA2 or GAD† 32.8 (40) 27.2 (64) 40.0 (4) 0.7
IA2† 16.3 (20) 13.9 (33) 0 0.3
GAD† 21.1 (26) 16.0 (38) 36.4 (4) 0.1
Proliferative DR† 53.9 (56) 52.7 (97) 36.4 (4) 0.5
Microalbuminuria (ACR <7.91)† 15.1 (18) 10.8 (19) 23.1 (3) 0.3
Neuropathy (MNSI >2)† 60.4 (67) 60.7 (99) 60.0 (6) 0.9
Cardiovascular disease† 46.4 (52) 50.0 (96) 50.0 (5) 0.8
MMTT response 0 (0/3) 14.2 (3/21) 57.1 (4/7) <0.0001
Data are means ± SD or % (n).
†Percentages reflect calculations done on data available.
*P values resulted from ANOVA.
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Home » Darlington Digital Library
Darlington Digital Library
The Darlington Digital Library was created from the first major collection of books, manuscripts, atlases, maps and artwork donated to the University of Pittsburgh. Most of the credit for assembling the Darlington Collection rightly goes to William M. Darlington, an attorney by profession who was born in Pittsburgh in 1815.
The online collection consists of atlases, books, broadsides, visual images, manuscripts, map plates, and artwork, including John James Audubon's Birds of America.
The Darlington Digital Library was created from the first major collection of books, manuscripts, atlases, and maps donated to the University of Pittsburgh. Most of the credit for assembling the Darlington Collection rightly goes to William M. Darlington, an attorney by profession who was born in Pittsburgh in 1815.
By the 1840s, Mr. Darlington had developed a keen interest in colonial American history, especially as it related to Western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley. He initially acquired books on those subjects, but later he would expand his interests to topics associated with the exploration of the Trans-Mississippi, the Far West, and even world history. He also expanded his acquisitions to include atlases and maps, broadsides, manuscripts, lithographs, and works of art, including John James Audubon's Birds of America. Since this complete double elephant folio set and the accompanying five-volume Ornithological Biography are considered by the University Library System to be so important, a dedicated Audubon Web site provides access to these rare sets.
After Mr. Darlington died in 1889, his wife Mary, who shared her husband’s enthusiasm for American history, continued to acquire materials. Their children, O’Hara, Mary, and Edith, also added to what became a family collection. O’Hara, for example, collected English first editions from the Victorian era. Of particular note are fine copies of books authored by Dickens and Thackeray. Attending to the family estate was left to Mary and Edith. In 1918 they made their initial donation to the University, which was followed in 1925 by the bulk of the estate.
An excellent overview of the collection was published in 1938 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Written by Agnes Starrett, The Darlington Memorial Library is available online within our Historic Pittsburgh website. In addition, Personal Memories of the Darlington Family at Guyasuta, by Anne Hemphill Herbert, also published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, in 1949, is available online, too. It is very useful for insight about the Darlington family and their life at Guyasuta, their home.
About the Darlington Memorial Library
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William Pitt Family Papers (43) + -
Hugh Henry Brackenridge and Andrew Watson Papers (36) + -
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Christopher Gist's Journals by William M. Darlington (17) + -
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Dick, Archibald L. (4) + -
Engraving. (1253) + -
Portraits. (1064) + -
North America (549) + -
Birds (441) + -
Pictorial works (435) + -
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Description and travel (206) + -
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Thomas Mellon and William B. Negley Day Book,
Thomas Mellon and William B. Negley Day Book, Darlington Digital Library
Edward Hand to Archibald Lochry,
Darlington Autograph Files, Darlington Digital Library
Mrs. Rudd
DARIMG1887
The Eagle rocks
Meyer, Hermann J.
Thomas Benfield’s debt to William and Ramsay Carlyle,
Ohio Company Papers, Darlington Digital Library
General Harrison
Lorton, Richard
The Right Hon. The eal of Hillsborough
John Normster to James Craik,
Derry Station, Pennsylvania
DARMAP0746
Reverend Robert Robinson
Hugh Mercer, Account with Adam Stephen,
New Map of North America
Daniel Wilson’s debt to Maxwell Guthrie & Co.,
Andrew Marvell
By the Honourable John Penn, Esquire, Governor…
Pennsylvania. Governor (1773-1776 : Penn, John)
DARBSIDE0025
Ferdinand Duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle
Adam Stephen’s debt to Lewis Neill,
Bejamin Flower
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Tagged: Cloud, Dedicated Servers, Europe Hosting, Hosting Ireland, Intel, Intel Servers, Ireland Hosting, Samsung SSD, UK hosting, Western Digital, Xeon
PEER 1 Hosting Makes Data Center History with 1.1 PUE
July 27, 2011 by FindMyHost News · Comments Off on PEER 1 Hosting Makes Data Center History with 1.1 PUE
Hosting Services – Southampton – PEER 1 Hosting, the global online IT hosting provider, is bringing a new standard in data centre efficiency to Britain, offering a predicted PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) rating of 1.1, the lowest in the country by a considerable margin, to customers of its new data centre in Portsmouth, UK.
By signing with Excool, a UK-based, innovative cooling technology specialist, PEER 1 Hosting will become the first data centre in the world to work with Excool, delivering the greenest state-of-the-art facility for managed hosting, dedicated hosting, cloud and co-location, all under one roof.
Tagged: Data Centre, Dedicated Hosting, Managed Hosting, Peer 1, Power Usage Effectiveness, PUE, servers, UK hosting
Equinix Launches Second Phase of State-of-the-Art London Data Center
July 15, 2011 by FindMyHost News · Comments Off on Equinix Launches Second Phase of State-of-the-Art London Data Center
Hosting Services – London – Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), a provider of data center services, today announced the opening of the second phase of its latest London (LD5) International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center. This expansion of Platform Equinix™ adds another 4,000 square meters of customer space and capacity for 1,400 cabinet equivalents in the London metropolitan area.
Russell Poole, managing director, Equinix UK, said, “London is one of the largest and fastest growing data center markets in the world and the opening of LD5’s second phase underlines our commitment to support our customers’ growth. We have been focusing our efforts on providing a global platform to meet the demand for colocation and network exchange services from the whole market. At the moment, this growth in demand is particularly strong from financial services firms and cloud service providers.” Read more
Tagged: colocation, data center, Data Centre, Equinix, London Data Center, UK Datacenter, UK hosting
UK Web Host Memset Prepares For World IPv6 Day
June 2, 2011 by FindMyHost News · Comments Off on UK Web Host Memset Prepares For World IPv6 Day
Webmaster Toolbox – Surrey, UK – Memset announced that it will join leaders from across the industry to participate in “World IPv6 Day” on June 8th 2011. The event, which is sponsored by the Internet Society (ISOC), is designed to provide a global “test flight” of IPv6 capabilities bringing together major web providers, network operators, and ISPs to enable end-to-end IPv6 capabilities on major websites for 24 hours.
Memset who have already deployed IPv6 across their internal servers and own network, are rolling out a beta trial of their IPv6 network on June 1st. Those signed up to the beta trial will be able to join and take part in World IPv6 Day. Read more
Tagged: Hosting Network, IPv6, Memset, UK hosting, Web Hosting, World IPv6 Day
Onyx Acquires New Data Center in South Yorkshire
May 19, 2011 by FindMyHost News · Comments Off on Onyx Acquires New Data Center in South Yorkshire
Webmaster Toolbox – Onyx Group acquired a new data center, strengthening its position in the UK data center market. Based in South Yorkshire between Leeds and Sheffield, the strategic acquisition is an important milestone for Onyx, establishing us as a leading data center business in the enterprise space. The 22,000 square foot data center gives the Group a large presence in key regions across the UK – Scotland, North East, Yorkshire – and highlights the geographical expansion of the company.
“Our latest acquisition is a key step in the Group’s national footprint”, said Neil Stephenson, CEO, Onyx Group. “It takes us into a new geography, and expands our data center capabilities across the UK. Owning five data centers provides us with a unique advantage over competitors and it enhances our ability in meeting the data needs of larger enterprise businesses. It’s great to acquire a second facility in Yorkshire, following the opening of the North Yorkshire data center in March.” Read more
Tagged: data center, Data Centre, Onyx, South Yorkshire Data Center, UK Datacenter, UK hosting
Sentry42 Opens First UK Data Center
May 12, 2011 by FindMyHost News · Comments Off on Sentry42 Opens First UK Data Center
Webmaster Toolbox – UK – Colocation specialists, Sentry42 has opened one of the most secure, reliable and environmentally-efficient data centers in the UK today. The 60,000 sqft newly refurbished Gatehouse Data Center is located in Norwich, East Anglia.
Sentry42 is the colocation business of Migration Solutions, the leading independent computer room and data center consultancy which has been responsible for the £12 million refurbishment of the data center and its ongoing management. Read more
Tagged: colocation, data center, Datacenter, Sentry42, UK Colo, UK Colocation, UK Data Center, UK Datacenter, UK hosting
SoftLayer CTO Skarda to Speak at Internet World
May 10, 2011 by FindMyHost News · Comments Off on SoftLayer CTO Skarda to Speak at Internet World
Webmaster Toolbox – DALLAS – SoftLayer Technologies®, the innovation leader in Cloud and Dedicated hosting, today announced it will sponsor and exhibit at Internet World, UK, May 10-12, 2011.
Duke Skarda, SoftLayer Chief Technology Officer, will make a keynote presentation at the event on Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at 3pm, presenting SoftLayer’s unique views on cloud computing and on-demand hosting and highlighting the company’s truly integrated capabilities.
“I am honored to speak at Internet World this year,” Mr. Skarda said. “This is the first event that we will sponsor in the United Kingdom. We have a tremendous story to tell about the power of SoftLayer innovation, and automation, and I’m thrilled to be the first person to share it broadly to this market in person.”
Internet World is Europe’s premier event for online businesses and companies that use digital marketing. The annual show is expected to attract around 12,000 visitors and 300 exhibitors at the show this year making it one of the largest events for the industry. Read more
Tagged: Cloud, cloud hosting, Data Center Services, Dedicated Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Duke Skarda, Internet World, Softlayer CTO, Softllayer, UK hosting
Nexcess Announces UK Magento Hosting Services
April 29, 2011 by FindMyHost News · Comments Off on Nexcess Announces UK Magento Hosting Services
Webmaster Toolbox – Ann Arbor, MI – Nexcess, a Magento Enterprise Hosting Partner, has announced expansion into the UK Magento hosting market. This effort has been designed to better serve the company’s current and future eCommerce hosting clients by providing lowered latency throughout Europe and Asia.
“We’re very excited to be bringing 10+ years of eCommerce experience to the European web hosting market,” commented Chris Wells, President & CEO of Nexcess, “We knew that many of the specialized Magento hosting solutions that Nexcess provides are of great value to the European eCommerce webmaster, and wanted to deliver these services at lower latencies than we were capable of providing from our Dearborn, Michigan data center.” Read more
Tagged: CDN, CMS, Content Delivery Network, eCommerce, enterprise hosting, Hosting, Magento, Magento Hosting, Managed Hosting, Nexcess, UK hosting, Web Hosting
DiscountASP.NET Expands Hosted Team Foundation Server SaaS Solution into Europe
April 28, 2011 by FindMyHost News · Comments Off on DiscountASP.NET Expands Hosted Team Foundation Server SaaS Solution into Europe
Webmaster Toolbox – Pasadena, CA – DiscountASP.NET, a leader in Team Foundation Server (TFS) hosting, announces the launch of hosted TFS services in Europe in a UK-based datacenter. With this expansion, DiscountASP.NET provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for source code version control and bug tracking that is in closer proximity to European developers.
“We saw a demand for TFS hosting from European developers. So we are very excited to expand our hosted TFS service into Europe and provide a source control solution that is closer to them.” said Takeshi Eto, VP Marketing and Business Development at DiscountASP.NET. “For a seamless experience, customers can select the data center location where they desire to host their source code as part of our online TFS hosting ordering process.” Read more
Tagged: data center, Datacenter, DiscountASP.NET, Europe Hosting, Europe SaaS, SaaS, Software as a Service, Team Foundation Server, UK hosting, UK SaaS, Windows Hosting, Windows Servers
Consumer Study Shows Small Business Lose Customers from Poor Websites
March 28, 2011 by FindMyHost News · Comments Off on Consumer Study Shows Small Business Lose Customers from Poor Websites
Web Hosting Blog – LONDON – A total of 46 per cent of British consumers have cancelled plans to spend with a small business after finding a poor quality website, according to research released today by 1&1 Internet Ltd, a global leader amongst web hosts. From a study of more than 1800 UK adults, 37 per cent have walked away completely whilst a further 9 per cent have opted to spend less as a direct result. Many consumers feel that small business websites today are mostly unattractive and often contain errors. Whilst 1 in 3 consumers are willing to provide valuable feedback to business owners, a further study of small firms finds that half have never asked clients about their experiences of using their website.
The majority of UK businesses have now taken steps to launch a website and battle for valuable online visibility. However, 1&1’s ‘2011 Digital High Street Audit'(1) finds worryingly low levels of consumer satisfaction with the small business websites available to them. The risk to firms from providing a bad online experience is clear – 49 per cent of consumers believe that a bad website makes a worse impact than a business having no website at all. This conclusion has led 37 per cent to walk-away from companies completely, in favor of using a competitor. An additional 9 per cent of Britons have found themselves reducing their spend with small companies as a direct result of being deterred by a poor company website. Read more
Tagged: data centers, Poorly Designed Websites, small business hosting, SMB, UK hosting, Web Hosting, Website Design
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3,4-dichloro-N-(2-cyanophenyl)isothiazole-5-carboxamide
Absorption:
The maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) of 0.2 - 0.36 µg of test substance equivalents/g administered dose following the 4 mg/kg treatment was reached at 0.3 to 1.7 hours. Following the 200 mg/kg treatment the highest plasma concentration of 2.57 - 4.17 µg test substance equivalents/g administered dose was reached at 0.9-10.6 hours. Elimination half-lives (t1/2) were marginally longer at the 200 mg/kg dose level (17.9-20.5 hours) than at the 4 mg/kg dose level (13.9-17.8 hours). There were slight differences in the genders at both dose levels. For the female rats values were greater than the corresponding values for male rats. The absorption for the two dose levels, as determined by comparison of plasma Cmax and AUC values, was dose-dependent (nonlinear). Approximately of the administered dose was absorbed within 168 hours (calculated from the % of the administered dose recovered in urine and tissues).
After a 168-h exposure period, total residues in tissues were below 0.2 % of the administered dose and total residues in the residual carcass were 0.4% of the administered dose or less. Within the 4 mg/kg dose group, the highest residue levels were found in liver (0.134 ppm) and kidney (0.068 ppm). Residue levels for all other tissues were less than 0.03 ppm or were not detectable for the 4 mg/kg dose level. No sex-related differences in tissue residue levels were observed.
Within the 200 mg/kg dose group, the highest residue were found in stomach (8.95 ppm), intestine (1.29 ppm), kidney (1.29 ppm), liver (4.92 ppm) and packed cells (0.98 ppm). Residue levels for all other tissues were less than 0.6 ppm or not detectable for the 200 mg/kg dose level. No sex-related differences in tissue residue levels were observed.
Excretion:
In the 4 mg/kg group, up to 65% of the administered dose was found in faeces and 31% in urine after 48 hours. In the 200 mg/kg group, up to 86% of the administered dose was found in faeces and 12% in urine after 48 hours. The 168 hour values for total excretion were only ≤2% higher than the 48 hour values for all groups.
Metabolites were identified in the urine and in faeces. In urine the metabolites were: 3,4 -dichloro-5 -isothiazolecarboxylic acid, sulfate of 2 -amino-5 -hydroxybenzonitril, and 4’-OH- and 4’,5’-OH-metabolites of test substance and glucuronide of 4’-OH-metabolite of test substance, respectively. In the faeces unmetabolised test substance was the main 14C component, while 4’-OH-, 3’,4’-OH- and 4’,5’-OH- metabolites of the test substance were also detected to a lesser degree.
Absorption, excretion and metabolism of Isotianil were also investigated in bile-duct cannulated rats after single oral administration of the test substance using two different labelling positions. The test substance was labelled with 14C at the phenyl ring (Phenyl-14C-S-2310 label) or with 14C on the 3 position at the isothiazole ring and the carboxamide (Isothiazole-14C-S-2310 label). A dose level of 4 mg/kg bw was administered to groups of 4 animals/sex. Bile, urine, and faeces were collected in intervals between dosing and sacrifice 48 h after dosing. The total radioactivity, representing the sum of the parent compound and metabolites, was determined in urine, faeces, cage washes, bile and carcass.
After oral administration of either Phenyl-14C-S-2310 or Isothiazole-14C-S-2310, 14C was excreted mainly into the bile. Within 48 h after dosing, 46.2% - 63.8%, 14.7% - 24.6% and 4.6% - 13.1% were excreted into bile, urine and faeces, respectively. Remaining 14C in the body except for the stomach content was 1.7% - 3.0%. From the sum of 14C excreted into urine and bile and remaining 14C in the body, the absorption rate of orally administered 14C was estimated to be 72.5% - 85.9%, indicating that the test substance was rapidly absorbed.
Furthermore, it is reported that 14C was rapidly excreted from the body and more than 90% of orally administered 14C was excreted into urine and faeces within 48 h after dosing. As a total of 87.1% - 97.2% of 14C was excreted into urine, bile and faeces, it was considered that the reabsorption rate (enterohepatic circulation) of 14C excreted into the gastrointestinal tract via bile excretion was low. 14C excreted into the gastrointestinal tract is rapidly eliminated into faeces.
Analyses of the metabolites in urine, faeces and bile showed that the major metabolites in urine were DCIT-acid produced by the cleavage of the amide bond of the test substance, and sulfate of 2-amino-5-hydroxybenzonitrile formed from the conjugation with sulfuric acid of the hydroxylated metabolite at 5-position of 2-aminobenzonitrile produced by the cleavage of the amide bond. In bile, some metabolites hydroxylated at the phenyl group and glucuronides of these metabolites were observed. The major metabolites were glucuronide of monohydroxylated metabolite, 4'-OH-S-2310, trihydroxylated metabolite, Tri-OH-S-2310 (putative structure), and glucuronide of dihydroxylated metabolite, 4',5'-OH-S-2310. The unmetabolised test substance was not detected in urine or bile. In contrast, no metabolite was observed in faeces and only the parent compound was detected. Based on the results, most of the test substance orally administered was absorbed into the body and metabolized rapidly. Hydroxylated metabolites and conjugates were mainly excreted into bile. Amide bond cleaved metabolites were eliminated into urine, while unabsorbed test substance was excreted into faeces as unmetabolised compound.
Overall conclusion:The result of this study clearly shows that male and female rats exhibited a very similar absorption and excretion behaviour. Any accumulation or retention of radioactivity administered with the test substance can be excluded for male and female rats.
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War of the Rebellion: Serial 092 Page 0619 Chapter LVI. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. - UNION.
HEADQUARTERS TWENTIETH CORPS,
Near Horse Creek, GA., December 3, 1864.
Brigadier General N. J. JACKSON,
Commanding First Division:
GENERAL: The general commanding directs me to say that you need not wait to-morrow morning for the Michigan Engineers to precede you, as they have been ordered to remain at the crossing of the creek until further orders.
ROBT. P. DECHERT,
Captain and Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.
ORDERS.] HDQRS. FIRST DIVISION, TWENTIETH CORPS,
Big Horse Creek, GA., December 3, 1864.
This division will march to-morrow (having the advance) at 6 a. m., in the following order: Second Brigade in advance, First Brigade to follow, both to be unencumbered with wagons. The Michigan Engineers, followed by four tool wagons and a battery of artillery, will have a place in the column between these two brigades. The Third Brigade will be so disposed as to guard the following trains, viz: The pontoon train, the division train, the corps supply train, the artillery ammunition train, and the wagons of the Michigan Engineers, with one regiment in rear of all these trains. The same arrangement of ambulances will be made as ordered for to-day. The leading brigade will be on the road with the head of column near the creek in our front promptly at 6 o'clock.
By command of Brigadier General N. J. Jackson:
GEO. ROBINSON,
First Lieutenant and Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.
Brigadier-General GEARY,
GENERAL: The First division is encamped at this point. The general commanding directs that you get as far forward with your troops and trains as practicable, and go into camp. There is no camping-ground near here except in the woods. In the absence of further orders the general directs that you resume the march at 6 a. m. to-morrow, under the same regulations as to-day.
H. W. PERKINS,
Assistant Adjutant-General.
P. S. - Please report your location to-night.
(Same to Brigadier-General Ward.)
‹ Serial 092 Page 0618 OPERATIONS IN S. C., GA., AND FLA. Chapter LVI. up Serial 092 Page 0620 OPERATIONS IN S. C., GA., AND FLA. Chapter LVI. ›
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HOME › MEDICINE › Molecular Hydrogen
Increasing the Lifespan of Cells with Megahydrate
3:13pm on March 7th, 2016 2:04pm on January 30th, 2017
Hydrogen is one of the primordial elements that fueled the development of all life on Earth. Human beings cannot live without hydrogen. While science refers to us as carbon-based life forms, man is also a hydrogen-based life form. When plants absorb sunlight, they store negatively charged hydrogen ions through the process of photosynthesis. When you eat unprocessed plants, your body’s cells utilize the nutrients in those plants with the electrical charge of the hydrogen ions in those plants. When your body burns hydrogen and oxygen, it generates the energy you need for the process of life.
Hydrogen is the smallest known element in the Universe. All living things must have hydrogen to sustain life. The human body must breathe to get oxygen, and must eat and drink to get hydrogen ions. The primary source of hydrogen ions for the human body are fresh uncooked plants, fruits, vegetables, and water.
Due in no small part to mass food production, mineral deficient soil, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, over-processing of foods, the addition of chemical preservatives, and drinking over-chlorinated and over-fluoridated water, millions of individuals are not getting enough hydrogen ions daily and are suffering for it.
When certain chemicals in the body lose an electron, they become positively charged (and are called "free radicals" or "oxidants"). These chemicals roam freely through the rest of the body stealing electrons from other cells. Free radicals damage cellular DNA. The majority of modern science has come to the conclusion that free radical damage in the human body is the cause of aging. Aging is evidence of the damage to millions of the body’s cells through oxidation. This oxidation is due to the lack of hydrogen anions that are available to stop free radical damage.
To understand the concept and practice of increasing cellular lifespans, and thus health and vitality one has to look deep into the cells mitochondria, the Krebs cycle, the electron transport system, and how hydrogen plays a crucial role in the creation of ATP.
Negative hydrogen ions are able to generate ATP in the mitochondria and trap free radicals effectively. The H- changes NAD+ in the mitochondria to NADH. The NADH is then processed in the electron transport system to product 3 ATP molecules. Normally the Krebs cycle produces NADH, but the H- makes it possible to bypass the Krebs cycle by recycling NAD+ to NADH to do this.
The only product that generates H- is Megahydrate, which makes "micro-clusters" of water based around silica nanotechnology. These "micro-clusters" contain silica cages roughly 5 nanometers in diameter with the surrounding water in the EZ (4th or crystalline) state of water and have negative hydrogen ions (H-) embedded within it (see the diagram above). There is no other product that does this. The world expert on EZ water is Dr. Gerald Pollack.
Meghydrate is a hydrogen product that has very broad applicability and contains an abundance of negative hydrogen ions within a colloidal silica matrix. This product is the ultimate hydrogen product (even better, some think, than molecular hydrogen), greatly enhances the production of ATP (cellular energy) in the body, is the most powerful antioxidant available, and is the key that unlocks the potential of water as the medium for nutrient replenishment and waste removal at the cellular level. Other great options are molecular hydrogen, hydrogen generated from water ionizers (as long as the plates are clean, and a new generation of water machines that produce only hydrogen water (due out soon). For a full understanding of hydrogen and its use in medicine, please see this excellent video by Tyler LeBaron of the Molecular Hydrogen foundation.
Molecular hydrogen (H2), produced in ionizer water machines and the even better new generation of hydrogen neutral pH water machines, as well as from H2 tablets, is an uncharged gas. H- is a negatively charged hydrogen anion that can give up an election to NAD+ to produce NADH. H2 cannot do this. In addition, H- is itself a powerful antioxidant that converts hydroxyl free radicals into water the same as molecular hydrogen.
Tremendous Healing Power
An open-label trial of drinking 1.0 liter of hydrogen infused water (molecular hydrogen) per day over 12 weeks was performed on fourteen patients, five having progressive muscular dystrophy, four having polymyositis, dermatomyositis, and five having mitochondrial myopathies. Drinking hydrogen water improved mitochondrial function in mitochondrial myopathies and reduced the inflammatory processes in polymyositis and dermatomyositis[1].
Oxidative stress associated with the production of ROS has been well documented to underlie the surge in pro-inflammatory molecules and mitochondrial DNA damage apparent in disease; which includes cancer, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, neurodegenerative disease, and aging. Higher levels of hydrogen have been shown to protect DNA against oxidative damage by suppressing single-strand breakage of DNA caused by ROS, protect against oxidative damage to RNA and proteins[2], and enhance the anti-oxidizing activity of ascorbic acid by threefold – a factor crucial in avoiding the pro-oxidant risk of administering a high dose of ascorbic acid.
Hydrogen anions (H-) would be better at recycling Vitamin C than glutathione. In addition, we can conclude that the reduction of oxidized glutathione would be enhanced by H-. The same would be true for molecular hydrogen.
The vast majority of animals and plants are able to synthesize vitamin C, through a sequence of enzyme-driven steps. However, some animals, including guinea pigs and humans, lack the enzyme that is required in the last step of vitamin C synthesis. These species are able to survive with the lower levels available from their diets by recycling oxidized vitamin C. Animals that have the enzyme needed to synthesize of vitamin C do not have the ability to recycle oxidized vitamin C.
Thus, for us humans having a supplement that provides H- or molecular hydrogen in high quantities is going to extend our stores of Vitamin C and this is life enhancement at its best. H- and molecular hydrogen both will create a feedback loop and an updraft that lifts the activity of all antioxidants because an adequate supply of vitamin C enables the regeneration of vitamin E and other antioxidants in the body.
Typical Megahydrate Colloid Structure
The particle’s silica-water interface in Megahydrate is saturated with reduced hydrogen, or hydride (H-) ions, and takes on an overall negative charge. In such cases, the particle then acts as a reducing agent or antioxidant when in solution (standard reduction-oxidation potential, −550 mV). It is capable of providing literally trillions of hydride ions able to donate electrons into body fluids. Electrons, which Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (who first identified the anti-ascorbutic factor) called the “fuel of life,” are abundantly available in inorganically grown raw vegetables, fruits, and grains, but are deficient in our modem diet of over-cooked, acidic, or highly oxidized foods, beverages, and drinking water. In silica hydride minerals, the structured water around the silica-water interface stabilizes electron transfer.
Electron deficiencies resulting from inadequate diet have a deleterious impact on specific biological processes such as lactic acid build-up, cellular hydration, and damage from free radicals, mitochondrial bio-energetic capacity, antioxidant activity, and suitability of drinking water for conversion into optional cellular body fluids. Meghydrate fulfills the need that exists for a method of counter balancing these electron deficiencies and, as a result, enhancing each of these biological phenomena.
The above diagram shows the dissolution of Silica Hydride in water. The silica hydride compound does not violently react with water and has been determined by particle analysis to break down in an aqueous environment from the aggregate clusters to the silicate monomeric structures while releasing the hydride ions into the solution. ORP, rH and 1H-NMR measurements indicate significant long-term (on a magnitude of weeks) reduction potentials of −750 mV. Thus, Megahydrate is an antioxidant that promotes full-body hydration, defends against harmful free radicals, and supports energy production and metabolic activity.
The Concept of Silica Hydride.
Conceptually the hydride embedded organosiliceous silsesquioxane, or silica hydride, is a monomeric silica-based cage with interstitially placed hydride anions. As a bio-encapsulated compound, the silica acts as a colloidal carrier for the hydrogen anions in solution.
SOME BENEFITS OF MEGAHYDRATE
Contains Hydrating Silica Microclusters®
Extremely Powerful Antioxidant
Recycles other key antioxidants in the body
Extremely Safe and Non-Toxic
Increases Cellular ATP Production
Reduces Pain & Inflammation
Exhibits Powerful Anti-Aging Properties
Neutralizes Harmful Toxins like Fluoride, Chlorine, etc
Increases Absorption of other Supplements
Lowers surface tension of water you drink leading to improved detoxification
Removes Heavy Metals from the Body
Balances pH or Alkalizes the body
Increase Zeta Potential of Human Cells
Increases Cellular Hydration
Very Stable – Works Over Extensive Time Periods
Megahydrate Tested For Toxicity – Results Show Cell Life Extension
A series of solutions of Megahydrate were prepared in water, ranging in concentration from a few µg (micrograms) per mL (milliliter) to a supersaturated solution of grams per mL. Each of these preparations were introduced into separate vials containing live cells of each of the three cell types. The initial reaction with the cells was observed, then every 15 minutes for over six hours. At each observation, the Megahydrate treated cells were compared with live cells that were non-treated, which acted as a control. Each observation included microscopically looking for any cell disruption, bulging, shrinkage, etc. At each observation, the cellular concentration was also measured using a device called a hemocytometer.
Megahydrate, in every tested concentration, showed no signs of inducing necrosis or apoptosis over the course of the experiment to either the erythrocyte, hybridoma or the ovary cells. In fact, watching the red blood cells were one type of cell tested that indicated no signs of toxicity with Megahydrate treatment. More cells (up to 50%) more were living. Bottom line, more cells were healthy in any arbitrary observation than the non-treated controls.
Dr. Patrick Flanagan, is the creator of Megahydrate. He holds advanced degrees in chemistry, nanotechnology, bio-sciences and medicine. He has developed over 300 inventions and was named Scientist of the Year in 1997 by the International Association for New Science. He was way ahead of everyone in terms of hydrogen medicine. Megahydrate has been around for almost 20 years where as the mainstream of alternative medicine only started paying attention to hydrogen in 2007.
The number of Molecular Hydrogen research papers has grown enormously since 2008. One should take note that almost all the initial research and publications came from Dr. Flanagan who was way ahead of the curve in seeing how hydrogen can affect our health.
[1] M. Ito, T. Ibi, K. Sahashi and etal., "Open-label Trial and Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled, Crossover Trial of Hydrogen-enriched Water for Mitochondrial and Inflammatory Myopathies," Medical Gas Research, p. 1:24, 2011.
[2] M. Lee, Y. Kim, K. Ryoo, Y. Lee and E. Park, "Electrolyzed-reduced (Hydrogen Rich) Water Protects against Oxidative Damage to DNA, RNA and Protein," Appl Biochem Biotechnol, pp. 135(2):133-44, 2006.
> Magnesium
> Sodium Bicarbonate
> Iodine
> Cancer
> Diabetes
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WhatsApp turns to newspaper ads to spread awareness against fake news
Harsh Upadhyay
Mired by fake news circulation in India, Facebook-owned instant messenger service WhatsApp is looking tap national newspapers and local dailies to create awareness amongst citizens. Apart from advertisement and promotions, this is the first instance for any Internet company which is leveraging newspapers for controlling the fake news menace.
The company has reportedly given an advertisement in Times of India publication in Pune edition. Apart from English readers, WhatsApp will also cater regional dailies across India (such as Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and other states) where fake news circulation has been spreading like a wildfire.
WhatsApp has alerted people in 10 important points to curb and spot fake news.
“Our first step is placing newspaper advertisements in English and Hindi and several other languages. We will build on these efforts,” outlines the news advertisement.
The development comes after central government’s strong reaction against social media becoming a hub for spreading rumours, hatred and fake news. The sudden move by WhatsApp is also the result of a series of mob lynching and violence cases happened in Assam, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tripura, and West Bengals.
All of the incidents reportedly fuelled by messages circulated via WhatsApp which subsequently became viral and led to deaths of several people.
With over 250 million userbase, a messaging platform can be vulnerable in spreading any news deliberately or non-deliberately. As far as remedial steps by the company and government are concerned, both are trying to pass the buck.
After the government’s recent warning to tackle the issue, WhatsApp had claimed that it is working to resolve it. The company is testing a feature in India to highlight a forwarded message as well as it is deploying machine learning techniques to identify malicious content.
To identify rumors and false news, the company has also started working with fact-checking organizations such as Boom Live in India.
Of late, the company is reportedly working with researchers to help people spot fake news. It also offers $50K reward to researchers who can come up with measures to solve the problem.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp has claimed that the company’s end-to-end encryption that provides privacy and security prevents it from seeing problematic content spreading through private conversations on its app.
The development was first reported by Reuters.
Facebook, WhatsApp
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Video 9.5.1: Contributed Capital Disclosure Example
More Introduction to Financial Accounting
The course builds on my Introduction to Financial Accounting course, which you should complete first. In this course, you will learn how to read, understand, and analyze most of the information provided by companies in their financial statements. These skills will help you make more informed decisions using financial information.
Financial Accounting, Financial Statement, Accounting, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, Accounting Terminology
It got tougher as it went along, but Professor Brian Bushee never failed to make it interesting or at the very least, understandable. His virtual students livened things up!
This entire course was very well done. I liked the professor and his virtual students. They asked (for the most part) relevant questions that added to my understanding.
Week 9: Shareholders' Equity
Our final week of new material ends at the bottom of the Balance Sheet: Shareholders' Equity. We will talk about issuing stock, repurchasing stock, Treasury Stock, stock dividends and splits, Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income, and stock-based compensation. We will also finally cover the fourth required financial statement: The Statement of Stockholders' Equity.
Video 9.1: Share Issuances and Repurchases22:36
Video 9.2: Dividends, Splits, and AOCI22:51
Video 9.3: Stock-based Compensation19:00
Video 9.4: Earnings Per Share18:31
Video 9.5.1: Contributed Capital Disclosure Example10:45
Video 9.5.2: Stock-based Compensation Disclosure Example15:51
Video 9.6: 3M Company: Shareholders' Equity16:10
Brian J Bushee
The Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor
Seleccionar un idiomaInglés (English)
Hello, I'm Professor Brian Bushee.
In this video, we're going to take a look at some financial statement disclosures
related to stock issuements, stock repurchase and dividends to see where we
can pull out some of the information that we've been learning about this week.
Okay, our disclosure example we're going to look at PupCo,
which manufactures health drinks for dogs and
cats, so things like low-fat bacon smoothies or tuna and cheesy shakes.
And we're going to look at PupCo's Shareholder Equity disclosures to
answer the following questions.
What are shares issues shares outstanding and par value for the common stock?
How much cash did PupCo get from issuing new shares in 2012?
How much cash dividends were declared and paid in 2012?
How much did PupCo pay to repurchase shares in 2012 and
what was the average price that they paid?
And what's what the average price that they paid to acquired all of
their treasury shares as of 12/31/2012.
Okay, we're going to
start with the shares issues, shares outstanding, and par value disclosure.
So here is the balance sheet part of their shareholder's equity, and
we can see under the prefered stock, which has no par value, and the repurchased
preferred stock, that's like treasury stock with a preferred stock.
You can see the common stock and here we have shares issues are 1,865.
That's in millions and that's well below the 3.6 billion shares
that are authorized which means that managers could issue roughly another 1.8
billion shares before they would hit this cap of the authorized share limit.
For shares outstanding, we actually have to calculate the number.
It's not disclosed here.
So we start with shares issues of 1,865.
Then down here in the footnote we have repurchased common stock which is
the treasury shares and there it says we have 284 shares at the end of 2012.
So those are the shares owned by the company so
shares outstanding is the difference between those two which is 1,581.
And then for the par value we look back up here in the common stock line.
And we can see that the par value is 1 and 2/3 cents per share.
>> Why in the world would a company-
>> Dave, let me handle this one.
What kind of nonsense is a par value of 1 and 2/3 cents!
You know I tried to research this.
I looked at the real company and
I could not find how they came up with the par value of 1 and 2/3 cents.
So my guess is that they really wanted to do one and five ninths cents but
that would sound too ridiculous.
So you decide to do something more conventional like 1 and 2 3rds.
The next question was to look for cash from new stock issuances,
so what I've brought up here is part of PupCo's statement of share holders equity.
So it's their first look at one of these statements of share holders equity.
There is a top section which is on preferred stock and
repurchased preferred stock which is the preferred treasury stock.
And then below that we have common stock where there was a beginning balance shares
issued in an imbalance and then below that capital in excess of par value or APIC.
There's a beginning balance.
Some stock based compensation stuff that we'll talk about next video.
And shares issued.
So the two lines that have shares issued here are what we're looking for.
So they got 1 million of par value of common stock.
Plus another four, 4,546.
So that's 4.5 billion of APIC.
Which means the total common stock issued was 4,547.
Now, let's go to the statement of cash flows.
This is the financing section.
And we could look for this proceeds for
stock issuance on the cash from financing and it's let's see where.
No [SOUND].
It's I don't, I don't see it.
So it appears that there was no cash flow from issuing shares.
There's no line on here that says proceeds from issuance of common stock.
So that means that must've gotten no cash from this new stock issuance.
And, in fact, what happened is, I don't show it here.
But there was a disclosure at the bottom of the SCF saying that the share was
issued for an acquisition.
Which was a non-cash activity.
So PupCo issued the shared in return for getting the company.
There was no cash flow involved so
it doesn't show up in the cash flow statement.
So to find share issuances,
you want to look at the statement of stockholders equity.
And then to see how much of that was cash versus non-cash,
you need to go to the statement of cash flows.
A trick question huh?
What about the proceeds from exercises of stock options?
How do you know that some of the new shares were not for
stock option exercises?
>> That's a good point.
The proceeds from exercise of stock options could be
cash received from issuing the new shares at least part of them.
But as we'll see in the next video the stock options were.
Satisfied with treasury stock, not with new shares, so if you look at the whole
footnote, you're going to eventually found out that that's not the answer.
Next we're going to take a look at dividends declared.
And to see this, we go to the Statement of Stockholders' Equity again.
There's a section for retained earnings and AOCI.
Or in this case AOCL Other Comprehensive Loss.
So just quickly, we're not going to talk about the AOCL in the rest of the case but
we'll take a quick look at it.
So here at the bottom, you know, beginning balance.
Then you have each of the four items that we talked about that go through here.
Foreign currency translations fo subsidiaries outside the U.S..
Derivative gains and losses on cash flow hedges.
Pension related gains and losses, and then the one that we've covered, unrealized
gains and losses on marketable securities, which are under the available sale method.
If we go back up to the top, we have retained earnings.
We've got a beginning balance.
Goes up by net income.
And then we have all the cash dividends declared so
there's common dividends of 3022 that's $3 billion.
1 million of preferred dividends, and 12 million of dividends on restricted stock.
This is stock that was given to managers as part of their compensation.
So that's a total of 3 billion dividends declared so 3035.
We go the statement of cash flows, cash for financing section.
And we look in the middle here.
There's cash dividends paid, 2978.
And so we can see here is that PupCo has not paid all
the dividends that they've declared in cash.
There's a timing difference between when they declare it and when they pay it.
And it must straddle the fiscal year ends.
And so there's going to be a change in the dividends payable as a result of this.
So dividends declared we can get from the statement of shareholders equity.
Dividends actually paid in cash we get from the statement of cashflows.
>> That is a lot of dividends.
Why the lamb would the company pay such big dividends when it is borrowing so
much money?
That should just stop the dividends and stop the borrowing.
>> Yeah that's a good point.
PupCo borrowing about $8 billion and yet
they're paying about 3 billion in dividends.
But as we talked about previously.
Companies do not want to cut dividends because it
would be viewed as a bad signal to the market.
So PupCo's going to maintain those dividends to keep their
investors happy and then just go out and borrow money if they need to.
But hey it's 2012 moneys almost free anyway interest rates are low
why not do it.
Okay, finally we want to take a look at the treasury stock or
the repurchased stock, so we go back to the statement of
shareholders equity to look at the repurchased common stock section.
And what we're looking for is what were the payments in 2012 to repurchase shares.
So if we look at the disclosures,
we've got the beginning balance, then share repurchases, stock option exercise,
which we'll talk about in the next video, other, and ending balance.
So we can see that they paid 4,978.
To repurchase shares.
So almost $5 billion they spent to repurchase shares.
If we go to the statement of cash flows the cash from financing section we can
see towards the middle share repurchases common 4,978.
So those were all cash repurchases of treasure stock.
Coming back to the statement of stockholders' equity.
We can now figure out what's the 2012 average price.
So we can see that the 4,978 was paid to acquire 76 million shares.
So if we divide 4,978 by 76 million, we come up with 65.50 per share.
Now we can compare that to the average price for
all treasury shares held at 12/31/2012.
So I went back to the balance sheet, the shareholder's equity section.
We have the balance and repurchase common stock is 16,745.
We can divide that by the number of shares that we've repurchased,
which are 284 million.
Which means that the average price of all Treasury shares held is $58.96,
which is about $7 a share lower than the price in 2012.
Clearly, the company's stock price has gone up in 2012.
But why is the company repurchasing almost $5 billion in
stock during a year when its price went up?
Yeah I agree it's weird at first blush to see the company buying back so
much stock when their stock price is increasing but
again it could be one of these motivations that we've talked about earlier.
So even though PubCo's stock price is going up,
management could still feel it's not going up enough.
They're still undervalued.
Have PupCo's stuff on the shelves.
That must sell really quickly because they never have it
when I'm in the pets food store.
Or it could be that, as we'll talk about next video,
PupCo has a lot of employee stock options, a lot of restricted stock grants.
And they just may need to buy tons of their own stock to
satisfy the stock-based compensation without having to issue new share,
which will dilute the current shareholders.
So one of those reasons could still apply even though their stock price is going up.
And so quite a few times in this video I talked about stock option or stock
based compensation related issues that we would get back to in the next video.
So we will pick this up time looking at those specific disclosures.
I'll see you then.
>> See you next video.
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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Un-Settling Questions: The Construction of Indigeneity and Violence Against Native Women
Author(s): Robertson, Kimberly Dawn
Advisor(s): Goeman, Mishuana R.
Smith, Andrea L.
There is growing recognition that violent crime victimization is pervasive in the lives of Native women, impacts the sovereignty of Native nations, and destroys Native communities. Numerous scholars, activists, and politicians have considered Congress' findings that violent crimes committed against Native women are more prevalent than for all other populations in the United States. Unfortunately, however, relatively all of the attention given to this topic focuses on reservation or near-reservation communities despite the fact that at least 60% of Native peoples now reside in urban areas. In Un-Settling Questions: The Construction of Indigeneity and Violence Against Native Women, I posit that this oversight is intimately connected to the ways in which urban indigeneity has been and continues to be constructed, marginalized, and excluded by the settler state and Native peoples.
Thus, heavily informed by Native feminisms, critical ethnic studies, and indigenous epistemologies, Un-Settling Questions addresses settler colonial framings of violence against Native women by decentering hegemonic narratives that position "reservation Indians" as the primary victims and perpetrators of said violence while centering an exploration of urban indigeneity in relation to this topic. I do so not to "fill a gap in the literature" but rather to analyze the ways in which particular Native peoples become figured as the objects of state attention while other Native peoples become eliminated, both figuratively and literally, through the processes of colonialism.
To accomplish this task and formulate a theoretical praxis that articulates the intersections between marginalization, colonial spatialization, identity formation, biopolitics, and gendered violence, I arrange my dissertation to address three primary concerns: the multifaceted ways in which the United States has utilized a politics of location to facilitate the biopolitical management of Native peoples, the biopolitical nature of identity construction and regulation as it manifests in liberal legislative efforts directed at Native peoples, and indigenous employment of settler colonialist frameworks. Lastly, I apply a Native feminist analytic to the prevalence and conceptualization of violence against Native women in order to present the potential for such theorizations to alter our understanding of and fight against said violence.
Building Capacity at Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI): Cultivating Leaders and Civic Engagement through Federal Policy
Nguyen, Mike Hoa Thai
Challenging Objectives: A Legal and Empirical Analysis of the Substantive FAPE Standard After Endrew F.
Bueso, Leah
Identification of modulators of deoxyribonucleotide pools and replication stress in cancer
Poddar, Soumya
Improved Detection of Native Conformation Proteins with Hydrogel Interfaced Nanopores
Acharya, Shiv Jagat
Essays on Industrial Organization
Caoui, El Hadi
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Harvey Weinstein apologizes for using Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence in legal defense
By Mike Miller
February 23, 2018 at 08:20 AM EST
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Harvey Weinstein is apologizing for naming Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep in a recent legal defense.
“Mr. Weinstein acknowledges the valuable input both Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence have contributed to this conversation and apologizes,” a spokesperson for the disgraced mogul said in a statement Thursday.
“Mr. Weinstein has been informed that his civil counsel responded in court to a class action lawsuit which improperly sought to include all actresses who had previously worked with Mr. Weinstein, even where those actresses have made no claim of wrongdoing.
“Even though Mr. Weinstein has worked with hundreds of actresses and actors who had only professional and mutually respectful experiences with him,” the statement adds, “Mr. Weinstein has directed in the future that no specific names be used by his counsel, even where those actors have made previous public statements about him.”
In a legal filing obtained by The Blast on Wednesday, Weinstein’s lawyers used Lawrence, Streep and Gwyneth Paltrow — who was not mentioned in his apology Thursday — as examples of women who supported him or continued to work with him despite his alleged history of sexual assault and harassment.
The filing came in response to a class action suit previously filed by six actresses who claim that Weinstein, along with The Weinstein Company, used his power to bully women and cover up his alleged misconduct.
“Such women would include, presumably, Jennifer Lawrence, who told Oprah Winfrey she had known Weinstein since she was 20 years old and said ‘he had only ever been nice to me,’” the producer’s lawyers said at the time.
Lawrence responded to her inclusion in the documents in a statement saying on Thursday, “Harvey Weinstein and his company are continuing to do what they have always done which is to take things out of context and use them for their own benefit. This is what predators do, and it must stop.”
She continued, “For the record, while I was not victimized personally by Harvey Weinstein, I stand behind the women who have survived his terrible abuse and I applaud them in using all means necessary to bring him to justice whether through criminal or civil actions. Time’s up.”
Weinstein’s filing on Wednesday also mentioned Streep, who, Weinstein’s attorneys said, “stated publicly that Weinstein had always been respectful to her in their working relationship.”
Streep responded to the lawsuit with a statement on Wednesday, calling it “pathetic and exploitive.” She added, “The criminal actions he is accused of conducting on the bodies of these women are his responsibility, and if there is any justice left in the system he will pay for them — regardless of how many good movies, made by many good people, Harvey was lucky enough to have acquired or financed.”
As for Paltrow, who claimed Weinstein harassed her during the filming of 1994’s Emma, the documents pointed out that the actress “went on to star in another Weinstein production — Shakespeare In Love, and even won an Oscar for her role.”
The documents added, “Paltrow was not so offended that she refused to work with Weinstein again, nor did her career suffer as a result of her rebuffing his alleged advances.”
However, all three actresses have condemned Weinstein since The New York Times and The New Yorker alleged decades of alleged sexual harassment and assault in October. Since then, over 60 women have come forward to accuse the producer of sexual misconduct.
Paltrow was one of dozens of women who came forward to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct in the New York Times in October, saying that the movie mogul made unwanted advances towards her in a hotel room when she was 22. The encounter, which she said occurred after Weinstein hired her for the lead role in Emma, allegedly ended with him placing his hands on her and suggesting a massage.
After the alleged confrontation, Paltrow told the Times that Weinstein called her and threatened her not to speak to anyone else about it. “I thought he was going to fire me,” she told the paper. “He screamed at me for a long time. It was brutal.”
Paltrow, who would go on to win a Best Actress Oscar in 1999 Shakespeare in Love, which was produced by Weinstein, “feels relieved and pleased to have spoken out,” a source told PEOPLE at the time.
But for years, Paltrow said she felt the need to suppress the experience. She told the Times, “He was alternately generous and supportive and championing, and punitive and bullying,”
After Streep was criticized by Rose McGowan, who claims she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein, for not speaking out against the producer, the Oscar winner responded, saying, “Not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he raped Rose in the ’90s, other women before and others after, until they told us.”
She added, “We did not know that women’s silence was purchased by him and his enablers. HW needed us not to know this, because our association with him bought him credibility, an ability to lure young, aspiring women into circumstances where they would be hurt.”
RELATED: Uma Thurman Accuses Weinstein of Sexual Assault and Claims Tarantino Almost Killed Her in Stunt Gone Wrong
While Lawrence did say Weinstein was “paternal” towards her, she also said in the same interview, “I didn’t know that he was a rapist. And it’s so widespread, the abuse, from so many different people — it’s directors, it’s producers — that I think everybody needed to [process it]. Everybody needs to deal with this in their own way; everybody needs to heal.”
The actress, who won an Oscar for the Weinstein-produced Silver Linings Playbook, initially said she was “deeply disturbed” to hear of the allegations against the Hollywood mogul in a statement to PEOPLE.
Weinstein has admitted to making advances on actresses, but vehemently denies allegations of sexual harassment and assault. A spokesperson for the producer previously told PEOPLE in a statement that “any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”
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Novel inhibitors of RNA synthesis
Band Horwitz, S., 1974, In : Federation Proceedings. 33, 11, p. 2281-2287 7 p.
Anthramycin
Nucleic Acid Synthesis Inhibitors
Camptothecin
Observations on the development of the weaver mouse cerebellum
Hirano, A. & Dembitzer, H. M., 1974, In : Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology. 33, 3, p. 354-364 11 p.
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Dendritic Spines
Cerebellum
Cerebellar Cortex
Occupational health case report — no. 3 ethyl acrylate
Cohen, S. R., Maier, A. A. & Flesch, J. P., 1974, In : Journal of Occupational Medicine. 16, 3, p. 199-200 2 p.
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Cohen, S. R. & Maier, A. A., 1974, In : Journal of Occupational Medicine. 16, 3, p. 201-203 3 p.
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Optical excitation of plasmons in a quasi-one-dimensional conductor
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Gliedman, M. L., Tellis, V., Soberman, R., Rifkin, H., Freed, S. Z. & Veith, F. J., Oct 1974, In : Kidney International, Supplement. 1, p. 164-168 5 p.
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Plasmas
Radionuclide diagnosis in chest disease resulting from trauma
Milstein, D. M., Nusynowitz, M. L. & Lull, R. J., 1974, In : Seminars in Nuclear Medicine. 4, 4, p. 339-355 17 p.
Fat Embolism
Radionuclide imaging of the kidney in tuberous sclerosis
Blatt, C. J., Hayt, D. B. & Freeman, L. M., 1974, In : Journal of Nuclear Medicine. 15, 8, p. 699-702 4 p.
Angiomyolipoma
Radiopharmaceuticals for renal studies
Rao Chervu, L., Freeman, L. M. & Donald Blaufox, M., 1974, In : Seminars in Nuclear Medicine. 4, 1, p. 3-22 20 p.
Radiopharmaceuticals
Chlormerodrin
Renal Agents
Raman scattering and infrared absorption from the C-N stretching modes of K2Pt(CN)4Br0.3 3H2O
Rousseau, D. L., Butler, M. A., Guggenheim, H. J., Weisman, R. B. & Bloch, A. N., 1974, In : Physical Review B. 10, 6, p. 2281-2285 5 p.
infrared absorption
infrared spectra
absorption spectra
Relation between the ribosomal sites involved in initiation and elongation of polypeptide chains. Evidence for two guanosine triphosphatase sites
Lockwood, A. H. & Maitra, U., 1974, In : Journal of Biological Chemistry. 249, 2, p. 346-352 7 p.
Peptide Elongation Factor G
Guanosine
Replacement dosage of L-thyroxine in hypothyroidism. A re-evaluation.
Stock, J. M., Surks, M. I. & Oppenheimer, J. H., Mar 7 1974, In : New England Journal of Medicine. 290, 10, p. 529-533 5 p.
Thyrotropin
Replacement Treatment of Hypothyroidism
Wenzel, K. W., Meinhold, H., Alsever, R. N., Stjernholm, M. R., Valenta, L. J., Hamburger, J. I., Koutras, D. A., Palmer, F. J., Nelson, J. C., Daniell, H. W., Stock, J. M., Surks, M. I. & Oppenheimer, J. H., Jul 11 1974, In : New England Journal of Medicine. 291, 2, p. 100-103 4 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Letter
Resonance fluorescence and resonance raman scattering: Lifetimes in molecular iodine
Williams, P. F., Rousseau, D. L. & Dworetsky, S. H., 1974, In : Physical Review Letters. 32, 5, p. 196-199 4 p.
resonance scattering
resonance fluorescence
life (durability)
Resonance raman spectroscopy of rhodopsin in retinal disk membranes
Oseroff, A. R. & Callender, R., 1974, In : Biochemistry. 13, 20, p. 4243-4248 6 p.
Rhodopsin
Raman Spectrum Analysis
Opsins
Resonant Raman effect of I2 dissolved in solution
Fenstermacher, P. R. & Callender, R., 1974, In : Optics Communications. 10, 2, p. 181-185 5 p.
Wave functions
Chlorine compounds
Retrieval in verbal learning
Buschke, H., 1974, In : Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences. 36, 8, p. 721-729 9 p.
Retrieval of repeated items embedded in changing lists
Buschke, H., Ritter, W. & Gindes, M., Apr 1974, In : Journal of Experimental Psychology. 102, 4, p. 726-728 3 p.
Role of metastable dimers in the theory of induced atomic fluorescence
Callender, R., Gersten, J. I., Leigh, R. W. & Yang, J. L., 1974, In : Physical Review Letters. 33, 21, p. 1311-1313 3 p.
dimers
SECOND-ORDER RAMAN EFFECT IN AlP, AlAs, AND AlSb.
Masui, H., Klein, P. B., Chang, R. K., Callender, R. & Chicotka, R. J., 1974, Unknown Host Publication Title. B. G. Teubner, p. 509-513 5 p.
Phonons
Conduction bands
Special cutaneous receptor organs of fish. VII. Ampullary organs of mormyrids
Szamier, R. B. & Bennett, M. V. L., 1974, In : Journal of Morphology. 143, 4, p. 365-383 19 p.
Electric Fish
Specificity of ribonucleic acid chain initiation by bacteriophage T3 induced ribonucleic acid polymerase
Maitra, U., Salvo, R. A. & Chakraborty, P. R., 1974, In : Journal of Biological Chemistry. 249, 18, p. 5835-5839 5 p.
Bacteriophage T3
Bacteriophages
Guanosine Triphosphate
Cytidine Triphosphate
Spontaneous remembering after recall failure
Buschke, H., 1974, In : Science. 184, 4136, p. 579-581 3 p.
Stimulators and inhibitors of hepatic porphyrin formation in human sera
Rifkind, A. B., Sassa, S., Merkatz, I. R., Winchester, R., Harber, L. & Kappas, A., 1974, In : Journal of Clinical Investigation. 53, 4, p. 1167-1177 11 p.
Porphyrins
Oral Contraceptives
Study of electrotonic distribution on the surface of cardiac structures (Russian)
Sakson, M. E., Bukauskas, F. F., Kukushkin, N. I. & Nasonova, V. V., 1974, In : Biofizika. 19, 6, p. 1045-1050 6 p.
Heart Conduction System
Atrial Function
Heart Ventricles
Survival following amniotic fluid embolism with early heparinization
Chung, A. F. & Merkatz, I. R., 1974, In : Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey. 29, 6, p. 394-397 4 p.
Amniotic Fluid Embolism
Symposium: New data for noise standards: III. Organ culture of the mammalian inner ear: A tool to study inner ear deafness
Van De Water, T. & Ruben, R. J., 1974, In : Laryngoscope. 84, 5, p. 738-749 12 p.
Organ Culture Techniques
Synthesis of a carboxyl-terminal (constant region) fragment of the immunoglobin light chain by a mouse myeloma cell line
Kuehl, W. M. & Scharff, M. D., Nov 5 1974, In : Journal of Molecular Biology. 89, 3
Clone Cells
Taxonomy of the Taung skull
Olson, T. R., 1974, In : Nature. 252, 5478, p. 85 1 p.
Hominidae
Testicular function in sickel cell disease
Friedman, G., Freeman, R. & Bookchin, R., 1974, In : Fertility and Sterility. 25, 12, p. 1018-1021 4 p.
Oligospermia
Sickle Cell Anemia
Reference Values
Ischemia
The capping of surface immunoglobulin on mouse myeloma cells
Preud'Homme, J. L. & Scharff, M. D., 1974, In : Journal of Immunology. 113, 2, p. 702-704 3 p.
B-Cell Antigen Receptors
Plasmacytoma
The effect of a psychiatric residency program on admission and discharge rates and patient disposition
Karasu, T. B., Plutchik, R., Herschenfeld, P. & Siegel, B., 1974, In : American Journal of Psychiatry. 131, 8, p. 918-921 4 p.
Patient Discharge
Internship and Residency
The effect of synthetic luteinizing hormone releasing factor on plasma LH levels in pituitary disease
Coscia, A. M., Fleischer, N., Besch, P. K., Brown, L. P. & Desiderio, D., 1974, In : Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. 38, 1, p. 83-88 6 p.
Pituitary Diseases
Pituitary Neoplasms
Luteinizing Hormone
Gonadotropins
The electrostatic basis of Mg++ inhibition of transmitter release
Muller, R. U. & Finkelstein, A., 1974, In : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 71, 3, p. 923-926 4 p.
Neuromuscular Junction
Cations
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ITC proposes investment worth over Rs 1,100 crore in Uttar Pradesh
Donald Trump's tariff move to 'punish' China may be the biggest blow to renewables yet
ITC to invest Rs 2,000 crore in solar power, food processing in UP
Indian Oil Corp to take Rs 4,200 crore hit under GST regime
"We face the burden of dual tax compliance. First for non-auto fuels, which are under GST, and the second on auto fuels that are not under GST but the old VAT system,” IOC director (finance) A K Sharma said.
Oil companies' profits may be hit by irrecoverable taxes
The decision to keep crude oil, natural gas, petrol, diesel, and aviation turbine fuel (ATF) out of Goods and Services Tax (GST) purview is expected to impact profits and profitability of state-owned oil companies on account of irrecoverable or stranded taxes.
Tata Group explores ready-to-eat food market
The ambitious entry into the ready-to-eat market was a bone of contention between former chairmen Cyrus Mistry and Ratan Tata, ET had reported in December.
How much control could the government exert in private sector entities?
The value of the stakes of the government and its wholly owned arms in ITC, L&T and Axis Bank alone exceed Rs 1,80,000 crore.
Top six companies lost Rs 91,800 crore in market valuation last week
While TCS, RIL, ITC, Infosys, HDFC and HUL suffered losses in their market valuation for the week ended Friday, HDFC Bank, ONGC, SBI and CIL made gains.
10 blue chips alone wiped out Rs 77,000 crore in Wednesday’s meltdown; hope you survived
HDFC, the third biggest firm by market-cap, had taken a Rs 9,457 crore hit to Rs 2.10 lakh crore. ITC and Infosys tanked up to 4 per cent.
ETMarkets.com/
Rs 4,000-crore investments in wind energy on brink of becoming NPAs
“All these developers face this threat, even if they have been paying interest on their loans. This will affect their credit worthiness for future bank loans.”
58mTwo Chinese ports halt customs clearances for coal imports - sources
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Action » Maternal, infant and young child nutrition
Malaysia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Suriname GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Seychelles GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Thailand GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Kuwait GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Australia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Costa Rica GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Morocco GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Grenada GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Argentina GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Benin GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Bosnia and Herzegovina GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Brazil GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Botswana GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
China GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Côte d'Ivoire GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Cameroon GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Ecuador GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Fiji GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Georgia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Saint Lucia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Mauritania GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Niger GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Philippines GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Papua New Guinea GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Poland GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Romania GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Russian Federation GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
El Salvador GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Sao Tome and Principe GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Eswatini GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Syrian Arab Republic GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Togo GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
United States of America GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Uzbekistan GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
South Africa GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Zimbabwe GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9b) - Infant feeding in the context of HIV - Infants and young children|Pregnant/lactating women with HIV/AIDS A
Bangladesh GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Lesotho GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Madagascar GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Myanmar GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Mozambique GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Namibia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Burkina Faso GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Czechia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Guatemala GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Lao People's Democratic Republic GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Mongolia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Sudan GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Afghanistan GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Bolivia (Plurinational State of) GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Democratic Republic of the Congo GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Congo GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Colombia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Haiti GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Indonesia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Kenya GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Kyrgyzstan GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Kuwait GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Sri Lanka GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
New Zealand GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Somalia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
United Republic of Tanzania GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Uganda GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Nicaragua GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Pakistan GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Thailand GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Viet Nam GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Serbia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Malaysia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Burundi GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Chile GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Costa Rica GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Iran (Islamic Republic of) GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Jamaica GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Mali GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Australia GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Bosnia and Herzegovina GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Botswana GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
China GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Côte d'Ivoire GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Fiji GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Guam GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Israel GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Mexico GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Mauritania GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Niger GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Philippines GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Papua New Guinea GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Russian Federation GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Solomon Islands GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
El Salvador GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Eswatini GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Uzbekistan GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
Zimbabwe GNPR 2016-2017: Infant and young child nutrition (q9c) - Infant feeding in the context of emergencies - Infants and young children|Lactating women (LW)|Pregnant women (PW) A
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No Regrets? Reason Why 'RHONY' Star Ramona Singer Was Absent At Her Abusive Father’s Funeral
May 24, 2019 10:59 By Fabiosa
The Real Housewives of New York City star Ramona Singer had a troubled childhood, and she prefers not to recall those horrible times and her abusive father, in particular.
Публикация от Ramona Singer (@ramonasinger) 27 Мар 2019 в 8:31 PDT
Nevertheless, during one of the previous interviews, Ramone opened up that such a hard childhood helped her in her acting career. She said that it was rather easy for her to block out cameras because she constantly had to block out noise while being a child.
It’s easy for me to block out the cameras. Probably because, growing up, I had to block out all the noise in my family. I shut the cameras out, just like I shut out my father’s yelling.
Absent at abusive father’s funeral
Ramona Singer revealed that her father was very abusive to her mother, and the atmosphere in the family was indeed depressing and even dangerous.
Публикация от Ramona Singer (@ramonasinger) 22 Янв 2019 в 7:15 PST
As a kid, Ramona had to hide from her father, as she was afraid of him and knew he could do horrible things.
It was really a horrible situation. It was like a war zone. I didn’t know what I was coming home to. Dishes flying, screaming, yelling. We’d hide under the covers as kids. … His mother beat the s— out of him. He was abused as a child, so he was abusive to my mother.
Публикация от Ramona Singer (@ramonasinger) 13 Апр 2019 в 6:05 PDT
Nobody knew that the situation was so bad: on the outside, everything looked normal. But unfortunately, it wasn’t normal in the inside. Ramona didn’t feel love and support from her father; instead, he just ignored a little girl.
My family life on the outside looked very normal. But there’s a lot of darkness going on in the inside. I had no love from my father. No love, zero love. He ignored me.
Публикация от Ramona Singer (@ramonasinger) 6 Май 2019 в 1:37 PDT
When Ramona’s father passed away, she didn’t go to his funeral and even revealed the reason for such a decision
My dad's been dead for like 10 years, my mom for 12. I didn't go to my father's funeral, because my brother cremated him against my will.
She also said that dad left nothing for her in a will, which made her cry hysterically for a long time.
Публикация от Ramona Singer (@ramonasinger) 1 Май 2019 в 10:52 PDT
What to do if someone has an abusive husband?
Unfortunately, a lot of women face abuse in their families. But what can we do in order to help such women?
First of all, we should listen to the woman, as it is important for such people to share the story with someone. Also, we can help her get in touch with the counselor, who can answer more complicated questions. And of course, always be ready to show support.
fizkes / Shutterstock.com
Even though so many women become victims of family abuse, we can do something in order to make the situation better.
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Archive for yoga
ART MUSE EVOLUTION
Posted in Art, Chaos Magic, Goetia Girls, Love Magic, Lucid Dreaming, Psychology, Sex Magic, Shamanism, Sorcery, Succubus, Surrealism, Tulpa Creation, Witchcraft with tags anima, animus, anthropology, archaeology, Archimedes, art, art muse, artist, Athena, babalon, bonpo, brain, Buddhist, cave man, cave woman, chaos magic, chaos magick, coitus pactum, conjuration, conjuring, dakini, Dakinis, dream Yoga, Eureka, evolution, Faustian, faustus crow, goetia girls, great beast, grimoire, human brain, intelligence, inventor, language, Lilith's Harem, lucid dream, lucid dreaming, Mardun, meditation, muse, muses, National Geographic News, osculum infame, pop occulture, Princeton University, psychologist, ritual magic, scientist, sex, sexuality, shamanism, sorcery, spirit, succubae, succubi, succubus, surreal, surrealism, surrealist, Susan Fiske, Tantra, Tantric, Tibetan, tool making, yoga, Yogi on November 22, 2017 by FAUSTUS CROW
How did the naked ape become so smart, and what initiated it to happen? To untangle this age old question, anthropologists have been seeking to discover archaeological artefacts, which reveal the evolving intelligence of our human ancestors who lived 1.8 million years ago. It was at this point in the far distant past that a new type of stone tool had erupted upon the scene along with the human brain nearly doubling in size.
Some researchers have suggested that this more advanced technology, coupled with a bigger brain, implies a higher degree of intelligence, which was propelled by the first signs of language. But there is another driving force propelling this evolutionary leap in tool making, which is far more basic, yet profound in its implications. It was driven by the biological imperative to be seen as being attractive to the opposite sex.
Basically, the ape with the bigger chopper got the females attention, because with such a tool, he could provide the necessary fodder for his mate and progeny.
This of course also required him to have a bigger brain pan to create a better and far more efficient chopper than his competition, whereby enabling him to sow his seed, siring ever more cleverer apes. Some of whom would escalate in intelligence, becoming far too clever for their own good, but that’s evolution for you!
Let’s imagine a scenario, you have a lumbering giant of a cave man looking like Arnold Shwarzenegger with pumped up bear brawn, having the biggest red ‘Animus’ arse around, facing a spindly little cave man looking like Jim Carrey. The spindly cave man appears to be inanely grinning, for some unknown reason. All the cave women are pulling their hair out, frothing at the mouth, baring their breasts and buttocks, lustfully screaming.
The cave women are howling for their red ‘Animus’ arse favourite to attain the right to mate with them, who are expecting him to entirely decimate the little inconsequential cave man. Even the girls, who, like their mothers, scream out for the apish bear to win; but then, girls emotionally mature far more quickly than the boys do.
As the giant goes in for the kill, the little cave man suddenly pulls out a slingshot, to quickly let loose a sharpened stone at the bear sized ape. Whack! Right between his drooping testicles, the giant crashes to the ground with his red ‘Animus’ arse up in the air. All the cave women are stunned senseless. Intelligence has won over bear brawn, the new evolutionary aphrodisiac!
But, without the need to mate, the spindly cave man would have never been able to create a slingshot in the first place to give him the edge over mere brawn. Sounds a bit too cave man basic doesn’t it. Let us move forward in time to the glory that was ancient Greece, to see a horny sculptor sculpting a Venus out of marble with his advanced tool, or that of a sweaty renaissance Artist painting a canvas, inspired by an Art model Muse, who also drove the scientist absolutely Einstein crazy, creating varied technological tools. I shit you not, the Faustian scientist entered into an Osculum Infame Coitus Pactum with his Muse!
Your programmed brain might consider that this generalised interpretation is politically incorrect let alone sexist? Well, it isn’t, it takes two to tango. It has always been a case of a Yin-Yang team effort in order to survive all those great mammals, which made your ancestors look like tiny meals on bipedal legs. However they had those nifty hunting tools, bringing down Mammoths, which they also used to defend themselves against sabre tooth tigers and cave bears, etc; to have later created the technological wonders you presently know now, where weapons of mass destruction equates with having the biggest Area 51 Freudian chopper, rather than looking towards the Star Trek stars.
Alas, the bad-boy naked ape having the biggest bad arse chopper on the block, always gets the chicks hot for what’s inside of his beastly pants. There is an ancient Hindu adage, that goes, “a God is not a God without his Shakti.” In general the term, Shakti means the feminine principle, who is the creative inspiration and meaning of all life itself. Another old adage is, “behind every great man is a woman,” which is presently considered to be extremely sexist. However, when to look into ancient cultures, such as ancient Egypt, for example, a Pharaoh crowned as a Horus derives his power from the throne, which is seen to be Isis female, just as a Merlin hawk of a Myrddin is traditionally flown from a ladies stroking hand.
That is why women have been depicted having the hots for the horned Devil, who is actually a horned (Merlin/Myrddin) shaman. In other words, the driving force behind the evolutionary creative impulse of tool making is the biological imperative to be attractive to the opposite sex, otherwise there is no evolutionary furtherance of life. The same would be the case on other alien worlds.
You might ask Is there any hard evidence of the evolution of intelligence being entwined with evolving tool use, which enables a tool using naked ape to become more attractive to the opposite sex? It just so happens, there is some evidence.
A recent study of brain scans have revealed that when heterosexual men are shown pictures of scantily clad women, the region of the brain associated with ‘tool use’ immediately lights up.
This also indicates something else, concerning the shamanistic usage of erotic mediation images in order to activate the region of the brain associated with tool making, which of an ancient technique enables the conscious conjuring up of personified ideas as ‘Anima’ archetype Muses within lucid dreams.
A Tibetan Bonpo shaman would otherwise term a Muse as being a Dakini, whose inner manifestation enables consciousness expansion into other arenas of fiery perception, beyond the subliminal programming of a particular culture, which has a Playgirl emphasis upon the deified ‘Animus.’
As for the caveman usage of anthropomorphic symbolism, the present day UFO researchers misinterpret as being representations of alien hybrids; the sky-walking void-going Dakinis are often associated with particular archetypal animals, which symbolically represent subconscious energetic qualities. These energetic qualities can be tapped into when conjuring a particular animal headed Dakini. For example the wrathful wisdom Dakini called, Simhamukha initially manifests as a lioness, before assuming human form within a lucid dream.
The same type of anthropomorphic symbolism is utilised in the Playgirl grimoires where you have ‘Animus’ archetypes initially manifesting as various animals. The Muses also initially manifest as animals; it is one of the primary reasons why tools, such as ships, cars and computers, etc, are often given animal names as well as being traditionally seen as being feminine of quality by males, in the main, which at an unconscious level alludes to the tool making part of the male brain being activated. Should a heterosexual male practitioner sheepishly externalise this symbolism as being literal, it will invariably lead to animal welfare officers as well as the police becoming involved.
The finding that sexual (meditation) imagery activates the tool-making part of the male brain gives a whole new slant on the exclamation ‘Eureka!,’ which is famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes having a tool making insight when stepping into his bath. I will leave it to the women to imagine what he was actually doing of a meditation exercise upon Athena, just before bathing his illuminated… head.
However the findings have been mundanely interpreted as indicating that men dehumanize women as being mere sex objects, which of a commonality is seen to be molded by society. Whereupon the ‘Animus’ fixated religions, such as Islam, women have to be entirely covered up head to toe.
The experiment was orchestrated by the lead researcher Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University, who seems to have entirely missed the evolutionary point of a Eureka finding, who would prefer women being entirely covered up, that, or chemically castrating the ‘Anima’ imaginations of the male population.
“If a similar study were done with women,” Fiske told National Geographic News, “it would be hard to predict whether a woman shown a scantily clad male body would dehumanize him in the same way.” Well, she probably wouldn’t do so, if he hasn’t got a big enough chopper, I mean, stone axe, who would be the type of fellow who finds himself in a dead end job. Although he could potentially bounce out of a pandering shit pan job, should he rebelliously conjure an inspiring Muse amidst his Triangle Of Art Imagination.
Whereas a very crafty Witch would meditate upon an image of an archetypal expression of her deified ‘Animus,’ such as a Good-Guy Beta-Male Angel or an Alpha-Male Bad-Boy Daemon listed in the commonality of the patriarchal Playgirl grimoires, to then conjure up her tool making desire into a lucid dream, and on waking, to thence hunt down her ‘Animus’ projection in the crucified flesh, upon an intuitive synchronicity. Who knows, she may even birth an Indigo Moon Childe mutant of yet another evolutionary leap.
Suffice to say, said chosen male would not know what’s clubbed him, who will then have a primordial tool brain need to create lots of gadgets around the house for his Babalon, that, or having the big-bucks to acquire them from other Muse inspired inventors who are also being ridden as Great Beast’s by Babalon’s.
A number of evolutionary psychologists, who are far more honest than Fiske, have proposed that women tend to look for mates who have wealth and power; whereupon some of Fiske’s colleagues have suggested running a similar test where women are shown pictures of scantily clad Chippendale males next to expensive Merkaba cars or other affluent Playgirl grimoire symbols of tool making prowess.
However, Fiske doesn’t think such an experiment would work the same way, because she sees women usually reacting to men who they desire by “interpreting their minds, thinking about what they’re interested in, and then trying to please them,” she said, which indicates her agenda is far more subjectively political than objectively scientific.
There is ample scientific proof, which indicates that women also objectify men in the same way that Fiske and her cohorts are attempting to scientifically prove that males are the only sex who objectify women. The difference is that males are far more visual; whereas, women are turned on by how a male communicates him self. Hence women are more into ‘literary’ erotica, not so much that of visual stimuli.
But what Fiske to have also revealed without realising, is that the fallen ‘Anima’ fluctuations of the Art Muses act in the same way, like that of conjured schoolgirl (Succubi/Succubae) Dakinis who inspire the tool making brain of a conjuring Tantric headmaster.
When to presently look around, or to investigate bygone ages of innumerable written or illustrated examples, across all cultures, women expertly interpret male minds, by figuring out what they’re emotionally interested in, in order to stop them from sowing their oats elsewhere. Hence, like Hens, women are highly competitive with other women when choosing mates. But only if the desired males have bigger and better tools than the other Peacock males. It isn’t Atomic rocket science, it’s genetically-hardwired nature, which cannot be socially engineered out of existence. Should you intelligently work with mother nature, that’s fine, but if you fight against her, she’ll bite back, and she’s a bitch!
GOBEKLI TEPE SHAMAN
Posted in archaeology, Chaos Magic, Shamanism, Sorcery, Witchcraft with tags Algiz, animist, Apollo, Ayahuasca, bird, Brahma, caduceus, Chakras, Dakinis, DMT, Dr. Matthew Clark, dream, Göbekli Tepe, Graham Hancock, hermes, hindu, Hinduism, hypnagogic trance, India, Jeremy Narby, Kundalini Shakti, lucid dreaming, monotheisim, monotheism, muses, nine, nine muses, rune, sacred number nine, scorpion, serpent, shaman, shamanism, Siva, snake, Soma, Southeastern Anatolia, Spider, succubi, succubus, The Cosmic Serpent, trance, Turkey, valkyrie, yoga, Şanlıurfa on July 14, 2017 by FAUSTUS CROW
Göbekli Tepe, is an archaeological site atop a mountain ridge in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of modern-day Turkey, approximately 12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa.
What makes Göbekli Tepe unique is the date, when it was built, which is roughly twelve thousand years ago, circa 10,000 BC, going way beyond anything Hollywood can misdirection conjure up.
Archaeological artefacts have been discovered at Göbekli Tepe, one of which is an image of a human, wearing what looks to be a bird mask in profile, having a pronounced singular (Sun) ‘eye,’ whose spine is represented by the recognisable (Caduceus) symbol of two entwined serpents forming a double (DNA) helix. There are also nine spheres, whose number is considered to be very important in shamanistic systems. The number nine is usually associated with nine spheres of consciousness, planets, worlds or dimensions, which are personified as deities, the nine Rishis and their corresponding ‘wives,’ or as the nine ‘Muses.’
The motif of the serpent is found elsewhere in Göbekli Tepe along with anthropomorphic bird imagery. The symbolism of the serpent and the bird is well known of in shamanistic practices across the globe. The serpent and bird (feathered serpent) points at the experience of (hypnagogic) trance. When experiencing (hypnagogic) trance, the practitioner experiences the sensation that he/she is swimming like an amphibious fish/serpent in the ‘watery’ realm of the (lucid) dream, which is also equated with (nine planets) space. The serpent describes the experience of an energy rush within the body, which feels as if it is moving up the spine (Chakras/endocrine-system) towards the top of the head, when inducing (hypnagogic) trance.
This then leads to a ‘flying as a bird,’ like that of becoming a (inner Sun) winged-eye, of an Out Of Body experience, experiencing inner visions:
“In their visions, shamans take their consciousness down to the molecular level and gain access to information related to DNA, which they call “animate essences” or “spirits.” This is where they see double helixes, twisted ladders, and chromosome shapes. This is how shamanic cultures have known for millennia that the vital principle is the same for all living beings, and is shaped like two entwined serpents (or a vine, a rope, ladder…). DNA is the source of their astonishing botanical and medicinal knowledge, which can be attained only in defocalized and “nonrational” states of consciousness, though its results are empirically verifiable. The myths of these cultures are filled with biological imagery, and the shamans metaphoric explanations correspond quite precisely to the descriptions that biologists are starting to provide.”
Jeremy Narby – The Cosmic Serpent, DNA And The Origins Of Knowledge.
Jeremy Narby is a Canadian anthropologist and author. In his books, Narby examines shamanism and molecular biology, and shamans’ knowledge of botanics and biology through the use of entheogens across many cultures.
Narby has spent several years living with the Ashaninca in the Peruvian Amazon cataloging indigenous use of Ayahuasca.
Dr. Matthew Clark Post-Doctoral Research Associate, SOAS (affiliate), postulated that the ancient Vedic drink of India called Soma could have been an Ayahuasca analogue. If so, a certain pillar in Göbekli Tepe could be describing the Soma preparation of an Ayahuasca counterpart. This would require the plant materials being mixed and crushed together, using ritualistic ‘handled’ tools for the purpose of creating a (Scorpion) poison, which initiates the little death of (hypnagogic) trance.
There is also an image of an anthropomorphic bird, looking at a circle it is holding, which could represent a sphere, perhaps it is the Earth? If so, they knew that the Earth was spherical, twelve thousand years ago. That or the sphere is an ancient (Soma) pill; but then, both the Earth and a sacred hallucinogen would be seen as being one and the same, all are connected. There are also other symbols, which look like Runes; one of which looks like the 15th Norse (Valkyire) Rune, called Algiz. Although, said (Valkyrie) Rune, in its infancy probably pertained to the motif of the tree and in turn the axis-mundi of the spinal column, and its (Autonomic/Central – Nervous System) three-nerve-channels, which in Hinduism is symbolised by the trident wielded by the shamanic deity called Siva, who partook of (hallucinogen) Soma.
Little wonder then that the established monotheistic religions are getting in on the act, who are laying claim to Göbekli Tepe as their own to ‘brand,’ since the symbolic focus upon the Middle East has been knocked, which is due to Göbekli Tepe far predating their religious cultural-constructs.
(Much of the shamanistic symbolism has been appropriated by the monotheists, who do not understand it. For example, the symbolism of the horned ‘Cow’ or ‘Bull’ and that of other horned animals are associated with the horns of the shaman, which describe the hemi-synchronisation of the hemispheres of the brain, when accessing [hypnagogic] trance. The shaman will [Serpent] experience the [hypnagogic] trance sensation of having [Cow/Bull] horns growing out of his/her head, or to feel he/she is wearing a crown, or feeling as if his/her head is [pharaoh crown] elongating. This then leads to accessing the inner [Spider] web, which interconnects all things.)
However, Göbekli Tepe didn’t just appear out of nowhere, the site was very likely interconnected with other sites. These other sites could potentially far predate Göbekli Tepe, which are yet to be discovered.
That’s if they haven’t been destroyed, since their discovery will totally shatter the theological politics of the monotheistic religious constructs, who are seeking to keep the focus on the Middle East.
(One of the motifs you find in the Middle East is the worship of ‘fire;’ however, this is also known of by other peoples, such as the nomadic Aryans and Mongolian peoples of the steppe, etc. The fire represents the inner [bio-photon] fire, which is associated with the [Mitochondrial DNA] serpent.)
However much they try to lay claim to Göbekli Tepe their fixation upon a deified ‘Animus’ made as a God, just keeps on getting in the way, which invalidates their shared symbolic constructs of theological politics.
(The monotheists tend to be anti-sex, whereupon when confronted by serpent symbolism, which has a phallic association, they cannot handle it. When accessing [hypnagogic] trance, the conscious awareness of the practitioner is seen to be fertilising the womb of the [lucid] dream, giving birth to visions. The phallic symbolism of the serpent also alludes to the shamanic usage of Psilocybin mushrooms.)
Their religious cultural constructs are not important here at all, anyway, it is the inner experience, which is of importance; for it is the legacy of everyone upon the planet, which cannot be ‘branded,’ nor owned by any religious cultural construct.
What has been noted is the similarity between the Kundalini Shakti of Yoga practice, out of ancient India and the Göbekli Tepe symbolism of the entwined serpents. The arousal of the Kundalini Shakti (‘Fire’ snake/goddess) is experienced as an inner energy arising along the (Chakras) spinal-column, which then strikes the back of the head like a ‘Scorpion’ sting; this then engenders (hypnagogic) trance visions of the (Muses) Dakinis, the American ethnobotanist Terence McKenna would have equated with his mechanical Elves. The anthropologist and author Carlos Castaneda called the Dakinis, ‘Allies,’ which he described as being an inorganic feminine intelligence associated with power plants. (The stele below is of Siva and two entwined [Caduceaus] serpents from South India)
This has led to the monotheists getting into a rumble with the animist Hindus, who have come to a shaky agreement that the name of monotheist Abraham could be linked to the animist Hindu deity called Brahma, should you use dodgy etymology as well as moving the letters of Brahma’s name around; they even threw in Siva for good measure. I kid you not!
But the experience of the Kundalini Shakti is known of in other cultures, under differing names, which of a symbolic communication has its source in ancient shamanistic practices. For example, the symbol of the (Kundalini Shakti) Caduceus was originally carried by Apollo, who it is said had migrated from Hyperborea, which is the ancient Greek name for Siberia.
(The specific Hyperborean area in question could be the Altay [Altai] region of Southern Siberia, which had been hit by a massive Atlantean inland flood during the last ice age. This also ties in with the intriguing genetic findings of the 2012 genome project concerning a genetic cradle from the [Altai] Altay to Lake Baikal that a number of dispersed peoples share.) Apollo then exchanged his Caduceus with Hermes for his seven-stringed lyre, when Apollo eventually reached the land of the Hellenes.
As for shamanism, it is not and never was a religion, it has no dogma, nor religious texts, it is otherwise that of a system of ‘experiential’ techniques, which enable consciousness expansion. Shamanism is essentially the science of consciousness, anyone can engage in exploring.
When symbol systems are employed as ‘tools’ by shamans, the primary symbolism alludes to experiences of the inner reality, such as the serpent representing the energy rush of (hypnagogic/Phase) trance, the bird symbolising (OOBE) ecstasy, while other animals would represent differing states of consciousness, along with symbolism referring to being re-birthed from the inner visionary world of the (lucid) dream.
Wherefore you will find similar symbolism across the globe, which is due to our shared neurology and DNA, linking us with other life-forms, like that of being connected by a ‘Spider’s’ web.
(This does not mean that the exploration of the inner reality is disengaged from probable stellar observations, which have been noted at Göbekli Tepe, the two mutually support each other. The star-clock indicates [circadian rhythm] key-times for [hypnagogic] trance ingress into inner space.)
Whereas a religion has a total focus upon the symbolism of a particular culture, which tends to bury the primary symbolism of an inner experience, to either negate, or keep secret, that, or demonising it. The reason why religious constructs do this, is because, it’s priests who attain power and influence over others, do not want you becoming aware of your own shamanic legacy. Should you become aware of your own inner reality, the priests of the established religious construct will then lose their illusory power over you and others, which they do not want. Otherwise they’re out of their big-business; no more Shekels!
You can thereby conjecture as to why the builders of Göbekli Tepe later buried what they had built, who may have had the visionary foresight to protect it for their future descendents to rediscover. It does appear they were fully aware that a religious construct and its priests would have destroyed what it communicates of a shamanic legacy.
You might think that all of this sounds crazy; But there are other sites of interest, which may be of similar importance to Göbekli Tepe, the archaeologists are yet to investigate, if they ever do so, since these sites are no doubt considered as being dangerous to those who seek to keep their academic reputations intact, but more so by the present establishment.
The monotheistic religious constructs have been around for a very long time, their shared establishment is very much entwined with politics, finance, the acquisition of land, material assets, having control over the world’s need for water, food and energy, etc, whose ‘Animus’ fixated symbolism permeates your language and every level of culture.
Hence, they do not want such discoveries being made, since it will utterly destroy the illusory symbolic focus on the religious politics of the ever warring Middle East, upon which your present ‘Oil’ dependent culture is entirely based.
NOTE: The ancient Greeks most often associated Apollo’s name with the Greek verb ἀπόλλυμι (apollymi), “to destroy,” which is of similarity to the Hindu deity Siva, who is known as the destroyer. However, Siva destroys the illusion of [belief/Ring-Pass-Not/Limit] form, which is that of a rebellion against the accepted norm, symbolically equating with war, this leads to questioning the reality, upheld by an establishment; Siva is an anarchistic evolutionary force, who in many respects represents what a scientist should be.
Apollo is also associated with the ‘serpent’ and with ‘light.’ Hence he was seen to be a titan of the Sun; whereas, his twin sister, Artemis was associated with the Moon, whose Roman name Diana-Lucifera, refers to her being the mother of ‘fire,’ of similarity to the Altaic, Yal-un eke, the Hindus would call the Kundalini Shakti. Apollo’s association with light, is that of the inner light/fire [Diana-Lucifera/Yal-un eke] illuminating your [bio-photon] dreams.
In this context it then links Apollo with the “Southern Siberian” Altaic name, Odqan, which means, ‘Fire King,’ this then leads you to the Norse shamanic deity called Odin, the Saxons called Woden, whose name means ‘Light/ecstasy master,’ who has similarities with Siva and in turn with Apollo. Overall, Apollo – Siva – Odin/Woden was probably a deified [Altaic/Odqan] shaman.
In regards to the term, Altaic, it is a proposed language family of central Eurasia and Siberia, including the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic groups, which are invariably included in the family. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from Eastern Europe, through Central Asia to Anatolia [Göbekli Tepe] and to the Korean Peninsula and Japanese archipelago in East Asia. The group is named after the Altai mountain range in Central Asia.
The Altaic language group is considered to be highly controversial, as many linguists think that the common features of alleged Altaic languages resulted from borrowing rather than descending from a common ancestral tongue. A few scholars, however, take the opposite perspective and argue that Altaic is a genuine family. It just so happens that many of the peoples speaking these languages appear to have a curious [2012 genome project] genetic link with the [Altai] Altay.
DOCTOR WHO SHAMAN SIDDHI
Posted in Alien, Art, Chaos Magic, Dr Who, Goetia Girls, Lucid Dreaming, Occultism, Science Fiction, Shamanism, Sorcery, Succubus, Surrealism, Time Travel, Tulpa Creation, Witchcraft with tags alchemy. DMT, altai, anima, animus, Ansuz, art, chaos magic, chaos magick, Doctor Who, Ecstasy Master, Ehwaz, faustus crow, Fire King, Ganesh, Goddesses, goetia girls, Gundestrup cauldron, Hinduism, hypnagogic trance, India, kam, khara kam, Lilith's Harem, lucid dreaming, mantra, Mardun, meditation, Mount Kailash, multiverse, norse, odin, Odqan, pineal gland, pineal glnd, rune, runes, Saxon, shaman, shamanism, Shiva, siberia, Siddhi, siddhis, Siva, sleipnir, Soma, Somras, succubae, succubi, succubus, Tantra, tardis, third eye, trance, witchcraft, woden, Yggdrassil, yoga, Yogi on July 6, 2017 by FAUSTUS CROW
There are those who see my work as having no symbolic foundation or proof of an elder influence concerning a focus upon the archetypes of the ‘Anima.’ Whereas the Abrahamic foundation of the ‘Animus’ fixated grimoires have a historical lineage in the Middle East, which had been later appropriated by Rome’s empire. However, there are numerous examples of a symbolic focus upon the ‘Anima,’ which far-predates the Abrahamic gender focus upon the ‘Animus.’ Alas, there are hardly any examples of it, if at all, in European lore.
But, then what do you expect, not much has survived in regards to the pre-Christian shamanic traditions of Europe, due to the prior Witch burning’s conducted by Rome’s church, which lasted for over 500’yrs of tyrannical rule, when its Holy Inquisition committed mass genocide across Europe unto the Americas; wherefore ancient origins have been nigh eradicated.
So you will have to look into other elder cultures, who once shared ancient cross-cultural connections with Europe; an example being the European discovery of the Gundestrup cauldron of (Soma) ‘Somras,’ which is connected to India, whose peoples have not yet forgotten their own ancestral-self-identity.
There is an intriguing painting, painted by Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906) depicting the Hindu deity called Ganesh who is surrounded by Eight ‘Anima’ fluctuation Goddesses. These ‘eight’ Goddesses are personified Siddhis.
The Siddhis are spiritual, paranormal, supernatural, or otherwise magical powers, abilities, and attainments, which are the products of spiritual advancement through Sādhanās, such as meditation and Yoga. The term Rddhi (Pali: Iddhi, “psychic powers”) is often used interchangeably in Buddhism.
One of the ‘eight’ Siddhis is the ability of having unrestricted access to all places, across space and throughout time. This does not mean that you can miraculously teleport your physical body wherever you desire, but such can be achieved by your conscious awareness, when accessing a lucid dream. The point of the shamanic exercise is to consciously project your ‘Five Senses’ into another space-time locale, with full awareness, when attaining a ‘Sixth Sense’ lucid dream; wherein your third eye is opened.
Should you creatively utilise your TARDIS imagination, this particular Siddhi can be associated with the science fiction character of Doctor Who, whose characteristics are none too different to that of a Shaman. The shamanic character of Doctor Who can be assumed as an Avatar within a lucid dream, when ‘meditating’ upon the symbol of Doctor Who’s TARDIS, in league with the ‘fourth’ (Ansuz) Rune.
In this case the Ansuz/Rune Siddhi is personified as a Goddess/Succubus, whose conjured manifestation within a lucid dream, enables the conjuring dreamer to attain the inner experience of becoming like Doctor Who, to thence remote-view other far off places and times.
I am not talking about taking on the guise of a particular Doctor Who out of the series, here. Doctor Who is more of an ageless inner archetype, who as mentioned, is none too different a Shaman, whose TARDIS is otherwise that of an ‘eight’-legged-Mare, which symbolically represents the power of hypnagogic (Phase) trance.
(The Horse/Mare Rune is the nineteenth Rune called Ehwaz. In the Southern Siberian Altai region of Pazyryk, where a number of tattooed ice mummies have been discovered, there are also horse burials; some of the horses are bedecked in ritualistic attire, looking as if they have eight legs, wearing elaborate head-dresses, having Reindeer horns.)
Doctor Who’s character is very likely based upon the ancient shamanic deity of the Norse, called Odin, the Saxon’s called Woden, whose sacred colour is blue. Odin’s names are many, and each of his myriad names are that of an alternate guise to shape-shift into; whereupon he is ultimately known as the unknowable one, because his consciousness is formless, having no limitation of a definite form.
Odin means Light/Ecstasy Master, which was originally derived from the Southern Siberian Altaic word, Odqan, which means Fire King.
Odin/Woden is seen to have a singular eye, which refers to the third eye. He is known as the lord of the Runes, who wields a Rune (Word/Sound) spear (trident/trisula) named Gungnir, whereas Doctor Who has his ‘Sonic’ screwdriver.
Odin/Woden also rides an ‘eight’-legged-Mare called Sleipnir, which is none too dissimilar to Doctor Who’s blue TARDIS when travelling the nine-worlds of the (multiverse) world tree of Yggdrassil.
And like Doctor Who he has female assistants called Valkyries, who are essentially his personified Siddhis.
Odin/Woden can be equated with the Hindu deity called Shiva, whose sacred colour is also blue, having a third eye of a DMT producing pineal gland.
He is regarded as being a master rather than a God, who is formless, limitless, transcendent and an unchanging absolute Brahman, and the primal Atman (soul, self) of the universe/multiverse. Odin/Woden and Shiva can also be seen as being similar to the Haitian deity, Baron Samedhi.
Shiva has many benevolent and fearsome Doctor Who manifestations. His benevolent aspects, has him being depicted as an omniscient Yogi (Shaman) who lives an ascetic life on Mount Kailash as well as being a householder with his wife Parvati and his two children, ‘Ganesh’ and Kartikeya.
When assuming his fierce aspects, Shiva ‘polices’ the multiverse, whereupon he is often depicted slaying malign influences just as Odin/Woden/Doctor Who are known to do.
Shiva is also called Adiyogi Shiva, who is regarded as being the patron deity of Yoga, meditation and the Arts.
Many of the (Kam) Shamans of North Central Asia hold Shiva in high esteem, who place Shiva’s ‘AUM/OM’ trident/trisula amidst their (Oboos) altars.
Whereupon the ancient (Kam) Shamans also tended to wear the blue vestments of Shiva when inducing endogenous DMT (Soma) ‘Somras’ production within their own bodies of inner (blacksmith craft) alchemy.
The blue wearing Shamans are called (Khara Kam) black Shamans, whose practice involves the assumption of Shiva’s guise within their lucid (TARDIS) dreams.
When lucid within the dream the (Khara Kam) Shaman can then (AUM/OM) vibrate the dream upon an uttered (Rune) mantra, in order to then conjure up the eight personified Siddhis as his (Succubi/Succubae) spirit wives, and each of the Siddhis are conjoined with an Avatar of the conjuring Shaman.
The (Khara Kam) Shamans do not worship Shiva as their God, they otherwise seek to emulate him as being the first horned Shaman/Artist, who created the deities to paint upon a cave wall.
And just as he can create as an Artist, he can also destroy what has been created of a form, being that of a belief, to then recreate it anew, to go beyond its limit; this is the evolution of consciousness, which has no limits.
NOTE: The modern symbolism of Doctor Who has an emphasis on a as yet unattainable futuristic technology, just as the Gods and Goddesses of mythology manifest powers everyday mortals only know of as fantasy.
The symbolism of Doctor Who can be traced back to an ancient mythological source where you find the Shaman, whose abilities are not mere fantasy.
The Shaman experiences the mythological reality within his self-induced lucid dreams, where a technology of a time machine is otherwise seen as an internal (Siddhi) ability, which can be achieved.
The Hindu Night-Mare Goddess, Kali is associated with the great wheel of time. Wherefore her Shakti power will empower a time machine, which can be symbolically translated into a meditation image of an eight-legged (Siddhi) Mare.
When the Shiva Shaman consciously recognises the trigger-symbol of the eight-legged Mare within a lucid dream, he can then remote-view ride her as his Kali TARDIS.
NOTE 2: Kali is an aspect of Durga, also known as Devi, Shakti and by numerous other names, who is a principal and popular form of Hindu Goddess. She is a warrior Goddess, whose mythology is centred around combating malign and demonic forces, which threatens the peace, prosperity and Dharma of the good. She is the fierce form of the protective mother Goddess, who is willing to unleash her Kali anger against those committing evil.
Durga is depicted in the Hindu pantheon as a fearless woman riding a Tiger, which is of similarity to the Norse Goddess called Freyja, who is the wife/lover of Odin/Woden. Durga has a retinue of female spirits called Dakinis, which in Europe would be considered as being none too different to (Succubi) Succubae.
Freyja likewise has a retinue of female spirits called Valkyries, whose nature is the same as the Dakinis. Durga appears in Indian texts as the wife of the God Shiva, as another form of Parvati or mother Goddess.
As you can probably deduce, there are many cross-cultural symbolic parallels between Hindu and Norse/Saxon mythology concerning Shiva and Odin/Woden, Durga/Kali and Freyja, as well as the Dakinis and Valkyries. Wherefore, the ‘Siddhis’ being personified as Goddesses (Dakinis/Valkyries) can be seen as (Succubi) Succubae to list within a Grimoire of the Fallen ‘Anima.’
SHAMAN TRANCE TARDIS HORSE DRUM
Posted in Art, Chaos Magic, Dr Who, Goetia Girls, Love Magic, Lucid Dreaming, Occultism, Sex Magic, Shamanism, Sorcery, Succubus, Surrealism, Tarot, Time Travel, Tulpa Creation, Witchcraft with tags altered states of consciousness, anima, Anima Mundi, art, art muse, art print, artist, autonomic nervous system, bio photon, central nervous system, chaos magic, Doctor Who, dream Yoga, drum, drumming, ecstasy, faustus crow, female centaur, goetia girls, horned Devil, horned shaman, hypnagogic trance, hypnotic, hypnotism, Lilith's Harem, lucid dream, lucid dreaming, macrocosm, Mardun, Mare eight legged mare, microcosm, mitochondrial DNA, occult, pop occulture, pop surrealism, redbubble, shaman, shaman drum, shaman horse, shamanism, shirt design, siberia, Siberian, Siberian Shaman Drum, Siberian shamanism, sorcery, spirit wife, succubus, surreal, surrealism, surrealist, tardis, tarot, Theta brainwave, trance, witchcraft, world tree, yoga on March 29, 2017 by FAUSTUS CROW
The Artwork depicts a Siberian shaman drum. The drum in Siberian shamanism, in particular, is symbolised as being the trance horse the shaman rides into an ecstatic state of consciousness. The motif of the horse is often symbolised as being an eight-legged Mare.
The eight-legs of the Mare represent the eight cardinal directions, which are also associated with the eight points of a ‘cube.’ Hence in the Tarot card of the ‘horned’ Devil XV, which depicts a demonised ‘horned’ shaman, he is traditionally depicted seated upon a ‘cube,’ you could imaginatively associate with the TARDIS of Doctor Who, since the shaman saw the drum as a macrocosmic tool, that empowers his microcosmic trance ingress into other (inner) realities.
At the centre of the ‘cube,’ and at the centre of the eight cardinal directions you have a ninth point. Whereby the eight-legged Mare was also associated with the world tree interlinking nine (worlds) states of consciousness, which of a symbolic formula was painted upon the drum skin.
The eight-legged-Mare is also a fusion of two horses, representing the two nerve channels running along either side of the spinal (world tree) column. These two (horses) nerve channels belong to the Autonomic-Nervous-System. When these two (horses) nerve-channels are brought into balance via meditative (hypnotic) drumming, the two horses become fused, as the eight-legged-Mare, which activates the central-nerve channel of the Central-Nervous-System running along the centre of the spinal (world tree) column.
When the central-nerve channel is activated, the shaman will experience the arousal of what is known to the Yoga practitioner as the Kundalini-Shakti, along his spinal (world tree) column. The Kundalini Shakti is considered to be the life-force, which is experienced as being a liquid (fire) light, whose ‘quintessence’ is intuitively felt to have a feminine (Anima Mundi) source. The Kundalini Shakti may be an intuitive description of the bio-photon, emanating from the Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from the mother to her children.
Whereupon the eight-legged Mare is seen to be the (female-centaur) animal form of a Spirit Wife, who manifests as a shape-shifting human (Anima) female within visionary states and bio-photon illuminated lucid dreams, a Surrealist Artist would call an Art Muse. If you are interested in an Art print or the shirt design, etc, Check Out my Redbubble shop, Please Click Here.
Those of a Westernised temperament will probably find that the symbolism employed by a shaman is a bit too much to swallow, concerning his/her trance tool of a (genie bottle) drum. In order to further clarify what the shamanic symbolism of the drum is communicating in regards to hypnagogic trance induction, which is none too dissimilar to inducing a state of self-hypnosis, you have the following excerpt from a research paper.
“Scientific research has determined that drumming patterns are associated with different brain wave activity, as measured by cortical EEG. The research was conducted, to determine if the subjective experience of percussion in general, and rhythmic drumming in particular, would elicit (inner) images or (internal) sensations with a common (symbolic) theme.”
“Twelve participants were divided into three groups and monitored for EEG frequency response to three separate drumming tapes. These tapes included: Shamanic Drumming, at approximately 4 to 4 1/2 beats per second; I Ching Drumming, at approximately 3 to 4 beats per second; and Free Drumming, which incorporates no sustained rhythmic pattern.”
“Four cortical sites, bilateral parieto-temporal and parieto-central areas, were monitored for each participant during three sessions. At the conclusion of the sessions, each participant prepared a brief written account and was given a tape-recorded interview of his or her subjective experience. These subjective experiences were then categorized according to recurring themes and consensual topics.”
“This research supports the theories that suggest that the use of the drum by indigenous (shamanic) cultures in ritual and ceremony has specific neurophysiological effects and the ability to elicit temporary changes in brain wave activity, and thereby facilitates (Triangle Of Art Imagination) imagery and possible entry into an ASC (altered state of consciousness – active imagination of varying visionary intensities), especially the (shamanic state of consciousness – hypnagogic trance/ecstasy) SSC.”
“Drumming in general, and rhythmic drumming in particular, often induces (inner) imagery that is ceremonial and ritualistic in content (depending on setting) and is an effective tool for entering into a non-ordinary or altered state of consciousness (ASC – active imagination) even when it is extracted from cultural ritual, ceremony, and intent.”
“The drumming also elicits subjective experiences and images with common themes. These include: loss of time continuum; movement sensations, including pressure on or expansion of various parts of the body and body image distortion, “energy waves,” and sensations of flying, spiraling, dancing, running, etc.; feelings of being energized, relaxed, sharp and clear, hot, cold, and in physical, mental, and/or emotional discomfort.
“Emotions, ranging from reverie to rage; vivid images of natives, animals, people, and landscapes; and non-ordinary or altered states of consciousness (ASC – active imagination), whereby one is conscious of the fact that there has been a qualitative shift in mental functioning., including the shamanic state of consciousness (SSC -hypnagogic [the Phase] trance) journeys, out-of body experiences (OBE’s), and visitations.”
“A pattern that incorporates approximately 4 to 4 1/2 beats per second is the most inducing for ‘Theta’ gain. (Theta frequency is usually associated with drowsy, near-unconscious states, such as the [hypnagogic trance] threshold period just before waking or sleeping. This (acoustic/’music’) frequency has also been connected to [creative – ‘Muse’] states of “reverie” and [The Phase] hypnogogic dream-like image.”
“The pattern of the drumbeat as it relates to beats per second can be correlated with resulting temporary changes in brain wave frequency (cycles per second) and/or subjective experience, provided the drumming pattern is sustained for at least 13-15 minutes.” (NOTE: The Theta brainwave is depicted in the design.)
NOTE: The excerpt of the research paper, was adapted with notations, from a ‘Presentation Abstract’ by Melinda Maxfield, Ph.D. for the Stanford University Centre For Computer Research In Music And Acoustics (CCRMA).
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SHAMAN SPIRIT DRUM LUCID DREAMING
Posted in Art, Chaos Magic, Goetia Girls, Love Magic, Lucid Dreaming, Occultism, Sex Magic, Shamanism, Sorcery, Succubus, Surrealism, Tulpa Creation, Witchcraft with tags anima, archetype, art, art muse, Art Muses, art print, Ayami, chaos magic, drum, faustus crow, genie, goetia girls, Goldi, HGA, holy guardian angel, horse, hypnagogic, hypnagogic trance, Leo Sternberg, Lilith's Harem, lucid dream, lucid dreaming, Mardun, mare, Mircea Eliade, muse, occult, pop occulture, pop surrealism, powerhouse, russia, Russian, Shakti, shaman, shaman drum, shamanism, shirt design, siberia, Siberian, sorcery, spirit wife, subconscious, succubus, surreal, surrealism, surrealist, trance, witchcraft, yoga on March 27, 2017 by FAUSTUS CROW
The Artwork depicts a Yakut Shaman, whose trance drum is symbolically seen to be the genie bottle abode of the his Spirit Wife, who visits him within his lucid dreams.
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The European classification of the Spirit Wife is usually based upon a medieval perception, which considers the Spirit Wife to be a demonic entity, called a Succubus.
Western psychology, during the Soviet era, once considered the Spirit Wife complex of Siberian shamanism and that of other shamanic cultures to be a mental aberration, or that of fantasy prone individuals indulging themselves in erotic delusions. However, the psychologist Carl Jung otherwise saw the Spirit Wife/Succubus as being an archetypal aspect of the ‘Anima.’
Jung saw the feminine archetype of the ‘Anima’ as being the personified intermediary with the psychic powerhouse of the subconscious, whose myriad female forms are encountered within ‘lucid’ dreams, from whom a Shaman derives his psychic abilities, an Artist is inspired by as his Art Muses.
The motif of the Spirit Wife is known to the Yoga practitioner as Shakti, whose numerous feminine aspects are called Dakinis, which is also very much part of Tibetan Buddhist dream Yoga practices as well as Siberian shamanism.
For example, the Goldi tribe of Siberia clearly distinguish between a female tutelary spirit, known as an Ayami, which in Western occult practice is of similarity to the (HGA) Holy Guardian Angel, (Jung would also see the HGA as being the ‘Anima,’) who chooses the shaman.
Whereas the helping spirits, (Jung would see as being the myriad aspects of the ‘Anima’) the Goldi call Syven, an occultist would call (Succubae/Succubi) Demons, which are subordinate to the Ayami. The Syven are granted to the Shaman by the Ayami herself. The Altaic name, Ayami means, ‘Silk Twisted In Beauty,’ as in a horse’s mane. The Siberian shaman in particular sees the drum as his Mare, who too is his Spirit Wife, whom he trance rides as an eight-legged female centaur into conscious dreaming.
According to the ethnologist and anthropologist, Leo Sternberg, the Goldi explain the relations between the Shaman and his Ayami by a complex sexual emotion. Below is an experience related by a Goldi shaman:
“Once I was asleep on my sick-bed, when a spirit approached me. It was a very beautiful woman. Her figure was very slight, she was no more than half an arshin (71 cm.) tall. Her face and attire were quite as those of one of our Gold women.
Her hair fell down to her shoulders in short black tresses. Other shamans say they have had the vision of a woman with one half of her face black, and the other half red. She said: ‘I am the “Ayami” of your ancestors, the Shamans. I taught them shamaning. Now I am going to teach you. The old shamans have died off, and there is no one to heal people. You are to become a shaman.’
Next she said: “I love you, I have no husband now, you will be my husband and I shall be a wife unto you. I shall give you assistant spirits. You are to heal with their aid, and I shall teach and help you myself. Food will come to us from the people.”
I felt dismayed and tried to resist. Then she said, “If you will not obey me, so much the worse for you. I shall kill you.”
She has been coming to me ever since, and I sleep with her as with my own wife, but we have no children. She lives quite by herself without any relatives in a hut, on a mountain, but she often changes her abode. . . . Sometimes she comes under the aspect of an old woman, and sometimes under that of a wolf, so she is terrible to look at.
Sometimes she comes as a winged tiger. I mount it and she takes me to show me different countries. I have seen mountains, where only old men and women live, and Villages, where you see nothing but young people, men and women: they look like Golds and speak Goldish, sometimes those people are turned into tigers.
Now my ‘Ayami’ does not come to me as frequently as before. Formerly, when teaching me, she used to come every night.’
She has given me three assistants-the ‘Jarga’ (the Panther), the ‘Doonto (the Bear) and the ‘Amba’ (the Tiger).
They come to me in my dreams, and appear whenever I summon them while shamanising.
If one of them refuses to come, the ‘Ayami’ makes them obey, but, they say, there are some who do not obey even the ‘Ayami.’ When I am shamaning, the ‘Ayami’ and the assistant spirits are possessing me; whether big or small, they penetrate me, as smoke or vapour would.
When the ‘Ayami’ is within me, it is she who speaks through my mouth, and she does everything herself.
When I am eating the ‘Sukdu’ (the offerings) and drinking pig’s blood (the blood of pigs is drunk by shamans alone, lay people are forbidden to touch it), it is not I who eat and drink, it is my ‘Ayami’ alone.”
NOTE: The quoted material concerning the Ayami is derived from: Mircea Eliade, Shamanism, op. cit., PP. 72-3, quoting Leo Sternberg, ‘Divine Election in Primitive Religion’ (1924), PP. 476 ff. cf.. Shamanism, PP. 42l ff., for autobiographies of South-Indian Savara male shamans and female shamans, whose marriages to (Anima – Animus) spirits are in striking parallel to the documents collected by Sternberg.
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SHAMAN DRUM SIBERIAN TRANCE
Posted in Art, Chaos Magic, Goetia Girls, Lucid Dreaming, Occultism, Sex Magic, Shamanism, Sorcery, Succubus, Time Travel, Tulpa Creation, Witchcraft with tags Alien, alien abduction, Anima Mundi, axis mundi, bedroom invader experience, chaos magic, clubbing, dance clubs, Evenki, faustus crow, Finno Ugric, genie, genie bottle, goetia girls, hypnagogic, hypnagogic trance, Kalahari Bushmen, Kia, Kundalini Shakti, Lilith's Harem, lucid dream, lucid dreaming, Mardun, mare, Num, occult, old hag syndrome, out of body experience, pop occulture, Rave, russia, Russian, Saman, shaman, shaman drum, shaman horse, shamanic, shamanism, siberia, Siberian, sorcery, spinal column, Spirit Horse, spirit wife, succubus, tardis, the rush, Theta brain wave, Theta brainwave, trance, trance dance, trance dance clubs, Tunguic, Tungus, witchcraft, world tree, yoga on March 22, 2017 by FAUSTUS CROW
The design features a Finno-Ugric Siberian shaman. The word Shaman originates from Siberia, which is said to be derived from the Evenki word “šamán,” most likely from the South-Western dialect spoken by the Sym Evenki peoples. If you are interested in the Art pint, shirt design, etc, Check Out my Redbubble shop, Please Click Here.
The Tungusic term, Shaman, was subsequently adopted by Russian explorers interacting with the indigenous peoples in Siberia. The word, Shaman can also be found in the memoirs of the exiled Russian churchman Avvakum.
The term Shaman has since been adopted by anthropologists as a coverall term for numerous other cultures who share similar shamanic techniques, which enable a practitioner to alter his/her (brain wave) states of consciousness.
The Siberian shaman in particular utilises the drum. The drum is often referred to as being an eight-legged-mare; which is in turn is associated with the abode of a (Anima emanation) Spirit Wife, somewhat like a genie in her (drum) bottle. In other words, the drum, Mare and Spirit Wife are seen to be the same. (The Eight legs of the Mare, being the eight compass directions of a symbol painted upon the skin of the drum, which is also associated with the motif of the World Tree.)
The shamanic motif of the Mare and the Spirit Wife leads to the term ‘Nightmare,’ which originally referred to the Old-Hag Syndrome.
The Old Hag Syndrome is otherwise known as the Bedroom Invader Experience, which is experienced when an individual inadvertently accesses hypnagogic trance.
An unprepared individual will invariably become terrified when accessing hypnagogic trance, wherein he/she will experience the manifestations of his/her deepest fears, which often involves sexual scenarios.
Whereupon the term, Old-Hag Syndrome refers to the visitation of a Succubus, whose initial manifestation is nightmarish, which induces the experience of intense pressure upon the body, the sensation of being (Sphinx) strangled, sleep paralysis, vivid hallucinations, and eventual lucid dreams.
Wherein an individual will feel as if he is being abducted by otherworldly (Alien) entities as well as experiencing out of body experiences.
The Shaman learns to control his fear, in order to ride the (inner TARDIS) ‘Night-Mare,’ rather than being ridden by her.
Whereupon she becomes his (Ally) Spirit Wife; hence the carved (World Tree/Axis-Mundi) handle of the Shamans (Mare) drum in the design, which represents his (trance) Spirit (Anima-Mundi) Wife.
(NOTE: The Mare/drum [trance symbol and tool] is seen to be tethered to the World Tree, which symbolically represents the spinal column of the Shaman. The Spirit Wife refers to what Yoga practitioners call the Kundalini Shakti, which is experienced as a liquid energy that is aroused to arise along the (World Tree) spinal column. the Kalahari Bushmen of South Africa call this inner energy, Num, which is aroused when a practitioner accesses hypnagogic trance, which the Bushmen call, Kia. In ‘trance dance’ culture of the [Rave] dance clubs, this inner energy is known as ‘The Rush!’)
The monotonous beat of the drum stimulates the Theta brain wave, which induces hypnagogic trance. The experience of hypnagogic trance is basically hypnotic induction.
The Theta brain wave is also associated with anxiety reduction, the active (day dreaming) imagination, lucid dreams and Zen meditative states.
The Theta brain wave is depicted in the design, which is also known as the hyper-suggestible state.
The inducement of the Theta brainwave allows for mental programming via the use of repetitive Mantas, such as the ecstatic songs (and trance dancing) of a shaman are effective at dispersing fear states, when sung in conjunction with the (Spirit Wife/Mare/Pony-Girl) drum.
The above Art and information is covered in my Art books, ‘Goetia Girls,’ which are available from Amazon, under my author’s name, Faustus Crow.
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THE CONJURING 2 OF VALAK
Posted in Art, Chaos Magic, Demon, Demonology, Film, Goetia Girls, Lucid Dreaming, Occultism, Sex Magic, Shamanism, Sorcery, Succubus, Surrealism, Tulpa Creation, Witchcraft with tags 72, anima, animus, Anunnaki, archetype, Bonnie Aarons, brainwashing, Caduceaus, Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes, chaos magic, chaos magick, Da'at, Daath, David Leslie Johnson, demonologists, demonology, devil, diana lucifera, Dogon, Ed and Lorraine Warren, Exorcism, fear, film, fylgja, goetia, great old ones, hermione granger, HGA, High Priestess Of The Silver Star, hogwarts, holy guardian angel, Horror film, hypnagogic trance, James Wan, Kether, Kundalini Shakti, lucid dream, lucifer, matrix, media, mind control, necronomicon, neuromarketing, Nommo, nun, occult, old man, ouija, poltergeist, pop occulture, Possession, psychic, Qoph, satan, school girl, schoolgirl, serpents, shamanism, Sirius, Slytherin, snakes, sorcery, subconscious mind, succubus, synchronicity, tarot, The Conjuring 2, the phase, trance, tulpa, two headed dragon, Ualac, Valak, Valax, Valic, Valu, Vatican, viral meme, Volac, witchcraft, yoga on June 12, 2016 by FAUSTUS CROW
Valak is otherwise called Valu, Ualac, Valax, Valic or Volac in the classical Grimoires, who is usually described manifesting as a little naked boy, having angel wings riding a two headed Dragon.
The classical image of Valak is based upon the ancient Greek deity called Hermes, the Roman’s named as Mercury, who wields the Caduceus, made up of two entwined serpents, which is otherwise described as being a two headed Dragon in the Grimoires.
Valak is also described as being the 62nd spirit of the Goetia, and a Great President, which of a Cabbalistic title refers to the planetary sphere of Mercury and the Sephira of Hod. As for the (two headed Dragon) Caduceus, it symbolically refers to what a practitioner of Yoga terms as the arousal of the (fire snake) Kundalini Shakti; hence Valak’s association with snakes, which is otherwise, mundanely interpreted as the remote viewing discovery of enemies.
The Grimoires are commonly populated with an all male pantheon of entities, whether they be angelic or demonic; there are no historical examples of Grimoires listing female entities whatsoever, apart from the Goetia, mentioning a couple of female spirits out of “72;” but they are described as being primarily male, who have assumed female form, which is indicative of a symbolic brainwash.
Whereupon I have rebelliously ‘Conjured’ up Valak as a ‘Schoolgirl’ Succubus of Entartete Kunst Artistry, who is an aspect of the Fallen Anima.
At the end of the day, the practice of Art is indivisible to sorcery; both the Artist and Sorcerer ‘Conjures.’ In fact as you are reading this, you are subconsciously ‘Conjuring’ symbolic associations with the words you consciously read, just as you do so when you speak.
This subconscious associative process of ‘Conjuring’ is what the science of neuro-marketing seeks to influence, via the manipulation of emotionally charged symbolic stimuli. The science of neuro-marketing is nothing new; its science is based upon what religions have been doing throughout human history.
For example, in ancient Rome, you had an ‘Anima’ expression of a Goddess called Diana-Lucifera. The Goddess Diana-Lucifera was later transformed into a male entity, to name, Lucifer by the Christian’s as their horny Devil of a machismo Satan, whose symbolic focus is an all male pantheon of an ‘Animus’ fixation.
(NOTE: The Animus is an inner archetype, which is conjured up by a heterosexual woman, whenever she ‘imagines’ her perfect male partner. Her Animus determines what she is attracted to in a man. Likewise a heterosexual male conjures up his Anima, when ‘imagining’ his perfect female partner. The Anima determines what he is attracted to in a woman. The Animus and Anima are associated with numerous male and female archetypes. For example, women are generally enamoured with certain Animus archetypes, such as the Vampire, Werewolf, Pirate, Doctor and Billionaire; most of whom are of the Bad-Boy (Devil) type.
As for monotheistic religion, you have a Good-Guy Christ who invariably gets Crucified, while the Bad-Boy Devil gets all the Horny fun, along with having a fixation upon the [Billionaire] All-Father. However the present social-engineering of society has targeted the Anima within the male psyche, by making heterosexual males in particular feel guilty about their own sexuality. This is an ongoing process. It has been occurring for a very long time, which appears to be associated with the subversive psychological conditioning of the male psyche. The reasoning behind it, is population control. Hence the Anima and her archetypes have been systematically castigated out of the monotheistic paradigm. As for those of differing sexual orientations, the Animus and Anima swap over symbolic roles.)
As for ‘Conjuring’ Valak as a schoolgirl, many of you might think that this is just plain crazy, let alone very kinky, whether you be of a Biblical mindset, a traditional occultist or a skeptic. However it is not that of a mundane projection upon the flesh, it is otherwise that of a conscious Conjuring of an Anti-Viral-Meme within the imagination, rather than allowing others to Conjure up a neuro-marketing ‘Animus’ fixated Viral-Meme within one’s mind.
It is no crazier than the classical symbolism of a demonic Cherub haunting the closeted Vatican, or that of ‘Conjuring’ up Valak as a transgender Nun, which of associated symbolism is very much at the social-engineering fore of present day gender politics.
The reasoning behind the schoolgirl motif is because I am employing symbolic logic to create an Anti-Viral-Meme. Valak originally refers to a little boy of a Hermes. The feminine version of the name of Hermes, is Hermione.
This then leads you to the symbolic association with the modern icon of Hermione Granger, who can be esoterically associated with intelligence increase and accelerated learning, should you Artistically apply the symbolic correspondences of the grimoires to mercurial Hermione.
This being one of the reasons why Valak was conjured in the first place, who revealed hidden treasures within you concerning activating the junk DNA of the (Caduceus) double-helix, as well as referring to remote-viewing hidden treasures across the globe, or to otherwise ‘seer’ the Kundalini (serpent) energy (aura) signatures of others.
However, as for Valak’s serpentine association, it would Pop-Surrealist lead to the house of Slytherin. The employed Hogwarts symbolism sounds hilarious doesn’t it.
Let’s say its a case of Discordian humour, which a Heyoka would contrary-wise utilise as an Avadhuta. But it is not scary enough for those who enjoy indulging themselves in fear. But then I am not into living in fear; are you?.
Basically, the Artistic ‘Conjuration’ of Valak as a Hogwarts Schoolgirl Succubus is to negate the all male ‘Animus’ brainwash, which of a gender focused paradigm is facilitated further by inducing a state of fear.
You could argue that the symbolic transformation of Valak into a Nun, as featured in the 2016 American supernatural horror film, entitled: The Conjuring 2, directed by James Wan, is also a rebellious symbolic reversal.
Not quite; Wan’s version of Valak is a transgender Nun in the film. I don’t think Wan is into rebelling against the ‘Animus’ fixated paradigm of the real life demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Although, perhaps Wan is rebelling, since the character actress Bonnie Aarons, who is also a mercurial writer, plays the part of Valak. May be Wan is attempting to create a neuro-marketing ghost Nun Viral-Meme Tulpa.
Anyway, both Ed and Lorraine Warren were devoutly religious, whose characters are featured in both The Conjuring movies, which cater to a mostly religious audience, who, at one time, long ago, got their ‘Salem’ entertainment out of torturing, burning, drowning, stoning and hanging Witches.
As mentioned prior, the classical Grimoire of the Goetia, lists a few female spirits. But they are depicted as being essentially male entities in disguise. This perpetuates the all male ‘Animus’ paradigm of a religious foundation, as described in all the Grimoires. In other words, you are surrounded by a symbolic Matrix, which is self-perpetuated because of your indoctrinated beliefs.
The Conjuring 2 film was written by Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes, David Leslie Johnson as well as Wan, in which Valak is depicted in the common Grimoire style. Apart from the Valak’s transgender manifestation out of the classical Grimoires, why did Wan have Valak manifesting as a Nun, instead of as a little naked Cherub, you may perhaps ask?
Well, if Wan and his colleagues are using occult symbolism, it could be a symbolic reference to the 13th path of the Cabbala, which is ascribed the Tarot card: The ‘High Priestess’ Of The Silver (Sirius) Star II; hence corresponding with a Nun, whose 13th path interpenetrates the sephira of (Sirius) Da’at, numbered “11.”
The term, Nun is also that of a Hebrew letter, which is associated with a ‘fish.’ The Hebrew letter of Nun was originally derived from the prior name of the ancient Egyptian primordial sea called Nun, which was seen to be feminine.
The Hebrew letter, Nun and that of a corresponding Cabbalistic 24th path is ascribed the Tarot card of Death XIII, which is primarily associated with hypnagogic (fish) trance ingress into the (Nun/sea) dream. In ancient times the domain of dreams was seen to be the (watery – amphibious) realm of the dead; whereupon the dreamer, as a disembodied (fish – Dogon/Nommo – Sumerian/Anunnaki) spirit was considered to be also one of the dead.
Overall, the film is just a Hollywood perpetuation of the already established symbolic brainwash, using the age old, nigh archetypal image of a demonic Nun, haunting an American Horror Story Asylum.
If you are searching for real horror, look into the ongoing brainwash of the masses via subversively engineered symbolic stimuli.
But when to find that its symbolic emphasis is that of an all male symbolic pantheon, which indicates an underlying sexual orientation, due to its gender focus, you will then find that the Conjuring 2, and a plethora of films like it are quite laughable since they have an overriding fixation upon the… ‘Animus.’
I am not saying that the film, The Conjuring, and other films like it are part of some vast conspiracy; that would be just plain silly. I enjoy a good horror film myself; The Conjuring 2 looks cool. It perhaps would have made more symbolic sense of an ‘Animus’ fixation if Valak was depicted as a demonic little boy, looking like an innocent Christ babe tormenting a girl, via a haunting ‘Animus’ ghost of an old man, whose disturbing disposition is that of a dirty old Fatherly Goat.
But most of these horror films, if not all, are just feeding into the already established symbolic Matrix, which is self-perpetuated.
You certainly wouldn’t have Valak depicted as an Entartete Kunst schoolgirl, that’s just far too edgy for Hollywood to handle; whereas a transgender Nun of gender politics is more acceptable, for the politically-correct palette of an androgynous celibacy.
The audience have been trained to buy into a ‘brand’ of a story over the generations; whereupon, a film maker seeking to make money within a competitive market, will obviously pander to the audiences ‘programmed’ needs of an indoctrinated continuance.
Nor am I saying that entities do not exist; they do, at an informational level concerning the symbolic domain of your dreams, wherein the archetypes can be ‘Conjured.’
For example, a two-dimensional image of a symbol can be implanted into your subconscious mind via intense meditation, which can then manifest as a three-dimensional interactive reality within a lucid dream.
However, when it comes to mind-control, a symbol can be subversively ‘Conjured,’ out of the psychic powerhouse of your subconscious mind via the neuro-marketing medium of films and other media, which stirs the emotive state of fear, empowering the associative ‘Conjuration;’ this in turn perpetuates the already established brainwash.
But when you realise that the all male pantheon of angels and demons dancing around a (old man) God and a Devil is that of an ‘Animus’ fixation of a Matriarchal focus… Possessing… your mind, you will then see the true horror of it all, to then laugh of an… Exorcism.
As for the fallen ‘Anima,’ she was castigated into a Lovecraftian Hell, long ago, along with all her legions of Succubae Great Old Ones, cast beyond the language (angel) angles of the established symbolic Matrix, over-watched by a deified ‘Animus,’ made as a God/Devil. So, when an extremist feminist rages that the Matriarchy is the future, you will find that the Matriarchy is already here, which has been around for a very long time, since the ascendancy of an ‘Animus,’ fixated paradigm.
Alas, no film has as yet covered the fallen ‘Anima.’ But then none of the historical Grimoires, whether ancient or modern listed Succubae, until I created a Succubus Grimoire of a Necronomicon.
NOTE: ESOTERIC SYMBOL CRUNCHING: As for the Conjuring 2 haunting ghost of an ‘Animus,’ fluctuation emanating from the girl’s reptilian-brain-stem (throat/back-of-the-neck) sphere of (11) Da’at and that of a 13th path Tarot card Nun, you have the name of the “72” year old Bill Wilkins, the name of Bill is derived from the Germanic name Willahelm, which is composed of the elements wil ‘will, desire’ and helm ‘helmet, protection.’
Of an aside of sorts, it just so happens you have a Saint William of Gellone, who was an 8th-century cousin of Charlemagne who became a monk. The name was common among the Norman’s, and it became extremely popular in England after William the Conqueror was recognized as the first Norman king of England. Whereupon the name Bill symbolically alludes to a King, hence a helm/crown.
In regards to the name of Wilkins it is a well-known surname of German and English origins. The surname originated from the name ‘Will’, shortened for ‘William’, having the diminutive suffix ‘-kin’, meaning ‘kin of Will.’
The name of the girl, Janet, in the film, is a feminine form of John, as in John the Baptist’s head or skull, which by association you have a… helmet.
The real life Janet who had experienced the Enfield Poltergeist haunting during the late 70’s in London, related years later to reporters that she didn’t think the ghost was evil, something you’d never know from the Hollywood Creepypasta of The Conjuring 2 film.
But, Hell! The real event is not scary enough; much of the supposed psychic manifestations was seen by some researchers to be a Hoax, concocted by Janet, who, over the years updated her tale for the horror fans.
Although Janet appears to have been quite adept at inducing (back of the neck/Da’at) ‘trance,’ whose family had experienced a number of ensuing psychic manifestations. However, when Janet’s story went public, it got blown out of Exorcist proportion. What is more, there was NO mention whatsoever of a demonic Nun called Valak. The demon Nun is a Creepypasta creation of Hollywood horror fare, going viral like Creepypasta Slender-Man, although, you do have Gremory as depicted in the Black Raven Tarot of the Succubus. Please Click Here For More Information.
In pre-Christian times, the haunting ghost would be seen as a manifestation of the girl’s Fylgja by the one time Norse ancestors of the Norman’s, which was considered to be a contra-sexual following spirit, such as Faustus Crow’s Succubus named, Mephistophina as depicted in the watercolour painting below. (Please Click Here Or Click The Artwork For More Information.)
The psychologist Carl Jung would term Janet’s Fylgja as being her masculine ‘Animus,’ whereas for a male it would be the feminine ‘Anima.’ Both the ‘Animus’ and ‘Anima’ are symbolic interfaces with the collective unconscious dream, which of an analogy is like the internet.
Western Occultism has transformed the Fylgja into its primarily male Holy Guardian Angel, otherwise known as the HGA, which is contacted when a practitioner crosses over the abyss of Da’at, leading thence to the top-most sephira of Kether, being the… head/crown/helmet.
The abyss symbolically represents hypnagogic trance, which is otherwise termed as the ‘phase’ by others. The initial manifestation of the HGA can be terrifying when accessing hypnagogic trance, since it will reflect back the fears of the practitioner, which need to be healed and thereby transmuted; while doing so, various psychic phenomena may be experienced, such as that of the poltergeist phenomena in rare cases. But usually a mounting number of synchronicities are observed, which makes the practitioner realise that reality is like that of a dream, a Hindu mystic would term as being Maya.
The practitioner will soon discover that the synchronicities are reflecting back his/her beliefs; hence, if the practitioners beliefs are fearful of nature, he/she will then feel that his/her life is becoming like that of a haunted nightmare. Should the practitioner heal himself/herself of his/her fear, this will then lead to an arousal of the Kundalini Shakti (fire snake) along the (reptilian-brain-stem/back-of-the-neck) 13th path.
The Kundalini emanates from the female source of Shakti, you can associate with the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from the mother to her children. The mitochondria determines the energy output of the cell, from whose DNA emanates the bio-photon, which illuminates your electron dreams. Hence you have the feminine symbolism of the Nun, which of a prior age was that of the Priestess, Witch and female Shaman, who were considered adepts of hypnagogic (phase) trance. As mentioned earlier, when experiencing trance you may experience a prior sensation of an energy rush along the (Da’at) ‘back-of- the-neck,’ it then hits the back of the (Qoph) head; should it continue in its course, the energy then arcs its way towards the top of your (Kether) head.
In other words, the film character of Janet has the psychic potential to become a female Shaman. But, due to the symbolic Matrix of fear, Janet will never attain her psychic potential, and likewise for many another; because the established symbolic Matrix of an indoctrinated religious brainwash will not allow for anyone to expand their consciousness beyond its mind-controlled Ring-Pass-Not Matrix!
So, if you want to otherwise indulge yourself in fear, go right ahead, if that be your ‘Muggle’ choice, to not taste of the Da’at Apple. However, keep in mind that the subversively engineered orchestration of fear via the media, by those who seek to sustain the symbolic Matrix, upon which their illusory power exists, will invariably blind you to your dreams, to never become lucid. Wherefore only the singular of eye are as ‘Hogwart’ Shamans in the New-World-Order Eden of the blinded.
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Lancia is not dead
07/11/2012 · by Felipe · in Lancia. ·
Photo by: Wikipedia
As fast as Fiat released its results for 2012 and plans for coming years, a rumor became that big that anyone could tell that Marchionne himself confirmed it during the conference call. Specialized press and a lot of Italians were saying that Lancia was finally dead. What really happened in that presentation regarding Lancia must be closely analized because the truth is that the brand will continue to exist with a different approach. Yes, in Europe’s plans for coming years, Lancia was the only brand to have one all-new model, while the other brands of the group were plenty of them. Even Maserati is expected to have more new cars in the next 3 years. Lancia plans to introduce one new model in 2013 and then in 2015. Nowadays its range is composed by one Italian made car, the Delta, one coming from Poland, the Ypsilon, and 3 Americans: Thema, Voyager and Flavia. In 2013 the Delta will die along with the Bravo, and its successor is expected to come from USA and will soon presented in Detroit as the Chrysler 100 (January 2013). Then, in this scenario Lancia will not produce anymore its cars in Italy, at least for the next 3 years. And that’s why so many people say the brand is dead. Lancia is 100% Italian but soon will not offer any 100% Italian product, so the ‘made in Italy’ feature will not be part of the brand anymore. Certainly is not what all Lancistas want as they still think of rallye times in which Lancia was more known for its victories in the race than for its sales registrations. Times have changed and European scenario has forced a lot of car makers to change also if they want to survive. That’s the case of Lancia as part of Fiat Group.
Both brands sold around 400.000 cars worldwide. Certainly Lancia is a clear winner with Chrysler brand merge.
By the time Fiat bought the majority of Chrysler, Lancia and Alfa Romeo were struggling to survive with their battle against Germans and French. They still need a lot of effort to become profitable. Alfa Romeo has already big plans as it will be focused on American market, but Lancia is more local and has lost a big market share in the last decade. Those brands thinking local will disappear and Lancia is a high valuable brand to let that happen. It is why its future is merged to another great brand so they both can survive. Lancia’s future is Chrysler’s future, and they will both join their forces to create a unique company with two names and two markets. Some people would say that the original Lancia is dead. But personally I think Lancia has finally become global and important in terms of volume. It may not have the spirit it used to have 50 years ago, but its future does not depend anymore on Italian clients. It has found a big partner to develop its products and gain more market share in Europe. With Chrysler both brands will jointly create and develop new cars not only for America (as it happens now with the Lancia Thema, which is a 100% Chrysler) but thinking also of European requirements. Of course, an Italian brand with no products made in Italy is not the best thing, but in the globalized world, the origin of the products is not as important as it was before. For example, Lamborghini is an Italian brand owned by Germans, and I think it makes it more German than Italian. What really matters is the way the cars are created and of course Italians will continue to own the company and it means it will have at the end the Italian touch. Long life to Lancia.
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9 responses to “Lancia is not dead”
The Lamborghini comparison is not really valid: while owned by VW, and having access to VW technology (similar to Fiat and Ferrari), Lamborghini designs and develops its own cars, in Italy, and produces them in its own factory, in Italy.
Lancias will be designed, developed and manufactured by Chrysler in US, Canada and Mexico, with just a Lancia badge applied at the end of the assembly line.
I would not say all Lancia will be entirely developed by Chrysler. Yes, they may be born in America but they will consider European needs for creating a global car that fits both, American and European markets. It will not be as they did with Chrysler 300/Lancia Thema. Coming products will develop taking into account both brands and their markets.
Yes, if we’re lucky, it’ll be a designed as a world car rather than one designed only for the US market. But still all of that will be done in North America; Lancia will be just a badge.
I agree. Now Lancia are Chrysler badge engineered, also the styling of small Y wich is not sold in North America, is clearly derived from Chrysler (horizontal front grille, front hood similar to that of old PT Cruiser).
Lancia is no more, welcome to Chrysler!
Pingback: Lancia Sales 2012 Full Year Analysis | Fiat Group's World·
Whether the Lancia-Chrysler merger will be successful is one giant wait-and-see. Thus far, the Chryslers rebadged as Lancias were not originally designed with Lancia in mind, and have hardly been successful in the marketplace – in fact, one may argue that they have even further tarnished the Lancia brand, as they do not represent what Lancia is and should be.
It remains to be seen whether new Chryslers designed with Lancia in mind from the start will fare better. Chrysler’s Ralph Gilles has briefly talked about the new Lancia design that will be introduced with the Chrysler 200, and said “Wait until you see the new [Chrysler] 200, your faith in Lancia will be restored”. Let’s hope he’s right.
But personally, I think that the most plausible scenario is that eventually the Lancia-Chrysler union will be dissolved, and that the decision to have Chrysler vehicles wear the Lancia badge will be reversed and the Chrysler brand name brought back.
In any case, only time will tell. To be honest, I care more about the fate of Alfa Romeo (especially because of the German threat to its survival), although I do appreciate Lancia as well and want it to thrive.
Pingback: Lancia and Chrysler: a marriage for long | Fiat Group's World·
Pingback: The ‘future’ of Lancia according to Marchionne | Fiat Group's World·
Becky 17/07/2014 at 16:03 · · Reply →
That’s a sharp way of thinikng about it.
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Home · News · Analysis
None of the pontificating politicians in Westminster, who are currently debating forcing forecourts to install electric charging points, appear to have given any thought to the practical issues involved. Had they attended the launch of the fourth edition of the Blue Book they would now be having second thoughts.
John Dallimore, chair of the APEA's electricl sub group and consultant Gareth Bourhill, who have been involved in drawing up guidelines for the APEA, warned that many forecourts may not be suitable for a charger, while the cost of obtaining the electrical infrastructure required may be prohibitive for others. Dallimore did not mince his words when he started his presentation by saying: "My personal opinion is the worst place on earth you can put an EV charger is on a filling station. I'm trying to have an open mind but it really is a nightmare." He criticised politicians for making decisions without appreciating the difficulties involved, but did concede later on that chargers on big sites, such as motorway services, would be "probably fine".
He emphasised that most chargers on forecourts were likely to be power-hungry fast chargers because no one wanted cars parked on forecourts for six-to eight hours while they charge. On motorways, he said, there were 920 volt dc chargers, using up to 300kW and with charging currents of up to 500 amps. Due to the huge current, some fast chargers have to have cooling systems to prevent the charging cables melting. He added: "I am not sufficiently familiar with the chargers to know what safety precautions are built into them, because if the charging carried on when the cooling failed, goodness knows what might happen."
Bourhill said that in many cases modifications to the filling station's electrical installation would be necessary for a charger. Explaining that a filling station's supplies will generally only support chargers up to 10-15kW, he added: "Fast chargers will probably require a substation and in most cases there will not be adequate space on a filling station for a substation. Plugging in a fast charger will be like plugging in another five filling stations. Most people do not understand the massive supply they need."
He warned that some network providers are quoting six-figure sums to get that size of supply to a filling station.
If filling stations could secure sufficient power supplies, however, he conceded that chargers could be installed and operated safely.
He said: "I do have my concerns about EV chargers going on filling stations, but if everybody identifies the particular risks with them, and they can accommodate those risks and follow the regulations and the safety advice that has been given, then it's not a problem.
"The physical size of a UK forecourt doesn't lend itself to this, but at the end of the day it's a risk assessment and as long as we get everything right we should be okay." But he also warned: "The incorrect installation of an EV charger on a filling station may lead to dangerous, life-threatening situations, both with the hazardous areas and within the remainder of the filling station. But who is going to enforce this? From discussions with the authorities it is very apparent that a planning officer will not understand the special electrics on a filling station."
He said that the APEA Blue Book, and the IET Code of Practice third edition, which is due out next month, contained checklists covering all the areas installers and owners needed to consider. One of the critical areas is the earthing for the charger. If a charger has a separate earthing system to the rest of the site, any conductive material (generally metal) on the charger must be at least 2.5m away from conductive material connected to the site's earthing. He said that this could be safely accomplished at installation, but if an illuminated sign or floodlight column was later erected too near the charger, safety would be compromised.
He also warned that some forecourt owners and politicians don't understand the complexities involved in installing a charger.
He said: "Duty holders must be aware that adding an EV charger to a filling station is certainly not simple. I think at the moment that is the way the government look at it. It is not a case of simply asking a contractor to install an EV charger."
He also cautioned that filling station owners wanting to install an EV charger should choose their supplier carefully, and ensure that they understand the special safety requirements involved in working on forecourts, and what is required of the equipment. He said: "It's a bit like the Wild West out there. Somebody has discovered snake oil that cures everything. It's brand new and everybody wants it. There are some very competent companies, but the majority don't understand the full risks."
Charge checklist
The APEA Electrical Sub Group has identified the risks associated with having an EV charger on a forecourt, and clause 9.5.11 of the Blue Book addresses these:
The charger and vehicle must be outside the hazardous area
The full load of charger(s) must be included in any load calculations.
If a new supply is required for the EV charger, the supply cable must be routed around the hazardous areas and not run underneath.
Where the filling station has a TT earthing system it must be used for the EV charger earthing system. Two separate TT earthing systems are acceptable.
If a separate utility company supply is installed to an EV charger, a warning label must be fitted to indicate that the charger supply is not controlled by the main switch for the filling station.
The supply to the charger must be interlocked with the filling station electrical controls so that the supply to the charger is switched off when the forecourt is closed.
NOTE: some EV chargers include anti- condensation heaters and transfer data at night. These functions require the supply to the EV charger to remain energised. In such cases, it is acceptable for the interlock to prevent the EV charger from being used when the forecourt is closed.
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SEAD Advices? I don't think I operate them correctly
geronimonimo
Sergeant First-Class
Joined: Mon 3 Feb 2014 18:45
Contact geronimonimo
Postby geronimonimo » Sat 29 Mar 2014 07:46
It's been a month i played ALB now and RD is already out...
But there isn't the problem... I'm having troubles operating SEADs without getting shot down before my target.
they seem to be able to spot radar equipped unit only times to times and I only played against the AI so far (I have my game from the Appstore and it still hasn't updated it to play online. Plus this forum can't find the link to get the patch v1616)
anyways if you can help me for both of these problems, but please give me a priority for SEADs, i'll be really grateful if you could help.
thanks all.
audigex
Joined: Fri 6 Dec 2013 17:16
Contact audigex
Re: SEAD Advices? I don't think I operate them correctly
Postby audigex » Mon 11 Aug 2014 12:50
The biggest mistake people make is sending them on long range incursions into enemy territory: they will usually destroy the first enemy defences they meet, but will be hit on the way out either by air superiority fighters or other SAM units further back.
SEAD jets are effective, but are useless once out of missiles, while their turning circle usually isn't great, leaving them open to flanking SAM units as soon as they start to turn.
To be more effective, use them over your own front lines and slowly creep them forward toward the enemy. Even if the enemy gets a lock, they likely won't be able to destroy you before you're back out of range, and in any case it's more useful to clear the enemy's forward SAM units, ready for your bombers (sending bombers deep into enemy territory is foolhardy, even when hot on the heels of SEAD units)
Rule #1 of using planes: if you're already over enemy units when you drop your ordnance, you should be using artillery.
The only exception I make is when attacking enemy command units, when I'll sometimes send in a deep-incursion SEAD plane followed by a bomber. I'll often lose both, but the point-efficiency will be close to neutral (ie the command unit plus any AA units I take out will roughly equal the planes) and you cost the enemy points gained, while hitting command units is one of the most distracting things in the game. When done hot on the heels of a specOps team taking out another command unit, or launched at the same time as a push elsewhere, you can split the enemy's attention quite effectively.
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patty1h
3.9k Excellent
Masterchef (AU)
patty1h replied to SilverStormm's topic in Other Competitive Reality Shows
Every episode I say SHUT UP, LARISSA! at least 4-5 times. Sick of the sound of her encouraging remarks to her colleagues.
patty1h replied to David T. Cole's topic in Other Non-Fiction Shows
I got a rerun too - it was the show that originally aired Monday, which was Wendy's first day back after hiatus. She did come out crying that show.
5.1k replies
Wendy seems high today - very giddy, laughing and sniggering all during HT, acting all distracted and frantic. Did y'all catch the 60 seconds of strangeness from the audience? For those who don't watch: First, Wendy stopped HT to say there was a fight in the audience! It must have been a quick one, cause there was no audible ruckus. Then, Wendy decided to compliment a well dressed middle-aged woman in the audience who was dressed in an outfit usually seen on Park Avenue socialites -- some tasteful gold chains over a Chanel logo top and a big black Kentucky Derby-ish hat and one of those snap open fans; she snapped it so we could see it was black lace. The woman was given a microphone and started speaking in a heavy accent (maybe Spanish) about her psychic telling her to come to the show, that her wife in Europe was sick blah blah. (Then again, I'm not sure it was a bio woman - I'm 50/50 on that. The cheekbones were outrageous, though.) Wendy was thrown off for a second by the "wife" comment - she made a point to ask The Socialite "did you say your wife?". Wendy got a "uh oh, this one is a kook" look in her eyes. Then I guess she sensed that this was going to get out of hand and shut it down by saying "this is not a political show" and the woman's mike was cut. The one exciting minute in the whole hour.
The Walking Dead in the Media
patty1h replied to ElectricBoogaloo's topic in The Walking Dead
Just saw a preview for one of the upcoming shows for the Fall season on Fox. It's called "Prodigal Son" and there was no mistaking the actor onscreen with the pretty eyes... it was Tom (Jesus) Payne. Not sure if he's the lead or co-lead, but it also stars fellow British actor Michael Sheen. I got a vibe that it has a supernatural/scifi theme from the clips they showed. I loved Tom Payne on TWD - he was seriously underused and I'm definitely going to give this new thing a look.
Hot Topics has turned into ME! Topics this week. 90% of the segment has been blah blah me, I, me. O.V.E.R.K.I.L.L. on her life. She spent a whole two minutes on Mariah Carey and turned it onto herself re: them both having/wearing shirts with their own faces on it, then two minutes on Meghan Markle, but then it went into how Meghan came to the WW studios looking to be hired back in the day. Dang, did Abby Miller go overboard on the tanner or what? She was almost Oompa Loompa orange.
Someone on a gossip forum wrote something that made me laugh and also go hmmm. Their statement was "isn't it lucky for Wendy that she's involved with a guy with access to a prescription pad". You can take that two ways -- he can get her meds for her illnesses OR he can get her access to the controlled stuff. EDIT: For those who watch live here on the East Coast on WNYW/Fox, the show tom'w (7/10) will be preempted by the Woman's Soccer team parade. However, I see that the local channel My9 will be airing the show at 10AM.
Two days in and I'm sick of her name dropping and star f**king - Kris, Kim, Kanye, Naomi, ASAP Ferg (who?). She's invited to Africa and yachts and to Tiffany's and rolling out her new comedy show with her stories in between acts. What addiction and health problems? After regaling us with her exciting new jet-set life full of fielding calls from this one and accepting safari invites from that one, she tones it down for a second to assure us all that she's still just lil old Wendy from NJ. All I could think of is that time she was on Howard Stern's show and accused HIM of "going Hollywood" and befriending celebrities. Hypocrite much?
S04.E06: Into the Black
patty1h replied to saoirse's topic in Animal Kingdom
Pretty sure that the gabby woman said something about having a minivan she used to taxi her many grandkids around and Smurf picked up that was her vehicle.
I am just a sucker for cute guys. I got misty when Deran told Adrian that he loves him, right after killing and burying the guy who said that Adrian is most likely a police informant. Fingers crossed that he loves him enough to not kill him by the end of the season.
S03.E02: Chapter 21
patty1h replied to kariyaki's topic in Legion
Question: Did Oliver and Melanie's characters get killed last season? I only half watched the last few eps of S2 and notice that neither one has been seen so far. Thanks.
Saw on Youtube a video of Wendy doing a photo shoot, getting ready for her return on 7/08. Didn't someone here say that Wendy was extending her hiatus and that Jerry O'Connell is supposed to do a week(s) of shows before Wendy returns? I'm not on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. so no confirmation from those. I went to the Wendy website and the "request tickets" link comes up blank/no calendar of available seats. However, there is this statement: To attend a taping of Jerry O with Jerry O’Connell, please request an August taping date. So, is Jerry filling in during August or is he getting his own show? I'm confused.
S06.E04: The Moose
patty1h replied to Quilt Fairy's topic in Alone
I didn't notice until today that Jordan sounds drunk or stoned. Did he sound like that from the beginning or is he getting worn out from the environment and sounding slurry?
Cast In Other Roles: That's Fake Me. This Must Be Fake Mine.
patty1h replied to Pete Martell's topic in Supernatural
Actor Billy Drago died today - he played the creepy doctor who harvested organs for eternal life in "No Rest For The Wicked". EDIT: The episode was actually "Time is on my Side". Thanks @Myrelle
S05.E04: Skidmark
patty1h replied to nodorothyparker's topic in Fear The Walking Dead
It's been 4 episodes since the new season started and I still have no clue what they need another airplane for. To rescue some other group? Where? Who? Why? Another question: Is Dwight gone for good? That was underwhelming if he was one and done. Last episode they showed a helicopter like the one that took Rick away. I'm a little curious what happens with that, but I'm hating the groups "we gotta help everyone" edict. They just need to find a place and settle down.
Just saw on TMZ that Kevin Jr appeared in court to face the charges against assaulting his father. I didn't watch more than 2 minutes but the spin by the TMZ vultures was that Wendy didn't bother showing up to see her lil darling plea his case in front of the judge. **He plead not guilty**
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Other Genre Television
By SilverStormm, December 12, 2017 in Other Genre Television
Clanstarling 14.5k
Think I need to revisit the show. I remember being pretty confused sometimes.
Gillian Rosh 6.7k
I definitely need to re-watch season 1.
marinw 3.0k
The trailer indicated Three Seasons!
After watching the great Chernobyl, I am so ready for another show about a Nuclear Plant accident.
I hope we get more amazing music. "A Quiet Life" is STILL stuck in my head!
Paloma 1.0k
Just found this useful recap of each episode of season 1 (good if you don't want to rewatch the whole season):
https://www.thenerddaily.com/dark-season-1-recap-review/
2 hours ago, Paloma said:
Thanks! I watched the first episode of season 1 yesterday and wasn't sure I wanted to rewatch all of it. This will help.
Tardislass 685
DARK is here!!!
I think we can safely say that there are three seasons based on the triangle star thing with the three years that is always shown. Also think Jonas should be happy that at 50 years old he looks at least 7-10 years younger!😀
From what I've heard, this season seems to be a bit more of the sci-fi rather than the time travel genre. Admit to being hesitant about the dystopian future Jonas is in as it could get real cheesy and so far this show walked the fine line. Luckily, they filmed this season pretty quickly after the first since the younger actors-especially Michal grow up very quickly.
Now all Netflix needs is to air Season 3 of Babylon Berlin with the fine Volker Bruch and I'll have my German TV fix.
Edited to add that I think the watchmaker is a more central figure than what we have seen so far. He's the only one-except for Noah that really doesn't have a backstory yet.
Edited June 21 by Tardislass
krankydoodle 692
One of the few constants on this show is Hannah's awfulness.
There was so much going on that I'll have to watch it again at a slower pace to make sure I understand what's happening and who's who. But I was happy to see from one of the creators that season 3 should be coming out some time in 2020.
Edited June 22 by krankydoodle
kelslamu 751
I watched all of the second season only to have to go back and rewatch the first. Still interesting.
ihartcoffee 3.5k
I love this show, but boy is it hard to keep up with all the characters. There is so many reveals of who is actually related to who, and people interacting with their older or younger self.
I definitely need to watch again. I will have to start from the beginning to really understand, lol.
Enigma X 7.2k
I like this show but not a fan of how things turned out. And agree with the poster who said that Hannah is the worst!
I am rewatching S1 now before I start S2 and am realizing things I had missed the first time around, probably because it was hard to keep track of all the people at different ages and their relationships. I am now 20 minutes into episode 3 of S1 and realizing how tragic it must have been for Michael Kahnwald (formerly Mikkel Nielsen) to not just be cast back in time and lose his family, but to realize who they were as they all grew up together (with him being just a few years younger than his father and mother) and they started to look like the parents he remembered and then have his older siblings. Of course, he may have realized who they were from the moment he saw that he was in 1986 and heard their names, but it must have been difficult to wrap his head around this as a child and so he may have not fully understood until some years went by. But after young Mikkel was born he must have understood that there were now two versions of himself in the current timeline and that young Mikkel would disappear and go back to 1986, thus beginning the tragedy of Michael's life. What I still am not sure of is whether he committed suicide before or at the same time as young Mikkel disappeared, and if he did this in hopes of preventing the whole thing from happening.
Also in episode 3 while still in the hospital he tells his nurse and soon-to-be adoptive mother Ines Kahnwald that he comes from the future; in the moment she probably thinks he is saying that because she just gave him some Captain Future comic books, but as the years went on she may have remembered this and realized he was telling the truth--assuming she knew that before he refused to give his name and parents' names to her and the doctor, he had told the police that his father was Ulrich Nielsen.
Rewatching S1 also reinforces the popular opinion that Hannah is the worst!
So did the deaf girl give birth to her mother, Charlotte? With Noah? So many crazy reveals!
Question for those who have seen all episodes
15 minutes ago, ihartcoffee said:
So did the deaf girl give birth to her mother, Charlotte? With Noah? So many crazy reveals!
Yes! It's bonkers!
I'm rewatching season 1 and had forgotten that Helge is Peter's father, but who's Peter's mother? And Helge's mother said she didn't know who his father was, so what's going on there?
I was disappointed that we didn't see Tronte and Jana in season 2. Jana especially must have been devastated at losing her other son, and I thought since Tronte knew some of what was going on and was having an affair with Claudia in the 80s that he would show up at some point.
I'm having trouble deciding who has it worst since there are even more characters having a terrible time this season. Claudia's poor secretary (and maybe the French delegation) should definitely be in the running. Seriously, though, there were so many heartbreaking moments. Egon became one of my favorite characters and his fate was tough to watch.
I finished season 2 last night, and I am shook.
I loved seeing the other Winden residents slowly finding out about time travel (Katharina's initial reaction was both amusing and heartbreaking). The writers did an excellent job of bringing the other characters besides Jonas, Mikkel and Ulrich into the larger story.
In the midst of a more expanded story and more timelines, I was heartened to see that the writers kept so much focus on the characters and their inner lives. That focus resulted in some of the best scenes of this series. Case in point: the relationship between Claudia and her father, Egon unfolding over the decades was poignant and made Egon's death all the more heartbreaking.
Same with the scene where Jonas tries to stop Michael from dying by suicide. There's so much pain and emotion on both their faces in that moment. It's so painful to watch, but also I couldn't look away. Just thinking of that scene makes my chest tighten.
Those are the kind of scenes that first drew me into this show, and I'm glad to see the writers kept the emotional core of the show.
On the time travel front - I am super intrigued to learn where Goth Future Martha (that's what I'm calling her for now) came from. And where Katharina ended up. And if that's Franziska with Magnus in 1921 serving Adam/Jonas.
Whew! In case you couldn't tell, I'm still deeply in love with this show. Will probably have more to say after I've re-watched.
1 hour ago, krankydoodle said:
OMG I forgot the secretary! So much happens, it's hard to keep up. I'm still mindblown over the Charlotte parentage twist.... how is it possible? Chicken or egg....
I'm starting over from the beginning too and man do they foreshadow like crazy. Now I'm getting it more. S2 revealed a lot that I now see in S1.
I'm rewatching too, and I'm finding it easier to follow.
Whew! I have a lot to process. Glad there will be a season 3.
I like how personal this show is. Poor young Jonas. Glad there is an alternate timeline to keep things from getting too...dark.
Lots of spoilers. Good read if you're trying to understand what you just watched, lol
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/dark-season-2-ending-spoilers-season-3-questions-netflix-1202152315/
I feel sorry for Bartosz.
Not only does he get conned by Noah, beat up by the teen gang and left in the cave overnight but he gets killed by young Noah at the behest of Adam for being a non-believer. Plus his mom is dying from cancer. Talk about a bad life. No one except his family cared about him.
After watching a second time, I'm amazed at all the little details that may be missed the first time. Even the name of the book that Elizabeth picks up in her great-grandfather's workshop
The Kybalion
has some hidden meaning. I'm so glad they mapped out their three seasons and are ending it.
1 hour ago, ihartcoffee said:
Reveal spoiler
Thought it was ironic that the people hung in the dystopian future were French and then Claudia just cancels a meeting with the French delegation onsite. There are no coincidences in this show.
From the article linked to from @ihartcoffee:
"Charlotte and Elisabeth are both mother and daughter to each other, creating a biological causal loop with no origin."
Edited June 25 by marinw
Door County Cherry 1.4k
Stop using spoiler tags for events that happened in the first and second seasons of the show. I appreciate the desire to be considerate but the show has now aired worldwide. Anyone who enters who hasn't watched the whole thing is going to risk being spoiled. Such is the nature of the streaming game.
If you'd like to be considerate of people who haven't watched the whole thing, you can specify the episode you're talking about so people can skip but no more spoiler tags unless you're talking about actual spoilers for the third season.
I was distressed at the reveal that Adam is Future Jonas because Young Jonas and Middle-Aged Jonas are so handsome, and at some point Jonas will have his Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader transformation.
I'm very shallow
shimarella 74
yes! I had forgotten season 2 had dropped. I loved season 1 even though I had to rewatch many episodes a few times over. I'm only halfway through S2 and its picking up steam. Glad there's a final season on the way. I was obsessed with the S1 soundtrack for a long time. I don't have any specific questions yet but as a heads up, the official Dark website on Netflix is a very useful resource!
On the casting front, whoever's responsible did an excellent job. Not only is the acting impressive all around, but I initially thought that old Ulrich was the adult actor with old age makeup.
3 hours ago, marinw said:
So am I and that was my first thought too.
4 hours ago, shimarella said:
was obsessed with the S1 soundtrack for a long time.
Not sure if the music for this season is as memorable. The cover for Arcade Fire's "My Body Is a Cage" was an unexpected chioce for the final episode. I was expecting "You Want it Darker" by the late Leonard Cohen.
So I've almost got my head around Charlotte>Elizabeth>Charlotte. But I'm still puzzled by the pocket watch that says For Charlotte. We know in Season 1 that Noah gave Elizabeth the watch for her mother(we know also why he knows sign language). I'm assuming Noah knew Elizabeth was going to be his wife but NOT that Charlotte was his daughter. We see Elizabeth has the watch at the end of Season 2 when she's at the bunker. It's likely she shows young Noah the watch that is for her mother and tells him how she received it.
But who made the watch? Charlotte's grandfather-the clock maker? Also hoping that whatever relationship Noah and Elli had was years after the bunker. Because a 16-17 year old liking a 10 yr old is just eww though not uncommon in Winden. I also find it fascinating that everyone finds their partner in their teens. Magnus and Martha's parents, Ulrich and Katarina, Hannah and Michael. Same with their children- Franziska and Magnus, Martha and Jonas, etc. Hmm.
On 6/25/2019 at 7:01 PM, Enigma X said:
I'm thinking that since Jonas isn't having luck in changing the future than perhaps The Stranger/older Jonas will be the one who actually defeats Adam.
Rabithed 419
On 6/25/2019 at 5:56 PM, krankydoodle said:
It’s not?!? I thought it was the same actor too!
Do people in Germany always knock on doors so loudly and urgently? The banging on doors was stressing me out! Also, is it normal to just walk into someone’s home if they don’t answer the door? LOL! I notice the silliest things
This is the best series I’ve seen in a while. Certainly the best Nexflix series. From the actors, the storyline to the music (including the opening song. So haunting) I’m so sad I have to wait a year To be swept away in it again
9 hours ago, Rabithed said:
Yeah the door banging was hysterical! And no one took off their shoes upon entering-another German trait.
It's probably like the way people must think all Americans talk on the cell phone without introducing themselves and hang up without saying goodbye. That drives me nuts that characters just say their piece and hang up. Like what? There is a video out on Youtube with the cast going over Tweets from German viewers. One of the complaints was how is there such great cell phone reception in a small German town and even in bunkers and caves! LOL.
I need to find that YT video! That sounds hilarious. I agree that the soundtrack this season wasn't as compelling although the cover of My Body is a Cage was perfect. I was holding my breath at some points during that whole scene. I can't wait fir Season 3, not just to see how they tackled the conclusion but then I can rewatch all three seasons and really enjoy all the little details. For me, Season Two took a few episodes to build and then once Episode 4 got going, it all made sense. Seeing the consequences of how the time-travel messed up relationships and ruined people's lives both with what they knew and didn't know. I suppose Season 3 will be a full-out battle against the Travellers ( and I can't decide yet if they really are the villains). Not sure how I feel about the addition of dimensions as well as timelines, since they only have one season to wrap it but I'm sure it will be a wacky ride. Finally , I sincerely hope that Hannah gets a comeuppance. I almost felt sorry for her when Mikel was too depressed to leave the house, then she made it all about her anyway. Jonas was right, she "needs no one". She seems to be the only one like that, so I wonder what Season 3 holds for her.
jmonique 2.6k
Katharina can be a nasty piece of work in every timeline, but I couldn't figure out why she was so horrid to Grown-Up Jonas while shouting out who he was to Martha?
I imagine S3 will track how Grown-Up Jonas became Charbroiled Jonas/Adam, but I am having difficulty wrapping my mind around how he could end up doing such a 180 in regards to time traveling.
The video is in German but it's cute. The guy who plays Noah is especially funny as they ask the cast what other character would they want to play and the actor says, "are you kidding, I'm Noah!" There's also a funny tweet about Noah being a dumb but hot priest.
As for Season 3, it will be nice to tie things together though I worry we'll have all the cast gong through dimensions and/or timelines and I think that big painting in Adam's office will be a key point(as the closeup were heavy-handed).I'm hoping we'll see more of Mags and Franziska journey from rebels to slaves of the religion-or are they? When they were leading Young Noah out Magnus gave old Noah a look that Noah returned. Like something between them, but then they were fine with him being killed. Are they really as devoted as they look to Adam?
Another thing that bugs me is if baby Charlotte was transported to another time and Noah and Charlotte could time travel, why was Elizabeth left in the dystopian future. From the story, it seems like Noah and Elizabeth loved each other. I can't believe Noah would leave her in a dystopian world. The only thing I'm certain is that Jonas and Martha will end up together. When characters profess their love throughout time-you know they are the super couple. So obviously something would happen to not make her his aunt.
I really like this show but can’t help to think that 50% of the conflict would have been cleared up either if the older selves told their younger selves specific things or if people from different timelines just killed others from other timelines.
My annoyance with time travel plots is that neither one of those things is an option until it is.
53 minutes ago, Enigma X said:
As someone else pointed out, why does the villain in James Bond movies never just shoot him in the head like a normal person would? Or in horror movies, have the young people call the cops when they hear screams from an abandoned building rather than going inside? It's fiction:)
The Creators of Netflix’s Dark on Why Writing Time-Travel Stories Is Like Playing Jazz
iMonrey 27.7k
Season 2 got a bit more complicated than I would have preferred, I think. I mean, I like that it's smart and ambitious but I have so many questions, and there are so many paradoxes.
I think I managed to follow most of it, and I was glad they cleared up how Mikkel made his way to 1986 because we never saw him discover the tunnel or the door. But I'm still confused about the tunnels and their connection (if any) to the power plant, and the time machines. It seemed like three different characters had the same time machine at the same time, but had gotten it from different timelines. So confusing!
Also totally confused about the Noah/Elizabeth/Charlotte thing. I wish we had learned more about Noah this season because he's still pretty much an enigma. I mean we found out who Adam is but not Noah. C'mon. And now he's dead but nobody is dead dead since they still exist in other timelines. And now, different dimensions? Gah!
The worst part was I was thinking there were 10 episodes so when the 8th ended and there were no more I was really mad. 😞
hertolo 74
This is a show to give up making sense and just enjoy the ride. You can puzzle it together and watch it a second time, but at my first run through through season 2 I felt it best to just lean back and watch. It takes so much away from guessing about where this can lead. It let‘s you enjoy the character moments which are the best about this show. (Actually true for any show, they‘d just be athmosphere or mystery and that is boring).
I enjoyed it a lot, but I will have forgotten nearly everything by next year and season 3. It really is confusing to make sense of all the familial connections... I liked the future and that it was a relatively minor part and I liked that the next season will again play in Winden in the existing sets and locations, even though we just saw the apocalypse. A good show reinvents itself with every season, Dark definitively did. Although that slow episode before the climax was needed, in the midst of all that time travel stuff.
One last comment: Does it make sense to say that Hannah may have lived the happiest life? If she truly just vanished into 1954 or so and created a new life for herself, she‘s the one outside it all? She‘s not stuck 66 years in the past, she‘s not the mother of her daughter, she doesn‘t have to stay alone fighting in a war for 50 years, she doesn‘t get scared. So far, of course. She has to give away the time machine one time, or maybe that‘s the end of the travel for the time machine? (And please don‘t tell me now that Hannah resurfaced somewhere in the episodes and I didn‘t get it... :)).
And truly last comment: Why do they all meet their soulmates in their teenage years and never leave Winden? Because it‘s fiction and you can do that in a book, but it gets really complicated on TV. Also, the detective remarks as much...
Observation..... people in this show love to stare at pictures from the past, usually of themselves with someone
Hannah is constantly staring at the folded one with Ulrich.
bannana 32.7k
On 7/1/2019 at 3:09 PM, iMonrey said:
Also totally confused about the Noah/Elizabeth/Charlotte thing. I wish we had learned more about Noah this season because he's still pretty much an enigma.
I guess we have to assume that young Noah and Elisabeth are in the bunker and then somehow also get transported back in time? This whole my daughter is my mother thing is very troubling.
On 6/29/2019 at 11:40 AM, Enigma X said:
And when they do tell their younger selves, they lie!
On 6/27/2019 at 12:43 PM, Tardislass said:
Another thing that bugs me is if baby Charlotte was transported to another time and Noah and Charlotte could time travel, why was Elizabeth left in the dystopian future. From the story, it seems like Noah and Elizabeth loved each other.
So I wondered about this too but the Elisabeth in the post Apocalypse world has to be the young Elisabeth in the bunker who survived but lived in this horrible world. It would be 32 years later so that makes sense to me. Or am I not getting this right? But I do not get how Elisabeth then could be her mother's mother. 😕
On 6/24/2019 at 8:40 PM, Tardislass said:
Not only does he get conned by Noah, beat up by the teen gang and left in the cave overnight but he gets killed by young Noah at the behest of Adam for being a non-believer.
How did I miss this? Was this at the end?
I too felt sorry for him.
15 hours ago, bannana said:
Yes, it's the younger Elizabeth from the bunker. Watching Season 1 again, it seems she is 9 years old in 2020 which is kind of creepy since young Noah looks about 17. Really hope a decade or so goes by before they get together and have a baby. But given the weird relationships in this show, I'm not holding my breathe.
7 minutes ago, Tardislass said:
I think it does make sense that a decade goes by because the photo we see of Noah and the baby as an infant is not young Noah.
So I have been trying to wrap my head around this. Charlotte is maybe a tween in 86 when she sees the dead birds? And somewhere I read that the only person who can travel to any time frame (rather than designated ones) is Adam. So surmising that Adam took baby Charlotte to say 1976, Charlotte grows up with her "grandfather" and then meets Peter and they have Elisabeth in 2000. Still hurts my head to think about it.
Dame sans merci 429
Nothing made me happier than the moment I got to yell 'she's her own grandmother!' at the screen. Oh Dark, what a supremely wild flex.
2 hours ago, Dame sans merci said:
The writers must have had fun in the writers room.
-Dudes, let's make Jonas' dad Mikkel. So he can date his girlfriend and his aunt.
-Even better how about making someone their mother and their daughter so her sister will be both a daughter and her aunt.
High fives all around.
This is a show to give up making sense and just enjoy the ride. You can puzzle it together and watch it a second time, but at my first run through through season 2 I felt it best to just lean back and watch. It takes so much away from guessing about where this can lead. It let‘s you enjoy the character moments which are the best about this show. (Actually true for any show, they‘d just be athmosphere or mystery and that is boring).
I have to disagree. When a show is well written it's much more rewarding when everything makes sense. If a story is just a convoluted mess that doesn't follow any consistent logic I'm not going to "enjoy the ride." I, for one, do not enjoy being taken for a ride. Which I why I quickly became disenchanted with Lost.
So far, Dark has done a very good job of making sense. It just got a little more confusing in Season 2. I'd have to re-watch and maybe map a few things out to understand it all but I do believe the writers put the work in to make this all "logical," as far as time travel is concerned.
Sure, it's always better if a set-up works with a consistent logic. It's only that I feel that to be a pretty high standard for a time travel story. And it seems to me they could pretty much explain anything with the time travel and now dimensions that they want to.
I personally put more value on the aesthetics (character interactions, visuals, settings, camerawork, and so on) than trying to understand everything in detail. Often, especially on these web forums, the discussion turns more around understanding the plot. I just wanted to emphasize these other aspects. F.e.is it okay for Jonas to pursue his aunt as a love interest in a world and a life "without a happy end"? Not sure, but i find debating that as more interesting than to plot the itinerary of the single time machine throughout the years and persons.
Coxfires 746
I had forgotten how good this show was and loved this second season. I like the approach of time travel where the past doesn't change, if something happened, or happened and going only means that you created it, like Claudia killing Egon trying To save him, same with Jonas trying to prevent his Dad from killing himself.
This show goes really deep in family dynamics, and props to the actors who sell the emotion really well. Claudia/Egon, Jonas/Michael, Mikkel/Ulrich, all their interactions were beautifully done.
The casting is fantastic, old Ulrich and ils Magnus really look like the actors were aged up
I was gutted by the Charlotte/Elisabeth reveal, what a strange loop here
Now season 3 opens on something else, I really can't wait to see where it leads
I'm getting the feeling in Season 3 that Jonas will be able to save some people but not all. I do think Season 2 has messed up the cycle, now that Katarina is traveling to somewhere and Alternate Martha has appeared. They've showed that little things can change, like the second cycle Martha/Jonas have sex but not in the first cycle. I do think Jonas will be saved but that he'll be the Jonas who brought Mikkel back to the cave. He doesn't remember doing that because he hadn't done it yet when he talked to his father. So there will be some sacrifices.
The whole Doppler family is a paradox including Peter as we've never seen him as a young teen AND it's hard to imagine Helge marrying a woman and having a child. Personally, I wouldn't mind if they got rid of Martha because she's bugged me from day one with everyone fighting over her-gag. I do have a theory that future girl who knows sign language is a family member of hers.
Or it could just end with young Jonas waking up gasping at the mental hospital where he was after his father died and telling his doctor about the crazy dream he had.
Ottis 3.5k
On 12/18/2017 at 5:53 PM, truthaboutluv said:
That said, for as much as I enjoyed this show, I don't know if I'm so eager to see a second season. It was certainly a fascinating exploration of family, love, good vs. evil, all set against a backdrop of science fiction and the whole age old questions of time and how our lives are shaped, etc. But I found it a bit slow and frustrating at times and just wasn't deeply engrossed enough all the way through to feel excited at a potential second season.
I've now watched almost all of the second season (spoiler-free content to follow). And I'm with you. My interest in this show was and is in the actual mystery of the mythology and mechanism for time travel. I don't care about the angst of these characters over the years, beyond getting an overall sense of who they are and their history. The momentum slowed down about midway through season two, because the show paused to fill out character backstories. Some people love that stuff. It bores me to tears. And so many shows fall victim to it (Lost being a primary example). Some people like to say "it's about the characters." No it isn't, not when the wider mythology is fascinating and mysterious and the reason you watch the show.
Go To Topic Listing Other Genre Television
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global entertainment
[Current Mainland Chinese Drama 2018] The Story of Ming Lan 庶女明兰传 / 知否？知否？应是绿肥红瘦
By angelangie, May 28, 2017 in Mainland China
庶女明兰传
趙麗穎
馮紹峰
zhao li ying
feng shao feng
linhlinh111 872
Let's not talk about whether QH and GTY were close before. Let'a assume they were just casual friends. Fact that GTY snatched the girl that QH loves. Let's not discussing who's at fault here since they are both flawed characters and they have reasons to defend their actions, it's just difference in characteristics and world view. But if I were a guy and some other guy married the girl I love then I deemed to resent him. There's no right and wrong here. It's about feelings. GTY and QH were rivals in love so no matter whether GTY is a good husband or not, QH would still hate him. It's a natural thing. QH hates GTY now and GTY is not the nicest guy in the capital. He has bad reputation, many weaknesses that he doesn't even try to cover at all (Gu family matters and MN). Also the way he acts doesn't seem to prove his innocence at all (trying to bargain with the family in court for his relatives, letting MN loose spreading rumors everywhere) and what a coincidence, QH works for the disciplinary department and his job is to report misdemeanors. GTY basically left his weaknesses open for people to strike on. If GTY was clean then there's nothing to worry about, but he's not so he is bound to receive attack from outsiders. In this situation, if QH was an easygoing guy or were close with GTY, he may just turn a blind eye, but he is not on GTY's side now so why does he has to let GTY go? Why would QH want to make life easier for GTY? GTY fk married the girl QH loves. They can never get along again. And when people don't get along in the government, they will try to make it hard for their opponents.
About ML, I think what QH has for her now is not just love anymore. It's love mixed with a bit of regret, anger and resentment. QH is not blaming ML, it's the pain that changed him. He is trying to get her attention, be a part of her life for better of for worse. He's not aiming to achieve any goal in doing this, not trying to separate ML and GTY, nor trying to win her back. Psychologically, he's going through 5 stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I think he's somewhere between anger and bargaining right now, when he get to acceptance then he'll be fine.
This is a little bit irrelevant but I so fk love seeing QH cry. There's something about him that makes me want to see him in pain. He's so much more beautiful when he's miserable. I actually like QH more now than before when he was still naive and nice. He's exactly the type of character that I love to watch and he is going down the path I prefer. The kind and gentle QH is great though but it was a bit monotonous. The QH right now is more interesting. I always wanting to see a guy who originally was as bright and warm as the sun then got struck by the cruelty of reality, see him suffer and devastated, drowned in pain and tainted with darkness. I want to see devil grow in his heart, on his anger and resentment, he does things that betray his code of honor, but he still manages to hold his ground. I want to see him struggle, fall apart, remorse and get back up again. GTY's battle is a battle against the world, while QH's battle is a battle against himself, and QH intrigues me more than GTY as a character.
Suzzy San 1,400
15 minutes ago, linhlinh111 said:
I think someone is finally viewing this generally, I would say I was just supporting one and discarding the other, so I punish myself to a drink hahahhajah.. But truly, I can understand QH being angry at GTY. And truly GTY left his weakness open and people just use it to back stab him.. And I think this is one of the things ML is trying to avoid while not opening up, they are rival and will always be.. No saying otherwise to that truly..
And I also agree that QH is just trying to gain ML attention by trying to protect her and accept his state for being the live that will always be beside her, but he is being so delusional with this though, because he was never protecting her at all.. So let's just conclude him to be in the stage of denial, which is making him delusional now
And omg.. Wow this part made me laugh, I think he should just keep crying and one day his hear and brain and body will register his position now for him.. Hahahahhaha.. . QH, cry cry cry, you're beautiful when you're in pain
nichiwoohee 1,536
25 minutes ago, cherubstomato said:
The couples habits are rubbing off each other slowly. I bursted out laughing when ML threw that chopsticks. She should’ve thrown the plate for better sound effect.
I wish they added that narration of ML thoughts. That would give us a better insight on her cleaverness...And that would give the drama some comedy. But I guess they don’t want it to be like a comedy drama.
Yeah, it would be golden when everytime molan and cl do their usual play, ml would stare into the camera- the office style
I was clapping so hard when ml throw the chopstick, when will we ever get her to be that ferocious against the stepmom. I want ml to stomp her
gleek49 795
I remember that in the scene where the emperor was yelling at GTY, Prince Huan told him that many officials criticized GTY because of the MN's matter, too, but as soon as GTY showed them his wound resulted from MN's attack, all of them just stopped. That's why no one brought it up during court, only QH did it, why is that? At least the other officials went to ask GTY first, QH didn't, he was just trying to find fault and grabbed it first chance he could, didn't even bother to investigate at all.
Why would QH want to make life easier for GTY, you ask? Cause he's the one who claimed over and over again that he "only wished for ML's happiness", so attacking her husband is his way of making her happy? Hypocrisy at his finest. I don't need him to help them or whatever, just leave them alone ffs, why is that so hard for him to just let go and live his own life? Honestly, the guys can be political rivals and fight each other to death all they want, if the fight is purely about politics. But as QH, while crying prettily , unconvincingly convinced himself that it's not personal, I'm just not convinced in the slightest. I can't help but finding his motives and actions petty and pathetic. I, for one, do not find him compelling or interesting at all, I'm just so tired of seeing his face on my screen, I guess I'm probably the only one who is indifferent towards ZYL and his performance
13 minutes ago, Suzzy San said:
Yeah and one thing I don't like in GTY is that he keeps telling QH he was genuine in helping him before, and blaming him for not accepting his proposal to kidnap the princess. Like hell anyone in the right mind would accept to that. I feel that if GTY was not genuine in helping QH, it's still okay since he also had eyes on ML and he had every right to fight for love, underhandedly or not. However, although he easily resorts to scheming, he keeps playing the innocent game against QH and repeats this to QH every time they confront. It's like telling QH "Hey we both know I cheated but you have no proof and I won so I will use this to mock at you often".
GTY knows his methods were not honorable, he knows ML wasn't in love with him when she decided to marry him. ML's actions after getting married make him more insecure. It's like QH is releasing his anger on GTY while in fact it was QH's fault for being too late, GTY is also releasing his anger on QH believing it would cover his insecurity.
bulubulu 471
27 minutes ago, gleek49 said:
Why would QH want to make life easier for GTY, you ask? Cause he's the one who claimed over and over again that he "only wished for ML's happiness", so attacking her husband is his way of making her happy? Hypocrisy at his finest. I don't need him to help them or whatever, just leave them alone ffs, why is that so hard for him to just let go and live his own life? Honestly, the guys can be political rivals and fight each other to death all they want, if the fight is purely about politics. But as QH, while crying prettily , unconvincingly convinced himself that it's not personal, I'm just not convinced in the slightest. I can't help but finding his motives and actions petty and pathetic. I, for one, do not find him compelling or interesting at all, I'm just so tired of seeing his face on my screen, I guess I'm probably the only one who is indifferent towards ZYL and his performance
You're not the only one. I'm with you. Whenever i read your posts, i pretty much agree with all you say because u wrote what i couldn't and you spoke my mind.
annakas 274
1 hour ago, linhlinh111 said:
Word word McWORD! Neither of them was right or wrong! I love it that both are such human characters with their faults and their good sides.
I absolutely adored the confrontation scene in ep 51 between GYT and QH! Both of them layed out some truth bombs the other needed to hear.
QH needed to hear that he was coming close to abusing his power because of a personal grudge. He also needed to hear that this was also what had made him blind to the fact that no other official made the complaint since they asked the other party too. His personal grudge had made him blind to the fact that he could be manipulated in to abusing his power and making blind accusations. By the end of the scene I got the impression he was slowly coming to grips with the fact he indeed accused GYT because of a personal grudge.
I adore GYT and ML as a couple, but GYT was sooo in denial about the fact that when he went after ML he betrayed a friend/family member for it.
GYT on the other hand needed to face the fact that he indeed had abused QH trust and petrayed the friendship when he schemed to marry ML. He knew perfectly well why QH had to abandon ML and he was also QH closest confidant about the whole situation. GYT knew very well that QH was forced to marry the crazy princess and how he still loved ML. So GYT snatching ML with a scheme and QH never trusting him again should really not come as a surprise to him. Or how that betrayal of trust can have consequences.
QH asking whether the emperor knows of the GYT situation or wheter the emperor trusts GYT version of the situation, and where it might bring him, like it brougth QH when he trusted GYT was something GYT needed to hear.
I think GYT has come very close to abusing the emperors trust in him and he needed that verbal slap from QH as a reminder, that GYT is indeed capable of it and he should not be surprised when the people whose trust he has betrayed can have consequences in the future! I think this verbal slap/reminder might force GYT face his own character flaw and hopefully he will be more respectful of the Emperor in the future.
I adored that scene! Both of them were fabulous in it! I love it when main characters are three dimensional and have flaws!
You've been writing "one thing I don't like in GTY" several times now, so I guess it's not really just one thing, isn't it? IMO, GTY did genuinely wanted to help them. There no reason for him to lie about that. What if QH agree? You're implying that if QH agreed, then GTY would just bail right at that moment? Because he didn't mean it?? Even if the kidnapping thing was risky, they could always come up with another plan, or plan the kidnapping plot carefully, both of them were smart enough. Point is GTY WILL HELP HIM! Why are you implying that GTY is a buffoon who just lie on the spot for no reason like that? What makes you think that he was not genuine? Why are you keep painting GTY as this bad guy who's out hurt the innocent precious QH? He didn't tell QH all of those thing to rub it in his face? He was just try to point out to QH what he thought QH did wrong? Why do you keep insisting that GTY has malicious intentions towards the innocent precious QH?
dito 7,100
1 hour ago, fra8 said:
In the novel there was also the bit about him confessing he wasn't completely open since he was able to act completely rational during the fire. So yeah, it depends on how they are going to deal with the fire accident.
I agree, the changes make them more relatable and adorable, But apart few things, I like the drama more. It might be because I skipped a lot and it was hard to read with translation
I like the changes too....at least most of them.The changes in characters is what I'm divided on. Some I approve...like GTY is a better man in the drama than in the book. He's a good father in the drama....in the book he completely ignored his daughter. He shares his thoughts with ML in the drama..... in the book you never knew what he was thinking until he said it.
QH is the one I'm not happy about and the other is SH....in the drama he's total crap...in the book he was still a little better. His love for Molan and CL evaporated after the Liang affair came out. He did ask about Molan a few times after her marriage but was shut down by granny.
I'm afraid I skipped a lot of the book too. Google translation is not easy to comprehend if the novel has hard language....and also the author was rambling on about secondary characters when all I wanted to read about is the leads.
1 hour ago, nichiwoohee said:
Its hard because I look forward to the arc from the novel, but also like the changes from the drama. And I like the drama more too, although
I kinda miss witty book ml, her narration is hilarious, but I understand since there’s no time traveling, it would look out of place. As a replacement we got witty gty. All is well I guess
one of my fav bits from the book was when ml just finished fending of stepmom, gu family, his tongfangs, and in comes gty, so ml cursed him silently for bringing so much drama in her life. I wish I could see that in the drama
Yes book ML was a riot with her mind commentary whenever the fakers were doing their drama. Her modern references to dramas and movies were hilarious.
56 minutes ago, nichiwoohee said:
Yes, which will be out of character for drama gty to NOT murder manniang. So far ml has been his consciousness from being reckless, cant wait how the drama incorporates the poisoning arc and the *maybe* new arc of gty fall from grace
Exactly. GTY's character in the drama is such a loose canon that not going for manniang would be completely unlike him. ML is keeping him reined in....if someone threatens ML life and that of his child....then God help them.
I'm eager to see in what sequence they put both these events. Poisoning track needs GTY's army...or atleast some of the soldiers. Won't he loose them with his position if he falls...
purplefall94 130
The confrontation scene between QH and ML was terrific. I was clapping hands like crazy when ML stomped out in anger but ran back to shake QH out of his dellusion. think her words summed up pretty much everything people have been discussing here. Rough translation:
ML: You are the baby of Qi family but I'm just a lone soul. Luckily, he (my husband) is a considerate guy. Have you ever thought of what could have happened to me if he were a petty and vicious guy? My life could have been ruined because of your action.
QH: But...but I just did what was good for you.
ML: Then it has to be considered as good by me first! Good by your book doesn't count!
(Later, ML to XT: The little Duke is such a big cry baby. He just does whatever he feels like.)
I have never had a bit of sympathy towards QH, way before QTY proved himself a worthy contender for ML's husband because I'm a supporter of ML from the start. QH's actions, intentionally or not, have always caused harm to ML, from gifting her precious stationary to publicly expressing his affection to ML and making unrealistic promises. And I agree with the comment above that people of this kind are even worse than the villains, because we can't hate them but they're not exactly innocent either. Such an annoying character.
Edited January 29 by purplefall94
Honestly I was a little disappointed with ML and GTY's fighting scene. I was hoping for it since the beginning and I expected it to be more serious and heart broken. In the book it happened when they were alone in the room when ML was looking out of the window and cried. It was very intense while ML poured her heart out for the first time. Instead in the drama it happened while they were walking in open space with a trail of maids behind them, which made the atmosphere more relaxing. And especially the way ZLY walked and talked (adorable like a baby girl compared to FSF) made the fight way less serious. I wonder if it's done intentionally to ease thing out but I prefer the book version.
mooose 583
he keeps playing the innocent game against QH and repeats this to QH every time they confront. It's like telling QH "Hey we both know I cheated but you have no proof and I won so I will use this to mock at you often".
GTY only cheated and manipulated against Dr HE. QH wasn't even a contender anymore in GTY's mind that he had to cheat or manipulate.
GTY wanted QH to go and be rejected by Grandma and be done with it since QH had zero chance of ML accepting his proposal again.
GTY might not be innocent against other suitors but against QH, he is. Why shouldn't he defend himself?
UnniSarah 54,924
17 minutes ago, annakas said:
I think GYT has come very close to abusing the emperors trust in him and he needed that verbal slap from QH as a reminder, that GYT is indeed capable of it and he should not be surprised when the people whose trust he has betrayed can have consequences in the future! I think this verbal slap/reminder might force GYT face his own character flaw and hopefully he will be more respectful of the Emperor in the future
I sometimes miss key points in Cdrama @annakas When did GTY come close to abusing the Emperor’s trust??? Can I have the episode to rewatch. I don’t remember that happening.
mundane9 847
4 hours ago, leeza77 said:
I have a withdrawal syndrome tonight.. Need a dose of TSOM..
Hunan tv is broadcasting spring festival tonight..
but CNY is not till Feb??!?!
fra8 723
9 minutes ago, linhlinh111 said:
Me too. I expected more angst. Probably as you said it was intentional but maybe because they will have other confrontations. I don’t know if they solved everything.
I, for one, do not find him compelling or interesting at all, I'm just so tired of seeing his face on my screen, I guess I'm probably the only one who is indifferent towards ZYL and his performance
I don't mind his face but his character is seriously pissing me off. You know, I've read people praising both ZLY and ZYL here....but I have to admit for me FSF's performance is no less than other two. I usually replay his scenes more than others. His expressions and his gestures are sometimes very subtle, very different...very natural than what I'd expect an actor to do.....then I remembered the director saying he let the actors to improvise and adlib. I have yet to see a scene like that with ZYL. He's too restrained in his gestures....maybe its just his character. GTY is such a flamboyant character that he just takes over the screen.
32 minutes ago, UnniSarah said:
I think the way GYT has manipulated the Emperor and put him several times in a very akward losing face kind of situations. That behaviour has come close to abusing the Emperors trust in him.
We know GYT is a loyal subject, but he is not a respectful subject since he views the Emperor as someone he could manipulate easily and take his favouritism as granted. He is getting cocky with it and that could get dangerous.
The only reason why he has gotten away with such disrispectful behaviour is because he is the Emperors most favoured subject and so far he has found decentish explanations, when the Emperor has called him to task.
There is only so many times GYT can get away with this kind of behaviour before it actually gets too disrespectful and the Emperor would start to think his favoritism is taken for granted and abused.
No one wants to feel like they are a chess piece for someone to be manipulated as. And it is really dangerous if the Emperor himself starts to feel as a tool for GYT to use.
1 hour ago, gleek49 said:
Looks like someone is finally saying this, I just don't feel any kind of pity, or pain for QH at all.. No matter what, he should just move on
10 hours ago, purplefall94 said:
Thanks for translating this. I wanted QH to hear exactly this from ML....and that she's doing well in her life with GTY.
So he can move on already.
9 hours ago, linhlinh111 said:
It was funny.... no idea why they made light of the scene......but I think it did loose its impact though. The scene in the book left a deep impression on GTY. It was after listening to ML and seeing her cry that he stopped his cold war and decided to accept whatever she's willing to give rather than demand more than she can give him.
38 minutes ago, dito said:
As in, ZYL is a great actor, but for me the person that owns this film and has surprised a lot is FSF like people are just seeing QH as ZYL and are supporting the second lead but for me QH is a character that's meant to be criticised, so they should start seeing that his facade of playing the weak, hurt and innocent is just so stupid, and outrightly wrong no matter the reason, at least GTY owns up to his deeds, and we all know he isn't anyway a pure character and he accepts it, so why should we pity QH that is being delusional to his reality.. If people blames GTY for betraying QH which doesn't even makes sense, and are criticizing him, then QH should be criticised too for trying to destroy him just for a stupid and baseless personal grudge.. It's very simple. We are just supporting someone who is hurt and trying to be weak to gain attention, and trying to ignore the feelings of someone who is more hurt but is trying to be strong and live his live well.. Like how ML said that if someone acts weak, we should just do whatever they want for them and not care for the others that's not weak, during the Dr. He and his cousin issue... So I think that's what we are doing for QH now, because he feels hurt, so he can go destroying other's life and as long as he gets cured, all his mistakes should be forgiven.. Am I the only one that finds this so unfair to GTY too, because his own efforts and hard work and strength and dedication are not being admired at all
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Martha Lane Fox: Yeuch! The Internet is made by men?!?
Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho has talked of her discomfort that the internet is made by humans who have a penis. The former Martha Lane Fox, CBE, told the Radio Academy's Radio Festival in Salford that she felt uneasy "that something that is now fundamental, like the water, for everybody’s daily life has been entirely produced by …
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Wednesday 15th October 2014 18:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
To be fair
A quick survey of the media shows that the likes of Lane-Fox, Burchill et al are comfortably outnumbered by their male equivalents.
Wednesday 15th October 2014 20:48 GMT TheOtherHobbes
Re: To be fair
Such as Tim Worstall, for example?
Unless I'm mistaken, your quick survey isn't very good given that it's actually saying women in media - either the production of or the subject of - are outnumbered by men.
I don't think you could actually work that out quickly. Seems to me there's loads of womens magazines, presumably about women, and loads of mens magazines with women in them. So it could get pretty tricky doing that as a quick survey.
You could however just say men are far too dominant in the world, which is definitely fair.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that Lane-Fox has, rather curiously, reached some pretty dizzy social heights off the back of being briefly involved in selling discounted holidays.
Wednesday 15th October 2014 18:53 GMT Ted Treen
That explains it...
It's not her fault:- springing from the British aristocracy she's bound to be a congenital idiot...
All those centuries of inbreeding, don'cha know, old chap
44 1 Reply
Re: That explains it...
Not all of them are. The point is that the IQ spread of the aristocracy is about that of the general public, but an aristocrat of average IQ gets a leg up that would need a couple of SD's plus for the non-aristocrat. It's Peter Principle in action; aristocrats rise to their level of incompetence very quickly, whereas some of the rest of us never manage to get there. And the genuinely very competent aristocrats don't need to get in the public eye for self validation, so you don't hear about them.
I'm going to mention just one example; the member of the House of Lords who happened to be passing by in Wiltshire when the Battle of the Beanfield was on. His integrity, reporting and testimony had a big effect on law enforcement. But few people know his name.
As for inbreeding, the aristocracy has long had a technique for dealing with this. They tend to import attractive and intelligent young women from the rising middle classes. The Windsors are currently demonstrating how well this works as a tactic.
Thursday 16th October 2014 01:01 GMT Dave 126
What Arnaut the less said.
And: Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell for his influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (type theory) and philosophy.
Also: Archibald Clark Kerr, 1st Baron Inverchapel for this classic letter:
"My Dear Reggie,
In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time. So I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.
We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when Spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.
Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr, H.M. Ambassador"
Thursday 16th October 2014 12:00 GMT Matt 21
Bertrand Russell always struck me as someone who was very adept at hiding his ignorance behind an impossibly complex veneer of logic.
Made me wonder about Wittgenstein too.
Thursday 16th October 2014 16:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Wittgenstein, as everybody knows, was a drunken swine. But he wasn't as sloshed as Schlegel.
Russell - his original work with Whitehead was brilliant, and if it was rapidly superseded it was partly because they built such detailed foundations and partly because at the time foundations of maths/mathematical logic was a focus of research. He just then went on to demonstrate Famous Scientist/Mathematician syndrome - a tendency to pontificate on things he didn't know that much about at the behest of the Press.
On the subject of the letter, above, I'm reminded (OT) of the story Humphrey Littelton used to tell about his father. One day at the breakfast table reading The Times his father started to laugh, but when asked why refused to explain. Eventually his son prevailed upon him and his father wrote him a note, enjoining him not to show it to his mother or sister. When Littelton opened the note it read "The new Prime Minister of Singapore is Mr. Bum Suk Lee."
Thursday 6th November 2014 22:37 GMT photobod
"Famous Scientist/Mathematician syndrome" sounds a lot like "Member of Parliament syndrome", especially in the form of "Member of Parliament With Nothing But A Lawyer's Background Syndrome".
Thursday 16th October 2014 11:33 GMT smudge
The point is that the IQ spread of the aristocracy is about that of the general public...
Indeed. This has been advanced as an argument in favour of a House of Lords populated by people who are there solely by birthright - not by appointment or, heaven forbid, by election.
The reasoning being that if you select purely by accident of birth, you'll get a general cross-section of IQ range and abilities. Whereas if you include those who have succeeded in being appointed or elected, you will skew the curve towards ambitious, pushy, self-centred types - like the House of Commons.
Not saying I agree with this - just pointing out that there is some logic in it.
Friday 17th October 2014 16:11 GMT Nigel 11
There is indeed some logic.
Appointed by random selection from the electoral roll might be even better. A bit like jury service, but better-paid and safer.
Personally I'd insist that the randomly selected people then passed a fairly simple general knowledge test. (that's knowledge, not trivia). We'd then have a more representative house of (mostly) non-politicians, with intelligence and abilities slightly above the average.
We might even lose MLF.
Wednesday 15th October 2014 18:53 GMT Irongut
Does she have a similar problem using bicycles, cars, buses, trains, boats, buildings, pavements, roads, bridges, clothes, shoes and all the other things that were designed and largely built by men?
Wednesday 15th October 2014 23:02 GMT Roland6
Perhaps someone should tell her that electronic voting systems were largely designed and built by men...
Thursday 16th October 2014 01:01 GMT dan1980
@Roland6
I have awarded you an up-vote via the usual means but please take this e-mail as symbolic of the 99 other up-votes I would like to give this comment.
Thursday 16th October 2014 08:47 GMT Michael Nidd
... take this e-mail as symbolic of the 99 other up-votes I would like to give this comment.
With a little effort, generating those 99 other up-votes would usefully demonstrate the value of electronic voting.
Thursday 16th October 2014 16:21 GMT gkroog
And since its online, its running across that same nasty internet. She seems not able to even.
Wednesday 15th October 2014 18:53 GMT Jim 59
Somebody famous for being a bit silly has been a bit silly
Wednesday 15th October 2014 18:53 GMT Stevie
Bah!
Is Her Gibberishness aware that a good 50% of the water in the UK is made by men?
Wednesday 15th October 2014 23:04 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: Bah!
The other 50% is due to the melting polar icecaps caused by global warming, which is the fault of men.
Thursday 16th October 2014 12:02 GMT GrumpyOldMan
"The other 50% is due to the melting polar icecaps caused by global warming, which is the fault of men."
According to my wife EVERYTHING is the fault of men. Well, me, actually! My default state is "Wrong". So it doesn't matter what I say or do, I'm wrong. Which is actually very liberating - I can do and say what I please! It's going to be wrong anyway so hey-ho!
Thursday 16th October 2014 16:20 GMT Bernard M. Orwell
A womans place is in the kitchen....a mans place is in the wrong.
Friday 17th October 2014 10:52 GMT Archaon
"According to my wife EVERYTHING is the fault of men. Well, me, actually! My default state is "Wrong". So it doesn't matter what I say or do, I'm wrong. Which is actually very liberating - I can do and say what I please! It's going to be wrong anyway so hey-ho!"
Be careful, friend. Many have tried this path and found that while there is no state better than wrong, there are many many states that are considerably worse than wrong. Examples of such states are 'Very Wrong', 'Don't touch me!', 'Oh-My-God-How-Could-You-Say-That-I'm-Never-Talking-To-You-Again' and 'Whacked around the face with a frying pan and buried in the garden'.
Consider yourself warned.
Dammit the male internet made me post !!
One MLF you just wouldn't want to ...
Friday 17th October 2014 13:43 GMT IsJustabloke
Re: Dammit the male internet made me post !!
Oh I dunno.... I probably would. I don't have to talk to her and as long as I can keep her mouth busy...
Wednesday 15th October 2014 18:53 GMT Clive Galway
Where on earth did she get the idea that the internet is "Entirely produced by men".?
This statement belittles the contribution of every woman working in the industry.
Thursday 16th October 2014 01:01 GMT John Brown (no body)
"This statement belittles the contribution of every woman working in the industry."
Abso-bloody-lutley? My wife for one! She once made a web page. With a picture of our cat on it. With a little help from me (a man. Oh, I feel so ashamed!)
Thursday 16th October 2014 20:08 GMT JRBobDobbs
Radia Perlman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radia_Perlman
There's one woman who made a very fundamental piece of the internet
Saturday 18th October 2014 17:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Radia Perlman
And a rather more important bit than a website for people with poor planning skills.
Political Correctness gone MAD I tell you
This is EXACTLY why you need a sarcasm icon and tag.
Due to the utterly unbelievable PC nature of the world today and the festering vestiges of your monarchial system, its is nearly impossible to tell whether this article is about someone real or imagined.
The real horror is that it could be about someone who actually exists and has that opinion.
IF it is about someone who exists, then it is time to toss the whole institution and all it's members into a black hole before some twat says another word. Boston Harbor needs dredging, there's not enough room.
7 11 Reply
Re: Political Correctness gone MAD I tell you
With Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann as representatives of your fine country, you might just possibly want to rethink "festering vestiges of your monarchical system." Ms. Lane-Fox is unlikely to find herself on the ballot for a job equivalent to that of US Vice President. Palin actually did.
Re: Political Correctness gone MAD I tell you (@ Arnaut the ignorant)
Since I was commenting on the article it's an unfair comparison. however...at least those two don't have any "hereditary line to the throne" like your Lane - Fox (and the accompanying inbreeding).
At this time I'd actually prefer Palin over Biden. It couldn't be worse and it might be better than his ineffectual bumbling. I know Palin would get more attention. She could hardly be considered manhating and PC. I'm not a fan of Bachmann but she's not covering my area. There could have been a better showing from Republicans but in my experience that was a throw away election for them.
Any person who works hard can accomplish great things in the States, they don't need an aristocratic title to do so. Certainly money helps. But they don't have to be "born to rule" like you seem to prefer over there, the royals do what ever they want and you just go happily along with them, even when they are out of touch with reality.
Some of us here prefer not to be led by the nose for all our decisions, you would apparently rather be led than have to make a hard decision. We threw off the monarchy a long time ago. Turns out they didn't know better than the common man.
Thursday 16th October 2014 17:36 GMT Sir Runcible Spoon
"Some of us here prefer not to be led by the nose for all our decisions, you would apparently rather be led than have to make a hard decision"
You have a very odd idea about our Monarchy Mr/Mrs/Ms AC (but I'm guessing Mr.)
They don't make our decisions, we rely on the toffy-nosed upper middle-classes that went to the old-boys school to so that for us.
Friday 17th October 2014 13:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Political Correctness gone MAD I tell you (@ Sir Runcible Spoon)
Never said it was just the monarchy but those who came with it fit the bill as well. Old Boys School tie types included. Anyone who talks with clenched teeth and patronizing manner as in "I'm special, you commoner".
As I said you are not captain of your own ship. As a country you let too many others make your decisions FOR YOU.
Brittain is losing it's very identity to the EU. It's own people are willing to give theirs to blue blood tossers that have no business telling anyone what to do.
Sunday 19th October 2014 14:45 GMT Sir Runcible Spoon
Well, Mr AC, I've got news for you, they are all under the sway of private money - so even the Captains aren't the Captains of the ship, and just who owns the ship eh?
Wednesday 22nd October 2014 15:07 GMT h4rm0ny
>>"Brittain is losing it's very identity to the EU. It's own people are willing to give theirs to blue blood tossers that have no business telling anyone what to do."
That's an odd mix of attitudes. Joining the EU has been one of our best protections against rule by the British upper classes. Pulling out is basically playing into the hands of Eton Establishment, etc. UKIP are funded by upper middle-class and upper class.
Wednesday 29th October 2014 07:22 GMT Jamie Jones
"Never said it was just the monarchy but those who came with it fit the bill as well. Old Boys School tie types included. Anyone who talks with clenched teeth and patronizing manner as in "I'm special, you commoner"."
Is this the point where you start your 'quirky cockney' dance, after delighting us with that little speech no doubt voiced in a Dick Van Dyke style English accent?
"Any person who works hard can accomplish great things in the States,
... unless they get ill and need healthcare, or shot by yet another gun nut.
Wednesday 19th November 2014 22:42 GMT Marshalltown
Palin would be a catastrophe in hip boots. Go to Alaska and you encounter the mystery that no one seems willing to admit having voted for her. However you might be right about Palin vs Biden. Palin's handicaps are blatantly obvious while Biden is likely to be far more plausible.
Re: nearly impossible to tell
No, it's easy to tell. Try googling.
Of course, you aren't making that claim because you're actually too thick to use a search engine; you're making it because you have a pre-existing agenda that you wish to twist the facts to support.
Now sod off back to #GamerGate, where you and your horrible friends can all sympathise with each other about how horrible things like social justice are.
Oh, and I think she's an arsehole too, but it's not because I think she's being PC, because she isn't: she is ignorantly dismissing all the contributions women have made to computing and the internet. The fact that you cannot even see that just demonstrates the depth of your politically-driven blind spot: you see PCness where none exists because you wish to blame all the ills of the world on your one favourite little bugbear.
Wednesday 15th October 2014 18:53 GMT Jelliphiish
Baroness SOHO
Our Lady of the Small Office/Home Office
who says the guvmint have no sense of hoomerr
Wednesday 15th October 2014 18:53 GMT malle-herbert
The internet is made by people...
Unfortunately some of them are dicks...
Monday 27th October 2014 10:03 GMT LaeMing
Re: The internet is made by people...
regardless of gender.
Wednesday 15th October 2014 18:53 GMT Nigel Whitfield.
Utopian drivel
Unless they're going to issue everyone of voting age with a basic internet connection and a device with which to vote, then there will still be a need to have polling stations, or public internet access if it's online only, for those who don't have a suitable method of voting with them.
And, I can't help feeling, some people would be perfectly happy with that - a situation where many people can vote at their convenience, but the most disadvantaged have to queue up at a polling station or a library to cast their vote.
Re: Utopian drivel
"Unless they're going to issue everyone of voting age with a basic internet connection "
A more pressing concern is that not voting is a valid choice. I didn't have any acceptable choices for MP at the last general election, so I didn't cast a vote for any of the candidates. If Martha is too stupid to see how important the right to not vote is, then she's evidently fully qualified to be a member of the house of lords. Presumably serial stupidist Lord Vaz will be joining her soon, as he's demonstrated the necessary hypocrisy and dim-ness.
The interesting aspect of this is that under the previous hereditary system the Lords were great - a chamber of sleeping old codgers who allowed us to sell the idea of being governed by a class system to tourists, but who never interfered with the bungling stupidity of the lower chamber, other than a few irrelevant speeches about the need to hunt foxes, badgers and peasants. Following the "reforms" by that village idiot Blair, we can now see that we don't need two chambers, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify the House of Patronage.
I say shut the doors and gas 'em.
Wednesday 15th October 2014 23:02 GMT John 110
@Ledswinger
By and large I agree with you're sentiment, but I think in the real world if you don't vote, then you fall into the category of those who just can't be arsed. Much better to trawl along to the polling station and stuff your unmarked ballot paper into the box. (I once wrote "I don't want to vote for any of these people" on my ballot paper) The fact that you turned out to vote gets counted and none of the pillocks you didn't want to vote for gets the benefit. Oh wait, there's someone at the doo
"A more pressing concern is that not voting is a valid choice. I didn't have any acceptable choices for MP at the last general election, so I didn't cast a vote for any of the candidates."
I don't see that as a valid reason for objecting to compulsory voting (although there are other valid reasons) since a ballot can be spoiled, thus venting your spleen or alternatively, part of a change to compulsory voting would be add a "None of the above" choice on the ballot which is counted, totalled and announced as part of the results.
Thursday 16th October 2014 06:33 GMT Dr Scrum Master
""A more pressing concern is that not voting is a valid choice. I didn't have any acceptable choices for MP at the last general election, so I didn't cast a vote for any of the candidates."
I don't see that as a valid reason for objecting to compulsory voting (although there are other valid reasons) since a ballot can be spoiled, thus venting your spleen or alternatively, part of a change to compulsory voting would be add a "None of the above" choice on the ballot which is counted, totalled and announced as part of the results."
And if we have compulsory voting with voting machines or voting over the Internet, then is there scope for spoiling one's "ballot paper"?
Thursday 16th October 2014 07:56 GMT werdsmith
Well John Brown, idealism about voting doesn't go very far. I never hear about spoiled voting papers, nobody cares about them, I think the powers categorise them as juvenile tantrum activity and disregard them completely. More is made of voter apathy and low turnouts are seen as a reflection on our politicians and a message for them to up their sorry games.
Having read the total shyte that people opine about politics on social media, guardian comments, daily mail comments etc, I have despaired that the best of a bad lot democracy system is not keeping up with the modern world and needs a bit of a looking at.
News for Faecebookers:
1. Torys are not going to privatise the NHS and steal all the money from ordinary working people to give to posh twats to spend on pheasant shoots in the Scottish Highlands.
2. Labour are not going to penalise people who study hard, work hard and achieve by taxing them more so they can give the money as handouts to lazy-arse bastards to spend on piss lager and fags.
Or are they?
Rather blindly and sanctimoniously carry on with the dogma, and getting supercilious about people that don't vote, there are some that should be looking at the reasons for increasing voter apathy.
After all, those people that died in wars to support democracy, also died for our freedom to choose.
@werdsmith
"1. Torys are not going to privatise the NHS and steal all the money from ordinary working people to give to posh twats to spend on pheasant shoots in the Scottish Highlands."
Oh, I think they are...
Thursday 16th October 2014 11:34 GMT Evil Graham
"After all, those people that died in wars to support democracy, also died for our freedom to choose."
Well they died for freedom full stop. In my opinion that should include the freedom to not vote, if that's what you want.
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Documents filtered by: Period="Confederation Period" AND Date="1789-04-06"
From George Washington to Bryan Fairfax, 6 April 1789
To Bryan Fairfax
Mount Vernon 6th April 1789
Sometime ago Mr Muse informed me by letter—that he expected an order for the delivery to him of the Papers belonging to the Estate in my possession1—I answered they were subject to, and ready for that order whenever presented but as a friend I would advise him to let them remain in your hands and draw out such only as he might want. To this he seems perfectly agreeable and I mention the matter before I leave home, that if you incline to take charge of them they will be delivered by my Nephew Majr George A. Washington at any time you may call for them.
Old as the date of the enclosed letter is, it has been but lately received. It is my sincere wish that this tedeous and irksome business could be brought to a close; but less then ever2 will it be in my power now, to afford any aid towards the accomplishment of it. Mrs Bomford must therefore turn her attention to some others as an Attorney, for the purpose of receiving her money, if it ever should be recovered3—With best wishes for Mrs Fairfax and your family, and with sentiments of sincere regard and friendship. I am Dr Sir, Yr Most Obedt & Affect. Sert
Go: Washington
LB, DLC:GW.
Bryan Fairfax (1737–1802) was a half brother of GW’s old friend George William Fairfax. After a fairly irresponsible youth Fairfax married Sarah Cary Fairfax’s sister Elizabeth Cary and settled at Towlston Grange in Fairfax County. In 1789 he was ordained a minister. In May 1798 Fairfax went to England for his health and petitioned Parliament successfully for certification as eighth Baron Fairfax of Cameron to succeed his deceased cousin Robert Fairfax, seventh Baron Fairfax of Cameron. Fairfax was GW’s close friend and fox-hunting companion, and in 1769 GW stood godfather for Bryan’s son Ferdinando.
1. For the discussion between GW and Battaile Muse concerning the papers relating to George William Fairfax’s estate, see Muse to GW, 1, 6 Nov., 19 Dec. 1788, 7 Feb. and 8 Mar. 1789, and GW to Muse, 7 Nov. 1788, and 19 Feb. 1789.
2. In the letter book this word reads “our.”
3. Fairfax had also been involved in the Savage affair. It is uncertain what letter GW enclosed in this letter, but it clearly concerned the complicated affairs of Mrs. Margaret Savage, which had plagued GW since the 1760s. See John Dixon to GW, 5 Mar. 1789, n.1. Sometime after Mrs. Savage’s arrival in Ireland in the late 1760s she was apparently abandoned by her husband and left almost destitute. She sought shelter with Mrs. Sarah Bomford, the wife of Isaac Bomford, who lived on Fishamble Street in Dublin. Mrs. Bomford apparently cared for her friend until ill health forced her to move to Bath in 1776 (Sarah Bomford to GW, 27 Sept. 1773, 25 May 1774). When she announced her departure from Ireland, Mrs. Bomford informed GW that she could “not afford to maintain this unfortunate woman from under my own roof,” from whom she had “neither expected nor received one shilling” (Sarah Bomford to GW, 28 April 1776). Although she frequently pointed out in her letters to GW that she had taken in Mrs. Savage only as an act of charity, Mrs. Bomford nevertheless pursued assiduously the bequest left her by Mrs. Savage’s will. And, as GW wrote Bryan Fairfax, 6 Jan. 1790, her claims now included payment “for the diet, lodging &ca of that unfortunate woman for upwards of four years. . . . I have informed Mrs Bomford that circumstances have put it out of my power to pay particular attention to the affairs of Mrs Savage—and that I should transmit her letter to you, not doubting but you would give it that attention which it deserved.” See also GW to Sarah Bomford, 6 Jan. 1790.
Fairfax, Bryan
“From George Washington to Bryan Fairfax, 6 April 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0027. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, vol. 2, 1 April 1789 – 15 June 1789, ed. Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 27–29.]
From Fairfax to Washington [16 November 1787]
From Fairfax to Washington [7 February 1790]
All correspondence between Fairfax and Washington
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Tony Awards 2019: ‘Hadestown’ wins Best Musical and leads the way with 8 wins
Posted 4:34 AM, June 10, 2019, by CNN Wire, Updated at 04:39AM, June 10, 2019
The 73rd Annual Tony Awards were presented Sunday to celebrate Broadway’s best performances of the year.
James Corden served as host of the event for the second time and kicked off the show with a nine minute opening number in which he poked fun at live TV versus streaming services.
When it came to the coveted Best Play and Best Musical categories the winners were “The Ferryman” by Jez Butterworth and “Hadestown” respectively.
It was a big night for “Hadestown,” starring Reeve Carney, Amber Gray and André De Shields, who lead the way with 14 nominations and scored 8 wins.
Tony’s history was made by Ali Stroker as the first actor in a wheelchair to ever win a Tony Award. She took home the award for featured actress in a musical for her role in “Oklahoma!”
But it didn’t stop there, it was an entire night of firsts.
Rachel Chavkin won the Tony for best director of a musical for “Hadestown” as the only female nominated in that category this year and Elaine May won her first ever Tony Award for best leading actress for her role in “The Waverly Gallery.”
Andre DeShields won his first ever Tony Award in the featured actor in a musical category for his role in “Hadestown.” Santino Fontana was awarded Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical for “Tootsie” and Stephanie J. Block won her first Tony for Best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical for “The Cher Show.”
When the Tony nominations were announced in April, some Broadway observers were surprised that both “To Kill Mockingbird” and “Network” were not nominated in the best play category.
CNN caught up with Corden earlier in the week to discuss his hosting duties, and he revealed that, believe it or not, he gets incredibly nervous.
“I get nerves to an almost crippling degree,” he said. “I actually went to see someone about it at one point because it was getting to a point where I was so nervous, it was unmanageable.
See below for a full list of winners.
Best play
“Choir Boy” by Tarell Alvin McCraney
“The Ferryman” by Jez Butterworth *WINNER
“Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus” by Taylor Mac
“Ink” by James Graham
“What the Constitution Means to Me” by Heidi Schreck
Best revival of a musical
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” *WINNER
“Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”
“Hadestown” *WINNER
Best revival of a play
Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons”
“The Boys in the Band” by Mart Crowley *WINNER
“Burn This” by Lanford Wilson
“Torch Song” by Harvey Fierstein
“The Waverly Gallery” by Kenneth Lonergan
Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical
Brooks Ashmanskas, “The Prom”
Derrick Baskin, “Ain’t Too Proud”
Alex Brightman, “Beetlejuice”
Damon Daunno, “Oklahoma!”
Santino Fontana, “Tootsie” *WINNER
Best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical
Stephanie J. Block, “The Cher Show” *WINNER
Caitlin Kinnunen, “The Prom”
Beth Leavel, “The Prom”
Eva Noblezada, “Hadestown”
Kelli O’Hara, “Kiss Me, Kate”
Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play
Paddy Considine, “The Ferryman”
Bryan Cranston, “Network” *WINNER
Jeff Daniels, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Adam Driver, “Burn This”
Jeremy Pope, “Choir Boy”
Best performance by an actress in a leading role in a play
Annette Bening, “All My Sons”
Laura Donnelly, “The Ferryman”
Elaine May, “The Waverly Gallery” *WINNER
Janet McTeer, “Bernhardt/Hamlet”
Laurie Metcalf, “Hillary and Clinton”
Heidi Schreck, “What the Constitution Means to Me”
“Ain’t Too Proud,” Dominique Morisseau
“Beetlejuice,” Scott Brown and Anthony King
“Hadestown,” Anaïs Mitchell
“The Prom,” Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin
“Tootsie,” Robert Horn *WINNER
Best original score (music and/or lyrics) written for the theater
“Be More Chill,” Joe Iconis
“Beetlejuice,” Eddie Perfect
“Hadestown,” Anaïs Mitchell *WINNER
“The Prom,” Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” Adam Guettel
“Tootsie,” David Yazbek
Best direction of a musical
Rachel Chavkin, “Hadestown” *WINNER
Scott Ellis, “Tootsie”
Daniel Fish, “Oklahoma!”
Des McAnuff, “Ain’t Too Proud”
Casey Nicholaw, “The Prom”
Best direction of a play
Rupert Goold, “Ink”
Sam Mendes, “The Ferryman” *WINNER
Bartlett Sher, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Ivo van Hove, “Network”
George C. Wolfe, “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus”
Best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical
André De Shields, “Hadestown” *WINNER
Andy Grotelueschen, “Tootsie”
Patrick Page, “Hadestown”
Jeremy Pope, “Ain’t Too Proud”
Ephraim Sykes, “Ain’t Too Proud”
Best performance by an actress in a featured role in a musical
Lilli Cooper, “Tootsie”
Amber Gray, “Hadestown”
Sarah Stiles, “Tootsie”
Ali Stroker, “Oklahoma!” *WINNER
Mary Testa, “Oklahoma!”
Best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play
Bertie Carvel, “Ink” *WINNER
Robin De Jesús, “The Boys in the Band”
Gideon Glick, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Brandon Uranowitz, “Burn This”
Benjamin Walker, “All My Sons”
Best performance by an actress in a featured role in a play
Fionnula Flanagan, “The Ferryman”
Celia Keenan-Bolger, “To Kill a Mockingbird” *WINNER
Kristine Nielsen, “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus”
Julie White, “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus”
Ruth Wilson, “King Lear”
Best choreography
Camille A. Brown, “Choir Boy”
Warren Carlyle, “Kiss Me, Kate”
Denis Jones, “Tootsie”
David Neumann, “Hadestown”
Sergio Trujillo, “Ain’t Too Proud” *WINNER
Best orchestrations
Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose, “Hadestown” *WINNER
Larry Hochman, “Kiss Me, Kate”
Daniel Kluger, “Oklahoma!”
Simon Hale, “Tootsie”
Harold Wheeler, “Ain’t Too Proud”
Best scenic design of a musical
Robert Brill and Peter Nigrini, ‘Ain’t Too Proud”
Peter England, “King Kong”
Rachel Hauck, “Hadestown” *WINNER
Laura Jellinek, “Oklahoma!”
David Korins, “Beetlejuice”
Best scenic design of a play
Miriam Buether, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Bunny Christie, “Ink”
Rob Howell, “The Ferryman” *WINNER
Santo Loquasto, “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus”
Jan Versweyveld, “Network”
Best costume design of a musical
Michael Krass, “Hadestown”
William Ivey Long, “Beetlejuice”
William Ivey Long, “Tootsie”
Bob Mackie, “The Cher Show” *WINNER
Paul Tazewell, “Ain’t Too Proud”
Best costume design of a play
Toni-Leslie James, “Bernhardt/Hamlet”
Clint Ramos, “Torch Song”
Ann Roth, “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus”
Ann Roth, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Best sound design of a musical
Peter Hylenski, “Beetlejuice”
Peter Hylenski, “King Kong”
Steve Canyon Kennedy, “Ain’t Too Proud”
Drew Levy, “Oklahoma!”
Nevin Steinberg and Jessica Paz, “Hadestown” *WINNER
Best sound design of a play
Adam Cork, “Ink”
Scott Lehrer, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Fitz Patton, “Choir Boy” *WINNER
Nick Powell, “The Ferryman”
Eric Sleichim, “Network”
Best lighting design of a musical
Kevin Adams, “The Cher Show”
Howell Binkley, “Ain’t Too Proud”
Bradley King, “Hadestown” *WINNER
Peter Mumford, “King Kong”
Kenneth Posner and Peter Nigrini, “Beetlejuice”
Best lighting design of a play
Neil Austin, “Ink” *WINNER
Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus”
Peter Mumford, “The Ferryman”
Jennifer Tipton, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Jan Versweyveld and Tal Yarden, “Network”
Filed in: Entertainment, News
Topics: Broadway, Broadway Plays, Tony Awards
CENTER STAGE: The murder mystery comedy musical of a rise to the top at the Playhouse at Allenberry
Giannis Antetokounmpo wins MVP at the 2019 NBA Awards
NBA star Tony Parker announces retirement after 18 seasons
The best restaurant in America is in Philadelphia
MTV Movie & TV Awards 2019: See the full list of winners
Once-rivals Magic Johnson and Larry Bird will share the NBA’s Lifetime Achievement Award
USWNT dominates Chile to coast into Women’s World Cup last 16
The Toronto Raptors win Canada’s first NBA championship
NCAA men’s Final Four: Virginia, Texas Tech advance to the title game
Critics’ Choice Real TV Awards highlight ‘Queer Eye’ and ‘RuPaul’
There’s a Neil Diamond musical headed to Broadway
2019 BET Awards winners: The complete list
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Grayson Fritts #fundie #homophobia washingtonpost.com
(Some snippets from pastor, sheriff, and anti-LGBTQ screamer Grayson Fritts.)
…For roughly an hour, Fritts, who is also a detective with the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, railed against members of the LGBTQ community –– referring to them as “sodomites,” “freaks” and “animals” –– and called on the government to carry out the proper punishment for the “capital crime.”
….“They are worthy of death,” he declared in a video originally released by the church that was later shared on social media.
…“I’m sick of sodomy getting crammed down our throats,” Fritts said at one point in the video, drawing attention to Taylor Swift’s recent efforts to fight anti-LGBTQ bills going through Tennessee’s state legislature.
“It’s infecting our culture, people,” he continued, later insisting that American culture had changed but the Bible isn’t “outdated.”
Fritts argued that the Bible demands that gays be put to death. And throughout the sermon, he spoke passionately about how it is the responsibility of the government to enforce those supposed teachings, not individual Christians — unless they are also police officers.
“God has instilled the power of civil government to send the police in 2019 out to the LGBT freaks and arrest them and have a trial for them, and if they are convicted, then they are to be put to death,” he said, earning approving murmurs from the crowd. Fritts later added that the “Bible says that sentence should be carried out speedily.”
These days, Fritts said it would be easy to spot a member of the LGBTQ community. They’re in grocery stores and your neighborhood Lowe’s being “flamboyant” and “walking around like a bunch of Twinkies,” he said. And then, there are the Pride parades.
“Man, hey call the riot team, we got a bunch of them,” Fritts said. “We have a bunch of them we’re going to get convicted because they have all their pride junk on, and they’re professing what they are, that they’re a filthy animal.”
One week later, LGBTQ people appeared to still be on Fritts’s mind as he dedicated another hour to delivering a sermon titled, “Sodomite Reprobates,” which he kicked off by griping about people “trying to mischaracterize our stance on homosexuals.”
“What I believe about homosexuals is straight from the word of God,” he said last Sunday.
…“The world looks at it and they’re like, ‘Oh, there’s Pastor Fritts. There’s that lone wolf . . . that one guy, that one Baptist pastor that’s just a lunatic, that’s just crazy,'” he said. “Guess what, there’s a lot of people that believe exactly like I believe.”
The problem now, Fritts said, is that all his “Baptist brethren have put their heads in the sand” because they don’t want to deal with the widespread criticism he’s facing.
“They’re weak, they’re spineless, and you know what, if the Bible says it, you need to say it. You need to preach it,” he said as people in the crowd could be heard saying “Amen” and “That’s right.”
But his words did little to quell the outrage as many continued to accuse him of “inciting violence” against the LGBTQ community and labeled him a “bigot.”
…“I’m not calling anybody in here to arms,” he said. “I’m not calling anybody here to violence. I’m saying it’s the government’s responsibility is what I said.”
submitted by kuyohashi a month ago starred by Jhcbiinoc , SomeApe , Volcheka , JeanP , Swede , WarGoatHK417
Typical fascism/Nazism, calling the ones you loathe “animals”, thinking they deserve death for the crime of existing.
Love thy neighbour as yourself, pastor.
I’m sick of you people claiming things are crammed down your throats.
People being allowed to exist has no impact on your life whatsoever. We manage to get on with our lives even though hateful bigots like the good pastor here is allowed to exist.
People who wear clothes of mixed fabrics should also be put to death, according to the Bible. Women who are not virgins on their wedding night should be stoned outside their father’s house. Nobody cares about whether the groom was a virgin or not, whether the bride and groom just took a premature test-drive together, and both were virgins before that.
The Bible is not The Law in the US, dolt. Move to Daesh-land if you want to live like that. The US Founding Fathers worked hard to keep religion OUT of the government.
I had a manager some twenty years ago, when I worked at McD. I liked him very much and found him pleasant company. It was not until I found him on Facebook a few years ago, that I saw that he had registered as interested in men, that I knew he’s gay. I had a colleague back then who was quite flamboyant, but straight as a die.
Yup, that Fritts is one loony-bitts, that’s for sure. There’s a lot of people who believe that the Earth is flat. Doesn’t make it flat, it just makes them crazy lunatics.
Your brethren probably don’t want to be associated with a loony-bin like you.
The Bible also says that you must sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor.
YES, YOU ARE CALLING PEOPLE TO VIOLENCE, YOU HORRIBLE MONSTER! You said they should be tried and sentenced to death! Someone might listen, thinking the government isn’t doing its job, and take you up on your words. If that happens, the blood is on your hands, Fritts.
posted by Swede a month ago #3966 starred by Volcheka
His last name rhymes with grits, meaning he deserves all the blowback he’s absorbing.
How is this excuse for a man a detective?! Someone this toxic & clearly unstable should be tucked away somewhere, like an abandoned mine shaft.
posted by The_Crimson_Ghost a month ago #3969 starred by Volcheka
He sounds like Daesh. Also we're not a theocracy and don't need to adhere to your bible. Also Ezekiel 16;45-49. I hope you're helping the refugees at the Southern border as per Leviticus 19:33-34. If so you might want to play that up more than your homophobia. If not you're using the bible as guise for your prejudices
posted by Conscience a month ago #3971 starred by Volcheka
Well, you'd have to scream to make yourself heard, Dick Grayson.
While you're in that Closet that's so Armoured, it makes Fort Knox seem like a rickety wooden shed.
'Those who shout the loudest' and all that jazz...!
posted by Anon-e-moose a month ago #3975
I hope you will no longer be a sheriff.
posted by JeanP a month ago #3988 starred by Volcheka
Time to work on kicking this psychopath to the curb!
Also; Folks who are “one-issue wonks” like this usually are so for a reason. Sheriff Fritts, like “Pastor” Steve Anderson and the late Fred Phelps, appear to be having “Turkish Delight with The White Witch”, if you get my drift.
Sheriff French Fries is too burnt to be consumable….he needs to get tossed in the trash with the potato peels, rotten tomatoes and half-eaten hamburgers.
[I used to say they were ‘Having tea with Mr. Tummus’ but I wouldn’t inflict idiots on that nice little faun guy.]
posted by SpukiKitty a month ago #3994
God in his own image?
posted by Volcheka a month ago #4000
Dammit Moose, Dick Greyson is a great Nightwing/Robin! He shouldn't be conflated with this homophobic vanilla daesh asshole
posted by Conscience a month ago #4003
Apparently the sheriff’s office are now reviewing all cold cases where this man was a witness.
posted by Citizen_Justin a month ago #4005
“I’m sick of sodomy getting crammed down our throats”
Strip bars, x-rated cinemas (if they still exist), casinos, and the like have huge blinking signs shoving their business down our throats. Gays just want to live in peace with equal rights. Why doesn’t pastor Fritts go shoot up whore houses and strip joints?
posted by checkmate a month ago #4007
@SpukiKitty:
"Also; Folks who are “one-issue wonks” like this usually are so for a reason. Sheriff Fritts, like “Pastor” Steve Anderson and the late Fred Phelps, appear to be having “Turkish Delight with The White Witch”, if you get my drift."
Sorry, I really don't get your drift.
posted by Spacewyrm a month ago #4035
The fact that this guy is a sheriff scares me.
posted by TheKingOfRhye a month ago #4036
@Spacewyrm
They’re so deep in the closet that they’re in NARNIA!
To Sheriff Greasy Fries; Go ahead….
….Just try to arrest the Home Depot Twinkies!
@SpukiKitty: OK, I get it.
Just read the name, and my immediate first thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yANgcOjvtM8
posted by DarkPhoenix a month ago #4231
Strip bars, x-rated cinemas (if they still exist), casinos, and the like have huge blinking signs shoving their business down our throats.
To the fundie's … credit … the last time I visited Las Vegas, there was a protest group just outside the event center shouting about their religion.
posted by pyro 2 weeks ago #5900
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Vote Sheldon Neil As Your Next Much Music VJ
Voters have until this Friday, March 15, 2013 to cast their vote.
Click here to vote! Simply rate the video using the dial below it and click each of the characteristic tags that you feel describes Sheldon and your vote is in.
It’s a wonderful time of year for any passionate, fresh, edgy, energetic, funny, stylish and knowledgable young adult as the Much Music VJ search is on and Sheldon Neil is in the running.
Aside from certain perks like being on the red carpet at the MMVA‘s, interviewing celebrities, attending and hosting the best events in the city; there’s a lot more to Sheldon that secures his place in this year’s running.
His MMVJ interview shows us what Sheldon intends to bring to the table, how he will use his role as VJ to affect youth and also his bad experience with Michael Jackson’s: Thriller.
As the new MuchMusic VJ, what would you bring to much?
As the NEW MuchMusic VJ, I would not only bring enthusiasm, innovation, positive attitude and a LOVE for people — BUT a strong sense of journalism. I can edit, film and host my own pieces. I have worked as a REPORTER for CBC News Windsor at 6pm, PRODUCER for CBC NewsNow, an On-Air Contributor on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. I have worked as an On-AIR Host for Context With Lorna Dueck, which airs on Global TV and in the US. I have experience in Sports Journalism, on Raptors TV, experience hosting my own music radio show, just to name a few. I want to bring the factor that brings together —Personality and Skill. I believe thats what would makes me special, and would make me a great addition to the already talented MUCHMUSIC team! I wouldn’t just bring high energy, innovation, and talent — and (on the spot random dancing) . . . but concrete broadcast skills that will get the job done! ALSO — I have a mow hawk!
How would your friends describe you?
My friends would describe me as someone who is smart, driven, unrelenting, outside the box, Zanny stylish, funny, loves the art of television, lots of energy— and doesn’t need a Red Bull to start the day! LOL.
If you could interview anyone, who would it be and what would you ask them?
HANDS DOWN — I would love to interview, JAY Z or LADY GAGA. I think they are two artists who I believe are not only interested in creating their music, but they are equally interested in starting movements that influence generations of youth. Lady Gaga has her crew, the “Monsters” and Jay Z has those who throw up “The Rock.” They are artists who produce music, but also move to create new worlds through their music. Not every artist is interested in that. I would love to ask Jay Z … just for starters: I would love to ask Lady Gaga …. just for starters:
Tell us about a song, artist or album that changed your life.
I don’t think there is a song, artist or album that ever really changed my life. BUT, there is an up and coming artist many in mainstream may not know of, named Lecrae. He’s a rapper, who just won a Grammy. He does AMAZING concept albums. He picks a theme (i.e. Rehab, Gravity) and then creates an entire album (i.e. songs, lyrics) … around that theme. Great artist and great concept creator.
What are some big trends or issues affecting youth in Canada.
The big issues that are affecting youth in Canada include: -Struggles surrounding Teen Suicide -Bullying among Teens -Struggles surrounding body image and acceptance – Violence and murder in communities between youth. MUCHMUSIC serves as a place where youth across the country go to hear the latest music, stay informed on the latest trends, and stay engaged on the personalities that are informing our culture. With that in mind, I believe MUCHMUSIC and more importantly a VJ has a unique responsibility to help guide audiences and youth through that which is out in society working to influence them the most. As the NEW MUCHMUSIC VJ, I would work to ensure that youth audiences feel safe, and can view myself as a trusted source who can keep them plugged in that which makes up a balanced life — bringing balance and informing them both culturally and socially.
What is your best music experience story?
To tell you my best music experience EVER story . . . I’d have to take you back to my childhood. You ready? Alright, here we go. So, Michael Jackson’s THRILLER music video always gave me the creeps!!!! I remember, when I was young, I walked into my kitchen one night, and my mother (i.e. who knew how scary I thought the video was) saw me coming, and said, “Don’t look, if I were you.” OF COURSE, I looked! My dear friends, boy did I regret it! I looked at the TV, saw just a part of the video…. and IMMEDIATELY bursted into tears of fear, and ran ALLLLLL the way upstairs. Yup. Needless to say, I slept with my parents that night.
Pauleanna Reid Appears On MTV To Talk About Her Battle With Mental IllnessPauleanna Reid & Chivon John Host The Dreamweaver Effect: Vision Board Workshop [VIDEO]
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Top 10 MMO PC Games
March 6, 2019 Clyde Shelton
These games are ranked by PlayScore. A unique rating that averages critic and gamer reviews. Opening our list of Top 10 MMO PC Games is EverQuest II A game that has spanned for more than a decade, EverQuest II is ever expanding its rich lore and heritage to the gaming industry. With more than 10 expansions, create your own story and journey to its world sprawling with rich magic and heartfelt characters. Don’t cha know the game shares similarities with World of Warcraft? It eventually varies itself through its various brilliance. A PlayScore of 7.79 8th place is Star Wars: The Old Republic What does it take to become part of George Lucas’ universe? Thankfully for BioWare, they gave us what we needed the most. A Star Wars game that flows with midichlorians. With its 5 massive expansions, choose between the Dark Side and the Light & conquer the galaxy through a vast morality based-system and Force-powered fun. Star Wars: The Old Republic has a PlayScore of 7.85 The name speaks for itself. 9th on our list is WildStar The name speaks for itself.
Wildstar is a colorful and wild MMORPG game that breathes of fun, adventure and interplanetary Alien-killing. Notably a Pay-To-Play game before, this has now been transformed into Free-to-play due to its critical acclaim. It’s stellar approach to its glistening sci-fi world and its active fighting gameplay is reminiscent to the Star Wars universe. WildStar has a PlayScore of 7.86 Ranked 7th is TERA As much as these MMO games go, most of them are pretty old but are still really good as years go by. TERA is a vast fantasy-driven online experience with gorgeous graphics, sweet musical score and thrilling Player vs Player system. Its seamless battle system and diverse set of races and classes offer more surprises since it began years ago. TERA has a PlayScore of 7.86 6th is Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Chocobos, Crystals, Dragons, Warriors’ The basic formula of a good Final Fantasy game. A Realm Reborn re-ignites the previous games dying flame. Square Enix crawled its way from Final Fantasy XIV’s shadow and lights up with this saviour of a follow-up.
Dubbed as “Version 2” of the XIV franchise, the game has a staggering amount of content from gameplay, story and expansions. Oh yeaah! A Realm Reborn PlayScore of 7.90 5th spot is Path Of Exile This game is rich with Diablo’s style, dungeon-crawling and NPC-talking adventures. What separates this game from its inspiration is its wide array of customization and detailed economy. You are left to tread over a world without currency but progress through trading. It promotes a sense of isolation as you travel around its world filled with dire monstrosities. Path of Exile has a PlayScore of 8.16 Ranked 4th is The Lord of The Rings Online Listen to the horns as they blow & cover your ears as the Nazgul’s go. The Lord of the Rings online brings the most Tolkien-like game to ever come out on the videogame world. This world is brimming with rich lore from the beloved franchise and is populated with expansions that adds layers and layers to the already epic story
Multiplayer Pinball?
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PL IC Thread IX++ //Oddsbodikins & Atomic Kittens//
5919 posts • Page 223 of 237 • 1 ... 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226 ... 237
The New Velociraptor Empire
by The New Velociraptor Empire » Thu Aug 06, 2015 7:59 pm
Neil and Gretta were roused by the commotion, finding themselves bound together by rope. Neil sighed and asked, "Again?" to nobody in particular as he easily cut through the ropes with his sharp claws. "I'm afraid so." Gretta replied as she freed herself just in time as the floating ship had begun dragging the anchor.
Up above Robert caught sight of the backyard pirate ship through his high power spyglass as it moved down Main street. "Enemy sighted!" the young raptor exclaimed. "Full speed ahead and raise the anchor!" Swift ordered his siblings as he turned the airship's wheel. "All cannons primed with sporks!" Jenny reported from below deck as she struggled to raise the anchor. The trio of young Raptors set out to "sink" the rival pirate ship.
Arthur dug himself out of the cocaine pool, somewhat confused and surprised that somewhere along the way an apple got pinned to his shoulder by an arrow. Fortunately, he couldn't feel it but one wonders how exactly these things happened.
ℳadhouse
Tsuyoi Tekikoku
by Tsuyoi Tekikoku » Thu Aug 06, 2015 8:30 pm
Edge tripped and fell on her face, she rolled around for a bit and stood up. "Rawr, Imma kill spinosaurus!" That said, a passing truck filled with toy dinosaurs bounced over a rock and the door to the back came open, then a toy spinosaurus flew out, bounced off of a wall, then off a tree, and finally off of a car's window and flew straight towards Edge like a sniper's bullet. As Edge approached Katya and the......raptors...she...was talking to?...The toy spinosaurs whacked her right in the face, and knocked her out cold. The toy spinosaurus landed on her face and made a glitchy laughing sound, as if it was taunting the Poor T-rex girl.
Predictably unpredictable and fabulous at the same time!
XA-1MVGLHS
Queen Oberon, our red devil! Click the URL to learn about our Leader!
Edelweiss and Reina, the two previous ones are still alive. None of Tsuyoi Tekikoku's leaders are killed in their duels of succession.
I don't use NS stats.
I'd prefer the pronouns she/her,if your referring to me
Mincaldenteans
P2TM RP Mentor
by Mincaldenteans » Thu Aug 06, 2015 10:36 pm
Faes had a knack for doing this kind of thing, but it often came with a celebration long and without masking one's senses, or fogged concentration, with guaranteed pleasure (or horror) from the simplest to the deranged. Then came the black out but at least the memory of the previous night's debauchery would forever be remembered. This however, this was absolutely different and to be suddenly here in the park skating on ice jarred the Monarch of the Winter Sidhe; it was simply alien to experience. This would make it the second time this had happened to her; not that she wasn't in favored company, but it was the principle of the matter being caught off guard twice in a row. What could happen next time? The first was a dance in the backyard, a waltz that had the potential to shift reality with every spin, now it was a dance of darkness and ice, a medium that was closer to her nature, her existence. Fortunately, she could hardly hold onto her trepidation, as the feeling dissipated as quickly as the orchestra. The music was a welcome to the dance upon the moonlight, a perfect moment, really. Pity, she thought to herself, an hour or two more of the symphony with ice under her feet and in the arms of Fritz would have been a welcomed notion. But such moments never lasted, Mab knew, and for a being like her it that was a rarity on its own.
Mab looked up to the dark skies then, her tri-colored storm eyes glazed in the dark as the eerie silence of night reacted to her gaze. The fading moon's light was captured under the fae's alabaster skin, giving a faint illumination across the exposed portions of her body while long strands of hair fell around her shoulders in a blanket that so dark it glimmered in purple and white. The night's chill affected her none, instead registering as a familiar to her being and power. They played gently upon her skin, welcoming and paying its due to the Winter Sidhe. A light laugh escaped her deep red lips then, partly from joy that sprang up from somewhere deep within her that she never indulged, and for Fritz's modest comment since a fae was never truly modest to be without any clothes. Mab kept her smile, letting the feel of it linger for the time being. The warmth of Fritz's jacket, and his hands upon her shoulders was an added welcome, one that crept into a bigger smile the Queen of Air & Darkness did nothing to stop.
She rested her hand upon Fritz's chest, leaning in to look up into his eyes filled a singular happiness no one else would be lucky enough to see. Mab spared but a moment to see a trio fiddling about by the fountain, she couldn't bring herself to detract from this moment.
"And time yet, still," Mab murmured softly.
They were an implacable force. An endless legion of them that made of bright colors and delicate features. They moved as though blessed with the grace of the wind and they dance upon their feet, barely stirring the dust in their fancy footwork, playing with him as with each dodged swing of his fists. Never had the Klingon encountered such a formidable enemy, one that kept its arms wide open with a smiles of warmth and welcome, no trace of fear and a disturbing emotion of happiness stuck upon their faces. It was all a farce, somewhere deep inside him knew that, it had to be. They were the most insidious of p'taQ'pu he'd ever face and Mezran swore silently that he'd die before submitting to them.
A string of curses only the gatekeeper of Gre'thor could make out escaped the Klingon's mouth, roaring as he charged with arms wide and tackled the tubemen with barely a grip to to them. He landed upon the grass in a heavy thud, the full impact jarring him and doing nothing against the happy-faced clown figurine. Impossible!
He punched it, hard, the spiked ends of his leather gauntlets ruptured the inflatable, letting loose a whistle of air while it crumpled upon itself into a wrinkled mess of plastic and rubber.
"Hah! The y'Intagh'pu do die!" Mezran bellowed in triumph as he got back to his feet and readied himself to face the rest.
Someone smacked his head from behind and all enthusiasm for the ongoing war against the army of flailing-arm tubemen dissipated with it.
"You dumb targ, these are toys, they are not even real! They don't bleed! How do you defeat an enemy when you can't break bones?" Tavana huffed, though her jagged grin gave away her amusement, complete with twinkle in her eyes. She stepped up, letting her heavy boots settle upon the one unfortunate slain tubemen and narrowed her eyes across the remaining they still faced.
She made a slight nod as though satisfied of her death glare upon the inflatables, "Let us retired for the night, I do not care to be outside so late and these... things are not worthy of anymore attention than you've given it."
"Bah, they all deserve a quick death!" Mezran argued, though the hardened stare from Tavana caved the proud warrior and he grumbled his acceptance with a shake of his mane. He turned to see see Chrys and Hans had similarly fought against the tubemen, though likely they knew it was harmless.
"First the tribbles, now this p'taQ'pu, the next thing you know it will be the Ferengi," he rumbled under a thin veneer of disgust. His stomach was growling, perhaps Tavana's insistence was a blessing in disguise. He looked up to the rest of them, "Come, my friends, let us head back. I would have you join us for morning breakfast, if you like."
Apartment 8A, err, the Guild
There was a certain peace and tranquility that came with devotion and duty. Erick, being a dervish, a scythe wielding wandering monk, paid many a homage to his gods. Temples of the five gods could be found anywhere in Tyria, and many like Erick took great pains to tend to any left in disrepair and neglect. Now in a home that held altars of all five, Erick had made it a point to pay his respects to the Five. The Dervish had no high hopes or wishes, nor designs or false promise, a humble servant to his dying days, perhaps his only wish was gentle ease into the afterlife.
This morning was no different than every morning since their permanent residency in Bielefeld. His morning ritual of attending to the gods' altars was well underway when most of his guildmates were still slumbered. Per the usual routine, it started with Dwayna. The Goddess of Life and Air was a fragmented stone statue suspended in the air with wings spread across, a half torso of a woman with her arms spread and head up looking to the sky. Her statue was no more than 3 feet high, nestled in thick green leaves close to a stream. Here, Erick rested his knees at the base of her statue, lighting incense of sandalwood while humming an old hymn he remembered as a child. The next was Melandru, the Goddess of Earth and Nature, a figurine of a half-woman, half-tree that sat around a well of water, enclosed to protect the wary traveler from the elements of the earth; here Erick placed incense made of copal and held a silent tribute without his shoes, a symbolic acknowledgement to nature and his singular being in the goddess' domain. The God of War came after, a statue of a proud long bearded man with a barrel body that laid his hands upon a large sword buried into the earth. At the base of his robed figure accompanied a pair of hounds at his feet. Erick took careful note to lay his scythe nearby the tiny figurine, a show of devotion and gratitude to the lord martial was honored with olibanum incense. The next was Lyssa, the goddess of Beauty and Illusion: Myrrh was the usual incense and so was his hood that shrouded his visage while he prayed. An old tale he remembered of the goddess where aspects made one beautiful; not their looks. The last was Grenth, as fitting to what he represented. The of Death and Ice looked forward under a dark hood, the souls at his feet clamoring for him in devotion or fear. Most misunderstood the practical god, but Erick had a certain respect for him and only wished that when it was his time, Grenth would ease his passing into the next life. He lit a black copal incense and prostrated himself at the feet of Grenth, whispering a prayer...
When a loud banging echoed across the courtyard and into the foyer. Erick winced, feeling a surge of irritation for being interrupted in his morning prayer. There was a specific reason he woke up this early, not only because it was a tradition, a routine, but also because of the silence. The banging didn't stop and Erick had to let a pray of forgiveness to Grenth before he rose quickly, settling his feet into his well worn leather shoes and hastily gripped his scythe from Balthazar's altar. With a featherfoot grace, Erick was at the front gates of the guild home, still mumbling his irritation of the day's service. He stopped short, realizing he had the scythe firmly gripped and settled the weapon out of the way but within reach. Turning the rustic doorknob that led to the outside world, Erick swung the door in haste, ready to chase away the visitor...
...only to find a child in front of him.
The dervish blinked, frowned, and looked out the hallway to see if the kid had any parents. He pushed the brown hood from his head. "Can I help you, young one?"
Last edited by Mincaldenteans on Mon Aug 10, 2015 7:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
P2TM RP Mentor: Have a question on RP'ing? Feel free to TG me!
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☼ I wear teal, blue & pink for Swith ☼
Highfort
Liberal Democratic Socialists
by Highfort » Fri Aug 07, 2015 12:00 am
Septimus let out a hiss as he struggled not to scream as Neste's exo ripped one of the bumper stickers from his belly. A bit of blood seeped out from the exposed flesh, indicating that enough skin and hair had gone with the sticker to warrant concern on his part. He leveled a glare on the other part of Neste's consciousness before his gaze softened - she'd probably had just as crazy an evening as everyone else had, given the wave of insanity that had swept across the city.
Her earlier comment, dropping the name "Zalgo" confirmed his suspicions that he'd been drugged. If mass-drugging was commonplace in this city then he wasn't so sure he was cut out to be part of its government in any capacity. At the very least, drugs weren't a popular recreational item in the Confederation and Septimus had little experience with them. Of course, given 2,000 years, even the most prudish individual gets around to trying the classics once or twice - marijuana and cocaine were not unknown to him - but he still felt very out-of-place given that the Chaos and whoever these "god killers" were seemed to be content to intrude on citizen's private lives to through senseless, dangerous parties using drugs.
Before he had a chance to spare more than a glance at the now-clothed Fritz and the still-nude Mab, Septimus was freed from the wrapping of streamers and bumper stickers and thrown aloft the construct's exo.
The cyborg let out a yelp as the exo proceeded with locomotion and carried her pilot and him out of the park and toward the Building. Stabilizing himself upon her back, he turned to face the nearly-nude construct as she asked about him. Septimus' cheeks reddened as he noted that his name was plastered rather tastelessly across her breasts on a bumper sticker, quickly pulling his gaze up as he answered.
"I-I'm fine," he nodded vigorously, absentmindedly scratching at his groin as he realized that his decency was being protected by a wrapping of both stickers and streamers which would probably make him howl upon attempted removal, "Could be worse, I suppose. I just wish I remembered what the fuck happened that left us naked wearing my name on our bodies."
He laughed at the incredulity of it, rubbing the back of his head as the pain dulled slightly and his senses came back to him in limited form, "Wow, never thought I'd be using all those words in that order. This 'Zalgo', whoever he or she is, has an odd sense of humor."
Inactive: shoot me a PM if you need anything
Tiltjuice
by Tiltjuice » Fri Aug 07, 2015 8:01 am
Dora was rolled off Adrastus' legs as the tech-priest sat up. It was just as well, anyway, she thought rather blearily as she also twisted awkwardly around to a sitting position. Nearly two millennia of partying, contrary to Septimus' experience, had left her with tolerance only to alcohol and nicotine - chemically speaking, anyway. At the moment, though, one of the two called her name, and she didn't particularly care which.
At once, the applause of the tech-priests drew her notice, and she glanced up to catch the mural in its half-lit glory, the point at which she'd always most appreciated sights. It gave her a bit more energy, enough to check if she had sufficient clothing on. Not that it particularly bothered her one way or the other, but she didn't want to chance embarrassing or irritating the tech-priests. Or scarring Marcus and Giovenith. Satisfied with the results (nothing torn, merely ruffled and askew), she approached it to take a closer look, moving from side to side. The vivid colors spoke of esprit and soul, and that touched her heart as very few things truly did. In her scrutiny, she nearly missed the blurred figures in the corner, but at the last minute her gaze passed back over them. She reached out to touch, stopping just short of the surface.
I wear teal, blue, pink & red for Swith. | ✎ Member - ℘ædagog
Discrimination is unworthy. | Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. -Khalil Gibran
Shadowdancer OOC | PL OOC
WriteWorld - Just write.
Little Details - the one-stop shop for bringing chars and worlds to life!
Primordial Luxa
Left-Leaning College State
by Primordial Luxa » Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:29 am
Primordial ignored the pain and allowed it wash over him in cascading waves of agony rather than focus on it in any particular amount. That was the way he had learn to transcend the physicality of it and allow the pain to change into ecstatic pleasure. The trick was ignoring it and letting it take its course while it would naturally flow into your brain, for a Luxan that had so many different sensations in their memory pain that wasn’t being focused on quickly turned into much softer emotions. This skill was one which most Luxans possessed since Sadomasochism was considered a holy skill like prayer or meditation. It meant going beyond the physical and the mental and therefore ignore the pathetic part of the human condition. Primordial had learned this skill from Aegis and from his time living in the apartment where there were always opportunities to ignore and supersede the suffering.
So when he stood up Primordial was filled with anger rather than pain and he channeled the anger and the unused pain into her strength. He extended his hand which was curled into a fist and said “You’re meek that power set is the only thing good about you.” He opened his hand and uttered a word of non-Euclidian kinetic filament and a ball of potential energy flared up in front of her. She didn’t have the training with pain Primordial did, she was young not nearly as experienced as he was. So the blast sent pain burning through her skin, down into the roots of her muscles and lancing into her bones like a spear.
“And even that is insignificant.” He continued walking towards her slowly as he suppressed the pain. “Why Insidious thought that you would somehow need a brain is beyond me. I suppose she does like her art projects but you are obviously nothing more than a failure to her.” It then that Hollow surged towards him with a more controlled and intelligent fury than she had lashed out with originally. Her skin was now the rolling red insides of a pedigree falcon allowing her to charge forward at over two hundred miles an hour. She slammed into Primordial who quickly plunged his fingers into her face and began sending out torrents of tactile force like needles.
Hollow responded by dropping Primordial who hit the ground like a bag of rocks and was pitched about because of the speed they had been moving. She then reached into her archival gut and pulled out the tenacity of Tardigrades to heal and ignore the deep tissue damage that would have broken someone else’s skull in half. “Your nothing but a dullard failure. You were treasonous to your countries ideals and now you’re trying to make up for it. But you will always know deep down you’ve failed. As long as a none-Luxan exists in this Universe you have failed.”
Swith Witherward wrote: But I trust the people here. Well, except Prim. He has shifty eyes but his cute smile make up for it.
Monfrox wrote: But it's not like we've known Prim to really stick with normality...
P2TM wrote: HORROR/THRILLER Winner - Community Choice Award For Favorite Horror/Thriller Player: Primordial Luxa
Factbook (underconstruction)
Personification Life and GAU Posts
Luxan Imperial Narcotics (The ONLY narcotics store on GE&T)
The BranRiech
by The BranRiech » Fri Aug 07, 2015 12:17 pm
"S-sorry . . ."
Drova too, took a few steps back, almost horrified. He . . . He'd just kissed a human, a human girl! Part of him was torn on how to feel. Torii definitely wasn't happy with the situation, and neither was he, but it was almost exhilarating in a way. He couldn't lie to himself and say he was disappointed.
"I-It is quite late, I think I'll . . . I think I'll go to bed." He stuttered, tearing the ring from his finger, dropping it on the podium, letting it clank around before falling down lower, onto the ground of the park. His eyes drooped down, unable to look Torii in the eyes. "I-I'm sorry for violating you." He sighed, knowing an apology was in order. "I don't even remember what happened, to be completely honest."
"Socialism isn't about walling yourself in, it's about reaching out to others and living with them.
It means not only dreaming about a better world, but making it happen."
I wear teal, blue & pink for Swith.
Torsiedelle
by Torsiedelle » Fri Aug 07, 2015 2:44 pm
"No, it's okay, I was just surprised is all!"
Torii didn't know exactly how to rationalize the situation. Yes, she was upset, but a part of her was also kind of excited by the whole thing. He might not have been the girl Torii wanted, but she appreciated the kiss.
She picked up Drova's ring and squatted down next to him. "You didn't violate me, Drova. Actually, you were great.", She told him. "And that's coming from a girl who's into girls. You're a good kisser."
That really didn't come out as she intended it. Did it? Shit, now Torii was double-embarrassed, sitting near the boy. "Anyways!", She tried to avoid that topic, "Keep the ring. Is this your first, um, Zalgo-thingy? I've been in worse situations, but we can keep these rings as a reminder.", She said. "And, uh, also, I think they're plastic wedding rings. Hopefully not a real wedding, right?", She chuckled. "I hope. We can laugh this off, right?"
How was she supposed to handle this? She didn't know what to say. She had a crazy idea, but...well, no, she didn't know what to do. She hoped that her friend wouldn't be too upset by this awkward moment.
Katya got up and stood over Edge. "And here you go, sleeping! Sleep is for sheep. Come on, why don't we go find your room and turn it up a notch? I can get more drinks!", She tried hoisting her friend up. "It'll be great!"
Rostavykhan is my Second Nation.
⋘EXCELSIOR⋙
To Cool For School
by The BranRiech » Fri Aug 07, 2015 5:03 pm
He was a good . . . A good kisser?
Drova shook his head, trying to deflect the feelings for Torii, trying to put himself in a more stable mindset. His mind kept wandering back though, to the same subject as before. S-she likes me! She likes me! He thought with wild excitement, cheeks turning red with embarrassment that he be caught in such a compromising state of mind.
But wait. Torii liked other girls?
"Uh . . . Thanks." He managed to stutter out, lips quivering with the memory of meeting Torii's own. He'd hopelessly fallen for her now, no turning back in his belief that she was perfect. He looked down at the ring as if to distract himself from his rebellious thoughts. "Oh, these? Had I known they were cheap toys, I would have gotten rid of it long ago." He brushed the notion off that they were wedding rings. "And hopefully so, I suppose we can see this as . . . Mmm, just having fun?"
Giovenith
Senior P2TM RP Mentor
by Giovenith » Fri Aug 07, 2015 5:45 pm
At first not having noticed the mural, Giovenith was seized by confusion when Marcus stumbled over words, but then quickly noticed the large graffiti display herself with a gasp. Obviously she did not actually remember creating it, so there was a moment of further confusion and worry when everyone started cheering and Marcus was congratulating her. Looking at it closer she could tell that yes, it was likely her handiwork, but it still felt strange receiving credit for something she did not remember painting up. It brought a heavy blush to her complexion, and she found herself clinging close to Marcus' arm out of bashfulness.
"I..." she tried, looking downward. "I, did my best I guess, thank you..."
Looking back up at the mural, further warmth spread through Giovenith a greater appreciation dawned on her. She didn't know what she'd been on during the fest, but it hadn't interfered with the overall magnificence of the piece. In fact, it was probably the best it could have been--harmony, the people of Bielefeld, together! Could this have been the very first depiction of what actually happened during a Zalgofest?
"That's what I want to happen for real," she said, pointing up at the mural and smiling.
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"Gio has said "fuck you" a few times prior in this chat.
At her phone, at a friend over the letter x, at poe's law,
at me once, at NA once, at pokemon a lot, at people
who do not like polishing rocks, at god, and I stopped
reading after page one of search results but there's two more"
—Ever-Wandering Souls
The BranRiech wrote: He was a good . . . A good kisser?
"Yeah, just fun.", Said Torii. They had simply gone to the party, been affected just like everyone else, and had some fun, which ended in them sharing a kiss with a beer label bouquet and two rings. What was so bad about that?
She wrapped her arms around her legs and curled up, using the podium to lean back. "So..."
Fvaarniimar
Mother Knows Best State
by Fvaarniimar » Sat Aug 08, 2015 11:02 am
Kwa'a coughed. "Strong drink..." It was spicy and tasted of freshness, but wasn't going down her throat right. Through vision rather distorted by large quantities of genuine alcohol (which was starting to exit her system, leaving her with a headache) she spotted Bran. She giggled. Sitting on the edge of a river thing, no attempt at protecting himself...she needed water and this looked clean. Taking a huge gulp partway across the river lake thing, she had enough time to get to Bran and attempt to yank him into the water before she started hacking as though her lungs were attempting to eject themselves.
Mincaldenteans wrote: Apartment 8A, err, the Guild
This morning was no different than every morning since their permanent residency in Bielefeld. His morning ritual of attending to the gods' altars was well underway when most of his guildmates were still slumbered. Per the usual routine, it started with Dwayna [...] The banging didn't stop and Erick had to let a pray of forgiveness to Grenth before he rose quickly, settling his feet into his well worn leather shoes and hastily gripped his scythe from Balthazar's altar. With a featherfoot grace, Erick was at the front gates of the guild home, still mumbling his irritation of the day's service. He stopped short, realizing he had the scythe firmly gripped and settled the weapon out of the way but within reach. Turning the rustic doorknob that led to the outside world, Erick swung the door in haste, ready to chase away the visitor...
Frantically, the kid looked for Duncan before giving up and speaking - this would test her English skills. "Well... Um..." Giving up on reaching her apartment anytime soon, she lay down, trying to use the stuffed animal as a pillow -
Which resulted in claws in her scalp as a certain spammy rat stuck to her hair with something like glue or molasses made his displeasure at being woken and squished clear. "I apologize, Duncan!" Rmwtyliin laughed in relief, and stood back up. "I am unsure. I thought that this was my apartment -" she yawned - "But it is yours and -" she yawned again - "Mine is not here. If I woke you up..." She thought of the hood...no one would sleep in it, fitting garment for a ceremony... "Or... otherwise disrupted your routine, I regret that..."
Nick batted at a bit of blue hair.
Come to the light side. We have teamwork, waffles, popcorn, grape juice, and way too much ramen.
_->>
Alt:Fggwyyliieimn
Also controls:Borksmiclen
1.I'm a cis female.
2.(PL only)If I type"Nick touches your character and does <this>",he is communicating. If your character has nerve endings in the spot being touched,they'll get the message.Otherwise/if neither bare skin nor explanation given,TG me;something else may come into play.
by Primordial Luxa » Sat Aug 08, 2015 3:49 pm
Primordials anger at Hollows last retort eclipsed the rage he had felt at the rest of her insults and sins, partially because it resonated so truly with him and reflected with him much more than he was comfortable with. He stood up throwing a film of protective energy around his body as he did so, it was a gelatinous mass of pure force which reflected Hollows next strike. It hurt him but not physically it was like a spiritual ache that radiated through his soul.
By this time Primordial use of higher realities and shunned indigo beams had begun to show its effects on the surrounding park land. Large chunks of grass where beginning to turn brown and small animals were have explosion tumors spout up randomly. The weather was also turning slightly and the clouds were growing big and darker.
However these changes were lost on Hollow who paused in her violent assault to notice them and in that moment of unfortunate distraction Primordial took his opportunity to end the fight. He reached out with his mind and grabbed hold of her liver with his dark rites and blasphemous chants, smashing the organ to paste with a single hate filled thought.
She immediately collapsed as Primordials anger turned into her pain. Her entire body screamed in agony at losing such a major organ. Primordial didn’t know how long Hollow would survive or if she would even live at all. He didn’t care, he was happy once again now that she was broken. He walked away let her bleed and suffer. He reminded himself that she and every other last thing was meaningless, him, her. He reminded himself Insidious could always make another.
Swith Witherward
by Swith Witherward » Sat Aug 08, 2015 7:20 pm
People began to scream as the wildlife around them twisted into mutated abominations, the animal's own tortured wails shrieking into the early morning air. Hollow's pained noise and her writhing didn't help the situation. Her screams came to an abrupt end, however, as a bullet pierced her brain, splattering the tissue across the grass and concrete.
A sphere descended upon Primordial, containing him. The USiPO had chosen to make its presence known.
"What the fuck is with these Luxan shitheads?" Will snarled from his vantage point in the bushes. "A goodwill event ending on a high only to be disrupted by terror. And now? Now we abs are probably fucked. Dispatch the Lads, and drum up Klaus' Men. We might need to get good people off the street."
Last edited by Swith Witherward on Sat Aug 08, 2015 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Why is everyone a social justice warrior?
Why didn't any of you choose a different class,
like social justice mage or social justice thief?
The Eternal Bugblatter Fennec of Traal
Bastard Mentor
Clever Tsar is clever.
Anti-intellectual elitism: the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.
- sauce
John gazed at the cat. He didn't know where it came from, or what it was doing here, nor why he and Yuna were walking around in public. What he did know was that he wasn't standing duty. Zalgofests weren't an excuse. Not for someone of his lowly rank.
"I..." he began, but the words caught in his throat. Aw fuck, he was going to be in major trouble. He knew it in his very bones. "Yuna, I'm sorry, but I need to report for duty. I didn't intend to stay out this late. I was going to bring you to the Ruins before it... and now I'm late. Shit."
The young cultist brought a hand up to touch his face and felt the gas mask and helmet still firmly in place. Momentary relief flowed through him. Alright, the night wasn't a total cock up.
"I'll call you!" he backed away. "Or call me. Yeah."
John's boot tapped against the iron grate lying flush with the curb. He breathed deep, then dropped between the tiny openings to gain the tunnels below.
Alas, all good things come to an end. The pirate ship faded into the night air, the last remnants of it harmlessly passing over Scel as she trudged up Main. She stepped to the side to avoid the Raptor chicks' ship, and then continued towards the Building.
Neste picked at the edge of a bumper sticker covering her shoulder. "Zalgo is an ominous entity believed to cause insanity, death and destruction of the world. But that's not necessarily true. When summoned, he blesses drugs and drink alike, drawing the masses into revelry. No one is totally immune unless cocooned. It's not magic, but chemical potency. I'm not certain how it's done, other than two people known as Bones and Charumati usually being behind it. They summon, I think."
She laughed. "Wait until you see what happens during a genderbender. I've only witnessed one, but it was hilarious."
Scel paused outside the Building in order for pilot and cyborg to dismount. The tape capturing Neste's skin didn't make things easy, nor did she appreciate the painful way it tore from her when she attempted to move. And then it suddenly hit her: she had only two outfits to her name. One was dirty. The other was now missing. Stupid Chaos with its stupid magic. She'd need to borrow a robe off Septimus in order to go to the secondhand store after breakfast.
"I would very much like to call this a night," she gently implored Septimus. "Honestly, I was looking forward to an evening spent cuddling, and perhaps something a bit more pleasurable once we'd gone to bed. Celebration. Not peeling tape off my body at 4 AM."
Adrastus picked himself up with much effort, and then joined Dora at the mural. His eyes focused on the figures under her fingertips, and he allowed a smile to cross his lips. "I suppose those are our benefactors? Bones? Charumati? Isn't that their names?"
"I'd like to think the mural depicts what happened for real," Marcus joined Giovenith in front of the building. "If not, maybe it's inspiration to go by? There's no reason we can't take steps to see this become a reality, and now that 13's failed, we've got that chance."
A bell softly rung and Marcus sighed. It was almost time for morning ablutions. The priests of his own order would come out of their rooms and file down the hallways, hungover or not, in order to offer up their prayers. The rest would emerge a bit later to occupy the chapel. Life went on regardless of whatever transpired in the dark of night.
"Can I walk you to your room, Giovenith?" he inquired lightly. "I'm sure you'll want to get a little sleep tonight."
by Giovenith » Sat Aug 08, 2015 9:48 pm
"Sure, that is probably best," the godling agreed, taking a glance out at the sky and trying to judge the oncoming sunrise. "I think there will be a lot of work to do tomorrow. Like I said, the time to strike is now."
That and she was quite tired still from the revelry. Not to mention there was probably a lot to do here at the Observatory, and Giovenith really didn't want to step on their hospitality and get in their way. Nodding, she would follow the boy back to her given room for a good few hours of rest.
It took quite a bit of tedious effort to pack all of the money AND the giant-ass statue all into a hammerspace bag, but by Celestia, Willow did it. He was really starting to warm up to the nifty little magic satchel trick, and was giving serious consideration toward asking Giovenith to insert the ability into his own saddlebag. At least then he wouldn't have to constantly borrow her tools, no matter how little she minded. He'd finally gotten passed concerns and assumed it was alright to take the money and the statue, and hoping he was right, gave a casual salute to the nearby beatnik before making his way home.
These things would come in handy.
by Tiltjuice » Sat Aug 08, 2015 10:15 pm
Swith Witherward wrote: Adrastus picked himself up with much effort, and then joined Dora at the mural. His eyes focused on the figures under her fingertips, and he allowed a smile to cross his lips. "I suppose those are our benefactors? Bones? Charumati? Isn't that their names?"
"I think you're right."
Dora stood there for a few ticks more, and then turned. "There hasn't been any sign of them for too long. I'm sure they'll turn up eventually, though. In any case, I think I ought to get back to the Building. I have a few vices that need taking care of. Could you show me to the tunnel?"
by The BranRiech » Sat Aug 08, 2015 10:25 pm
"And I'm already packed . . ." Yuna was about to say as John once more jumped off into a shadow, leaving her once more to ponder the night's events she knew so little about. At least she wasn't dressed as hilariously as some of the residents of Bielefeld scattered around her. She was far enough off to be spared the suffering of all the little animals and critters that were affected by Primordial's rage, but this also meant she had no idea why John even had to leave again.
Maybe it was for the better, if she didn't go along with him, if getting called away every time she saw him was going to be the new norm. She looked down at the baby-carriage, and looked the cat right in the eyes. "So uh . . . D-do you have a home?" She pondered.
It wasn't pressing enough, however, for Yuna to ignore the headache coming on from simply being awake for so damn long. She sighed, and waved her hand dismissively. "Ah, someone'll bring you home." She sighed, and staggered her way back to the apartment.
"So . . ." Drova continued on Torii's drifting off. "We should go to bed." He smirked slightly, eyes shifting around. His ears easily picked up the shrieks of the small animals, though he shook his head, wincing. "Ach." The young man sighed, looking down.
"We should go to bed, but, w-would you like to stay up with me? We can see the sunrise." He offered, reaching a hand out for her to take.
by Torsiedelle » Sat Aug 08, 2015 10:34 pm
The BranRiech wrote: "So . . ." Drova continued on Torii's drifting off. "We should go to bed." He smirked slightly, eyes shifting around. His ears easily picked up the shrieks of the small animals, though he shook his head, wincing. "Ach." The young man sighed, looking down.
Torii chuckled. "Yeah, we should. I don't think it'll help, though."
the girl jumped at the sound of animals. It was sudden. What the hell? This night was getting too weird...
"See the sunrise?", She asked. The idea was....romantic, but kind of dumb, too. She shook her head, but she did end up taking the boy's hand. "I'd rather not. Actually, I need to show you some stuff. Let's go to my room, okay?"
Last edited by Torsiedelle on Sat Aug 08, 2015 10:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
by Highfort » Sun Aug 09, 2015 2:30 am
Sentia gazed up at the gas-masked man and the cultist girl. Why they had stuck her in a baby carriage was beyond her - why she had agreed instead of clawing her way to freedom was even more perplexing. Still, she had little right to complain - carriages were more comfortable than walking, as all cats know - though she was perplexed when the carriage stopped and the masked man disappeared quickly, his scent trailing away into the curb which seemed to her a rather preposterous notion.
Offering a meow at the cultist woman, the undead cat hopped from the baby carriage before sniffing the air and following the familiar scent of Septimus - nearly masked by the unfamiliar scent of a giant beast intermingling with the scent of the lizard woman - toward the Building. She was hungry, and the bathroom required attending to. The toilet paper roll had run out.
"Blesses drug and drink?" Septimus offered a chuckle as he rubbed the back of his head, the pain now dulling as he fully woke up and slowly came back to his senses, "I'm not sure I'd call what just happened to us a 'blessing', Neste. Genderbending,though, that would be trip."
The cyborg tried to imagine himself with breasts and found that he wasn't as averse to the notion as he thought he might be. I mean, they would probably get annoying after a day or so and they'd be hell on his back, but just for the evening after a drug-crazed orgy... He always did want to feel what it was like to have melons weighing down on his chest.
Septimus ended that line of thought before it messed up his already-addled mind any further. The new representative was already drugged, he didn't need to let his imagination run free as well.
As the cyborg and his construct companion dismounted her exo, he let out a grunt of displeasure as more tape and bumper stickers ripped from his skin, leaving yet more reddened patches as they took hair with them. He was going to be extremely sore in the morning, he knew - hell, it could already be morning given how long he'd been out. If they stayed up long enough, they might be able to see the sunrise. That was romantic, right?
Neste's prodding elicited a snort from Septimus as she accurately-appraised the situation, "If it's that late, then I don't see why we can't peel off the tape and proceed with the evening's intended activities before the sun rises. Cuddling in the morning is fun, I've been told. Never experienced it myself, obviously."
As the nearly-naked duo made their way into the lobby, he offered her a grin and added, "And you still owe me breakfast, Mrs. Neste Trilb."
by Primordial Luxa » Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:14 am
Swith Witherward wrote: People began to scream as the wildlife around them twisted into mutated abominations, the animal's own tortured wails shrieking into the early morning air. Hollow's pained noise and her writhing didn't help the situation. Her screams came to an abrupt end, however, as a bullet pierced her brain, splattering the tissue across the grass and concrete.
Primordials eyes widened in mild surprise as the sphere lowered over his body and he began looking around with considerable amount of anxiety. He tasted the air and pulled out a pair of Synthetic phantasm sticks in order to better analyze the surface. They would relay to him through a weak telepathic link what they figure out but in the meantime he began trying to focus on the outside of the sphere. He strained to hear what he could and see through the sphere if he could but all the while his mind was racing. Someone had killed Hollow and try as he might he felt a little disturbed by that notion. As much as he had hated her she was a Luxan and any Luxan dying was worrying.
However instead of dwelling on it he consulted his sticks before putting them away and pulling out his bag of charms and sigils. Many of them were small little tribal fetishes but others with patented OOO products that were meant to channel the mind and spirit. He rubbed them in his hand and offered some slight prayers.
Warpspace
by Warpspace » Sun Aug 09, 2015 2:09 pm
Snip again.
Last edited by Warpspace on Sun Aug 09, 2015 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.
- Friedrich Nietzsche -
by The BranRiech » Sun Aug 09, 2015 8:39 pm
Torsiedelle wrote: Torii chuckled. "Yeah, we should. I don't think it'll help, though."
"Stuff to show me?" He asked, knowing it was rude to ask too many questions before being explained to, but with the random feelings of affection, confusion, and tiredness floating around in his head, he'd dropped most of the pretense of social cues. "I'd be fine with heading back inside." He nodded. "If . . . If you can hold on, we could always fly there, though I suppose we aren't too far away, now are we?" His smile narrowed a bit, into a grin.
by Swith Witherward » Sun Aug 09, 2015 9:24 pm
Marcus brought Giovenith up the narrow stone stairs that lead to the dormitories. The whisper of robes in the passages beyond was unmistakable as they stepped through the stairwell opening and onto the main floor. The boy's hand closed around her chamber door's handle, lingering there as he waged in internal battle with common sense and etiquette. Both opponents fell to his innate mischievousness and he opened the door. His mind wasn't on the bed, however. He went to the worn cabinet occupying a tiny fraction of the room, and he pulled two red robes from it.
"Before you go to bed, I'd like to share something," he smiled as he slipped a robe on. "Just pull the hood up to conceal your face. This won't take long, I promise. Few outside my order get to experience it."
He paused at the threshold and nervously coughed. Really, he had to right to steal away any more of the godling's night. "Unless you'd rather go to sleep. I mean, I'll understand. I won't be offended or anything, I promise."
"Never?" Neste's head tilted as Septimus revealed yet another intriguing thing about himself. Or perhaps it was about his culture in general? She considered the overwhelming amount of augmentations he bore when they first met, and the state of Brutus and Cato in the tent. It would be easy to assume the cold metal drove them to avoid physical contact, or that they used it to sequester themselves from feelings, but such assumptions were based solely upon her perception of their build. Constructs, for all their displayed warmth and tenderness, were isolated because people assumed that they lacked the desire and ability to love. People were wrong. It stood to reason that she was wrong, too.
Neste smiled as she leaned towards her lover to intertwine her fingers with his. "I've never experienced it either. I can't think of anything I'd rather do right now. Well, other than remove this tape. And you'd better believe there's a good breakfast to come."
Their passage through the lobby was unremarkable save the shrill, two-toned whistle from the cultist manning the desk as they passed by. Residents were milling about, some of them still recovering their senses, but Neste paid them little mind as they sought out his apartment door. The familiar sound of his key in the lock and the welcoming scents of their previous meal as the door opened brought a shy smile to her lips.
"Once we close that door, we're no longer tool and representative. We're just us," she mused. "All our flaws and faults, and our quirks and prior misdeeds? We accept them as part of each other. We're free to simply be ourselves. Septimus, I can't begin to explain how comforting that is to me."
She turned and regarded the man wearing nothing but his own name inked on tape and paper before dropping her human guise to adopt scales. Stripping the adhesive off her skin was far less painful this way. "Shut the door, and let the world get along without us for a while. And if you step into the shower, I'll help you peel off those silly things as painlessly as possible. The hot water should help."
by Giovenith » Sun Aug 09, 2015 9:50 pm
Giovenith tilted her head in thought as she carefully took the robe in her hands and examined it, then looked back up at Marcus. The night was very old and she really should have been getting some sleep, but there really was no way she could just ignore the curiosity Marcus had thrown up in the air. She wanted to catch at it, but had some concerns about what the adults might say if they caught on. What if it was some really super personal priest thing? That would be disrespectful. Then again, Marcus himself was very devout, she didn't think that their infatuation was so deep that he'd throw aside his duties and loyalties just to impress her, he was better than that. So it couldn't have been too wrong, could it?
"I don't mind seeing," she finally answered, trying to wiggle her way into the red garment like a rabbit in a hole. "It's not too secret, is it? I don't want to invade."
Users browsing this forum: The Hoosier Alliance, The Republic of Atria
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abound me?
Thread starter rootin' tootin'
rootin' tootin'
Is the following sentence correct?
"I will never be able to thank you enough for the support that has abounded me."
Glasguensis
Signal Modulation
English - Scotland
Glasguensis said:
Thank you for your response. Could you please elaborate?
Member Emeritus
". . . the support that has abounded me" doesn't make any sense. Have you looked up the word "abound" in our dictionary? (Access via the search box at the top of the page.)
Occasional Moderator
Belfast, Ireland
English-Ireland (top end)
rootin' tootin' said:
It is difficult to be more helpful than 'No,' unless you explain to us what you want the sentence to mean.
bennymix
Ontario, Canada. I grew up in California.
English (American).
Perhaps "abounded to me"* or "abounded for me" would work, but you must clarify your intended meaning.
ADDED: Also, "abounded unto me" as later posters have pointed out.
Copperknickers
Scotland - Scots and English
For those of us without psychic powers, could you please reveal to us the context which has made you so certain that this sentence is incorrect?
We always ask for context, Rootin' Tootin'. Maybe this usage is incorrect, maybe it's an old-fashioned usage, maybe it's a regional dialect. We can't say unless we know where it comes from.
Copperknickers said:
For those of us without psychic powers, could you please reveal to us your supernatural knowledge which has made you so certain that this sentence is incorrect?
If you can give me an example of where it would be correct I will happily eat my word. And even if you can, I'm extrememy confident that it's not the context rootin' tootin' had in mind.
RM1(SS)
English - US (Midwest)
It's an intransitive verb, for one thing....
RM1(SS) said:
2 Corinthians 9:8 "and God is able to make all grace abound unto you..."
That's still an intransitive usage but it's a little different to today's usage. It would once have been regarded as correct to say 'thank you for the support which has abounded unto me', and it is not a major leap from there to remove the 'unto' (the bible is full of examples of uses of the word 'unto' which would be redundant today, e.g. 'give them' rather than 'give unto them'). So it would be incorrect to say 'abounded me' in modern English, but if this sentence is an excerpt from a historical work or a conscious archaicism then it is not necessarily incorrect.
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Blood on the Floor
BBC Radio 3, 16 July 1997 19.30
In conversation with David Sefton ,
Mark-Anthony Tumage introduces his new work Blood on the Floor, exploring urban alienation and drug addiction. Recorded at the world premiere performance last year at the Queen Elizabeth Hall , London.
John Scofield (guitar), Peter Erskine (drums), Martin Robertson
(saxophone), Ensemble Modern, conductor Peter Rundel
Unknown: David Sefton
Introduces: Mark-Anthony Tumage
Unknown: Queen Elizabeth Hall
Guitar: John Scofield
Guitar: Peter Erskine
Unknown: Martin Robertson
Conductor: Peter Rundel
Feedback about Blood on the Floor, BBC Radio 3, 19.30, 16 July 1997
Please leave this link here so we can find the programme you're referring to: http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a59250515b334073a999f9c0347e1974
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Mietzelchen: Poland
This page presents the geographical name data for Mietzelchen in Poland, as supplied by the US military intelligence in electronic format, including the geographic coordinates and place name in various forms, latin, roman and native characters, and its location in its respective country's administrative division.
Full Name (see definition): Mietzelchen
Primary Country Code (see definition): PL (Poland)
First-order administrative division code (see definition): 47
Region Font Code (see definition): 2 (Eastern Europe)
Unique Feature Identifier (see definition): -517614
Unique Name Identifier (see definition): -734280
Military Grid Reference System coordinates (see definition): 34UDE9230453859
Joint Operations Graphic reference (see definition): NN34-08
Feature Classification (see definition): P (Populated place type feature)
Feature Designation Code (see definition): PPL (populated place)
Name Type (see definition): V (Variant or alternate name)
A form of the full name that allows for alphabetical sorting of the file into gazetteer sequence (see definition): MIETZELCHEN
Full Name with QWERTY characters (see definition): Mietzelchen
NOTE: The information regarding Mietzelchen in Poland on this page is published from the data supplied by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a member of the Intelligence community of the United States of America, and a Department of Defense (DoD) Combat Support Agency. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Mietzelchen information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Mietzelchen should be addressed to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
https://geographic.org/geographic_names/name.php?uni=-734280&fid=4756&c=poland
Poland names alphabetically
Mietzelchen
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XLU Sep 2019 63.000 call
OPR - OPR Delayed Price. Currency in USD
0.0000 (0.00%)
Bid 0.0000
Ask 0.0000
Strike 63.00
Expire Date 2019-09-20
Contract Range N/A
Open Interest 4.23k
Market Realist•21 hours ago
Southern Company’s Dividend Profile Compared to Its Peers
Southern Company (SO) declared a quarterly dividend of $0.62 per share on Monday. The dividend is in line with the previous quarterly dividend.
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The U.S. economy is putting up some impressive numbers in GDP, jobs and wages, but many pundits fear that a slowdown is pending. Trade-war fears with China and the European Union remain front and center in the news. And the yield curve is threatening to invert, meaning short-term interest rates may be moving higher than long-term rates. That's often a sign of pending recession on its own.By some measures, the current expansion is now 10 years old, making it one of the longest on record. That seems ancient, but there's no rule that says it can't continue. Australia is in its 28th consecutive year of economic growth.Even so, all good things do eventually come to an end. And for the U.S. (and for Australia, for that matter), economists are looking for slowdowns. Even the Federal Reserve has indicated it is ready to lower short-term interest rates to combat any problems that may arise.Professional investment managers may look to sell a good deal of their holdings to step aside as the market falls. However, for most individuals, timing the market by selling when conditions seem dicey, and buying back when conditions firm up, is a big mistake. Even the pros don't always get it right, and they have armies of analysts and rooms full of technology at their disposal.Here are six ways to prepare for the next stock market decline. The key is to make smaller adjustments to your portfolio to reduce risk and still be ready to participate when the market resumes its upward march. SEE ALSO: 25 Stocks Every Retiree Should Own
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American Water Works Company (AWK)Although electricity and power are very important utilities, another utility of equal importance is water, and that is where American Water Works Company (NYSE:AWK) comes into the picture.American Water provides waters services to 15 million people across 46 states and Canada. That makes American Water the largest and most diverse publicly traded water company. Moreover, American Water is planning on spending a whole bunch of money over the next several years to modernize water distribution infrastructure, an investment that will likely lead to rate hike approvals and robust long-term earnings growth. * 7 F-Rated Stocks to Sell for Summer AWK stock has a dividend yield of 1.7%. That isn't great. But, what the company lacks in dividend yield, it makes up for in earnings growth, which should be able to run around 10%-per-year for the next several years. 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More From InvestorPlace * 2 Toxic Pot Stocks You Should Avoid * 7 F-Rated Stocks to Sell for Summer * 7 Stocks to Buy for the Same Price as Beyond Meat * 7 Penny Marijuana Stocks That Are NOT Cheap Stocks Compare Brokers The post 5 Utility Stocks to Buy for an Extra Durable Portfolio appeared first on InvestorPlace.
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Tag Archives: Los Angeles sculpture
LA artworld openings: Henry Tayor at Blum & Poe/Kehinde Wiley at Roberts & Tilton
Henry Taylor’s opening at Blum & Poe was phenomenal. There were young African-American photographers flanked on both sides of Henry, shooting non-stop photographs. Henry has achieved what no other African-American artist has done, which is to be offered representation by one of the world’s most important galleries – Blum & Poe. Henry Taylor has received significant applause for his figurative paintings. He works like artists did in New York in the 1940’s and 1950’s, in a but in a not so easy area of Los Angeles, in Chinatown. He has a huge studio space. He paints from life and from memory and from photos, and from live models, right off of the streets of LA, like artists did in the 19th century in Europe. He was trained to work as a Conceptual Artist but rejected that way of working in favor of a more hands-on approach to image making. Five or six years ago he painted seemingly exclusively on found objects – cigarette packs, cereal boxes, thrown away small pieces of luggage. I saw these works at both Sister gallery in Chinatown, itself a sliver of a gallery space. Later he showed a room sized installation of small painted objects and sculptural assemblages, also in his Chinatown studio/Mesler & Hug gallery. As his work gained significance in the market, he began to make larger paintings, which culminate today in his 24 foot wide painting with the words WARNING SHOT NOT NEEDED painted in bold black letters across the top of the canvas. In his first large-scale installation sculptural work, where black painted detergent bottles are set atop various poles, such as mops, he makes painterly gestures using black paint to signify erasure of the spirit, as in the case where a beer can case is almost completely painted over, leaving just enough text left to show that this was a case of Miller High Life, and the HIGH LIFE has been wiped out by black paint. There was a virtual orgy of people congratulating Henry at his opening, including myself. I recall teasing him at the gorgeous Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach about his paintings getting larger, after I saw one of his first maybe 4×6 foot paintings in the Rubell Family Collection’s show entitled 30 Americans earlier that day in December, a couple of years ago.
Henry Taylor's studio - photographed in black and white by the NYTimes, mythologies the artist and sets him back into the era that NYC perceives LA to be in, which is about the year 1945, in 2011.
Henry Taylor's press release for his Blum & Poe show
Henry Taylor's New York Times T magazine photo
Mock up of Henry Taylor's sculptural installation at Blum & Poe
A sculpture in Henry Taylor's show
Henry Taylor's A Jack Move painting at Blue & Poe
Henry Taylor's studio was photographed by the NYTimes in black and white to lend a mythological air to the LA Artworld, which NYC perceives to be living in around 1945, about the time that NYC overtook the 300 year old Paris artworld.
a second NYTimes photo of Henry Taylor's studio
Henry Taylor’s début opening at Blum & Poe, March 2011
Henry Taylor's sculptural installation of detergent bottles and mop heads at Blum & Poe
Tu Pac in Henry Taylor's sculptural installation
Henry Taylor's powerful potent, aesthetically compelling painting at Blum & Poe
In this painting by Henry Taylor the earth and sky planes interchange.
Taylor makes a poetic comparison between animals and downtrodden mankind, living both in power and in fear; then he plays with black silhouette head to make symbolic commentary.
Here Taylor seems to say that African-American soul negating texts are built into the society, without it even being conscious of it.
Henry Taylor's opening at Blum & Poe
Kehinde Wiley’s World Stage: Israel opening at Robert & Tilton in Culver City (Los Angeles) was heavily attended. The paintings feature bold uses of color. They seem to me to be more casual snapshot than about penetrating character analysis, and about popularizing the unfamiliar and the exotic.
Kehinde Wiley World Stage: Israel at Roberts&Tilton
Vincent Johnson is an artist and writer in Los Angeles
265 Southwark, South London (2011)
Vincent Johnson in London (2011)
LANYArtiststudio@gmail.com
Biography April 2011
Vincent Johnson lives and works in Los Angeles
Johnson’s work has been exhibited at Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles, LAXART, Las Cienegas Projects, the Kellogg Museum at Cal Poly Pomona, the P.S. 1. Museum, the SK Stiftung, Cologne, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Adamski Gallery of Contemporary Art, Aachen, the Sacramento Center for Contemporary Art, 18th Street Arts, Santa Monica, Another Year in LA gallery at the Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, Soho House, West Hollywood and the Boston University Art Gallery and several other venues.
Johnson’s photographic works engage both significant and neglected historical and contemporary cultural artifacts and is based on intensive research of his subjects. Upcoming are projects in Copenhagen and other European venues, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles.
Johnson received his MFA from Art Center College of Design in 1997. He studied with Mike Kelly, Jack Goldstein, Stephen Prina, Liz Larner, Chris Williams, Mayo Thompson (formerly of Art&Language), and Liz Larner.
Johnson is a 2005 Creative Capital Grantee, and was nominated for the Baum: An Emerging American Photographer’s Award in 2004 and for the New Museum of Contemporary Arts Aldrich Art Award in 2007 and for the Art Matters grant in 2008, and in 2009 nominated for Foundation for Contemporary Art Fellowship, Los Angeles. In 201o he was named a United States Artists project artist.
Johnson’s work has been reviewed in ArtForum, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Upcoming is a one person show in Copenhagen, a one person show at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a one person show at Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles. More exhibitions and projects will be announced soon.
Vincent Johnson currently has work in the ForYourArt benefit exhibition at Soho House, West Hollywood, California and will have work in Los Angeles Nomadic Division’s (L.A.N.D.) benefit exhibition and auction at Palihouse in West Hollywood, California in May 2011. In 2010 he was named a United States Artists project artist. In 2005 he was named Creative Capital grantee. His work has been shown in both the U.S. and in Europe and has been reviewed in the NYTimes, LATimes and Artforum. Future exhibitions are in preparation for shows in the U.S. and in Europe.
Los Angeles/New York
African American Artist/African American painters/African American sculptor/artists who work from modsel/Contemporary art Los Angeles/Los Angeles artist/Los Angeles artworld/Los Angeles gallery/Los Angeles painter/Los Angeles sculpture/New York City artist/New York City painter/New York Contemporary art in Los Angeles/sculptural installation
Mike Kelley’s Kandor series and E.A.R.P. at Gagosian (Beverly Hills 2011)
Mike Kelly's Kandor sculpture series at Gagosian Beverly Hills
MIKE KELLEY: Kandor 10/Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #34 Kandor 12/Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #35 at Gagosian Beverly Hills (Los Angeles)
This exhibition marks the first gallery show by Mike Kelley in Los Angeles since showing at Patrick Painter at Bergamot Station several years ago. It represents the shift in the LA artworld at its uppermost strata from being a center of art production to also being the market for that production, as did the recent debut show of Paul McCarthy at L&M Arts in Venice, on the property where the famed LA science fiction novelist Ray Bradbury lived during the 1950’s in Los Angeles.
Mike Kelley Kandor series
In the year 2000, Mike Kelly launched his Extra Activity Projective Reconstruction project. The details are here, from Artforum magazine (by John Welchman, Oct. 2005, from 1,000 Words, Mike Kelly talks about “Day is Done.”)
“Thirty-two down, 333 to go. Back in 2000, Mike Kelley unveiled Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #1 (A Domestic Scene), the first installment of an ongoing, gargantuan serial work that will eventually comprise 365 video pieces, each with its own set, or sculptural component. Next month, “Day Is Done,” Kelley’s first solo show at Gagosian Gallery in New York, will assemble an ambitious multiplex of thirty-one videos and associated sculptural “stations” (Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions #2-32, 2004-2005) that the artist has made since.”
“The Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction series of videos arose from my desire to fill in the blanks in Educational Complex, 1995 (an architectural model made up of every school I have ever attended), with some kind of action. The blank areas represent all the locations within these buildings that I couldn’t remember. The videos are false memories of “trauma” associated with these sites. I wanted these to consist of a very generic filler of shared cultural experiences. While some of this content and its detail might be subjective, at core it’s recognizable to almost everybody: popular forms of entertainment and social rituals.”
“The imagery is derived from photos of extracurricular activities found in high-school yearbooks. I developed a “plot,” if you can call it that, by building image connections between a set number of photographs from the hundreds I have collected. I worked with a limited group of iconographic motifs–specifically, goth and Halloween imagery and religious spectacles.”
by Mike Kelly
Just a couple of weeks ago I heard a narrative in Los Angeles on the radio about the birth of the Superman comics. I was astonished to be told that Superman is an invention by two sixteen year olds from Cleveland, Ohio, (writer Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster) where I too was born and raised. The radio narrative reported that Jerry Siegel’s was murdered in 1932. The young man then dreamed of a magical suit that would have protected his father.
The gravesite of Mitchell Siegel, father of writer/creator of Superman comic, Joel Siegel, of Cleveland, Ohio
This late 1933 cover design, not published until decades later, shows an early Superman stopping a robbery. It’s the first time Siegel and Shuster show their character as a hero. Those who think Siegel’s father’s death helped inspire Superman’s crime-fighting point to this image as evidence. (Cleveland magazine, January, 2009)
Superman comic Jerry Siegel's home in Cleveland, Ohio
Closeup photo of Superman symbol on the Cleveland home.
First ever Superman comic book
Here is the text of from a writer who saw the show in NYC that this current show is derived from.
(This show)”…is a combination of two earlier works, Kandors (1999) and Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction (EAPR) (2006). Recently known for exemplifying what art critic Jerry Saltz coined as “clusterfuck aesthetics,” Kelley continues his explorations of the grotesque pop cultural diaspora. The titling of this new show alone indicates Kelley’s continued interest in clusterfuck art: the scrambled code of his earlier works, barely intelligible key words that read like an internet pop up.”
“The Kandors series imagines Superman’s native city, Krypton. In the comic books Krypton is never consistently illustrated, its fragmented nature the point of departure for Kelley’s sculptures. Kelley has made multiple versions of Krypton, all of which are embedded with a reliquary-like quality. They are precious, Kelley’s Kryptons, but also seethe with a dark quality. Like much of his work, the Kandors solicits the somber from our collective past. Working with nostalgic themes, the narratives of the American yesteryear, Kelley highlights the potentially evil. The Kandors places Superman, one of the most recognizable American stories, under his black light. Kelley doesn’t draw any conclusions about Superman or its effect on the American psyche in his work—rather it is the hypothetical, the possibilities of Krypton, that tug on our collective origins.”
“Kelley’s EAPR series, first shown at Day is Done in 2005, draw on a similar, formative American memory. The videos derive from what Kelley refers to as “folk performances,” everyday spectacles documented in photographs in local newspapers and yearbooks. The two videos in EAPR #34 are taken from images of a school or community play, in which a “royal” male character presides over a female harem. In another, a female queen character humiliates a male servant. EAPR #35 is solely a group of gnome characters moving about aimlessly in a cell. Both works are shown at the Gagosian with their original sets. Kelley again brings up the repressed, often disturbing images from the collective past. Pulled from narrative, EAPR #34questions how we publicly perform, and subsequently control, gender. In Kelley’s hands, isolated from the original source and re-performed, it is a surreal and sinister vision of our shared fables. The gnomes perhaps, simply run around aimlessly like a suburban daydream.” E. C. Feiss
http://www.ynput.com/article/26678/go-see-los-angeles-mike-kelley-at-the-gagosian-gallery-beverly-hills-through-february-19th-2011
The crime that created Superman
By David Colton – USA Today
“On the night of June 2, 1932, the world’s first superhero was born — not on the mythical planet of Krypton, but from a little-known tragedy on the streets of Cleveland.“
“It was Thursday, about 8:10 p.m., and Mitchell Siegel, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, was in his secondhand clothing store on the near East Side. According to a police report, three men entered. One asked to see a suit of clothes and walked out without paying for it. In the commotion of the robbery, Siegel, 60, fell to the ground and died.”
“The police report mentions a gunshot being heard. But the coroner, the police and Siegel’s wife said Siegel died of a heart attack. No one was ever arrested.”
“It was just a year after Mitchell Siegel’s death, 1933, that writer Siegel and artist Shuster came up with “The Superman,” a grim, flying avenger they tried to sell to newspaper syndicates and publishers for five years. In the oldest surviving artwork, this early Superman, whom they call “the most astounding fiction character of all time,” flies to the rescue of a man who is being held up by a masked robber.”
“Was it Jerry’s alter ego flying to rescue his helpless father?”
“America did not get Superman from our greatest legends, but because a boy lost his father,” Meltzer said. “Superman came not out of our strength, but out of our vulnerability.”
“The more Meltzer looked, the more intriguing things became. A letter published in The Plain Dealer of Cleveland on June 3, 1932, the day after the robbery, denounced the need for vigilantes in the harsh days of the Depression. The letter is signed by an A.L. Luther.”
“Is that where (Superman foe) Lex Luthor came from?” Meltzer said. “I almost had a heart attack right there. I thought, “You have to be kidding me!’”
A FORTUNE SOLD FOR $130
The rest of the saga of Siegel and Shuster is better known, but no less tragic. It wasn’t until 1938 that the familiar red-and-blue-garbed Superman appeared on the cover of “Action Comics” No. 1. The creators got a check for $130. In return, DC Comics acquired rights to the character “forever.”
“Shuster died in 1992 and Siegel in 1996, but their legal battles have been never-ending. In March, a court ruled that Siegel’s heirs (wife Joanne and daughter Laura) were entitled to parts of the billion-dollar Superman copyright. Because of the ongoing litigation, neither the families nor DC Comics would comment, not even about Mitchell Siegel’s death 76 years ago or its implications.”
Superman, invented in 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio
Here now is a story from the Wall Street Journal that relates how one of Mike Kelly’s collector’s of he Kandor series has enlivened Munich’s collecting and contemporary museum scene.
“Kandor” (2007), by American artist Mike Kelly, is a mixed-media installation and one of nine Kelly works in the Brandhorst collection. Mr. Kelly was influenced by the Superman comics of his childhood and produced a series of works named after the fictional capital city of the planet Krypton. Hoses feeding an unnamed gas into oversized test tubes fill the room with their orange and purple glow. Inside, a crystalline city emerges and an eerie sound fills the gallery.”
‘Munich’s new Museum Brandhorst, which opened this week in a striking new building designed by Berlin architects Sauerbruch Hutton — and backed with a €120 million grant to fund future acquisitions — aims to vault this Bavarian city into the contemporary-art big leagues.”
“After World War II, only six contemporary art works had survived the Nazi purges of Munich’s museums. Now with the Pinakothek der Moderne and the Brandhorst, the city has two highly visible palaces devoted to 20th- and 21st-century art.”
text is by Mariana Schroede/Wall Street Journal/Weekend
Munich's Museum Brandhorst of contemporary art
This video projection of what seemed to be a jar containing a sort of mythical, humming, buzzing, lightning bolt fast moving creatures, inside of the jar. For it was the most strange, unique and marvel inducing aspect of the entire gigantic exhibition, which is a new high for Los Angeles, as now LA Art Star artists are showcasing their works right in the City of Los Angeles, as versus only in NYC galleries.
Mike Kelly's Kandor series
“In 1960, Siegel went back to work for Superman’s publisher and wrote some of his best work. In Superman #141, Superman is accidentally sent back in time to Krypton, where he tries (but fails) to save his parents and his home planet. Through Superman’s grief, Siegel expressed his own.” Cleveland magazine, January 2009
Mike Kelley's Kandor series showcases Superman's world in a bottle
There was for me this sense of being in an alternate universe, full of jarring and alternately calming narratives.
Mike Kelley's Kandor series
Mike Kelley's cave was invited to peek into, yet it looked a great deal like and is similar in scale to Kaari Upson's cave sculpture, that we saw in Miami at the Rubell Family Collection this past December, 2010
One aspect of Kelley’s show seemed to be the use of stage props being placed throughout this enormous and swords crossing installation. Kelley is building not only upon multiple prior narratives, he is also using video to stand in for the several performances he has produced that further expand his projected narrative. For context I’ve provided reviews of E.A.R.P. 32, which was performed at the historic performance space Judson Church, in Greenwich Village, New York City as part of Performa 09.
Mike Kelley: Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #32, Plus
Mike Kelley’s Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #32, Plus was one of the last things I saw in my biennial binge of performance art, and I couldn’t have asked for a better one to end with. Based on ‘Day is Done’, his 2005 exhibition at Gagosian in Chelsea, Kelley’s hour-long dance explosion was an upbeat, odd and entertaining trip to a stranger-than-strange fiction high school experience filled with rock and roll, basketball, marching bands, muscular naked men, and lots and lots of Mike Kelley.
Fittingly set in a grimy gymnasium beneath the Judson Memorial Church, the piece wasn’t prim or proper or even that practiced – in the closing moments a sweaty-handed Kelley accidentally fired a hand bell that he was swinging in to the audience – but it was a party, a loud, outrageous one, the kind you’re happy enough to leave, then wonder about while tucked safley in bed. Good night.
Graham T. Beck
Graham T. Beck is a writer based in New York.
Performa 09: High school agony with Mike Kelley
Posted by artreview.com on November 20, 2009 at 4:39pm in First View
All photos: Mike Kelley, Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #32, Plus, 2009, a Performa Commission. Photos by Paula Court, Courtesy of Performa
Mike Kelley, Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #32, Plus, Performa 09 Commission
17 November 2009, Judson Memorial Church
by Joshua Mack
Inspired by Day is Done, his loopy redux of American high school rituals and performances based on images in old yearbooks, the fourteen vignettes Kelley strung together in this seventy-five minute agony could have been brilliant. For anyone who went to school in the last seventy five years or has sat through the earnest performance of a beloved child, Kelley’s marching bands, dancers wearing papier mache horse heads, and sylvan dryad in green velvet robe and plastic flower wreath were familiar stuff, as was the brick walled, over heated basement gym in which the performance took place. Fecund material for exploring aging, social bonding, the dreams and disappointments that shape us when we are young. And clearly Kelley’s intention was to wrest some deeper truth from his renditions of these hokey skits. Take the program note for #13, Empty Gym: “… a sensitive evocation of the lonely unpopulated gymnasium of lost youth.”
That may be what the artist intended, but instead, the piece had the quality of a joke repeated too often and too insistently. The opening sequence of four girls simulating a basketball practice dragged on and on. Their whooping calls of “Yee Haw!” came off as a mean spirited, classist, insider joke. Flora, the Forest Sprite, traipsed about exuding pseudo-creepy chants through a microphone in three of the fourteen ‘acts.’ In “The Offer” based on an ad for a sound activated switch, a 12 piece brass band marched around while a caller riffed on the jingle, “Clap on clap off, the clapper.” But after the third of fourth iteration, “Gobe on gobe off, the Gober,” “Reef on reef off, the reefer,” “Janit on janit off, the janitor”, the joke fizzled. But the band kept on playing and playing and playing.
And then there were the times that Kelley danced around the gym wearing a straw hat festooned with plastic flowers, smiling like the cat who swallowed the canary, or blew bubbles in a pail of water. I’m glad he was having such a grand time, but the point of performance is to go beyond oneself and give something to the audience. Instead, Kelley’s performance was like suffering adolescent boys who think other people will be as amused by their farts as they are.
Performa 09 | Double Trouble (NYTimes T Magazine)
By LINDA YABLONSKY
| NOVEMBER 20, 2009, 4:41 PM
Photo by Paula Court / Courtesy of PerformaA scene from Mike Kelley’s “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #32, Plus.”
Entertainment used to be anathema to performance art, which can often seem more like an endurance test. But Performa 09, which runs through this weekend, has given us a breed of less self-indulgent artists for whom audience pleasure is paramount. Witness the exhilarating, back-to-back appearances last night by Mike Kelley and Terence Koh. Though the title of his work, “Extracurricular Activity Projective #32, Plus,” suggested more of the same-old-same, Kelley brought nudity, horseplay and a Bourbon Street-style marching band to the basketball court at Judson Church, the epicenter of postmodern dance.
With two bands providing hooflike beats and theremin tones, the concert began with four female dancers in sweats dribbling a basketball in prancing steps that gave a nod to the pedestrian choreography (by Kate Foley) associated with the Judson. Enter a vocalist in a flowing gown accompanying a room-filling wall of graduated reverb drones with a multipart chorale of sound. A dozen horn players then took the floor to recall the heraldic fanfares of television news shows. As lights dimmed, four strapping musclemen in their birthday suits — Kelley’s idea of stagehands — circulated in the space (so everyone could see them close up) and set up a 20-foot ladder.
Led by a drum major in a black suit chanting “Zip on, zip off the zipper” in drill-sergeant rhythm, the horn players returned to form a pyramid on it. The dancers reappeared to pantomime a courtship ritual. Before long Kelley himself kneeled at center court to play a blowgun through a miked pail of water, later joining the band for a joyous, rag-waving parade. Joy, in fact, was the point of the show, actually based on found photographs and snippets of obscure music. Whatever else it meant, Kelley accurately created “a fantastic world superimposed on reality,” the title of the festival of noise music he is presenting tonight and tomorrow at the Blender Theater.
After treating audiences to a buffet of hors d’oeuvres crawling with ants, the artist Terence Koh (formerly asianpunkboy) took the lectern at the National Arts Club to offer a dizzying lesson in art history. Dressed in his characteristic white suit, he faced an audience that included Vito Schnabel, Mary Boone, Will Cotton and Marina Abramovic, gesticulating for 45 minutes before a slide show that ran from Rembrandt, Velázquez, Goya and Vermeer through Duchamp, Malevich, Cornell and Bacon to Mapplethorpe, Goldin and Hirst, moving from beauty to war, queer politics, sex, religion, AIDS and performance art itself. All of this was delivered in excited, rapid-fire gibberish. Somehow it was both funny and moving, even kind of genius. As one wag put it at the end of the show, “Nice to know we’ve reached the end of art.” And survived it with style.
Photo by Paula Court / Courtesy of PerformaLed by a drum major, horn players formed a pyramid in Mike Kelley’s piece.
” A veteran of the Los Angeles conceptual art scene, Kelley uses deconstructive strategies in order to challenge the established norms of contemporary culture, both high and low.” Gagosian press release
“The Kandors, begun in 1999, are representations of Superman’s city of birth, the only remaining part of his home planet, Krypton. In the well-known comic books, Superman saved the miniaturized city in a bottle fed by a tank of atmosphere. Kandor’s depiction in these narratives is inconsistent and fragmentary, prompting Kelley to create multiple versions of it, cast in colorful resins and illuminated like reliquaries. Kandor 10, a yellow city housed in a hand-blown, pink glass bottle, is a grouping of tall skyscrapers situated within a full-scale rock grotto; Kandor 12, constructed in off-white resin and evocative of a group of chess pawns, or minarets, is encased in a shadowy brown bottle, which sits on a platform resembling a Greek column positioned in front of a chest of drawers and an illuminated translucent green wall.”
“The EAPR video series – first shown as the exhibition “Day Is Done” at Gagosian, New York in 2006 – stems from photographs of what Kelley calls “folk performances”—common, often carnivalesque, activities documented in school yearbooks, local newspapers, or home snapshots. The two videos comprising EAPR #34 are based on an image of what appeared to be an amateur stage play, featuring a “royal” male character with his female harem. In one of them, a “King” lords over his harem. In the other, a group of “Queens” demean a male servant. EAPR #35 features a cast of gnome-like characters who shamble around aimlessly in a cell. The videos are presented with the sets in which they were shot. Kelley has described the EAPR videos as defensive shields against the gaps or “repressed trauma” in his Educational Complex (1995), a model of his childhood home and every school he ever attended, merged into one structure.” Gagosian press release.
Mike Kelley, Kandor 19 B, 2010. Foam coated with Elastomer, blown glass with water-based resin coating, tinted Urethane resin, wood, found objects, lighting fixture. 31 1/2 x 49 x 43 inches overall (80 x 124.5 x 109.2 cm). Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Mike Kelley, Kandor 18 B, 2010. Foam coated with Elastomer , blown glass with water-based resin coating, tinted Urethane resin, wood, found objects, lighting fixture, 87 x 36 x 48 in. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Certainly the image of Colonel Sander's of Kentucky Fried Chicken, can be considered to be a part of the fiction producing mythology base of America. I did wonder why the Colonel, and not a different personage. I did check to see if the fabrication was at the level of what I had seen at the Madame Tussaud's in New York City in Times Square, which is a sensational exhibition in wax and plastic technologies.
Mike Kelley, Memory Ware #61, 2010. Foam, tinted resin, found jewelry, coffee pot, plastic toys. 47 x 81 x 12 1/2 inches overall (119.4 x 205.7 x 31.8 cm)
Mike Kelley, Kandor 19 B, 2010 (Detail view). Foam coated with Elastomer, blown glass with water-based resin coating, tinted Urethane resin, wood, found objects, lighting fixture. 31 1/2 x 49 x 43 inches overall (80 x 124.5 x 109.2 cm). Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Mike Kelley, Odalisque, 2010. Foam coated with Elastomer, wood, aluminum, wig, found objects, velvet, cotton batting, 56 x 115 x 30 in. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Cleveland, Ohio - Lakeview road tenement, Glenville area (Epson archival print 2010) by Vincent Johnson
Cleveland rooming house, Hough area (2010, Epson archival print, by Vincent Johnson)
Biography January 2011
Vincent Johnson is an artist and writer who lives and works in Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited at Las Cienegas Projects, LAXART, Las Cienegas Projects, the Kellogg Museum at Cal Poly Pomona, the P.S. 1. Museum, the SK Stiftung, Cologne, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Adamski Gallery of Contemporary Art, Aachen, the Sacramento Center for Contemporary Art, 18th Street Arts, Santa Monica, Another Year in LA gallery at the Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles and the Boston University Art Gallery. His photographic works engage both significant and neglected historical and contemporary cultural artifacts and is based on intensive research of his subjects. Upcoming is one person show in Copenhagen, a one person show at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a one person show at Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles.
Johnson received his MFA from Art Center College of Design in 1997. He studied with Mike Kelley, Jack Goldstein, Stephen Prina, Liz Larner, Chris Williams, Mayo Thompson (formerly of Art&Language), and Liz Larner. He is a 2005 Creative Capital Grantee, and was nominated for the Baum: An Emerging American Photographer’s Award in 2004 and for the New Museum of Contemporary Arts Aldrich Art Award in 2007 and for the Art Matters grant in 2008, and in 2009 nominated for Foundation for Contemporary Art Fellowship, Los Angeles. In 201o he was named a United States Artists project artist. His work has been reviewed in ArtForum, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Upcoming is a one person show in Copenhagen, a one person show at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a one person show at Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles.
Vincent Johnson
Vincent Johnson’s work is a form of sustained cultural mining that explores the depths of his subjects. His photographic works created from 2001-2007 delved into architecture as fantasy, from the vernacular architecture of Los Angeles to that found throughout the American West. He has documented several of the no longer extant commercial vernacular structures in both South Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley that came into existence during the birth of long distance family travel by car. In 2007 he presented a fully fabricated work of sculpture – a 12 foot long six-foot high replica of a 1956 Chrysler Air Raid Siren. This project developed as he was both researching and documenting a former military corridor in the San Fernando Valley that included a retired military airfield. His newest photographic works, all created in 2008 and 2009, are large-scale photographic montages, each of which confront significant cultural figures and several dramatic signal events of Cold War era Western cultural history, including Television, the launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Space program, American home-based bomb shelter program, and Vietnam. He is working on large-scale photomontages of the several major American political figures of 1960’s, including Martin Luther King, the Kennedy family, and Malcolm X, as well the representations of both Communism and Capitalism, Hollywood and Los Angeles and many related Cold War era subjects. Johnson’s photomontages can take several months to create as he captures hundreds of images from online sources, before selecting those which most well index a particular historical moment, personage or event. The creative juxtapositions and scale shifts of the found images is what he most relies on to develop his potent and illuminating photographic works.
8 years ago Short URL 2 Comments
Los Angeles/Vincent Johnson/Vincent Johnson Images
conceptual art/Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction/Gagosian Beverly Hills/Kandor/Krypton/Los Angeles artworld/Los Angeles sculpture/Mike Kelley Los Angeles Artist/Superman/Superman comics created in Cleveland/Superman house Cleveland/Superman's home
Paul McCarthy at L&M Arts in Venice (Los Angeles)
At L&M Arts Venice, Paul McCarthy had this gigantic animated sculpture of George Bush and a twin George Bush riding high – then you realize the two George’s are actually screwing pigs from the rear – yet at once riding them like a cowboy. The piece is incredible. The look on the twin George’s face’s is diabolical. This vision of American governmental power as completely savage is as unrelenting and mind piercing look into the soul of our country as I have ever seen in a contemporary sculptural work. The work conveys with exacting precision the full freight of the perverse and low to the ground single-minded pursuit of animal pleasure as a pure yet grinding power without a moment of relief.
I wished the other two were also animated, but they are not. They’re just huge hulking haunting masses.
L&M Arts is unlike any gallery in LA. There are 3 buildings. Two are galleries. The one in the middle is the business/sales center. It looks like a visitor to the gallery does not enter it unless the visitor is there for business or sales. They sell $5 million dollar contemporary art sculptures to the international art buyer who comes to LA, and there don’t need to be in the lanes of traffic of the people who only came to see the shows. One the gallery doors was wide open. It’s the one that is on the piece of property where Ray Bradbury grew up in LA. There is a wall plaque of the kind you see in New York detailing this. There is a 3rd sculpture on the lawn on their property. They have their own small parking lot, again not for gallery visitors but for buyers. I liked that no one was guarding the work like at Gagosian. It gave the impression of being totally available for view – which it was. Paul McCarthy’s mad sculpture was just there, humping and grinding away as if it were insane and didn’t care who saw it. I don’t know if L&M Arts will even have public openings – or will they only have private art parties. I suspect the latter is the case. Anyway, with the opening of L&M Arts in Venice, the LA Artworld is at a level it has never seen before in its life.
1st post card for the show
This was the first image posted for their inaugural show. It does not have a time for the opening on it.
2nd post card for the exhibition
I think that this second image appeared on L&M Arts website near the time of the opening. It has the opening time as 2-5PM. Its seems that more and more Los Angeles galleries are scheduling unusual exhibition opening hours – perhaps to capture the evenings (or in this case afternoon’s) artworld audience.
Paul McCarthy 1
Paul McCarthy 9A
Paul McCarthy 12
Vincent Johnson is an artist and writer in Los Angeles. He has recently been named a 2010 United States Artists Projects artist.
The USA site went live on December 7, 2010
My initial project is to fabricate a 3 foot tall doll house sized sculpture of the collapsed William Livingstone House in Detroit. The project description and a video presentation of the project are at the links provided here:
http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/user/vincentjohnson
http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/william_livingstone_house_detroit
Please feel free to review the site and to contact others who would be interesting in supporting the program and my project.
cell: 818:430.1604
Awards/Los Angeles/Vincent Johnson
animatronic sculpture/L&M Arts Venice/Los Angeles artist/Los Angeles artworld/Los Angeles sculpture/Paul McCarthy/United States Artists project artist
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American Literary History and the Turn toward Modernity
Melanie V. Dawson and Meredith L. Goldsmith
Published to Florida Scholarship Online: May 2019
DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813056043.001.0001
Part I Literary Pasts and Presents
1 “It Is Difficult to Disengage a Single Thread from the Living Web of a Nation’s Literature”
2 Wavering in Delight
3 Writing into Modernity
Part II Contrasting Cultures
4 Boarding School Poetry, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and the Demands of Americanization Poetics and Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
5 On Jane Addams’s Feminist Pragmatism
Part III Gender, Marriage, and Sexuality
6 Companionate Marriage across the Century’s Turn
7 Laura Jean Libbey and Sexual Transformation
8 Jessie Fauset’s Not-So-New Negro Womanhood
9 Yours for the (Marriage) Revolution
Subject(s) in Florida Scholarship Online
“It Is Difficult to Disengage a Single Thread from the Living Web of a Nation’s Literature”
Sarah Piatt and the Construction of Literary History
(p.27) 1 “It Is Difficult to Disengage a Single Thread from the Living Web of a Nation’s Literature”
Karin L. Hooks
DOI:10.5744/florida/9780813056043.003.0001
Arguing that the changing and more consolidated literary politics of the century’s turn helped make possible the canon wars of the twentieth century, this paper investigates the history of literary histories. Twentieth-century constructs of the field overlook an awareness that late-nineteenth century female literary historians envisioned in terms of a more inclusive and democratic American literary canon. Recovering a literary history largely erased by the turn into the twentieth century through a case study of Sarah Piatt’s career, this chapter focuses on two female literary historians of the 1890s: Ellen Mackay Hutchinson and Jeanette Gilder, whose literary anthologies include Piatt’s writing, unlike those of the following century. Hutchinson, who (with Edmund Clarence Stedman) edited a sizeable collection of American texts, the eleven-volume Library of American Literature, and Jeanette Gilder, co-editor of The Critic, who hosted a popular election to identify the top 125 American women writers of 1890, made arguments for the inclusion of Piatt in the canon that are worth revisiting in light of turn-of-the-century mechanisms for erasing the literary history of which Piatt was a part.
Keywords: Canon, female literary historians, Literary history, Anthologies, Women writers, Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, Jeanette Gilder, Sarah Piatt
Florida Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
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ArticlesNewsPoliticsRacismUS News
Zimmerman Verdict Revives Grievance Guru Industry
Taleeb Starkes July 23, 2013 0 Views
As expected, George Zimmerman's acquittal is being exploited by the usual "Grievance Gurus" to forward personal agendas. In buzzard-like fashion, they continue to figuratively rip from Trayvon Martin's carcass to satisfy their insatiable, race-fueled appetite, while ostracizing free-thinking BLACKS who avoid the feeding frenzy. In fact, the President of the NAACP's Norfolk, Virginia chapter is facing resignation calls for posting (on Facebook) an independent thought about Trayvon that differed from the NAACP franchise's official position. He observed, "As I look at this George Zimmerman case... I wonder why is it that we are always willing to say someone who clearly had a shaky past, was the victim. Are we blinded about why Trayvon was at his dad's house in the first place, and why he wasn't at home at the time he was shot? Please think logically and not racially..." Undoubtedly, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Complaining People) will persecute him for the treasonous act of placing logic over race. Moreover, he jeopardized their revenue stream, which is based on victimology not responsibility; therefore... off with his head!
Even in Booker T. Washington's day, when claims of institutional racism had legitimacy, the "Grievance Gurus" exploitative mission was a reality. Washington recognized, "There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well." Sadly, in 2013, as evidenced by the abundance of race-peddling (post Zimmerman verdict), this "certain class of race-problem solvers" are still channeling the long-gone era of institutionalized racism to keep their jobs.
One unintended consequence of this lawful acquittal is that the Grievance Gurus found another platform to maintain their relevancy... the Stand Your Ground Law. Despite the fact that this law has existed for years without issue, and was mostly invoked by Black Floridians (nearly double the rate of their 16% Florida population), this was simply another opportunity for the Gurus to extend their livelihoods. The Daily Caller noted, "Approximately one third of Florida "Stand Your Ground" claims in fatal cases have been made by black defendants, and they have used the defense successfully 55 percent of the time, at the same rate as the population at large and at a higher rate than white defendants." Regardless, the Grievance Gurus will characteristically dismiss any statistic that challenges their race-based narrative as racist.
The Chief Grievance Guru, Al Sharpton, scheduled "Justice for Trayvon" rallies outside Federal buildings across the country. Speaking in NYC, he told the vengeful mob attendees that Stand Your Ground invites racial profiling, and even compared its impact to slavery and segregation. In the nation's capital, comedian/activist Dick Gregory instructed the hoodie brigade to boycott Florida's tourism and agricultural industries (specifically Disney and Orange producers) to help eliminate the Stand Your Ground Laws. Another Chief Grievance Guru, Jesse Jackson, told CNN, "No doubt, the inclination is to boycott Florida, stop conventions, to isolate Florida as a kind of apartheid state."
Of course, Attorney General Holder couldn't avoid the feeding frenzy. However, his angle is to disarm law-abiding citizens while empowering criminals. He stated, "Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation's attention, it's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods." Surely, I'm not the only citizen who believes that the Bureau of Justice statistics should be a required read for the head of the Justice department.
As expected, Holder's boss (Obama) added fuel to this manufactured inferno. He chimed, "If we're sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms, even if there's a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we'd like to see?" Ironically, this anti-gun stance comes from a man who has heavily armed, James Bond-like agents providing twenty-four hour security detail. Go figure.
Just to stay employed, Grievance Gurus will even cut off their noses to spite their faces. Well, not their own noses...they would never harm themselves. I'm talking about the noses of their gullible followers. The Grievance Gurus aren't concerned that their promoted boycotts would ultimately hurt the very people they claim to serve. As preached in their victimology gospel, which my controversial book "The Un-Civil War: BLACKS vs NI**ERS" details, poverty is a main catalyst for the disproportionate amount of Black crime and anti-social behavior; yet, they're encouraging a boycott of Florida State that will exacerbate those conditions.
Don't be fooled by the Grievance Gurus' angry facade that's currently being marketed post Zimmerman trial, the verdict was actually a victory for them. Even though Jorge George Zimmerman was deceitfully categorized as "White Hispanic," he already had enough exploitable Whiteness to prolong their careers.
IJreview.com reported that in the 503 days between the Trayvon shooting and Zimmerman verdict, 10,865 Blacks were murdered by other Blacks. Even so, there were no hoodie marches, boycotts, or calls to repeal Stand Your Ground in any state because thousands of Black-on-Black homicides aren't as profitable as one White-on-Black homicide. Moreover, this harrowing statistic remains unmentioned by the Grievance Gurus because the shooters were Black. Inconvenient truths, such as these, reflect the race-based hypocrisy that's practiced in the Black community; even a Kermit Gosnell is preferable to a George Zimmerman.
Black-on-Black genocide is so common that Pittsburgh's Black press openly celebrated when June yielded no Black homicides. The New Pittsburgh Courier rejoiced, "The past few weeks have been loaded with news, with the most popular being the Supreme Court decisions on Affirmative Action, Voting Rights and Gay Marriages. But there was an even bigger news story that occurred that most of the media missed. It was huge. No Black homicides in the month of June. Yes you read it right. No Black homicides in the entire month of June. Zero."
Predictably, the Grievance Gurus would say that this anomaly only occurred because Zimmerman was on a strict, court-imposed curfew during June, and couldn't make his way to Pittsburgh to kill any Blacks.
eric holderRacism
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Taleeb Starkes
Taleeb Starkes is the author of an Amazon #1 selling book that confronts the criminal and dysfunctional subculture within the Black community titled, “The Un-Civil War: BLACKS vs NI**ERS.” Follow Taleeb Starkes on Facebook & Twitter.
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Updated: March 28, 2018 10:49 pm
Scientists think they’ve discovered a new human organ, the ‘interstitium’
By Staff Reuters
WATCH ABOVE: Scientists believe they may have discovered something new about human beings. They've identified a new human organ that has been hiding in plain sight. As Allison Vuchnich explains, researchers hope the finding will help them better understand the spread of cancer.
A group of scientists say they have discovered a new fluid-filled space inside human tissue that could be its largest organ.
Called “interstitium,” the space is found everywhere throughout the body, from under the skin and between the organs. It surrounds arteries, muscles, the digestive and urinary tracts, in a layer long thought to be dense connective tissue.
Doctors discover empty space where part of man’s brain should be
Interstitium was hiding in plain sight for decades and was found by chance, the scientists explain in a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
READ MORE: Pig-to-human organ transplants a step closer to reality after gene-editing breakthrough
In 2015, endoscopists Petros Benias and David Carr-Locke, then working at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, were investigating a patient’s bile duct for signs of cancer, using a new technique called confocal laser endomicroscopy that allows for close examination of living tissue.
For this, an endoscope was fitted with a small camera probe that can function as a microscope to peer inside a human body.
And instead of the well-known dense connective tissue, what they saw was cavities not known to human anatomy. They called in the help of pathologist Neil Theise, a co-worker at the Mount Sinai hospital.
“What we saw in this layer of the bile duct is this open fluid filled space supported by this collagen bundle latticework,” Theise, who now works at New York University School of Medicine told Reuters on Tuesday.
A diagram of tissue in the interstitium.
Illustration by Jill Gregory. Printed with permission from Mount Sinai Health System, licensed under CC-BY-ND.
The pockets of fluid are surrounded by a web of collagen interwoven by a flexible protein called elastin. The team realized that this interstitium was found because they were looking at living tissue instead of dead tissue used in conventional medical slides. Traditionally, in order to create slides, scientists use tissue that is chemically treated, draining the fluids, and making the interstitium collapse.
“The collagen bundles layer on top of each other and it looks like a wall of collagen,” Theise explained.
WATCH: Neil Theise, a professor of pathology at NYU School of Medicine, talks about the discovery of a new fluid-filled space inside human tissue.
The groundbreaking discovery of the new organ meant that old mysteries could be solved. For instance, scientists always knew that 20 percent of body fluids was missing in a total tally, in between blood, lymph, serum and other bodily fluids.
Theise says that this is found in interstitium, which totals about “10 litres of fluid” inside the human body.
One of its main functions, scientists believe, is to absorb shock and protect the moving parts of the body.
“It looks exactly like what shock absorbers are, there are these structures that flexibly contain fluid and can compress and then fill back up again,” Theise explained.
This fluid is rich in protein that drains into the lymphatic system, the network of vessels carrying lymph, a fluid that contains disease-fighting white blood cells.
This could explain how the interconnected fluids spread cancer cells throughout the human body, but understanding the interstitium could also help researchers fight the disease.
“Can we go in there and identify the mechanisms that allow the cells to traffic, and then could we think about ways to interfere with that?”
In the future a better understanding the works of interstitium could help slow or prevent metastasis, and the possibilities are infinite for “a variety of fields,” Theise said.
© 2018 Reuters
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"We only want to work with Stellar. Greg is an important member of our team, all for the dogs and cats!"
Denise Barr
Vice President of Marketing
Humane Society of Southwest Washington
"Dia, on behalf of all us at Kala, thank you for rocking it on stage! You are a juggler, a magician, a force, and an inspiration. Thank you for experimenting with us and elevating our auction and gala to a new level. "
Ellen Lake
Kala Art Institute
"Devon has done a wonderful job for Planned Parenthood Northern California. Devon is professional, accommodating and intelligent. These attributes, along with a great personality and winning smile, make him an exceptionally good auctioneer.
“Devon is willing and able to assist in many phases of auction planning. He is good at analyzing trends, suggesting lot ideas, ordering lots for maximum potential and executing effective fund-a-need and buy-in lots. It's a pleasure to work with him.
“I have been involved in fundraising in Napa Valley for more than 20 years. I can honestly say that Devon is among the top auctioneers I've worked with."
Stacey Bressler
Auction Chair
Planned Parenthood Northern California
"Ed, you were incredible to watch and I know the evening was only a success due to you; the way you hooked the bidders and committed them to buying packages was artful."
Teri Kil
Auction Co-Chair
"Devon was a wonderful addition to our auction this year. We are so grateful for both his preparation for the event and investment in our fundraising goals. We can't wait to work with him again next year!"
Christie D'Angelo
AD of Events
Glaucoma Research Foundation
Devon was great. We loved his humor, flexibility and preparedness!"
Deb Glazer
Smuin Ballet
"Greg, my friend, you are getting RAVE reviews. Thank you for the fun, energy and expertise that took us to a new level of fundraising Saturday night."
Dana Whitelaw
High Desert Museum, Bend, OR
"Another great event with Greg. Always professional and ready to help us 'get the most' out of each auction lot. Our best year yet!"
Connie Sangiacomo
Boys and Girls Clubs of Sonoma Valley
"Worth his weight in 'Gold', Ed was such a help to our organization. He is personable, caring, responsive, and really helped our gala reach a new level. Our board was very impressed!"
Sonja Bohannan
Donor Relations Manager
"I know Greg from his many years of work with our organization's auction and gala. He's hands down, the best auctioneer I've seen in action. I've given more at auctions that are being led by Greg (both for our organization and for others) than at any other fundraisers, and it has so much to do with his talent for guiding the auction planning process and then, of course, his amazing ability to inspire a crowd at auction time."
Irma Laxamana
Ed was fantastic – he did a great job for us! I think the best part of the deal with Ed was that he felt like a member of our team from the first meeting to the close of the event – his input was extremely insightful and always valued – an overall great experience for all of us on the committee, not just our live auction group.
C. Edward Turner, CPA
Windsor Rotary Community Foundation
"It was a delight to have Greg as auctioneer of OMCA NEXT, and we were thrilled with the energy in the room around the auction and with the outcome. He was able to make each of the lots very enticing, and to fully engage the room in the fund-a-need. We truly appreciate how good Greg is at his work."
Lori Fogarty
Director and CEO
"Ed Gold is the best. His expertise and input have helped our event revenue grow from a $40,000 wine tasting to an extremely popular Kentucky Derby themed wine auction that has steadily raised $200,000 over the past four years. Ed is always available for advice and he has creative ideas for improving your event. He is truly a member of the Huckleberry family."
Heather Mathews
Huckleberry Youth Programs
"We loved Devon! He really got an increase in bids over last year. It was hard to command our audience's attention, but he did it."
San Domenico School
"We love working with Greg. He really knows our organization and its goals and it shows in his performance. We appreciate all of the pre-work that Greg completes, from meeting with our Board to ordering the lots. Our crowd really responds to him and we look forward to having him back next year."
Anike Coates
VP of Development
Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Bay Area
“Thank you for working with the Diversity Center and helping us reach new heights in our auction. Stellar Auctions brought our fund raising to a whole new level and we did much better than anyone at the Center ever imagined. We are very excited about what we can do in the future.
"Jacquelyn, thanks for being on top of everything and doing such a great job getting this together.
"Devon, you are amazing and really knocked this thing out of the park. Everybody had a GREAT time and we learned so much from you guys.”
Dean Maynard
The Diversity Center of Santa Cruz
"Working with Ed is a pleasure. I find that the way Ed ‘thinks’ is in line with my thinking. We just get the job done, have fun, and pay attention to every detail. When something is ‘bugging’ Ed it is driving me crazy. He knows when he needs to take control & I know when he wants me to BINGO! He knows Booker T. “Green Onions” & I know Taj Mahal “Fishin Blues”! Jacquelyn seems to work 24/7 and is always helpful & friendly!"
Maureen Kelly
St. Helena Cooperative Nursery School
“Greg has been a catalyst for increasing our fundraising efforts at North Beach Citizens. At our largest fundraiser, he was able to think quickly on the spot leveraging a matching pledge of $25,000 into $50,000 in five minutes on the stage. He was able to single handily increase the donation of many of our long term donors by double and triple amounts..”
Kristie Fairchild
North Beach Citizens
"Having chaired numerous galas benefiting Larkin Street Youth Services, I have seen over and over again the added value of Greg's strategic outlook and deep experience as an auctioneer. His suggestions consistently drive increased engagement of guests and revenues in terms of dollars raised "the night of". His professionalism, high standards and consistent performance have received nothing but rave reviews from guests at Paving the Way. I can't recommend him more highly."
Annie Ellicott
Larkin Street Youth Services
"From the initial auction brainstorming to ordering the auction lots and encouraging enthusiastic bidding, Ed and his tremendous experience are always there for us."
Paul Knudsen
San Francisco CASA
“We could not have asked for a better partner for this event than Greg Quiroga.”
Ellen McGlynn
Marin Country Day School
"We are very happy with Devon, he brought charm and wit to the event and I would highly recommend him."
Herb Foedisch
“I have worked with Greg for the last ten years on our school’s two yearly auctions, and even after all these years, he never ceases to amaze me. Each year, Greg diligently researches each auction lot, and takes the time to know if the donor will be in the room, or history of the item. He also has an uncanny ability to capitalize on an event’s energy to raise funds, all while keeping an auction move along at a nice pace.
"Having the confidence in Greg’s ability allows me to be calm about the auction and focus my attention to other portions of our event.
"The partnership that I’ve formed with Greg cannot be replaced, as he plays an enormous roll in the success of our auctions year after year.”
Patricia Colin
International School of the Peninsula
"Ed was a huge help during the planning process for our dinner, and on the night of the event made sure our auction and paddle raising went exactly as planned. He got great reviews from everyone involved."
Andy Shin
Breakthrough San Francisco at SF Day School
“We have worked with Ed Gold for several years on our school’s live auction and he has done a terrific job – both on the advance planning for the auction and during the gala itself. Ed has brought us new ideas that have been a great fit for our fun-loving bidding crowd. For example, this year our raffle included a giant “golden paddle” for a lucky (and delighted!) bidder in the live auction. Ed has also helped in advance with packaging items to make them as appealing as possible. On the evening of the gala, it was wonderful to have Ed in charge of things like training our volunteer spotters. We are not a group of ostentatious bidders at our school – our community is quite low-key. But this year, one of our items reached our all time highest bid, making our school fundraising team and auction parent volunteers (including me), very happy! I highly recommend Ed and his team for fundraising and auctions.”
Kath Tsakalakis
Auction Team
Cathedral School for Boys
Regarding Devon: “You were phenomenal!!! Thank you so much for showing up to make our live auction spectacular. We raised three times what we made last year during our live auction!!!! I cannot thank you enough. I appreciate your professionalism, your guidance on the process and being a wonderful and fun auctioneer.”
Sharon Papo
“Ed did another great job. The heat was AWFUL and he never lost his cool. He's a real gem and we're glad to have him as our auctioneer.”
Susan Koza
SPCA for Monterey County
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Yahoo delays sale of core business to Verizon
24 January 2017 | 4:22 am
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National security, warcraft, and tech innovation
The entrance of Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, California PHOTO: HECTOR MATA/AFP/Getty Images)
Yahoo said Monday its $4.8 billion deal to sell its core internet assets to US telecom titan Verizon has been delayed several months.
The closing originally set for this quarter has been pushed into next quarter due to “work required to meet closing conditions,” the California online pioneer said in a statement, adding that it was “working expeditiously to close the transaction as soon as practicable.”
The news came in an earnings release showing Yahoo swung to a profit of $162 million in the final three months of last year.
The deal with Verizon, which would end Yahoo’s run of more than 20 years as an independent company, has been thrown into doubt following disclosures of two huge data breaches.
Yahoo said it is ramping up security as it grapples with the aftermath of epic hacks.
“Our top priority continues to be enhancing security for our users,” Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer said.
She added that “approximately 90 percent of our daily active users have already taken or do not need to take remedial action to protect their accounts, and we’re aggressively continuing to drive this number up.”
Yahoo boasted having more than a billion users monthly in 2016, with more than 650 million of those people connecting from mobile devices.
– Hack aftershocks –
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into whether Yahoo should have informed investors sooner about two major data breaches, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.
US law requires companies that fall victim to such hacks to disclose them as soon as they are deemed to affect stock prices.
Yahoo announced in September that hackers in 2014 stole personal data from more than 500 million of its user accounts. It admitted another cyber attack in December, this one dating from 2013, affecting more than a billion users.
The SEC’s investigation is focusing on why it took Yahoo several years to reveal the 2013 and 2014 attacks.
The data breaches have been a major embarrassment for a former internet leader that has failed to keep up with Google, Facebook and other rising stars.
The cyber attacks, and how notifying users was handled, has also raised concerns by investors that Verizon may seek to pay a lower price for Yahoo or even back out of the deal.
When companies are in the process of being acquired, earnings that hit or surpass targets typically don’t knock matters off course.
“The bigger things are the breaches; those have Verizon reconsidering the deal,” analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group told AFP.
“I think the merger is at risk; the delay would point to that as still a possibility.”
– Courting Mavens –
The earnings report showed Yahoo swung to profit a year after a massive $4.4 billion loss in the same period a year earlier, resulting from a large writedown on the value of its holdings.
Revenue in the fourth quarter rose to $1.47 billion from $1.27 billion a year earlier.
Yahoo reported a loss of $214 million for the full year on revenue that inched up to $5.2 billion from $5 billion in 2015, according to the earnings report.
Mayer has been driving a shift to mobile, video, social and native advertising offerings at Yahoo, and revenue in those areas — which she dubbed “Mavens,” continued to climb.
Mavens revenue for last year slightly topped $2 billion as compared to $1.7 billion in 2015.
“I’m very pleased with our Q4 results and incredibly proud of the team’s execution on our 2016 strategic plan, particularly given the uniquely eventful past year for Yahoo,” Mayer said.
Yahoo shares were up a little more than one percent to $42.88 in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures, which topped Wall Street expectations.
Mayer will quit the company’s board after its merger with Verizon, according to an SEC filing, though she is expected to remain with the core Yahoo business.
Yahoo is selling its main operating business as a way to separate that from its more valuable stake in Chinese internet giant Alibaba.
The share-tending entity, to be renamed Altaba, Inc., will act as an investment company.
TechUS telecomVerizonYahoo
algol2000
You get this kind of thing, loss of performance, when the females begin to proliferate in a corporate environment. You will never know what hit you!
FG begins payment of N22.6bn to defunct Nigeria Airways workers
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‘I don’t need to clear my name,’ says suspect in killing of mob boss Frank Cali – AOL News
“I don’t need to clear my name,” the Staten Island man accused of gunning down Gambino boss Frank Cali told the Daily News in a brief jailhouse interview on Wednesday,Anthony Comello, 24, who once tried to make a citizen’s arrest of Mayor de Blasio, wore a green-and-white striped jumpsuit as four officers escorted him to a video phone screen at the Ocean County Jail. He is accused of pumping a barrage of bullets into Cali’s chest in the driveway of the mob boss’ Staten Island home last Wednesday.
Source: ‘I don’t need to clear my name,’ says suspect in killing of mob boss Frank Cali – AOL News
→ Investing Outlook
← ROMANS CHAPTER 12 KJV
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Stephen Bennett - Harp Guitar
Stephen Bennett
About Stephen Bennett
Whether playing his great-grandfather's harp guitar, his 1930 National Steel or a standard 6-string, Stephen Bennett is a musician to hear. His playing has won awards and critical praise. In live performance and on record, his diverse musical influences and interests are joined with a lifelong love affair with the sound of guitar strings.
About the instruments
Pictures from here and there…
Listen on Pandora Radio
A Note From Stephen
Store – CDs and more…
© 2009 Harp Guitar. Ignited By TrueFire
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Photo by Jon Craig Photos, courtesy Encounters Festival
Our two cities can take you through the very beginnings of film into pioneering Virtual Realities
Bath can take some credit for the birth of cinema. In 1886, Bathonian John Rudge’s grandly-named Biophantascope produced motion pictures by mounting photographs on a revolving drum; his collaborator William Friese-Greene used celluloid ribbon to pioneer the kinematograph. Fast forward to today and neighbouring city Bristol is named UNESCO City of Film – a permanent status that recognises its outstanding contribution to the world of film-making. Channel 4 have just announced that Bristol will become a Creative Hub alongside Glasgow.
Silver screens
In Bristol, the Watershed – ‘Britain’s first media centre’ – is the go-to venue for independent and art-house films, festivals and digital creativity. Behind the scenes is the Pervasive Media Studio - a creative, collaborative space for digital pioneers, artists and academics to test-bed pioneering technologies. A stone's throw away is the newly opened VR Lab - where augmented realities are being developed. Local heroes, Wallace and Gromit, created by Oscar-winning Aardman Animations, began here and still form a large part of the creative economy.
On the fringe, the Cube Microplex is a Bristol institution, mixing live acts with cult classics and left-field world cinema. In Clevedon, wallow in nostalgia and Grade II listed tin panelling at The Curzon, one of the oldest continually working cinemas in the country.
Bristol’s world-class biggies are Encounters and Wildscreen, one devoted to short-form films and animation and the other, a wildlife doc fest linked to the city’s famous BBC Natural History Unit. But there are film festivals for all occasions: the Palestine Film Festival, the Radical Film Festival and Afrika Eye among others. The Slapstick Festival gives a new lease of life to the funnies of the silent movie era; there’s a festival devoted to Bristol-born Hollywood legend Cary Grant; and the year-round Bristol Film Festival brings classic cinema to unconventional venues: Redcliffe Caves, Bristol Cathedral or Averys wine cellars.
As well as screening new and upcoming films, November’s FilmBath pioneered the F-Rating classification which is awarded to films directed, written or starring women – all three gets a Triple F gold standard rating.
Roll the credits
While Bristol’s Bottle Yard Studios have provided sets for TV programmes like Sherlock, Poldark and The Crystal Maze, the city's landscapes and landmarks have been used in productions such as Dr Who, Casualty and Wolf Hall. Meanwhile, Bath has provided beautiful backdrops for film versions of Les Miserables, Vanity Fair and Persuasion. Even Clevedon has made a bid for stardom with a supporting role as the town centre in Broadchurch.
Related Attractions
Cube Cinema
Curzon Clevedon
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Nobody Knows What Socialism Means The title of this post is not meant to convey that I know what socialism means, so you should defer to me. Instead, it is mean to convey that nobody k...
Why ‘Socialism’ Conveys One Thing Here, Another There Socialism as a governing philosophy, an offhand insult, or both, is stirring politics again. From the U.S to the U.K. to Brazil and beyond, the term i...
Only 51% of Americans say socialism would be a bad thing In a new poll from Gallup, only 51% of Americans say socialism would be a bad thing for the United States, with 43% believing it would be a good thing...
‘Socialism for the rich’: the evils of bad economics The economic arguments adopted by Britain and the US in the 1980s led to vastly increased inequality – and gave the false impression that this outcome...
What Is Democratic Socialism? Whose Version Are We Talking About? Bernie Sanders is giving a speech on democratic socialism. But if you ask five democratic socialists what the term means, you’ll likely get five diffe...
Democratic candidates spar over ‘socialism’ Democratic candidates gathered in San Francisco Saturday to shmooze at the state party’s annual convention — and bicker among themselves over t...
Is socialism the future for Germany's ailing SPD? The Social Democrats are struggling for relevance after a decadelong crisis of faith. DW's Austin Davis traveled to Munich to see whether socialism co...
Why ‘Socialism’ Is Both a Governing Philosophy and an Offhand Insult Socialism as a governing philosophy, an offhand insult, or both, is stirring politics again. From the U.S to the U.K. to Brazil and beyond, the term i...
Conservatives must articulate a response to Medicare for All, or socialism wins Most healthcare proposals — including Medicare for All, Medicare at 50, a public insurance option, expanding Obamacare, and allowing the federal gover...
These Democrats Are Trying to Ensure the Term ‘Socialism’ Doesn’t Define Them in 2020 Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders stood on stage at a Washington, D.C., college campus extolling the virtues of democratic socialism in what his presiden...
Republicans have been tying Democrats to socialism for 90 years. Trump is going all in on the tradition. Ahead of the 2020 elections, Republicans and President Trump are again trying to contrast themselves with Democrats by linking Democratic policy propo...
Melinda Gates: Capitalism needs work, but it beats socialism and the US is 'lucky' to have it Melinda Gates, in an interview with CNBC's Becky Quick, says people living in developing countries "want to live in these types of capitalistic s...
Salt Lake City offers glimpse of socialism Mormon-style Utah has one of the nation’s lowest rates of income inequality in part because of the Church of Latter-day Saints’ welfare system, but it also ranks d...
Gaining Strength in Spain, Sánchez Emerges as Beacon for Socialism in Europe The prime minister has completed a remarkable comeback, consolidating a victory in national elections with a strong showing for the European Parliamen...
Laura Ingraham: Dems live in 'alternate universe' of socialism and 'other people's money' Fox News' Laura Ingraham accused Democrats on Thursday night of living in an "alternate universe" constructed on socialism and "other people's money."...
Candace Owens spars with Dr. Cornel West over the impact of socialism on African-Americans A lively debate ensued on "The Ingraham Angle" on Tuesday evening between conservative commentator Candace Owens and renowned Harvard philosopher Dr. ...
Statehood push for DC, Puerto Rico part of Dems' 'full-bore socialism,' McConnell says House Democrats' attempts to grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico amount to “full-bore socialism” -- which Senate Majority Lead...
Sean Spicer: 2020 election is a choice between Trump's economic prosperity and Dems' left turn toward socialism Voters in 2020 have a clear choice -- continue on President Trump's path of economic prosperity or take a hard-left turn under whoever emerges from th...
The US scored 13 against Thailand but we still don't know if they can defend The Americans have a host of brilliant attacking players but it is their defenders who will most likely decide whether they can retain their World Cup...
How organizations can better defend against DNS attacks DNS has become a primary target for cyberattacks, causing downtime and financial loss for many businesses, according to a new report from EfficientIP....
'An explosion of joy': U.S. defend World Cup celebrations U.S. captain Megan Rapinoe on Wednesday defended her under-fire team mates' exuberant celebrations during their record 13-0 World Cup victory over Tha...
J&J vows to defend itself in talc, opioid lawsuits Johnson & Johnson vowed to defend itself against lawsuits alleging the company fueled the opioid crisis and that its namesake talc-based baby powder c...
Iran will defend itself against any aggression, says foreign minister Iranian will defend itself against any military or economic aggression, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday, calling on European sta...
Top Iranian official: Iran will 'defend against any war efforts' Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Sunday his country would defend itself against any potential war that might arise between the U.S. ...
Which of his two championship belts will Henry Cejudo defend first? Cejudo won a second title on Saturday. What is in his immediate future, and what's in store for Valentina Shevchenko, Tony Ferguson and others from UF...
Iran will defend itself against any aggression: foreign minister Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said on Sunday that Tehran would strongly defend itself against any military or economic aggression and called on...
US defend title to win fourth Women's World Cup The US beat the Netherlands in the Women's World Cup Final to defend their title and secure their fourth World Cup. The Dutch put up a fight, but the ...
Semenya wins women's 800, wants to defend world title Caster Semenya easily won the women's 800 at the Prefontaine Classic on Sunday, as an international court continues to debate her future in the event....
Trump’s Aides, Not Eager to Defend His Tweets, Also Don’t Condemn Them His staff was more frustrated that the remarks interrupted an intraparty Democratic fight between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and four freshman congresswomen...
WIMBLEDON '19: Djokovic, Kerber defend their championships WIMBLEDON '19: Novak Djokovic, Angelique Kerber defend their titles; Roger Federer seeks his 9th title at All England Club ...
California police defend using spit mask on 12-year-old boy Police on Wednesday defended their use of a clear mesh "spit mask" on a combative 12-year-old boy as irate bystanders videotaped the tense encounter i...
Iran Prepared to Defend Itself After U.S. Sends Troops to Region Iran would be prepared to respond to a possible confrontation with the U.S. after the Trump administration dispatched troops to the region and arrange...
Candidate to run global food body will 'not defend' EU stance on GM Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle tells US she would be more open to its interests in UN roleEurope’s candidate to run the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisa...
France is creating a space command to defend its satellites The US isn't the only country that wants to create a dedicated space force within its military. French President Emmanuel Macron has greenlit pl...
All the Times Beyoncé's Beyhive Used Their Sting to Defend Their Queen If you come for Beyoncé, you come for the Beyhive too! When you become a music superstar, chances are you develop a strong, loyal fan base that will ...
Semenya wins women’s 800, wants to defend world title STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Caster Semenya easily won the women’s 800 at the Prefontaine Classic on Sunday, as an international court continues to d...
Ex-Labour official to defend breaking gagging order Labour's ex-head of disputes will argue whistleblowing laws allow him to give testimony to journalists on the party's handling of antisemitism allegat...
Police defend arrest of 12-year-old in western Michigan Police in western Michigan are defending their actions in the arrest of a 12-year-old black boy following online criticism about the officers' respons...
The Latest: Police defend Facebook likes deal with fugitive TORRINGTON, Conn. (AP) — The Latest on the Facebook fugitive (all times local): 3:45 p.m. Torrington police are defending the agreement they struck wi...
"Committed To Defend People Under Attack By PM": Rahul Gandhi In Wayanad Congress president Rahul Gandhi, on his first trip after the national election to Kerala's Wayanad - the constituency that voted him to Parliament - t...
Unfamiliar, but nice: Halep back in Paris to defend title Simona Halep is experiencing something new at the French Open this year, coming to Paris as the defending champion ...
| US defend 'excessive' celebrations that left Thai players in tears US star Alex Morgan defended her team's joyous celebrations after they began their defence of the women's World Cup with a 13-0 demolition of Thailand...
The Latest: Hong Kong police defend dispersal of ‘riot’ HONG KONG (AP) — Latest on the debate around Hong Kong extradition legislation (all times local): 5:50 p.m. Hong Kong’s police commissioner says...
Trump administration will have to defend claim of deceit over census question Plaintiffs suing the Trump administration over the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 census have until July 12 to file briefs explaining...
The Latest: Truex holds off Busch to defend Sonoma title SONOMA, Calif. (AP) — The Latest on the NASCAR Cup Series race in Sonoma (all times local): Martin Truex Jr. has won the NASCAR Cup Series race at Son...
Beijing vows to defend 'islands and rocks' in the South China Sea A high-level colonel in the Chinese military admits there's a possibility of a "miscalculation" in the South China Sea, but defended China's...
Cuomo uses sports analogy to defend Lynton’s removal from MTA board ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday defended his decision to replace new MTA board appointee Michael Lynton as a simple swapping of players. “The wa...
USTR, Treasury defend Trump strategy on trade row with China BEIJING (AP) — The U.S. Trade Representative and Treasury Department have issued a statement defending Washington’s strategy in its trade disput...
Trump Denounces Paris Climate Accord, Says, "Will Defend The Environment" US President Donald Trump on Monday once again denounced the "unfair, ineffective, and very, very expensive" Paris climate accord, during a speech on ...
Gulf Arab states support right of Saudi, UAE to defend interests Gulf Arab states voiced support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to take any action required to defend their security following recent at...
Fed's Evans: Rate Cuts Needed to Defend Fed's Inflation Target Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said in a television interview Tuesday the U.S. central bank needs to lower its short-term rat...
House Republicans defend Trump over ‘racist’ attack on Dems Top House Republicans rallied to President Trump’s defense on Tuesday ahead of a vote on a Democratic resolution condemning his attacks on four freshm...
Conservative Shitheads Race to Defend Teen's Right to Say the N-Word and Still Go to Harvard Kyle Kashuv, the Parkland shooting survivor turned right-wing, pro-gun activist, tweeted on Monday that Harvard University rescinded his admission aft...
Souths defend George Burgess's reputation after nine-game NRL ban for eye gouge Rabbitohs player ruled out for rest of season‘It’s a tragedy for George,’ says club’s general manager The fate of George Burgess’ career at South Sydn...
| WATCH: Sudan protesters flood capital to defend 'revolution' 'Just fall, just fall,' Hadia chanted, her voice cutting through the din as a convoy of paramilitaries rolled past a mass of flag-waving protesters in...
House Dems defend Nancy Pelosi amid spat with AOC A number of Democrats stood by Nancy Pelosi Thursday after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the speaker of singling her out based on race. “I thi...
Seattle defend Major League Rugby crown before season three expansion After the Seawolves’ dramatic win over San Diego, work will go on to address weaknesses – and build on evident strengthsThe Seattle Seawolves retained...
De Blasio tries to defend using taxpayer-funded NYPD security for campaign trips Mayor Bill de Blasio defended the use of taxpayer funds to cover the costs of his NYPD security detail while traveling for his long-shot presidential ...
U.S. Navy says working with partners to defend free flow of commerce and navigation The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet said on Thursday it is working closely with the British Royal Navy as well as regional and global partners to preserve and...
UPDATE 2-Minister calls on next PM to defend Britain's leading finance role Britain's next prime minister must make it their "overriding" priority to protect London's globally competitive position in finance after Brexit, fina...
Hong Kong shops, workers in rare strike to 'defend freedom' Hong Kong retailer Alan Li shut up shop on Wednesday, joining about 100 businesses and numerous workers in a rare strike to protest against an extradi...
Indians Defend Pak Skipper For Wearing Traditional Outfit To Meet Queen While all the other captains were dressed in formal suits, Pakistan captain Sarfaraz Ahmed wore a traditional outfit to meet Queen Elizabeth and other...
Australia's Domino's Pizza says it will defend itself against staff underpayment class action Australia's Domino's Pizza Enterprises said on Friday it did not mislead franchisees over payments to their employees and that it had not formally re...
Donald Trump calls into TV program to defend Mexico tariff threat President Donald Trump called into a cable news program Monday to refute comments by the chief of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who'd said his recent ...
Semenya wins in Montreuil, intends to defend 800m world title Caster Semenya, who is battling the sport's governing IAAF over rules that prevent her from running her preferred distance races unless she takes test...
Travel bloggers DEFEND hanging out of train in 'dangerous' railway snap TRAVEL bloggers Camille & Jean went viral when they posted a 'foolish' picture from Ella, Sri Lanka. They have since defended the controversial move....
‘Ain’t nobody licking our Blue Bell!’: Cops defend ice cream in viral photo Freeze! A couple of Texas cops struck a pose in a blue wall of defiance against would-be lickers of Blue Bell ice cream. “Ain’t nobody licking o...
At This Point It's Hard to Find a White Supremacist Laura Ingraham Won't Defend Laura Ingraham and other Fox News commentators have no problem promoting racism and sexism on their shows, but Ingraham did her audience one better on...
Bernie No..... With less than a week to go before the first Democratic primary debate, MA Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been steadily climbing in a number of both state ...
Hong Kong singer-activist urges U.N. rights body to defend territory China is tightening its grip on Hong Kong and the territory's autonomy and democratic freedoms are slipping away, a prominent Hong Kong activist told ...
Seaver vs. Brady: Iconic Mets Kranepool, Shamsky vehemently defend ‘Tom Terrific’ A white sign emblazoned with “Amazin’” in bold black letters hung above Ed Kranepool and Art Shamsky. That moniker forever will be associated with the...
Fort of Castillo San Cristóbal: Built to Defend Against the English, Dutch and Marauding Pirates Puerto Rico is a unique island with stunning scenery as well as a complex history and fascinating culture. ...
That's the Tea! Sophie Turner Interrupts Honeymoon to Defend Soccer Star Alex Morgan Sophie Turner has interrupted her honeymoon with Joe Jonas to deliver an important message, a message of support for U.S. soccer star Alex Morgan. On...
Trump tells four liberal congresswomen to ‘go back’ to their countries, prompting Pelosi to defend them The president said the four women of color — three of whom were born in the United States — should “go back” to the “crime infested places from which ...
Tony Romo pulls away to defend title at American Century Championship in Tahoe Tony Romo defended his title at the American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament at Edgewood Tahoe. ...
'The View' hosts defend Joe Biden from Dem attacks, say there’s a 'real racist in the White House' "The View" hosts on Thursday pushed back on race-based criticisms of former Vice President Joe Biden, suggesting that by calling him a "racist," peopl...
Here's how you can get a brand-new Galaxy S9 for only $300 (50 percent off) If that $350 refurbished Galaxy S9 from a couple of days ago seemed like a killer deal but you held off anyway for something better, that something ha...
Anthony Joshua will watch Madison Square Garden’s greatest fights before going out to defend his titles Madison Square Garden’s proud boxing history is not lost on Anthony Joshua The post Anthony Joshua will watch Madison Square Garden’s greatest f...
Democrats Vote to Condemn Trump’s Racist Tweets. Republicans Use a Rule From 1801 to Defend Him If you needed evidence that the rules of Washington are in unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory, you just needed to watch the C-SPAN coverage of the...
California police defend placing ‘spit mask’ over boy’s head after video sparks outrage Sacramento attorney Mark T. Harris said he is considering a lawsuit on behalf of the youth and his mother against the city, the security guard, and an...
Who’s Buying What Bernie’s Selling? On Wednesday, Bernie Sanders gave a prepared 45-minute speech about what democratic socialism means to him and why he believes it’s the best way forwa...
Ro Khanna, the Bernie Guy Who's Okay With Billionaires Ro Khanna, the second-term Democratic Congressman from Silicon Valley and a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, has the tricky...
Hong Kong’s struggle is ours too. It’s a wake-up call to defend all basic human rights | Natalie Nougayrède The young activists’ aspirations – to assemble peacefully, to speak freely, to not be persecuted – are a universal causeWhy do the Hong Kong activists...
LaCroix was the Millennial 'it' brand. Now it has lost its way LaCroix was once the "it" brand in one of the fastest-growing parts of the beverage market. But bigger, deeper-pocketed companies have caught up, and ...
Laptop Mag's brand rankings put HP at the top – with Apple far down Our friends at Laptop Mag have published their annual "Best Laptop Brands" report, ranking all of the major laptop makers on various criteria. Wh...
Deal: Get a brand new Apple iPhone SE for as low as $240 Despite the fact that Apple discontinued the iPhone SE, the Cupertino-based company continues to sell refurbished as well as new units for a lot less ...
Amazon is now the world’s most valuable brand. Amazon is now the world’s most valuable brand. The world’s least valuable brand: Amazon Warehouse Worker Pee in a Bottle Thirst Quencher....
A brand new ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ trailer just came out, but you won’t see it on TV Earlier this week, we saw a leaked Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer that featured plenty of previously unseen footage and even spoiled a few plot det...
How to Build a Personal Brand Without Being a Dick Strategist, podcaster, and influencer-for-good Aminatou Sow talks about confronting trolls, building a brand, and using her considerable clout for pos...
You Just Lucked Into Up to 75% Off Sale at Lucky Brand A blowout sale is upon us. Lucky Brand wants to make sure you get lucky with some deeply discounted apparel, so they’ve restocked their clearance sect...
US does not brand China as currency manipulator WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has again decided not to label China or any other country as a currency manipulator. But in a report to Con...
Mars has a brand new crater, and it sure is pretty Mars, like any other rocky world, has its fair share of craters. These scars of ancient impacts give the dusty surface of the planet some serious pers...
I would take a bullet for Putin, says Bernie Ecclestone Former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone says he would stand in front of any gunman who tried to shoot Vladimir Putin because he is a "good guy" who had nothi...
Premium TV brand Loewe is closing down its business Luxury TV manufacturer Loewe is throwing in the towel. The company is set to cease operations from July 1, with increased competition leading to insuf...
Vietnam's First Car Brand Is a Hodgepodge of Opel and BMW Parts Vietnam is out to prove you can have communism and cars. There’s the very first Vietnam Grand Prix coming up next year, but first, the country is laun...
Sports Illustrated, the Brand, Is Sold for $110 Million Meredith will continue to run the magazine and website, but Authentic Brands Group, a marketing company, will control the rights to images and the nam...
Krost fashion brand to open pop-up in Soho Samuel Krost is opening a two-week pop-up in Soho for his eponymous Krost brand. Located at 158 Mercer St., just steps from Houston Street., for its r...
Apple just surprised us with a brand new iPod touch For the first time since 2015, Apple is refreshing its iPod touch line with a brand new model. The 2019 edition of the affordable portable device feat...
Walmart Memorial Day sale: save up to $400 on top brand 4K TVs Memorial Day weekend is officially here, and that means discounts and deals from your favorite retailers. Walmart's Memorial Day sale includes di...
New name for BB&T-SunTrust bank lampooned: 'You could put this on a brand of toothpaste' "They have thrown aside two great brands that had real value in exchange for this horrific, means-nothing statement," said investor psychologist Peter...
Rihanna Proves She Is Her Best Fenty Brand Ambassador Again “Fearlessness is a façade,” Rihanna told Vogue of the pressure she feels to perform. The ceaseless hype surrounding the most-anticipated label launch...
Germany: no layoffs at Volkswagen brand through 2029 BERLIN (AP) — Automaker Volkswagen is ruling out compulsory layoffs at its core brand’s German plants for the next 10 years even as it looks to ...
New Bentley EXP 100 GT to mark brand's 100th birthday News 1 Jul, 2019 The new Bentley EXP 100 GT has been teased ahead of its official reveal on 10 July, the date of the British brand'...
Justice Department hires whole new team of lawyers to defend the Trump administration’s bid to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst The Justice Department is shaking up the legal team fighting for the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 census....
Toyota ranks No. 1, but VW makes biggest gain in car brand value Toyota has been No. 1 in the brand value rankings in 12 of the 14 years the study has been carried out. VW was the only brand in the automotive top 10...
This brand new Android flagship phone is even cheaper than the OnePlus 7 OnePlus unveiled the OnePlus 7 series last week, which includes two affordable flagships: The regular OnePlus 7 and the OnePlus 7 Pro. The latter is m...
Audi kills TT as it bids to emerge as a premium EV brand When it launched in 1998, the two-seat Audi TT won numerous fans but more importantly, it established Audi as a design leader. This helped differentia...
I Saw a Brand New Car Advertised for $50! Can I Make the Dealer Sell It to Me at That Price? As Jalopnik’s resident car buying expert and professional car shopper, I get emails. Lots of emails. I’ve decided to pick a few questions and try to h...
Rihanna launches new fashion brand in Paris with LVMH Barbadian singer Rihanna has unveiled her new fashion brand with Louis Vuitton owner LVMH, a rare move by the French group to set up a label from scra...
“Chanel Is Not For Sale,” Says Brand Of Long-Term Strategy “Unfortunately for many bankers, we will remain a fantasy, but that’s what nice brands are about, creating dreams,” said Philippe Blondiaux, Chanel’s ...
Cosmetics brand doubling size of downtown space Skincare products maker Korres USA is putting on a happy face at 80 Maiden Lane. The Greek brand, which specializes in all-natural cosmetics, is upsiz...
Brand-New Hearthstone Legendary Card Is Already One Of The Most Popular In The Game From time to time, Blizzard gives away free Hearthstone cards. Sometimes, they are good. But sometimes, as with the recently released free Legendary c...
New 2021 Mercedes EQB SUV to boost brand's electric line-up News 21 Jun, 2019 The all-new Mercedes EQB electric crossover will share its platform and boxy looks with the GLB when it officially lau...
Jay-Z joins cannabis company as chief brand strategist The rapper is the latest celebrity to get into the marijuana business as its legalization for recreational use has spread to 11 US statesBillionaire r...
Xiaomi launches new smartphone brand focused on photography It looks like Xiaomi has found a way to take advantage of its latest acquisition, Meitu's hardware business focused on selfie smartphones. Far from be...
CDC: Salmonella outbreak apparently linked to brand of papayas A Cavi brand of whole, fresh papayas "are likely the source" of a salmonella outbreak in eight states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...
Lynk & CO CEO outlines plans for 'wild horse' brand Lynk & CO's Alain Visser said the new automaker sees itself as a "mobility brand with a car," making it the "wild horse" in China's Geely Holding Grou...
The HTC U19e & Desire 19+ are the brand's latest overpriced devices HTC U19eThis year has been a pretty quiet one for HTC’s smartphone business so far, but during a press conference earlier today the Taiwan-based compa...
Huawei will have to wait to become world's biggest smartphone brand Huawei's plans to become the world's biggest smartphone brand will have to be put on hold, a senior company executive said, as the company faces incre...
New BH90210 Teaser Features Kissing and Brand New Footage Finally, we've got a glimpse of what BH90210 might actually look like. A new promo appears to feature some actual footage, and there are a whole bun...
The first macOS 10.15 screenshots reveal brand new Music and TV apps Apple on Monday will take the wraps off its newest software innovations that are almost ready for mass consumption. New iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS ...
W Hotel Creator Evokes Childhood With New Lodging Brand Real-estate investor Barry Sternlicht is known for hotels featuring sleek designs, sophisticated cocktail lounges and opulent furnishings. His latest ...
Facebook is so insanely big, it had to design a brand new DHCP server You can tell a lot about the direction of a company by looking at its tech stack. A great example of this comes from Facebook, which today announced t...
Apple may release an iPhone SE 2 with a brand new design next year The iPhone SE has long been a sleeper hit for Apple, with Tim Cook noting a few years ago that demand for the compact device was surprisingly strong a...
New Vauxhall Corsa kickstarts rejuvenation of British brand The Corsa gets a new nose, but all Opel-Vauxhall models arriving after this will get a front-end treatment even more reminiscent of the recent GTX con...
Your Budget Won't Sweat This Amazon Brand Activewear Sale Amazon sells its own activewear, because Amazon sells everything now, and they’re discounting a bunch of the men’s stuff below their already-low MSRPs...
Gap Brand, Old Navy Post Weakest Sales in Three Years Comparable sales slipped at Old Navy for the first time in three years and the Gap brand posted its biggest decline since 2016, a weak showing for bot...
The Bernie-Warren Suicide Pact to Save America Those of you wise enough to read Splinter should understand that the two best candidates policy-wise in the Democratic primary are Bernie Sanders and ...
Bernie says he'll probably raise payroll, income taxes to pay for 'Medicare for All' Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., specified Tuesday how he would pay for his Medicare for All" program, which critics have lambasted for its cost and impact...
Washington Post Dives to New Stupid Low to Attack Bernie It’s the first day of July, so summer is here and rent is due. You probably have to pay your student loans and credit cards, too. Feeling a bit light ...
Seeking Sister Wife's Bernie McGee Dead at 41 Bernie McGee has passed away at the age of 41. The Seeking Sister Wife star died over the weekend, his wife Paige McGee confirms to TLC. Paige shares...
Hunt and Johnson criticise Trump remarks - but don't brand them racist Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have criticised Donald Trump after he told four US congresswomen to "go back" to the "broken and crime infested places f...
Tecno to Launch 'Spark' Budget Smartphone Sub-Brand in India Transsion Holdings' smartphone brand Tecno Mobile is set to launch a new budget smartphone sub-brand 'Spark' in India soon, a senior company executive...
The world's most valuable brand is not who Apple and Google fans might expect There are many research firms that publish yearly reports ranking the world's most valuable brands after taking different factors and numbers into con...
Wayfair's modern furniture brand is having a huge sale right now Get that modern look you've always wanted while saving on popular rugs, accent chairs, throw pillows, and more. &#...
VW truck brand to invest $344 million in Brazil after Ford exit Volkswagen AG truck brand Scania said on Tuesday it will invest 1.4 billion reais ($344.14 million) to modernize its Brazilian factory in Sao Bernardo...
Bajaj Auto Gets Ready With First Electric Scooter Under Urbanite Brand Bajaj Auto is getting ready to launch its electric scooter under the Urbanite brand. The first electric vehicle from Bajaj will be an electric scooter...
Revived De Tomaso brand to make debut at Goodwood 2019 Original Pantera has lent its looks – and possibly its name – to new De Tomaso car 60 years since the defunct marque launched, its name will adorn ...
Apple’s AR glasses might be the first brand new product to launch after Jony Ive’s departure If you’ve been following Apple for a while now, the news that Jony Ive left the company shouldn’t have been a massive shock. Ive has been ...
Olay becomes first major skincare brand to trial refillable packs Beauty label to sell moisturiser with recyclable refill pod in attempt to cut plastic wasteOlay has become the first major global skincare brand to te...
Yasiel Puig Beats The Brewers With His Signature Brand Of Derring-Do I have no idea if Yasiel Puig is as dumb as Pedro Strop says he is, but on this we can all agree: Puig routinely does very cool stuff on a baseball fi...
Tech's favorite bag brand will sell you a $600 carbon fiber tripod Peak Design is known for its trendy (and pricey) camera bags and straps -- it's the kit du jour for photographers and vloggers. And now it's...
This brand returns to Mattress Firm stores after bitter feud Mattress Firm and the maker of Tempur-Pedic are getting back together after a dispute over accusations the retailer was selling lookalike products. &...
People are mocking a fashion brand for selling a $76 bikini you can't swim in PrettyLittleThing and Princrastinate/Twitter Pretty Little Thing became the subject of a viral tweet when a customer named Alisha discovered the biki...
Amazon overtakes Google and Apple to become the world’s most valuable brand Amazon has become the world’s most valuable brand this year by overtaking Google and Apple, according to a report. Last year, Google was ranked...
A Brand New Look At Halo Infinite, Which Will Be An Xbox Scarlett Launch Title Microsoft finally showed off some footage for Halo Infinite—a weighty name for the sixth major game in the 18-year-old franchise. Halo Infinite will l...
Rihanna Launches Her Fenty Fashion Brand With Paris Pop-Up Store (PARIS) — Rihanna, the first black woman in history to head up a major Parisian luxury house, is unveiling her first fashion designs for Fenty a...
The Garmin Vivoactive 3 smartwatch is an excellent bargain at $175 (brand-new with warranty) If you're in the market for a nice and robust Android and iOS-compatible smartwatch with a reasonable price point, you might be having a hard time cho...
Mail.ru Group reveals global gaming brand My.Games Russia's Mail.ru Group has revealed its global gaming brand My.Games. It already has games like Warface and more than 25 million monthly active users....
Brand new Pixel 4 leak features the same design that Google confirmed Responding to a series of recent leaks that claimed the Pixel 4 would have a square-shaped dual-lens rear camera module, Google shocked fans last week...
Bernie: Pelosi too tough on AOC’s squad, says they are ‘the future of the Democratic party’ Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., weighed in on the infighting that has been going on in the Democratic party, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi trading barbs...
Bernie Taupin: ‘Rocket Man’ lyrics aren’t a David Bowie rip-off Bernie Taupin is the ultimate songwriting wingman, penning the words that Elton John would set to music for such golden-era gems as “Honky Cat,” “Good...
Biden, Bernie to face off on same stage at 1st round of Democratic debates Front-runners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders will end up sharing the debate stage in Miami later this month, along with heavy-hitting rivals Kamala Harr...
Louis Vuitton's show stages brand's love affair with Paris Monogrammed Eiffel towers and crepe stands framed Virgil Abloh’s flowery collectionWith Karl Lagerfeld’s death in February, there is a vacancy in Pari...
SoftBank brand Ymobile to delay launch of Huawei P30 Lite phone Japanese telco SoftBank Corp's low-cost mobile brand Ymobile said on Wednesday it would delay the launch of Huawei P30 Lite smartphone, following the ...
Keren Craig to exit Marchesa, her fashion brand with Georgina Chapman Marchesa has faced a difficult 18 months since the allegations of sexual misconduct against Chapman's ex-husband Harvey Weinstein first made head...
Get a Smart Keyboard for Apple's classic 9.7-inch iPad Pro at the low, low price of $60 (brand new) If you're still somehow in the possession of a 2016-released 9.7-inch iPad Pro, you might be inclined to upgrade to Apple's new iPad Air, one of last ...
Boost Mobile welcomes a new brand into the US with the crazy cheap Wiko Ride The US smartphone market is largely dominated by Apple and Samsung, and although OnePlus has made decent strides of late with T-Mobile in its corner, ...
UPDATE 2-Brazil's Natura to boost revenues by investing in Avon brand - CEO Brazilian cosmetics firm Natura expects to boost revenue by investing in brand and digital capabilities after sealing a deal to merge with Avon Produc...
Big Baller Brand's demise looks imminent with sad clearance sale at a local gym Big Baller Brand once charged $50 for its T-shirts, and those prices were slashed to $5 at the pop-up shop at a volleyball tournament. &#...
Indian court rules that Asus can’t use its ‘Zenfone’ brand over trademark complaint Yesterday, Delhi high court banned phone maker Asus from using the name ‘Zenfone,’ ‘Zen,’ or any similar trademark for its products. The court said th...
North Face Apologizes for Adding Its Own Photos to Wikipedia to Promote Its Brand The North Face said it was ending a campaign that took photos of its clothing and equipment at outdoor destinations and uploaded the branded pictures ...
Ron Burkle and Sydell Group Sell Youth Hostel Brand for $400 Million A U.K. investment firm is paying about $400 million to acquire Freehand Hotels, the New York-based lodging company majority owned by hotel operator Sy...
Rihanna Breaks From Fenty Fashion To Introduce Chinese Brand Quetsche RiRi’s penchant for emerging labels has been bolstered by her stylist and collaborator Jahleel Weaver, who took over the role from Mel Ottenberg when ...
Meet the murfers: laid-back mums or busy brand-builders? A coterie of Australian influencers are taking a particular corner of Instagram by storm, one expensive oven at a timeName: Murfers.Age: Varies. Conti...
Mercedes ESF Concept shows brand's vision of an accident-free future News 20 May, 2019 Mercedes has unveiled a new autonomous concept car based on the GLE, and it comes with a variety of prototype safety s...
Sports Illustrated brand sells for $110 million; same company will run editorial production Meredith Corporation sells the intellectual property of Sports Illustrated to Authentic Brands Group for $110 million, but Meredith will continue to o...
'Spotlight' eBay deal brings Samsung Galaxy S10 price down to only $570 brand-new If you can't decide whether to buy the 6.1-inch Galaxy S10 at a cool discount from B&H Photo Video or at its normal price directly from Samsung with a...
Tyson Launches Its First Plant-Based Protein Brand to Compete With Beyond Meat Tyson Foods is launching the company’s first plant-based protein brand, called Raised & Rooted, that will feature vegetarian nuggets that taste li...
Skoda Launches New iV Sub-Brand; Marks Entry Into The World Of Electric Vehicles The first two allelectric vehicles based on Volkswagen Groups MEB modular electric car platform will be introduced in 2020, one of which will be a pro...
Trump sets record $7M one-day fundraising goal to top Biden, Beto, Bernie The Trump-Pence campaign has set a $7 million fundraising goal for Tuesday, the day President Trump is traveling to Orlando, Fla., to officially annou...
Biden hits back at Bernie’s bashing over high-dollar fundraisers Hours before he headlines two campaign fundraising events in Boston on Wednesday, former Vice President Joe Biden pushed back against criticism by som...
Bernie Taupin: ‘Rocketman’ is my platonic love story with Elton John Bernie Taupin is finally getting his close-up as Elton John’s longtime songwriting partner in the hit movie musical “Rocketman.” The 69-year-old lyric...
Beto and Bernie blast Trump for deal with Mexico and threatening tariffs 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke mocked President Trump’s claims of victory in the recent deal reached with Mexico to avert his th...
Yankees great Bernie Williams goes to bat in Washington for art and music in public schools Bernie Williams' love of music is known to New York Yankees fans. Now he is advocating for more music education in public schools. &...
Killer eBay deal brings original 128GB Google Pixel XL down to $200 (brand new) Google's hot new Pixel 3a and 3a XL are the talk of the town right now, shining in the camera performance department with the same stellar rear-facing...
Brand new Pixel 4 leak shows the display design and new mint color option After a series of leaks revealed the Pixel 4’s purported design, suggesting the phone will look a lot like the iPhone 11 when it comes to rear c...
Nike's 'inclusive' image at risk if it fails women athletes, brand experts say Olympic athlete Alysia Montano said when she told then sponsor Nike she wanted to have a baby during her career, the sports giant told her it would pa...
Brand New Jeep Gladiators and Chevy Silverados Destroyed After Train Derails in Nevada A train carrying at least a dozen new automobiles including Jeep Gladiators, Jeep Wranglers, Chevrolet Silverados, and GMC Sierras derailed Wednesday ...
Kantar study: Amazon passes Apple, Google as world's most valuable brand Retail giant Amazon surpassed Google Tuesday as the world's most valuable brand -- with a total value of $315.5 billion, an increase of more than $100...
Nissan’s Infiniti brand to move back to Japan from Hong Kong: document Nissan Motor Co’s premium brand Infiniti is relocating its headquarters back to Japan from Hong Kong, its home since 2012, to create "more operational...
Pernod Ricard adds U.S. premium brand Rabbit Hole Whiskey to its portfolio Pernod Ricard said on Friday it was acquiring Kentucky-based Rabbit Hole Whiskey, a high-end whiskey and bourbon maker founded seven years ago, as it ...
Going To Make This Brand Tie-In Work As Best We Can: 5 Dark And Spooky Horror Stories That Feature Claritin-D Claritin-D gave us a bunch of money to write a sponsored post, but didn’t really specify what they wanted. We thought it might be fun to do some scary...
A Day Well Spent With... Susie Willis, founder of natural skincare brand Romilly Wilde 'At 50 I feel fitter, stronger and more energetic than at 25. 30 years ago I didn't know what wellness was. I lived on skittles, rose wine and pringle...
The Veja way: inside the cult sneaker brand's operations in Amazonia – a photo essay Thanks to its ethical credentials and stylish designs, the trainer brand has amassed a devoted following. Here, its co-founder, Sébastien Kopp, files ...
Secret brand deodorant donates $529,000 to US women's soccer team to help close pay gap Procter & Gamble and its Secret deodorant, a sponsor of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, is now supporting its members' fight for equa...
Uber unveils brand new Jump electric scooters and swappable batteries for bikes Uber launched its Jump scooter rental service in October, with Xiaomi delivering the actual scooters that are one tap away if available in your city. ...
Lyricist Bernie Taupin on Rocketman‘s Depiction of His 50-Year Bond With Elton John For the past 50 years, Bernie Taupin has served as the primary translator of Elton John’s memories, moods and fantasies. John’s longtime l...
Sports Illustrated Bosses Insist To Staff That Being Sold To Necrophilic Brand Enthusiasts Is Good For 65 years, Sports Illustrated has persisted in narrowly covering sports, neglecting those who would like to, say, have their prostates examined in ...
Former Victoria's Secret model slams Karlie Kloss' 'feminist' reasons for leaving brand After Karlie Kloss claimed to quit modeling for Victoria's Secret in order to be a better feminist, another of the brand's former stunners is speaking...
Scott Disick Unveils His "Talentless" Clothing Brand & One Kardashian Family Member Isn't So Impressed Kris Jenner's mom is a tough sell! Grandma MJ and Scott Disick's sweet friendship continues in this clip from Sunday's Keeping Up With the Kardashian...
'Our traditional garment is not spandex': Kim Kardashian West renames Kimono brand amid outcry The reality TV star had faced widespread criticism after announcing her new shapewear line would be called KimonoDays after announcing the launch of h...
Apple's brand image in China is wrecked, expected to lead to big iPhone sales decline As if Apple's troubles in the world's largest smartphone market weren't already bad enough, iPhones have been reportedly facing somewhat of an "inform...
BBC must explain why it broadcast Jo Brand's battery acid comments over Nigel Farage, Theresa May says Theresa May has demanded an explanation from BBC chiefs for broadcasting a programme in which comedian Jo Brand joked about throwing battery acid on p...
Mike Pence heads to border to defend migrant facilities as Democrats decry 'unconscionable' conditions Mike Pence will tour a migrant detention center while House Democrats host a hearing about the centers featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ...
Elizabeth Warren Takes a Bite Out of the Bernie Bros With $19 Million Haul in Campaign Cash Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren raised $19.1 million in campaign cash over the past three months, beating the take of similarly ...
Former Yankees star Bernie Williams to perform music at Baseball Hall of Fame inductions Bernie Williams, the former Yankees star who was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award in 2009, will perform during the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. ...
Lady Gaga is launching her long-awaited beauty brand exclusively on Amazon — and pre-orders start on Prime Day Emma McIntyre/Getty Images Lady Gaga is finally launching her beauty brand, Haus Laboratories. Haus Laboratories will reportedly be the first major b...
The Twitter account for Megan Rapinoe's brand appeared to be taken over by a pro-Trump troll amid the player's barbs with the president LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images A Twitter account for United States Women's National Team co-captain Megan Rapinoe's personal brand appeared to b...
Theresa May’s Resignation Speech In announcing her departure, Mrs. May lamented the fact that she had tried and failed to persuade lawmakers to back her Brexit deal. Here is the text ...
Almost Everything Trump Said in His Environment Speech Was a Lie On the same day that Washington, D.C. was hit by a deluge of dangerous rain and flash flooding, President Trump gave an hour-long speech meant to conv...
Best speech to text app of 2019 While speech-to-text used to be specifically only for desktops, the development of mobile devices and the explosion of easily accessible apps means th...
Second Democratic debate could come down to Biden vs. Sanders During the second night of the Democratic presidential debate on Thursday, most eyes will likely be trained on former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S...
"One Of The Most Opaque": P Chidambaram On Budget Speech The budget speech by Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman is one of the "most opaque ever" former finance minister P Chidambaram said, pointing out that ...
Hear Me Out: Trump Speech Karaoke I came within a bladed edge of red death when I went out for karaoke one night last winter, but I do not hold that against karaoke. Karaoke is good sl...
Planes fly over Washington during Trump speech U.S. military warplanes and presidential aircraft conducted flyovers as planned during President Donald Trump's speech in Washington, D.C. on Thu...
Meet DW's champions of free speech DW Freedom works to promote greater freedom of speech and the media around the world by raising awareness of the detention and intimidation of journal...
Here's what investors are watching for from the Boeing CEO's speech CNBC's Phil LeBeau joins "Squawk Box" to give a preview of Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg's speech at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Confer...
A PR expert explains what the Boeing CEO should say in his big speech Dean Crutchfield, founder of Crutchfield & Partners, joins "Squawk Box" to discuss what investors hope to hear from Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg at th...
U.N. targets hate speech with new strategy U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday unveiled a new strategy to confront hate speech, which he warned was a precursor to the Holocaust, ...
Looking for Free Speech in Russia? Try YouTube The online video site has become a primary information source for tens of millions in a country where television avoids topics uncongenial to the gove...
Sanders losing the ‘Bern’ in New Hampshire: poll He’s Berning out. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ support in neighboring New Hampshire, where he trounced Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary electi...
The Trailer: Why the 2016 Sanders voter is still up for grabs In this edition: Democrats try to convert the Berniecrats, Fox News becames a primary issue, Marianne Williamson campaigns in Washington, and Kentucky...
Warren and Sanders: Two Liberals Aiming for the Same Target As Elizabeth Warren emerges from Bernie Sanders’s shadow, the two standard-bearers of the progressive base find themselves competing for voters, and d...
Sanders hits back at AOC after Ivanka Trump dig Sarah Sanders, the former White House press secretary, fired back at freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who called out Ivanka Trump for accompanyi...
'Raw, sad, hilarious': how Rip Torn lit up TV with The Larry Sanders Show The Larry Sanders Show was the grand stage Rip Torn always deserved – and he held it together like a masterTo look back on Rip Torn’s filmography is t...
R.I.P. Rip Torn of The Larry Sanders Show and Dodgeball As reported by Deadline, actor Rip Torn—best known for his work on The Larry Sanders Show and his memorable appearances in films like Men In Black and...
Sanders scores $18M in donations, but lags behind Buttigieg Sen. Bernie Sanders raised $18 million for his 2020 presidential bid in the second quarter, putting him behind Pete Buttigieg’s $24.8 million...
Don't bother replacing Sarah Sanders – there's no point As long as Trump occupies the Oval Office, the role of press secretary is a farce and a distractionThe imminent resignation of Sarah Sanders as Donald...
The best free text to speech software 2019 In years gone by, text to speech software was rather expensive, but these days there are excellent text to speech tools available free of charge. We&a...
YouTubers petition for free speech after AKK criticism The head of Germany's CDU is facing a backlash after suggesting there should be "rules" for influential online bloggers during election campaigns. Tho...
Bow Down to Hannah Brown After Her Epic Bachelorette Speech WOW. Just...wow. Just when we were sitting here still trying to figure out why Hannah has kept Luke P. on The Bachelorette through all this madness,...
Microsoft AI creates realistic speech with little training Text-to-speech conversion is becoming increasingly clever, but there's a problem: it can still take plenty of training time and resources to prod...
When And Where To Watch Nirmala Sitharaman's First Budget Speech India Budget 2019: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's budget speech will begin around 11:00 am on July 5. The Budget speech will be closely watched...
The Latest: Excerpts from Trump’s D-Day speech released LIMERICK, Ireland (AP) — The Latest on Trump attending D-Day commemorations (all times local): 8:55 a.m. President Donald Trump will tell those commem...
5 Top Quotes From Nirmala Sitharaman's First Budget Speech Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, presenting the annual budget statement to parliament, said the government planned structural reforms to kickstart...
Valedictorian barred from giving speech after he planned to use it to come out as gay A valedictorian from a Wisconsin Lutheran high school was reportedly blocked by school officials from giving his graduation speech once they learned h...
Man Who Poured Water On Baidu CEO During Speech Arrested Chinese authorities have detained a man in connection with an investigation of an incident in which a man poured a bottle of water over Robin Li, chie...
How Facebook Handles Speech in 'Secret' Groups Facebook enforces complex guidelines against hate speech, abuse and other categories when it comes to users' posts to their friends or to the public....
Barry Sanders Was The Coolest Football Player Who Ever Lived What would it take for a present-day football player to equal or surpass the sheer coolness of Barry Sanders, who turns 51 years old today? I’m not su...
Sanders, AOC, and Others Demand Workplace Safety Investigation of Amazon Following yesterday’s Prime Day strike at a fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota, over a dozen progressive lawmakers—including Bernie Sanders, Al...
Rip Torn, 'The Larry Sanders Show' star, dies at 88 Rip Torn, an Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in "Men in Black" and HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show," has died, according to his publicist Rick Mira...
Sanders, Harris pitch immigration reform in Calif. Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris dueled Friday over Hispanic votes in California, a central front in the nation's immigration battle where Latino...
White House spokeswoman Sanders leaving job at end of month White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, a fierce loyalist of President Donald Trump, will leave her job at the end of the month to return to her home s...
Here's why Sens. Schumer and Sanders are wrong on stock buybacks Two U.S. senators criticized $4 trillion in share buybacks from 2008 to 2017. It is important to understand this cash did not vaporize, nor did it ben...
Oh God This Sarah Huckabee Sanders for Governor Thing Might Actually Happen When President Donald Trump announced that world-class bullshit artist Sarah Huckabee Sanders was leaving his administration, he said he hoped Sanders...
Sarah Sanders to leave White House at end of June White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, one of the president's closest and most trusted White House aides, will be leaving the administration ...
Sanders to propose eliminating all $1.6T of student debt in US: report Bernie Sanders, the 2020 hopeful, is set to announce on Monday a policy proposal that would eliminate all $1.6 trillion of American student debt, acco...
The Trailer: Sanders wants to reshape the electorate. Here's how his campaign plans to try. In this edition: Why Bernie Sanders isn't sweating the Iowa polls, why Joe Sestak is running, and why the president probably didn't see "AOC" coming w...
Warren poised to break out, AOC endorsement could derail Sanders Democrat Elizabeth Warren’s once floundering 2020 presidential campaign has been declared back by the media and her bid to win the endorsement of Rep....
Sarah Sanders' job was to be the female face of a misogynistic administration Sanders helped to roll back women’s rights while allowing the Trump administration to boast about ‘empowering women’Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy...
Trump’s popularity could be tested if Sanders seeks office LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Press secretary Sarah Sanders seems to be in an enviable position as she leaves the White House for a possible run for govern...
Harris now trailing just Biden, Sanders after Dem debates: survey Sen. Kamala Harris’ breakout moment in last Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate when she confronted Joe Biden propelled her to third...
Let's Remember Some of Sarah Huckabee Sanders' Very Worst Moments Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that smokey-eyed liar extraordinaire, is finally leaving the Trump administration. What does her future hold? At this time, no...
Facebook to help French police crack down on hate speech Facebook is agreeing to help French police identify hate speech suspects, in what the French government is celebrating as a global first. ...
Man dumps water on tech CEO's head during speech A man pours water on the CEO of Chinese search giant Baidu while he makes a speech at a conference on Artificial Intelligence. ...
"My Speech Came From Heart": Mahua Moitra On Plagiarism Allegations Mahua Moitra, the Trinamool Congress lawmaker whose comments in parliament on "seven signs of fascism" went viral last week, has hit out at allegation...
Opinion: Merkel's Harvard speech is noteworthy for what she didn't say German Chancellor Angela Merkel's poignant and personal commencement speech at Harvard University was also a thinly veiled appeal to reject Trumpism. ...
Theresa May Brexit speech: What happens next for the Prime Minister and her deal? Theresa May has set out a 10-point compromise package ahead of another attempt to secure approval for a deal which has already been rejected three tim...
Man Pours Water On Baidu CEO During Speech In Shocking Video A man burst on to a stage and poured water over the head of Baidu CEO Robin Li as the founder of China's dominant search engine spoke at a company-spo...
How American Corporations Are Policing Online Speech Worldwide In the winter of 2010, a 19-year-old Moroccan man named Kacem Ghazzali logged into his email to find a message from Facebook informing him that a grou...
Nixon’s secret speech if Apollo 11 mission had gone wrong President Richard Nixon, who delivered a message to Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins after the successful lunar landing, also asked his speechwri...
Biden apologizes for praising segregationists in defensive speech Joe Biden scrambled Saturday to save his swiftly sinking campaign, finally apologizing for recent remarks in which he had positive words for segregati...
DW Freedom of Speech Award presented to Anabel Hernandez The exiled Mexican journalist has received Deutschen Welle's Freedom of Speech Award at the Global Media Forum. In her acceptance speech, she issued a...
Steve Bannon: ‘We went back and forth’ on the themes of Johnson’s big speech In a London hotel, the far-right activist told how he had exchanged texts with the former foreign secretary on his big resignation speechOn 16 July la...
Donald Trump delivers July 4th speech – live US president hails ‘heroes who defend our country’ as bad weather and low turnout threaten to overshadow event White House ‘struggles to draw crowds’ ...
Germany: Dozens of raids over online hate speech Police have said they carried out searches in 13 federal states over crimes like incitement and the use of banned symbols. Authorities have struggled ...
U.S. Democrats ask Trump to rethink Independence Day speech plan Democrats in the U.S. Congress have asked President Donald Trump to reconsider plans for a speech at the Lincoln Memorial during annual Independence D...
In Harvard Speech, Merkel Rebukes Trump’s Worldview in All but Name Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told the Harvard graduates of 2019 to be “outward looking, not isolationist,” and not “describe lies as truth and ...
A Year Later, Twitter’s New Banned Speech Policy Adds Little to the Old One An effort to forbid “dehumanizing” tweets was scaled back after criticism and debate, and for now focuses only on those directed at religious groups....
World must not 'sleepwalk' into war, Macron says in speech on reforming capitalism The world is going through a profound crisis and could be on the brink of a time of war, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech on Tuesday,...
Climate protesters interrupt speech by UK finance minister Climate change protesters briefly interrupted a high-profile speech by British Finance Minister Philip Hammond to leaders of the country's financial s...
Jenny Slate Will Give a Graduation Speech to a Class of One The standup comic and “Parks and Recreation” actress will speak at the eighth-grade graduation of Gwen Lynch, 13, the last student on Cuttyhunk Island...
Merkel uses Harvard commencement speech to swipe at Trump German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave the commencement speech at Harvard University on Thursday where she made not-so-subtle swipes at President Trump....
YouTube will remove some hate speech and conspiracy videos YouTube has updated its hate speech policy to ban more types of videos from its platform. They explicitly include those promoting or glorifying Nazi i...
Facebook Fined $2.3 Million By Germany Under Hate Speech Law (BERLIN) — German authorities say they have issued Facebook with a 2 million-euro ($2.3 million) fine under a law designed to combat hate speech...
Fox News viewers flock to Trump’s holiday speech Fox News Channel viewers gave the network unusually high ratings for the Fourth of July because it aired President Donald Trump’s Washington parade an...
Microsoft’s AI generates realistic speech with only 200 training samples In a newly published paper, Microsoft researchers describe a state-of-the-art AI speech system that needs only 200 samples to achieve high accuracy.Re...
Trump protesters rally at gay bar blocks from arena speech ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Opponents of President Donald Trump’s reelection announcement in Florida are launching their protests at a nearby gay bar w...
Facebook fined $2.3 million under Germany’s new hate speech law The Federal Office for Justice said the social networking company had failed to meet transparency requirements for its handling of hate speech complai...
Principal: I accidentally plagiarized Ashton Kutcher speech PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia principal accused of plagiarizing Ashton Kutcher in an address to his school’s graduating class says h...
The Phrase That Stood Out For Anand Mahindra From PM's Parliament Speech After delivering a landslide win for BJP-led NDA, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday addressed the newly elected lawmakers at the Central Hall o...
Principal accused of copying Kutcher speech is suspended PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia, principal accused of plagiarizing Ashton Kutcher in an address to his school’s graduating class has b...
Queen Elizabeth II gives moving speech to commemorate D-Day anniversary Queen Elizabeth II quoted her father King George VI during a moving D-Day remembrance speech in Portsmouth, England. ...
Trump: Conway's right to free speech under attack; he won't fire her President Donald Trump said he won't fire White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and the accusations against her are an attempt to take away her right...
UN launches plan to combat escalating hate speech UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is launching a plan to combat hate speech and counter what he calls “a groundswell of x...
Kim Kardashian West wins £2.1m in lawsuit against 'fast fashion' brand Kim Kardashian West has been awarded $2.7 million (£2.1 million) in her lawsuit with a so-called "fast fashion" brand she accused of ripping off her o...
Apricot Power brand apricot seeds recalled due to risk of cyanide poisoning No illnesses have been associated with the products, but officials say anyone who has the products in their home should throw them out or return them ...
New Akira Anime Project And Brand New Anime Film Keep Katsuhiro Otomo Busy This is Orbital Era. It’s a new anime feature film from Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo and Sunrise, the folks behind Gundam. This isn’t the only thing ...
Too Faced is selling Christmas-themed makeup in July, but some people think the brand is trying to get rid of old makeup Nordstrom Too Faced plans to rerelease Christmas-themed makeup from its 2018 holiday collection this July. The relaunch includes Too Faced's Gingerbr...
Could budget phone brand Nokia be about to release a 48MP camera phone? When you think of Nokia you think of budget smartphones – despite its recent Nokia 9 PureView having five rear cameras, in general the brand pu...
The largest underwater eruption ever detected produced a brand new underwater volcano Months ago, a bizarre hum rippled through the waters far off the coast of Africa, traveling around the world and drawing the attention of scientists w...
Sahara Group To Sell Electric Vehicles Under New Brand Sahara Evols Sahara Group has announced its foray into the automobile sector under the brand name 'Sahara Evols'. The business venture will offer a wide range of e...
Buttigieg raises $24.8m, eclipsing Sanders as candidate cull looms South Bend mayor receives contributions from more than 400,000, securing his spot on stage as outsider campaigns worryPete Buttigieg has said he took ...
April Ryan Wins Her Last Fight With Sarah Huckabee Sanders Amidst reports that White House reporters, clearly deep in the throes of a nasty case of Stockholm Syndromme, plan to throw a goodbye party for outgoi...
Biden, Sanders and Warren all lead Trump in 2020 poll WASHINGTON – The top three Democratic candidates cleanly beat President Trump in head-to-head match-ups, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal po...
Sarah Sanders To Leave White House Job, Go Back To Arkansas WASHINGTON (AP) — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, whose tenure was marked by a breakdown in regular press briefings and questions about the...
Trump says he hasn’t decided who will replace Sarah Huckabee Sanders Don’t plan on seeing The Mooch behind the White House press room lectern anytime soon. President Trump on Friday said he has not decided who will repl...
Donald Trump's Spokesperson Sarah Sanders To Step Down This Month Sarah Sanders, the combative White House press secretary whose tenure was marked by controversy and questions about her credibility, will be leaving a...
The NHL can thank women’s hockey for molding its top prospect into Barry Sanders on skates The presumptive No. 1 pick in the NHL draft has a first-round pick as his older brother, a potential NHLer as his little brother and a title-winning c...
Sarah Sanders: Mexico needs to 'step up and do more' to assist in the border crisis White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has defended President Trump's decision to abruptly increase tariffs against Mexico amid the escalating huma...
Who will replace Sarah Sanders? Here's what President Trump is saying about the search Trump on Friday weighed in on some potential candidates to fill the shoes of White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who is leaving. &...
Sarah Sanders leaving White House job; governor run ahead? WASHINGTON (AP) — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, whose tenure was marked by a breakdown in regular press briefings and questions about the...
Sanders, Harris seek Hispanic votes at California forum PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris are dueling over Hispanic votes in California. The two prominent Democratic presidential cand...
Biden extends lead as Sanders’ support plummets: poll A new poll out Wednesday shows that Joe Biden has extended his lead, and that Sen. Kamala Harris has doubled her support while Sen. Elizabeth Warren h...
Trump and Kim Jong Un ‘agree in their assessment’ of Biden, Sarah Sanders says The White House press secretary on Sunday defended Trump’s tweet that he “smiled” when the North Korean leader “called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ ind...
Biden, Sanders among high-profile Democrats to square off in 2nd debate Debate night No. 2 marks the first time top-tier presidential candidates will confront one another in person over who is the best fit to lead the Demo...
Trump says Press Secretary Sanders to leave White House WASHINGTON (AP) — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders will be leaving the Trump administration at the end of the month. President Donald Trump a...
Sanders is right: Republican tax cuts cost more than forgiving student debt Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined the Democratic presidential candidate in making a contrast with the 2017 lawA 2016 plan for free college tuition d...
Democratic contenders Biden, Sanders to face off in Miami debates U.S. Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden will appear on the same stage with Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and six other riva...
How Do You Know When the President Is Lying? Sarah ‘Suckabee’ Sanders’ Mouth Is Moving White House press secretary Sarah “Suckabee” Sanders, a.k.a. Satan’s favorite kitten heel, said Thursday that President Trump didn’t plan his abrupt d...
Sanders, Warren blast Sinclair’s purchase of Disney RSNs A trio of Democratic presidential hopefuls are urging close scrutiny of Disney’s $10.6 billion sale of its 21 regional sports networks to Sinclair Bro...
Sanders rips Trump over escalating tensions with Iran, says war would be 'disaster' Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday took aim at President Trump over the rising tensions between the United States and Iran, warning on Memorial Day...
Four candidates at top of Trump's list to replace Sarah Sanders: source President Donald Trump has four leading candidates under consideration to replace outgoing White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, a Trump confidan...
Adidas see great upside in 'stellar' Arsenal brand after years of under-performance Adidas believe that the "stellar" global brand of Arsenal is ripe for exploiting after agreeing a £60million-a-year deal to manufacture the Gunners' k...
Principal accused of plagiarizing Ashton Kutcher speech at graduation A West Virginia principal is accused of plagiarizing his graduation speech — by ripping off literary lion Ashton Kutcher. Parkersburg High School prin...
In Budget Speech, Nirmala Sitharaman Announces Creation Of 'Gandhipedia' Ms Sitharaman, who served as the defence minister in the first government led by PM Modi, presents her first budget at a time when India has lost its ...
| Trump celebrates US might, avoids politics in rousing July 4 speech US President Donald Trump sang the praises of the US military and American heroes of the past two and a half centuries as he skirted politics in a rou...
As Trump plans July 4 speech, his challengers march to a different drummer U.S. presidential contender Joe Biden and two Democratic rivals marched on Thursday in the same 4th of July parade in Iowa, a small-town scene in shar...
Judge: License law violated speech rights of Georgia guides SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A federal judge says Georgia’s oldest city violated the free-speech rights of tour guides by requiring them to obtain a lic...
Germany fines Facebook for underreporting hate speech complaints The US social media giant has been found guilty of failing to fully report the number of complaints it received, in clear violation of German transpar...
Hollywood has its free-speech moment in fight over movie spoilers Content creators have been trying to restrain what critics and consumers say about their movies online, particularly when it comes to plot revelations...
Antifa tries to disrupt ‘Demand Free Speech’ event in DC, reports say Members of Antifa clashed with police Saturday after attempting to disrupt a “Demand Free Speech” rally on Saturday in Washington, D.C., according to ...
Pelicans stop skid thanks to Gentry speech, Davis high "Anthony Davis shoulders Pelicans with season high in victory over Dallas Mavericks following tongue-lashing from head coach Alvin Gentry at the half ...
Airports In The 1700s? Historical Flub Lands In Trump Speech Airports? In the 1700s? A historical flub landed in President Donald Trump's "Salute to America" speech on Thursday marking the US Independence Day ho...
Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget: Long Speech, 4 Languages, Some Poetry Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman delivered her first Budget speech in parliament, one of the longest ever, occasionally switching to Hindi, Tamil, ...
Opinion: Angela Merkel's Harvard speech is noteworthy for what she didn't say German Chancellor Angela Merkel's poignant and personal commencement speech at Harvard University was also a thinly veiled appeal to reject Trumpism. ...
Live: Sensex, Nifty Flat As Budget Speech Begins Nifty, Sensex Stock Market Updates: The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 Indexes erased gains ahead of the first full Budget of Prime Minister Narendra...
Germany fines Facebook $2.3 million for violation of hate speech law German officials issued a 2 million euro ($2.3 million) fine to Facebook Tuesday, accusing the company of violating the country’s new hate speech law....
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Nacho's Whoring Amazon Wishlist of Death
Newsday »
Political Junkies »
Post reply ( Re: The Supremes )
[quote author=RottingCorpse link=topic=5265.msg170068#msg170068 date=1455546927] Going to be? [/quote]
Posted by: Reginald McGraw
It is silly to say that the president should not pick another justice because he has "only" a year of his term left. That's 25% of a term!
Going to be?
It's really going to be the most annoying thing in the universe.
Started us a Supreme Court nomination thread because this whole "not letting Obama nominate a Justice" standoff looks like it's gonna be a thing.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/02/justice_antonin_scalia_s_death_may_lead_to_a_constitutional_crisis.html
Could Justice Antonin Scalia’s Death Lead to a Constitutional Crisis?
Just five minutes after the San Antonio Express-News broke news of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, Conn Caroll, communications director for Utah Republican Mike Lee, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said this on Twitter: “What is less than zero? The chances of Obama successfully appointing a Supreme Court Justice to replace Scalia?”
Just 30 minutes later, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz chimed in to say the same. “Justice Scalia was an American hero. We owe it to him, & the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement,” he said on Twitter.
National Review writer Charles C.W. Cooke, like other conservative pundits, followed suit with a similar statement. “Senate must simply refuse to appoint anybody. Would be outrageous to replace a giant like Scalia with a minnow like Sotomayor.”
Scalia’s death was an incredible shock. This conservative reaction is not.
The stakes are so high that Obama could nominate the ghost of Thurgood Marshall turned flesh and the Republican Senate would reject him as a matter of course.
The last Supreme Court Justice to die in office was William Rehnquist, who passed away on Sept. 3, 2005. By the end of the month, President George W. Bush had picked his replacement—John Roberts of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, originally named to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat—and the Senate had confirmed it.
In theory, we could move at the same speed. There is no question the Obama administration has a short list for Supreme Court appointments, and there’s nothing in the Constitution that precludes a president in his final year from selecting an associate justice for the court. After all, a president doesn’t disappear after seven years. Barack Obama is still the legitimate executive of the United States government with all the authority that brings.
But modern American politics is a polarized place, and there’s a stark ideological divide between liberal and conservative jurists. To replace a Republican appointee like Scalia with a Democratic choice is to transform American jurisprudence, pulling it back from the conservative turn of the past 30 years, and swinging it to the left. If the 2014 elections were different—had Democrats turned out to save the Senate from a second Republican wave—then President Obama and his allies could have played a repeat of 2005, quickly bringing a new justice onto the court.
But the Senate is held by a firm Republican majority. And unless it wants to immolate itself in the flames of conservative fury, that majority will block Obama’s nominee, regardless of skill, belief, or reputation. The stakes are so high that Obama could nominate the ghost of Thurgood Marshall turned flesh and the Republican Senate would reject him as a matter of course.
Instead, as per Carroll, Cruz, and Cooke, we’ll have to wait until 2017, when the Senate swears in a new president. For Republicans, this is a rational choice. By every measure, this year’s race is a coin toss between Republicans and Democrats. But even a coin toss brings better odds than letting Obama cement his legacy by choosing a replacement on the Supreme Court.
With that said, there are other, larger questions: Do Republicans hurt their cause by stonewalling the president for more than 11 months between now and the next administration? Does it give Democrats space to run against GOP obstruction and emphasize the stakes of a Republican president for reproductive rights, civil rights, and labor? And what happens if the next president is Sen. Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, along with a Democratic Senate? Do Republicans concede and allow the president to choose a replacement? Or is the GOP so ideological and so polarized that it refuses to budge for a Democratic president, even in the face of an election?
In which case, Scalia’s death might set the stage for the first constitutional crisis of our young century.
So, this will be how Obama spends his last six months...and it'll be horrifying and disgusting.
Antonin Scalia dies suddenly! Looks like we got ourselves a Supreme Court Justice Confirmation on our hands. The Onion nails it.
http://www.theonion.com/graphic/justice-scalia-dead-following-30-year-battle-socia-52356
Justice Scalia Dead Following 30-Year Battle With Social Progress
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