pred_label
stringclasses 2
values | pred_label_prob
float64 0.5
1
| wiki_prob
float64 0.25
1
| text
stringlengths 44
986k
| source
stringlengths 37
43
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__wiki
| 0.794413
| 0.794413
|
You are here: Home / Autumn 2016_#Home / The home screen as an anchor point for mobile media use: Technologies,...
The home screen as an anchor point for mobile media use: Technologies, practices, identities
December 5, 2016 /in Autumn 2016_#Home /by Jeroen Sondervan
Tags: affordance analysis, customisation, epistemology of the smartphone, home, home screen
by Stefan Werning
The notion of home as a place to return to has been particularly prominent (e.g. in popular culture) at times of ‘abrupt change either within the social or physical environment or in the world of ideas’.[1] Abrupt change and concurrent sentiments such as disorientation and arbitrariness are not limited to material contexts but also apply characteristically to mobile media use, which is more dispersed and de-centralised than ever. This includes: geographic categories (most app stores include content from all over the world, often without clearly indicating its origin); temporal categories (smartphone use is less governed by patterns, occurs at any time of day, and can take from a few seconds up to several hours); social categories (popular mobile media applications and games like Whatsapp or Pokémon Go transcend socio-economic groups); and media formats (users are faced with a vast array of partially redundant hardware platforms and apps).
According to a 2010 study smartphones at the time already, on average, had 22 applications simultaneously installed – more than twice the number installed on traditional phones.[2] Thus, the abundance of mobile applications as well as numerous associations between them intensifies feelings of de-centeredness, and users try to compensate for that through a curated and personalised space that signifies ‘home’. However, in other domains such as literature abundance or ‘textual overload’ has been a permanent condition[3] that readers and writers learned to cope with. Thus, rather than adopting a dystopian view of this abundance it is important to analyse how exactly it manifests itself and how it is mediated.
For that purpose, one of the most relevant technologies to look at is the home screen of mobile operating systems like Android and iOS. Despite constant and rapid changes in other areas of smartphone development at least the outward appearance of the home screen has undergone remarkably few changes, a fact noted both in tech journalism[4] and by users themselves. Analysing the use of the home screen and its changing functionality can improve our understanding of the role opposing concepts such as centeredness and structure play in mobile media use.
The argument draws on previous research exploring the epistemic connection between home and identity. Within cultural studies this connection has most prominently been investigated with regard to migration narratives, in which ‘being at home’ and ‘leaving home’ constitute dominant topoi, which have been iteratively manifested in various ways, thereby creating a ‘mediated relation between being, home and world’.[5] Anthropological studies of domestic situations observe the construction of personal identity (within specific cultural contexts) through ‘forgotten symbolism’, as expressed in aspects such as window decoration, which are usually not ‘conscious affairs’ but rather ‘related to and sustained in practice’.[6] Finally, previous research on a similar phenomenon, personal homepages, amply demonstrates the connection between users creating a virtual ‘home’ and performing their identity online. For instance, Miller and Arnold outline a psychological framework for ‘understanding web page identity’[7] that draws on Goffman’s distinction between ‘back regions’ and ‘front regions’,[8] i.e. on the use of digital technologies to negotiate between outwardly visible and consciously hidden aspects of self-presentation.
Analogously, this article substantiates the hypothesis that the changing design and use of the home screen reflects concurrent changes in mobile media identity. The perception of the home screen is framed by users’ experiences with earlier technical constructs that used the material metaphor of the home,[9] for instance in the context of television. Particularly through the rapid increase in channels during the 1980s as well as short-form content like music videos, broadcast television has both overstrained and expanded viewers’ capacities to ‘orient themselves’. The teletext as an electronic programming guide[10] already provided a temporary ‘stable ground’ even though it did not stop the broadcast. However, it also affected the contemporary perception of the ‘home of the future’,[11] and thus was not just viewed as a system for the dissemination of news but also as a potential infrastructure for other developments such as the rise of home computing.[12]
So far, the home screen arrangement has been studied primarily in terms of usage behavior with the goal of streamlining the user experience. For instance, based on a comparative analysis of more than 130 screens, Böhmer and Antonio identify five patterns of how users group icons such as functional relatedness but also aesthetic concepts such as color or visual relation to the background image.[13] Building on this existing research, this article outlines a media and culture studies perspective on the home screen, focusing on the notion of identity performances and affordance changes.
The home screen between space and practice
Home as a concept has traditionally been defined primarily in spatial categories; indeed, both personal and cultural identity are very closely linked to place identity, as evidenced by motifs such as ‘losing one’s place’.[14] However, these definitions of home also implicitly acknowledge an element of practice. For instance, Buttimer argues that sense of place in all living beings is defined by ‘home’ and ‘horizons of reach’, i.e. by the ‘lived reciprocity of rest and movement’, which implies a constant, active negotiation between inward and outward orientation.[15] Accordingly, in the case of mobile media, the characteristic ‘exploratory’ mode of use afforded by the multiplicity of apps at the user’s disposal cannot be disassociated from the complementary affordance of returning to the home screen, usually with the press of a button. Following this dialectic, the goal of this study will be to conceptualise the home screen of the smartphone as a hybrid concept between place and practice.
While these ‘home screens’ refer to software rather than hardware, television scholars have already investigated how the screen as a material object can transform the perception of spaces, including those referred to as home. In her social history of television in postwar America, Lynn Spigel provides ample evidence of how the television screen was ‘bringing the world into the home’,[16] and how, fuelled by furniture manufacturers and women’s home magazines, the ‘ideal home theatre’ was turned into a ‘perfectly controlled environment of mechanized pleasures’.[17] Moreover, Hartmut Winkler addressed the ontological hybridity of the television screen between program and space, arguing that particularly the emergence of dedicated channels for shopping and sports as well as hybrid channels like the British Lifestyle (1985-1993) offered an experience that defied the traditional categories of a program. Due to their repetitive structure, he describes them as a ‘place’ [Ort] to return to with a distinct ‘symbolic topology’ rather than as a ‘sequence of events’ [Ereignis] or a curated program.[18] Contrary to previous acceleration tendencies in televisual formats, channels like Lifestyle dedicated a lot of time to mundane activities such as polishing the hood of a car or painting wooden boards in advertising programs. Moreover, they produce familiarity by offering the same ‘utility value’[19] [Gebrauchswert] within formally stable programs at fixed intervals. Therefore, these channels can also be included in the aforementioned overview of ‘home metaphors’ in previous media contexts.
The home screen, on the other hand, had been constructed from the get-go as a ‘symbolic topology’. Most evident is the rectangular grid as the central organising principle. While app arrangement in early versions of iOS was almost quadratic, the current screens usually opt for a page-like layout with 4×6 icons.[20] Moreover, it operates with a distinction between on-screen and off-screen space, being spread across different screens that are symbolically organised in a spatially congruent way. Yet, with the addition of new functionality (comparable to the addition of shopping and sports channels to the dispositif of television), the home screen gradually became a conduit for distinct practices. Over the past years these practices became more and more acknowledged as a coherent phenomenon in public discourse,[21] and users began to conduct them more self-reflexively. As a consequence, for many users the ‘place’ character of the home screen gradually became less relevant compared to emergent customisation and sharing practices.
Customising the home (screen)
As smartphones became more and more pervasive the home screens afforded conventionalised practices that provided a sense of stability and basic orientation. Similar to how watching television (e.g. switching to one’s favorite channel) became a ‘routine event […]’ and part of the ‘invisible history of everyday life’[22] in the 1940s and 1950s, these practices, such as tailoring the home screen to one’s own preferences, became a shared experience that created a sense of connectedness among groups of smartphone users.
With the launch of touchscreen-based devices after 2007, the form factor of mobile phones became almost completely unified.[23] At the same time, customising smartphone cases became a popular way to counter this standardization.[24] For instance, Jung argues that, much more than with previous media technologies, ‘users decide what a smartphone is for themselves, rather than just adopting a given product’, and that the deliberate use and customisation choices exhibit a hierarchy of ‘consumer knowledge’ which includes the expression of attributes, consequences, and ultimately values.[25]
From that angle, the customisation of a smartphone home screen and its assessment in aesthetic terms[26] is comparable, for instance, to historical practices of designing and photographing one’s home, through which ‘families can produce representations of themselves’.[27] Ethnographic research on more recent practices, by which residents maintain and decorate their homes, frames them more specifically in terms of consumerism and consumption theories.[28] In contrast to its earlier, primarily utilitarian understanding as a by-product of production, scholars in the 1990s reassessed consumption as a cultural act, a form of communication, and, in light of post-modern consumerism, as a projection of ‘dreams, images and pleasures’.[29] Accordingly, home customisation is also associated with ‘symbolic values’[30] that characterise a residential neighborhood or the relation of an individual household towards that environment.
Historically, interior decoration of the home has been traditionally viewed as an oppositional practice, primarily for women, who would explore the creative opportunities of the ‘domestic arena’[31] that contemporary society had assigned to them. Indeed, it became a site of actual social transformation with the advent of professionalised interior decoration that offered concrete business opportunities and, thus, social agency. These observations are only partially comparable to user customisation of their home screens, mostly due to profound differences in the social context and materiality of these practices, and indeed while in both cases the idea of ‘appropriating’ the home is visible the concrete implications are different. Literature on customising digital technologies is still scarce, but existing research on how users personalise a sports watch[32] or an online news aggregator[33] highlight the sense of autonomy and agency (or at least the desire to communicate these qualities towards others) as driving forces.
To further qualify this experience, however, it appears useful to more closely investigate how, for many mobile phone users, customising the home screen of their devices becomes playful performance of individual and social identity. For instance, Frissen et al. propose a basic grouping of identity dispositions according to Roger Caillois’ categories of play; the second category, simulational identity (mimicking and performing identity categories), is particularly relevant here.[34] According to the authors’ definition it ‘expresses itself in theatrical performances rather than in (romantic) inwardness’[35] but it can also refer to the public, experimental adoption or imitation of characterising traits. One popular manifestation of this identity type is the aspiration of many users to emulate the aesthetic ‘standards’ established by commercial companies like Apple. For instance, a popular trope with iOS 7.0 is the combination of nature imagery (containing a lot of depth and texture) in contrast with colorful and highly stylised ‘flat’ icons rather than skeuomorphs – a style that has been imitated by users in various ways.[36]
Another aspect of play and games in home screen customisation is the reveling in arbitrary constraints. For example, Suits argues that in games ‘the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means, and […] such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity’.[37] One example of how users derive pleasure from these constraints (and the collective efforts to overcome them) is the choice of a background picture and making that ‘work’ with the rectangular grid of icons. Online collections of well-designed home screens provide ample evidence of this pattern, for instance demonstrating how users visually semanticise the ‘dock area’ at the bottom of the screen or incorporate the ubiquitous date and time widget in different ways.[38]
While iOS provides numerous customisation tools out of the box, jailbreaking the iPhone and/or installing custom software for home screen decoration exhibits additional facets of identity construction. Even though they remove some constraints, these ‘advanced’ forms of use still require creative use of available materials, thereby encouraging a ‘bricolage’ approach.[39] One example are the iBlanks: custom invisible (i.e. empty) icons that seemingly allow for overcoming the rectangular grid and enable icon placement as a novel playing strategy.[40] Moreover, they facilitate expressing different values such as the notion of ‘mastery’, i.e. of reclaiming control over the device and (with Frissen et al.) of communicating their competitive identity.
Sharing the home screen
Following up on the metaphor of the game, home screen customisation as an expression of playful identities is primarily a multiplayer game, i.e. a social activity in which comparing and discussing designs is often as important as creating them. An important prerequisite for collective customisation is the sharing of screenshots, which has become an increasingly pervasive cultural practice,[41] supported by the creation of dedicated platforms. For instance, Clive Thompson documents this development in a column published by Wired Magazine in March 2015, calling it ‘photography for life on the screen’.[42] One platform for home screen sharing is #homescreen,[43] which offered a tool[44] that streamlines home screen sharing and a website to archive the screenshots. The parallel display of multiple user-submitted screens (starting with the most recent ones) creates an intuitive sensitivity towards patterns in other users’ home screen arrangements and, at the same time, frames this comparative disposition itself as inherently plausible. The platform affords playful identity performance in several ways. For instance, it invites users to discover patterns in other users’ profiles. With Caillois, this can be considered a rather paidic, i.e. a rather improvisational than teleological, form of play since the ‘actual’ profiles are not revealed and #homescreen thus provides no direct feedback on the accuracy of these guesses. However, the detail view of every home screen does show an overview of the identified apps paired with a percentage of how many other iOS home screens (in the dataset) also contain that app.[45] These data provide ‘players’ with cues to refine their cognitive model of the other user’s impression management.[46] However, they do not provide conclusive ‘evidence‘; thus they maintain but also temper the uncertainty of the process, thereby making it engaging as a ‘game’.[47]
There are several platforms like #homescreen currently active. For instance, Homescreen.me[48] takes a more professional approach and MyColorScreen[49] focuses most on social functionality and forum comments. Finally, several tech blogs formalise this usage practice through repeated activities such as ‘Show off your home screen day’,[50] thereby trying – more or less successfully – to institutionalise home screen sharing as a ritualised practice among related phenomena such as #screenshotsaturday for game development (which, at the time of writing, has been active for almost 300 weeks) or #FlashbackFriday on Instagram.
The latter two examples provide access to user discourse on home screen sharing, which could only cursorily be taken into account within the scope of this article. However, the observations above should provide a basic framework to identify and discuss other salient aspects that had to be omitted at this point. Among those, tutorials play a particularly important part, primarily because they help tie together customisation and sharing into one cyclical process. For instance, Müller studied tutorials with regard to quality discourses, i.e. in terms of how they bridge the gap between amateur media creation on YouTube and the ideal type of ‘professional’ online video.[51] The same patterns also apply in tutorials on home screen curation, but, even more importantly, these texts are relevant as mechanisms of ‘proto-cological control’ (using a term by Alexander Galloway as applied by Niederer and van Dijck to Wikipedia as a socio-technical system[52]). From that angle, the tutorials stabilise the discourse by: a) codifying established knowledge within the community; b) encouraging introspection, i.e. facilitating a systematic look at one’s own theming/customisation practices; and c) establishing discursive ‘standards’ that can be adopted or challenged by others to catalyse user interaction.
The ‘home screen-as-dashboard’: A metaphor of mobile media use?
Apart from the game, a second metaphor that characterises the home screen and its hybrid state between space and practice is the dashboard. Over time, added functionality has arguably turned the home screen into a dashboard for mobile media use; the recent changes in iOS10 and the left sub-screen (with its overview of contextual data from different apps) in particular substantiate this perception.
The term ‘dashboard’ traditionally refers to the control panel in the front of a car, but the term has been adapted for use in different context. Most basically, it can be regarded as an apparatus that aggregates (often real-time) data from multiple sources in one place. It thus affords and – as a consequence – arguably encourages cross-referencing these data sources and, thereby, suggests a more ‘complete’ overview of a given phenomenon (e.g. a website or a business). Cultural studies research on dashboards as mediatised organisational heuristics has mostly focused on city planning[53] and on how software creates a distinct episteme of a city as a conglomerate of interrelated indicators.[54] With the ‘home screen-as-dashboard’, mobile phones arguably foster a similar approach towards ‘managing’ one’s mediated lives.
Like a game, the dashboard as a hybrid form combines aspects of spaces and practices. It organises information spatially but, through its ‘realist epistemology’,[55] aims to become ‘invisible’ from the user’s perspective, ‘capturing and communicating the city as visualised facts’, and thereby institutionalises a particular set of usage practices. These practices focus on ‘visually compar[ing] and combin[ing] aspects of the city from the weather to the operation of transit systems to “what is trending on Twitter”’.[56] In the context of the home screen, the dashboard is relevant first and foremost because it applies an organisational heuristic from professional contexts to (mostly) private media use; it provides mostly quantified data (current temperature, minutes until next appointment, etc.), and thus substantiates the perception that media use can and must be ‘managed’ by showing users how effective they are and how much remains to ‘be done’. The dashboard itself encourages ludic forms of use in that it creates multiple, sometime overlapping feedback loops for the user/player to keep track of. In that sense, it is comparable to the dispositif of early digital games like Pong, which, according to Pias, continually provide input to ‘test’ for the player’s presence, thereby making them part of the device itself.[57] Similarly, the home screen dashboard continually presents push notifications from connected apps that require input, ‘test’ for the presence of the user, and need to be ‘processed’.
This view of the home (screen) as a ‘command center’ is not exclusive to digital media but has already been implied in earlier home-related discourses. For instance, Putnam describes the concept of the ‘modern home’, which emerged between the 1920s and 1950s, and its contemporary perception as a ‘technical terminal’.[58] Built around a ‘technical core’, the modern house combined different electronic affordances and life support systems. This paradigmatic configuration would also be reflected by a ‘decorative syntax’[59] that differed from 19th century principles like hierarchy and symmetry and reflected a more modernist aesthetic, with which it would become directly associated in the view of the public. Rather than just a technological development, this concept of ‘home’ became the locus of a new social design, in which ‘professional success became more dependent on education than on family contacts’,[60] not least because it required an unprecedented collaboration between state regulation and engineering developments. Similarly, taking into account the on-going ‘smart home’ debate and the increasing interoperability between connected home appliances, the dashboard approach is clearly not limited to the home screen but gradually finds its way into our brick-and-mortar homes as well.
A historically diachronic affordance analysis on the home screen in transition
To understand the changing perceptions of the Android and iOS home screens, the second part of the argument will pursue a comparative software studies approach that outlines how they have evolved in terms of affordances, material metaphors, and rhetoric, often reflecting public discourse around mobile phone use in general.[61] While the home screen appears as a rather basic layer of most (mobile) operating systems, it is in fact an assemblage of different design affordances bridging both hardware and software. The ‘home button’ on the iPhone can be considered a hardware affordance in that it is the only easily visible button on the iPhone and, thus, materially substantiates the centrality of the home screen. For instance, Vanhemert paraphrases its impact on the device itself as follows: ‘[n]o matter what you were doing on your phone, if you pressed the thumb-sized disc below the screen, you were safely shuttled home.’[62] While this paper focuses on mobile phones, it is important to note that wearable devices like the Apple Watch replaced the button with a ‘digital crown’, which operates like a dial and allows users to zoom in and out. This material change again demonstrates the interrelatedness of hardware and software affordances. The limited screen size in conjunction with the button replacement necessitated required several ‘sequential affordances’[63] like scrolling and zooming, which were thus added to the spatial ‘vocabulary’ of the watchOS home screen. For instance, fully zooming in opens the currently centered app, thereby suggesting a spatial continuity between the home screen and the screen space of individual apps.
Moreover, while the outward appearance of the iOS and Android home screens appears fairly consistent, the functionality of the underlying applications (on iOS, the home screen is controlled by a dedicated app called SpringBoard) is constantly expanded and tweaked. To acknowledge these changes, this chapter will propose a historically diachronic perspective on affordance analysis. Regularly, affordance analyses of software focus on a ‘status quo’, a particular version that is posited as representative. For example, Lev Manovich already acknowledges the changes in the tool palette of Adobe Photoshop.[64] Yet, his analysis then only includes affordances that have been present in the software for a long time, such as the ‘wind’ filter[65] or the image layers and blend modes.[66] However, with apps and mobile operating systems, this monolithic view on software affordances is not really applicable. Several authors already outline approaches towards a comparative affordance analysis. For example, Wang and Woo compare affordances of blogs and online forums that facilitate learning processes.[67] Moreover, Papacharissi compares Facebook, LinkedIn, and the members-only social network ASmallWorld in terms of design choices that affect the structure of the respective virtual social space.[68] Finally, in my work I analyze the different ways in which software affords and re-semanticises the use of the touch screen through standardised gestures.[69] Due to the ephemerality of apps and mobile operating systems and the intrinsic focus on the respective latest version, the observations on the home screen below are intended to demonstrate how comparing the addition, modification, or removal of specific affordances within the same application can produce insights that more static concepts of software fail to address.
As affordance analysis is primarily concerned with design choices and can only make informed guesses about their impact on individual user behavior, this method can and will not address the intentions of the developers nor the interpretation of individual users, and both are secondary for the argument at hand. Therefore, the corpus comprises affordances pertaining to the home screen from iOS1.0 and Android 1.0 up to the most recent versions as of writing (iOS10.1 and Android 7.0). In some cases, references to online user comments are included to illustrate concrete use cases; these are not generalisable but can serve as a reference point for a more systematic media ethnographic perspective on the home screen.
Stabilising the home (screen) through constant change
Early affordance changes to the home screen were intended to enable the transition of the iPhone from a few system apps to a multiplicity of concurrently-installed applications, including rarely used or even deliberately redundant ones. iOS 1.1.3 allowed users to rearrange app icons or delete web site links and web clips from the home screen through the so-called ‘wiggle mode’, which prepared opening up the operating systems for external developers with iOS2. The addition of a persistent search function with iOS3 fulfills a similar purpose but already includes a key epistemic difference: rather than relying solely on spatial contiguity, it allowed users to access applications through other associations like the name or last date of access.
The constant but granular tweaking of the home screen can be regarded as an affordance in and of itself, which only becomes observable from an inherently diachronic perspective. For a long time, the tweaks have stabilised the ‘authority’ of the home screen as the dominant metaphor of mobile media use, which can be optimised but for which no viable alternative exists. In an article for The Atlantic, Bogost argues, taking the ‘tweaking’ of the Facebook News Feed algorithm as an example, that this common practice in platform development ‘highlights the black-boxed nature of the software’.[70] In fact, according to Bogost, the rhetoric of algorithmic tweaking suggests that journalists and users effectively ‘elevat[e] those services to the divine rank of gods’. Even though Bogost does not explicitly make that point, it can be argued that the practice of algorithm updates and their public communication afford this fetishisation since only a few people have access to the source code as ‘ur-text’, even though many try to re-construct it and only selective interpretations are publicly communicated on a regular basis. This precarious textual status therefore appears reminiscent of the exegesis of religious documents and related discourses in biblical studies.[71] Analogously, the tweaking of the home screen has long cemented its role as the indisputable navigational paradigm of mobile media use.
Home: From (screen) space to (quasi-)social situation
This paradigm, however, is currently being challenged, and retracing the systematic change in affordances provides a better understanding of how concurrent notions of ‘home’ in mobile media use change with it. Already in the early 2010s, attempts at making home screen interaction more personalised were discernible. For instance, Shin, Hong, and Dey formulated an approach towards predicting mobile application use and developed a dynamic home screen application that would show the most ‘likely’ use apps first. The system was advertised as significantly ‘outperform[ing]’[72] traditional solutions. However, the first of two big steps towards transforming the concept of home in mobile media is the gradual positioning of messenger apps as a replacement for the home screen, the front end of the devices. For instance, the Messages app on iPhones, launched in September 2016, included 3rd-party compatibility, which enabled users to access the functionality of all participating apps through text messages. In turn, this would frame apps (and, in a second step, the companies behind them) as potential ‘contacts’ that gradually become more responsive over time as they expose more of their functionality to the Messages app. From a platform perspective,[73] the increased programmability of the messenger makes it a separate ecosystem within iOS; users will even be able to install dedicated apps without having to open the traditional app store.[74]
Thus, the idea of the virtual ‘home’ as a curated space gradually shifts towards the metaphor of an ongoing conversation, in which other users, but also apps and services, temporarily appear as ‘interlocutors’. Unsurprisingly, the current technological imaginary of the Messenger as quasi-operating system is extremely commercialised. Sample applications include ordering a table at a restaurant or simply transferring money through integration with Square Cash, all via pre-defined messages. Another key characteristic is the competition between different platforms, all of which try to establish their messenger app as the new hub for mobile media use. For instance, Facebook is currently preparing its Messenger for that purpose by, seemingly paradoxically, introducing ‘a new twist on a familiar concept: the home screen’.[75] While Facebook does not have its own operating system or hardware, the amount of time users spend on the platform essentially puts it in a similar position as Apple and Google. As a consequence, rather than revolving around one home screen, mobile media use will oscillate between several conversations taking part in different ‘rooms’. Even smaller, more focused messenger services like Slack are adopting a similar strategy: ‘[t]he chat app as operating system is an idea gaining currency in the tech industry right now, thanks in large part to the success China’s WeChat has seen as a platform for apps.’[76]
The final step in the transformation of the home screen is the inclusion of AI assistant-like chat bots into the conversation. For instance, Facebook is integrating its virtual assistant M into the Messenger app[77] and Microsoft is gradually bringing bots like Tay and Cortana into the Skype chat function.[78] Crucially, while the home screen for the most part afforded actively curating one’s own environment/identity, the AI assistant replaces that with algorithmically framed self-perception: ‘[i]f you fire up NYT Now each morning right when you wake up, iOS 9 will endeavor to note the habit and make the app available in the morning as a shortcut on the lock screen.’[79] Thus, rather than proactively designing one’s space, the messenger as ‘home’ primarily affords (re-)assessing one’s own identity through algorithmic suggestions such as people the user is likely to contact or apps that they might want to open at a given point in time.
To conclude, the (re)design of the ‘home screen’ is a struggle for establishing a dominant episteme of digital media use and the changing affordances reflect the shifting status of ‘home’ or ‘centeredness’[80] in mobile media use. The ‘home screen’ of the Google website revolved around the search function; for Apple it was the ‘home screen’ as an orderly display of the most-used apps (downloaded from within its own walled-off ecosystem), and with Facebook at the forefront, the messenger is taking the center stage but relativises the notion of centrality itself. While the space as metaphor implies clear dimensions and facilitates orientation, the alternative metaphor of the conversation has no discrete boundaries, neither in (virtual) space nor time, and users accept the notion of ‘getting lost’ in a conversation not as a crisis but as a permanent state.
The home screen as a shared idea (Outlook)
As the two-fold analysis has shown, the home screen has served as an ‘anchor point’ for users’ mobile media activity throughout the years, and while smartphone use has become more diverse the use of the home screen is surprisingly constant. This can even apply in extreme cases; for instance, Barbara Dabrowska and Yahya Alous asked several refugees from Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, and other Middle-Eastern countries to share and talk about the home screens of their smartphones,[81] which many describe as their most valued possession. Most users in that sample, from teenagers to elderly couples, decorated the screen with pictures of family members they had to leave behind, and one with a picture from the plane, as a symbolic reaffirmation of the journey. One home screen shows a photo of the phone owner ‘at home’ wearing a traditional Pashtun dress; thus, the screen helps mediate the transition from his ‘old self’ to the new.
Despite these similar use cases, rhetoric related to the home screen on tech blogs indicates its ambiguity as a concept. Due to its seemingly anachronistic stability as part of mobile operating systems, it has been described with a mixture of reverence and mockery, e.g. as a ‘hallowed place’.[82] While initially the home screen was ‘the iPhone’s face to the world’, its fixed structure – which at first was deemed liberating because it provided orientation – has recently been interpreted as rather constraining, as ‘these days, the smartphone experience is just too fast and fluid to be pinned to a grid’.[83] The disproportionate interest in the home screen as a mirror of the owner’s personality is referenced in similar terms, e.g. as a ‘cult of the home screen’.[84]
Quotations from the early 2010s, when the home screen was at the peak of its popularity, indicate how users perceived it as an epistemic bridge that turned the smartphone into a veritable extension of its owner in a McLuhan-esque sense. For instance, one journalist argues that it provides ‘quick access to the apps that will help you make the most of you, not the device’.[85] This perceived connection also gave rise to manifold discussions about ‘mastering the […] home screen’[86] as a means of seamlessly incorporating mobile media technology into the users’ identity construction. Despite its technical simplicity, the home screen thus displays a surprising degree of ambiguity and multivalence, and this ambiguity is the primary reason why the home screen as a shared idea will take a lot longer to be ‘replaced’ than as a technology.
Stefan Werning is an assistant professor for new media and game studies at Utrecht University, where he founded the Utrecht Game Lab (2014) and co-coordinates the graduate program Game Research. He has previously been an assistant professor for digital media at the University of Bayreuth (2009-2014), at the University of Bonn (2004-2006), and at the Fraunhofer Institute Media Communications in St. Augustin (2002-2004). While completing his PhD thesis on game technologies and concepts in the military entertainment complex, Werning worked in the digital games industry, most notably at Nintendo of Europe (2007-2009).
Ahmed, S. ‘Home and Away: Narratives of Migration and Estrangement’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2 (3), SAGE Publications, 1999: 329-347.
Batty, M. ‘A Perspective on City Dashboards’, Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2 (1), Routledge, 2015: 29-32.
Bogost, I. ‘Go Tweak Yourself, Facebook’, The Atlantic, April 2016: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/go-tweak-yourself-facebook/480258/.
Bogost, I. and Montfort, N. ‘New Media as Material Constraint: An Introduction to Platform Studies’, 1st International HASTAC Conference, Duke University, 2007: http://bogost.com/downloads/Bogost Montfort HASTAC.pdf.
Böhmer, M. and Krüger, A. ‘A Study on Icon Arrangement by Smartphone Users’ in CHI ’13 Proc. the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. New York: ACM Press, 2013: 2137-2146. doi:10.1145/2470654.2481294.
Bolter, J. Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Buttimer, A. ‘Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place’ in The human experience of space and place, edited by A. Buttimer and D. Seamon. Abingdon- New York: Routledge, 2015: 166-188.
Chen, Y., Bentley, F., Holz, C., and Xu, C. ‘Sharing (and Discussing) the Moment: The Conversations That Occur Around Shared Mobile Media’ in Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services – Mobile HCI ’15. New York: ACM Press, 2015: 264-273.
Cieraad, I. At home: An anthropology of domestic space. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006.
Costikyan, G. Uncertainty in games. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2013.
Frissen, V., Lammes, de Lange, S., de Mul, J., and Raessens, J. ‘Homo Ludens 2.0: Play, Media, and Identity’ in Playful identities: The ludification of digital media cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015: 9-52.
Gaver, W. ‘Technology Affordances’, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human, 1991: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=108856.
Gram-Hanssen, K. and Bech-Danielsen, C. ‘House, Home and Identity from a Consumption Perspective’, Housing, Theory and Society, 21 (1), 2004: 17-26.
Graziplene, L. Teletext: Its promise and demise. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2000.
Haberman, V. ‘Designing for Diverse Users – a Case Study on Touchscreen Smartphone Customization’, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012.
Johnson, D. Media franchising: Creative license and collaboration in the culture industries. New York: NYU Press, 2013.
Jung, Y. ‘What a Smartphone Is to Me: Understanding User Values in Using Smartphones’, Information Systems Journal, 24 (4), 2014: 299-321.
Kitchin, R., Lauriault, T., and McArdle, G. ‘Knowing and Governing Cities through Urban Indicators, City Benchmarking and Real-Time Dashboards’, Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2 (1). Routledge, 2015: 6-28.
Louridas, P. ‘Design as Bricolage: Anthropology Meets Design Thinking’, Design Studies 20 (6), 1999: 517-535. doi:10.1016/S0142-694X(98)00044-1.
Manovich, L. Software takes command. New York-London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Miller, H. and Arnold, J. ‘Self in Web Home Pages: Gender, Identity and Power in Cyberspace’ in Towards cyberpsychology: Mind, cognitions and society in the internet age, edited by G. Riva and C. Galimberti. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2003: 73-94.
Moore, C. ‘Screenshots as Virtual Photography’ in Advancing digital humanities: Research, methods, theories, edited by P. Arthur and K. Bode. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014: 141-160.
Müller, E. ‘Where Quality Matters : Discourses on the Art of Making a YouTube Video’ in The YouTube reader, edited by P. Snickars and P. Vonderau. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009: 126-138.
Niederer, S. and van Dijck, J. ‘Wisdom of the Crowd or Technicity of Content? Wikipedia as a Sociotechnical System’, New Media & Society, 12 (8), 2010: 1368-1387.
Nurkka, P. ‘“Nobody Other than Me Knows What I Want”: Customizing a Sports Watch’ in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 8120 LNCS:384–402. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-40498-6_30.
Papacharissi, Z. ‘The Virtual Geographies of Social Networks: A Comparative Analysis of Facebook, LinkedIn and ASmallWorld’, New Media & Society, 11 (1-2), 2009: 199-220.
Pias, C. ‘The Game Player’s Duty: The User as the Gestalt of the Ports’ in Media archaeology: Approaches, applications, and implications, edited by E. Huhtamo and J. Parikka. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011: 164-183.
Putnam, T. ‘”Postmodern” Home Life’ in At home: An anthropology of domestic space, edited by I. Cieraad. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006: 144-155.
Roizen, J. ‘Teletext in the U.S.A.’, SMPTE Journal, 90 (7), 1981: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=7242540.
Shin, C., Hong, J., and Dey, A. ‘Understanding and Prediction of Mobile Application Usage for Smart Phones’ in Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing – UbiComp ’12. New York: ACM Press, 2012: 173-182.
Sparke, P. ‘The Domestic Interior and the Construction of Self: The New York Homes of Elsie de Wolfe’ in Interior design and identity, edited by S. McKellar and P. Sparke. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004: 72-92.
Spigel, L. Make room for TV: Television and the family ideal in postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Suits, B. ‘What Is a Game?’, Philosophy of Science, 34 (2), 1967: 148-156.
Shyam, S. and Marathe, S. ‘Personalization versus Customization: The Importance of Agency, Privacy, and Power Usage’, Human Communication Research, 36 (3). Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010: 298-322.
Thompson, C. ‘The Most Important Thing on the Internet Is the Screenshot’, Wired Magazine, 2015: http://www.wired.com/2015/03/clive-thompson-6/.
Tov, E. Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible and Qumran: Collected essays. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008.
Tseëlon, E. ‘Is the Presented Self Sincere? Goffman, Impression Management and the Postmodern Self’, Theory, Culture & Society, 9 (2), 1992: 115-128. doi:10.1177/026327692009002006.
Tuunanen, J. and Hamari, J. ‘Meta-Synthesis of Player Typologies’ in Proceedings of Nordic Digra 2012 Conference: Local and Global – Games in Culture and Society, 2012: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/12168.40312.pdf.
van den Boomen, M. ‘Interfacing by Iconic Metaphors’, Configurations, 16 (1). The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008: 33-55. doi:10.1353/con.0.0045.
Vanhemert, K. ‘Apple Is Going to Kill the Home Screen’, Wired Magazine, May 2015: www.wired.com/2015/06/ios9-proactive-apple-is-going-to-kill-the-home-screen/.
Wang, Q.Y. and Woo, H.L. ‘The Affordances of Weblogs and Discussion Forums for Learning : A Comparative Analysis’, Educational Technology, 48 (5), 2008: 34-38: http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ807450.
Werning, S. ‘Swipe to Unlock. How the Materiality of the Touchscreen Frames Media Use and Corresponding Perceptions of Media Content’, Digital Culture & Society, 1 (1), 2015: 55-72.
Williamson, J. ‘Family, Education, Photography’ in Culture/power/history: A reader in contemporary social theory, edited by N. Dirks, G. Eley, and S. Ortner. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994: 236-244.
Winkler, H. ‘Vom Programm Als Ereignis Zum Programm Als Ort. Zeit Und Linearität Im Fernsehen Und in Den Digitalen Medien’, Kinoschriften, 4, 1996: 45-54. http://homepages.uni-paderborn.de/winkler/linear3.html.
[1] Buttimer 2015, p. 166.
[2] Shin & Hong & Dey 2012, p. 173.
[3] Bolter 2001, p. 83.
[4] Vanhemert 2015.
[5] Ahmed 1999, p. 331.
[6] Cieraad 2006, p. 4.
[7] Miller & Arnold 2003, p. 79.
[9] van den Boomen 2008.
[10] Roizen 1981.
[11] Graziplene 2000, p. 15.
[12] Ibid., p. 43.
[13] Böhmer & Antonio 2013, p. 2140.
[14] Buttimer 2015, p. 167.
[15] Ibid., p. 170.
[16] Spigel 1992, p. 106.
[18] Winkler 1996, p. 50.
[20] Android introduced an optional auto-rotate feature that affords a landscape view of the home screen in January 2016; cf. e.g. http://cnet.co/2acEKDz.
[21] These shifts in perception are limited in their generalisability and would require a more thorough diachronic analysis of public discourse than is possible here; tech websites like TheNextWeb (cf. e.g. http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/04/24/theres-no-place-like-home-screen-exploring-the-philosophy-of-app-placement/) can provide cursory evidence, but only represent a particular group of smartphone users.
[22] Spigel 1992, p. 2.
[23] Haberman 2012, p. 2.
[24] Image sharing platforms like Pinterest fueled this development by acting as an attention economy, within which categories for ‘successful’ customisation could emerge over time; cf. e.g. https://nl.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=iphone%20cases.
[25] Jung 2014, p. 303.
[26] Cf. e.g. archives like http://mycolorscreen.com/.
[27] Williamson 1994, p. 237 (italicisation in the original text).
[28] Gram-Hanssen & Bech-Danielsen 2004, p. 18.
[31] Sparke 2004, p. 72.
[32] Nurkka 2013.
[33] Sundar & Marathe 2010.
[34] Frissen et al. 2015, p. 39.
[36] Cf. e.g. an example at http://i.imgur.com/9ZZ4s7B.jpg, referenced in a Reddit forum discussion on home screen customisation at https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/2mt1we/show_us_your_primary_springboard_homescreen_page/.
[37] Suits 1967, p. 34.
[38] Cf. e.g. http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/cool-android-homescreens/.
[39] Louridas 1999.
[40] Cf. e.g. http://iempty.tooliphone.net/en/customize/iphone/customize-your-iphone-springboard-with-transparent-icons#.V4_K4vmyNHw.
[41] Chen et al. 2015; Moore 2014.
[42] Thompson 2015.
[43] Cf. https://homescreen.is/.
[44] In 2015, the app was removed from the iOS app store because its functionality was allegedly too similar to the app store itself.
[45] For instance, the ‘phone app’ is present on 86% of all home screens, while YouTube, which had been pre-installed until iOS 6.0, only reaches 33%.
[46] Tseëlon 1992.
[47] Costikyan 2013, p. 2.
[48] Cf. https://homescreen.me.
[49] Cf. http://mycolorscreen.com.
[50] Cf. e.g. http://www.droid-life.com/tag/home-screens/.
[51] Müller 2009.
[52] Niederer & van Dijck 2010, p. 1373.
[53] Batty 2015; Kitchin, Lauriault, & McArdle 2015.
[54] Cf. e.g. http://citydashboard.org/london/ for a prominent example.
[55] Kitchin & Lauriault & McArdle 2015.
[56] Batty 2015, p. 30.
[57] Pias 2011, p. 175.
[58] Putnam 2006, p. 145f.
[61] Most recently, Apple proposed moving onto a different navigational paradigm altogether; cf. http://www.wired.com/2015/06/ios9-proactive-apple-is-going-to-kill-the-home-screen/.
[62] Vanhemert 2015.
[63] Gaver 1991, p. 82.
[64] Manovich 2013.
[67] Wang & Woo 2008.
[68] Papacharissi 2009.
[69] Werning 2015.
[70] Bogost 2016.
[71] Tov 2008, p. 92.
[72] Shin & Hong & Dey 2012, p. 178.
[73] Bogost & Montfort 2007.
[74] Cf. e.g. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/14/inside-ios-10-third-party-compatibility-opens-up-messages-to-apples-app-universe.
[75] Cf. https://www.wired.com/2016/06/facebook-messenger-new-home-screen-lure-away-apps/.
[76] Cf. https://www.wired.com/2015/12/slack-is-investing-80-million-in-slack-bot-startups/.
[77] Cf. https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/26/facebook-is-adding-a-personal-assistant-called-m-to-your-messenger-app/.
[78] Cf. e.g. https://www.inverse.com/article/16007-chatbot-murphy-uses-faceswap and https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/30/microsoft-is-bringing-bots-to-skype-and-everywhere-else/.
[81] Examples can be found at http://www.vice.com/read/the-smartphones-of-refugees-876.
[82] Cf. e.g. http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/07/28/10-apps-you-need-to-have-on-your-iphone-home-screen/.
[84] Cf. http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/04/24/theres-no-place-like-home-screen-exploring-the-philosophy-of-app-placement/3/.
[85] Cf. http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/07/28/10-apps-you-need-to-have-on-your-iphone-home-screen/.
[86] Cf. http://www.smartmobilephonesolutions.com/content/android-home-screen.
https://www.necsus-ejms.org/wp-content/uploads/Necsus-01.png 0 0 Jeroen Sondervan https://www.necsus-ejms.org/wp-content/uploads/Necsus-01.png Jeroen Sondervan2016-12-05 17:44:112016-12-05 17:44:11The home screen as an anchor point for mobile media use: Technologies, practices, identities
The filmic representation of home in transnational families: The case of ‘I... Songs of home (and away): Ethnically-coded diegetic music and multidirectional...
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11680
|
__label__wiki
| 0.904078
| 0.904078
|
Brief Background of Oriental Mindoro
Chinese Traders/Spanish, American, Japanese Rule
Early in the 12th century, the 10 Datus of Borneo arrived and settled in Panay Island and the rest of the Visayas. Three hundred years after, the Spaniards came in 1521. A Spanish historian recorded the trade and commerce existing between the people of Mai or Minolo ( a barrio of Puerto Galera) and the Chinese traders from the Kingdom of Cathay(China).
A Chinese historian Chao Ju-Kua gave an account on the honesty of the early Mindorenos. It was the custom of the people of Mindoro to come and take with them whatever goods they like, and even if one could not distinguish one from the other, the Mindorenos would always return to pay the Chinese traders.
Because Mindoro was a Moslem settlement, it took 85 years for Spain to conquer Puerto Galera which they later converted into a ship building and repair station. Mindoro became famous during the Galleon Trade days which lasted for 200 years. Juan de Salcedo discovered gold in Mindoro and he called the place "Mina de Oro" (Gold Mine). The Spanish religious orders tried evangelizing the Mangyans and failed. In 1679 Calapan was founded. With Calapan, the progress of Mindoro started to develop. With the coming of the Americans, trade and commerce increased between Batangas and Mindoro. When the American educators (called "Thomasites") arrived in early 1900, health and education steadily improved. But there was a setback in 1942 when the Japanese invaded Calapan and controlled the whole island down to Bulalacao. The Japanese constructed a railway and built ports to transport coal, rice and animals. These were shipped to Batangas where many of the Imperial army officers held offices during World War II.
Independence 50 Years After
On November 15, 1950 Republic Act 505 was signed into law separating Oriental Mindoro from Occidental Mindoro. Calapan became the provincial capital with 14 other municipalities. Inspite being rich in natural resources, in agriculture and fisheries, Mindoro remained undeveloped.
Mindoro Today - A Paradise Island
Oriental Mindoro is now recognized as one of the country's economic centers and emerging as a prime destination for tourists, travelers, businessmen, inverstors and families.
Peaceful Province in Reqion IV
The development of program initiatives launched in the last decade have paved the way toward progress and prosperity. Improvements in power and energy, transportation and communications, roads and bridges, housing and livelihood, education and sports, as well as the peace and order situation have reached notable proportions.
Gateway to the Rest of the Archipelago
The province is a vital link to the rest of Southern Philippines, the CALABARZON region, the rest of Metro Manila, and now even to Visayas and Mindanao via the Nautical Highway.
It is only 45 minutes away from the Batangas International Port and 30 minutes via air from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
With about 50 round trips daily on a 24/7 schedule, the province not only offers pleasurable trips but definitely a good business zone. It has 3 airports in Calapan City, Pinamalayan and Mansalay.
9th Tourist Destination
As the country's seventh largest island, Oriental Mindoro is a haven for pristine white beaches, flowing streams and wondrous waterfalls, green forests, vast agriclutural lands and other abundant natural resources.
It takes pride in being cited as the 9th Top Tourist Destination in the country by the Department of Tourism (DOT), which is the result of gargantuan efforts to preserve the lush forests and to maintain the enchanting beaches and pristine blue waters.
Country's Food Basket
Mindoro Island has emerged as the Food Basket of the country upon winning the Gawad Sapat Ani 2000 Award meant for food producers in the country. It is also known as the Philippines' Banana and Calamansi King.
Agriculture and fisheries are the province's top source of income. Aqua cultured fish and prawns augment the local economy.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11684
|
__label__cc
| 0.553603
| 0.446397
|
ON THE RECORD: SPINNING SUCCESS
In Las Vegas, nightclubs have set the standard in form and function, fancy and fun for the rest of the world. At the end of last year, the city won again with the opening of On the Record at Park MGM. However, this nightclub—the 14th in the brand portfolio of L.A.’s nightclub impresarios Mark and Jonnie Houston—brings with it a breath of fresh air and a design funkiness that you’ll excitedly discover with each step inside the multiroom, 11,000-square-foot space.
While “bigger is better” dominated Vegas nightlife these past years, OTR takes it back to “intimate is idyllic.”
It’s all about nostalgia and music here. The design conjures different musical eras. Walls throughout the club are lined with actual speakers, radios and TVs, as well as concert posters from different genres and decades. Four spots throughout the club are equipped for live musical performances—everything from hip-hop bands, rock, indie and more; if you’re looking for EDM DJs, this might not be your spot. However, there are DJ performances—White Shadow (Feb. 1) and Just Blaze (Feb. 8)—from a booth made out of a sliced-in-half Rolls Royce.
The main room has a lit-up dance floor, banquette-style VIP tables and three private karaoke rooms. The Living Room space is just that—it has a lived-in vibe with a full bar and access to the patio. The patio has one of the coolest features in the club—an actual double-decker bus equipped with a bar and DJ booth.
o find the speakeasy, step through the red telephone box and walk along the hallway lined with old cassette tapes. The hidden passageway opens into the Vinyl Parlor where up to 25 guests can sip on song-inspired cocktails. This is also the room where OTR hosts its bartender residencies—top bartenders from around the country set up shop behind the bar and create their own signature cocktails. Feb. 1-2, catch San Francisco’s Kevin Dietrich from Pacific Cocktail Haven. He’ll be whipping up the Oh Snap! cocktail, inspired by the Avicii song “Without You.” It’s a blend of gin, Manzanilla sherry, fresh lemon, absinthe and sugar snap peas.
Park MGM, opens at 10 p.m. Wed. & Fri.-Sat. 702.730.6773
Janet Jackson celebrates Las Vegas residency with famous friends
Last Night's Look: The Red Carpet Outfits You Have to See
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11691
|
__label__cc
| 0.699475
| 0.300525
|
DOWNLOAD and Watch The Nine Lives of Chloe King complete tv series, full episodes of seasons 1,2
The Nine Lives of Chloe King seasons list:
Complete TV Series The Nine Lives of Chloe King by ABC Family. Seasons included: 1,2 in high quality and low size. Click Scroll to download to select the season.
6.4 /10 14 votes
The Nine Lives of Chloe King screencaps
Sixteen-year-old girl Chloe king once discovers that she has supernatural powers, and someone is constantly chasing her. Soon the girl learns that she is a descendant of some ancient race. And it just so happens that this young girl is the only one who can protect this nation, which for many thousands of years has been the target of murder. Her hunt for the mysterious order of assassins. Will the main character having a number of superpowers to defend the right to life of their own kind and get out of the war winner. Learn about it by viewing the show.
Select the season# of The Nine Lives of Chloe King, download and watch without registration
The Nine Lives of Chloe King Season 1
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11694
|
__label__wiki
| 0.745127
| 0.745127
|
Principles and Practices to Enhance Compliance and Enforcement of the Personal Income Tax
Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2011-24
Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2011-04
37 Pages Posted: 2 Sep 2011 Last revised: 24 Sep 2012
See all articles by George K. Yin
George K. Yin
31 Va. Tax Rev. 381 (2012)
Number of pages: 33 Posted: 29 Sep 2011 Last Revised: 27 Jun 2014
Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2011-24, Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2011-04
Number of pages: 37 Posted: 02 Sep 2011 Last Revised: 24 Sep 2012
Date Written: September 1, 2011
In July, 2011, the Budgetary Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress convened an international symposium on reform of China’s Personal Income Tax (PIT) system. Currently about 30 years old, the Chinese PIT system very roughly resembles the U.S. PIT system at a similar age (prior to changes effected during World War II). This symposium paper describes general principles and specific practices to improve compliance and enforcement of the PIT, based on the U.S. experience with that tax. Support for the symposium was also provided by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ), an enterprise of the German government that supports international cooperation for sustainable development.
Yin, George K., Principles and Practices to Enhance Compliance and Enforcement of the Personal Income Tax (September 1, 2011). Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2011-24; Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2011-04. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1920934 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1920934
George K. Yin (Contact Author)
University of Virginia School of Law ( email )
580 Massie Road
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11698
|
__label__cc
| 0.514645
| 0.485355
|
The Charles H. Townes Graduate Fellowship
An endowment, the payout of which will support high-achieving graduate students in the Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Recipients shall be full-time graduate students who demonstrate high academic distinction. Prospective recipients will be identified, screened, and selected by the Chair of the Department of Physics or his/her designated representative.
Donate to the Charles H. Townes Graduate Fellowship
The Graduate Student Support Fund in Physics
An endowment, the payout of which shall be used to support high-achieving graduate students enrolled in the Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who demonstrate high academic distinction.
Donate to the Graduate Student Support Fund in Physics
The Physics Undergraduate Student Support Fund
An endowment, the payout of which will be used in the Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, to benefit undergraduate Physics majors in good academic standing. Recipients are selected by the Department of Physics.
Donate to the Physics Undergraduate Student Support Fund
The Robert P. Lin Fellowship Fund
Gifts to the Robert P. Lin Graduate Fellowship fund help support outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research related to space sciences, including students with training in Physics, Astronomy and Engineering.
Donate to the Robert P. Lin Fellowship Fund
The Stuart J. Freedman Memorial Fellowship Fund in Physics
The Stuart J. Freedman Memorial Fellowship Fund in Physics provides graduate fellowship support in the Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Donate to the Stuart J. Freedman Memorial Fellowship Fund in Physics
Erwin Hahn Graduate Fellowship in Physics
An endowment, the payout of which will be used to provide support for high-achieving graduate student(s) in the physics department at UC Berkeley. Preference is given to a student(s) studying condensed matter experiment. Professor Erwin Louis Hahn, on the faculty in the Department of Physics at UC Berkeley since 1955, passed away on September 20, 2016. He is best known for his discovery of spin echoes, which led to the development of Magnetic Resonant Imaging (MRI) technology, improving medical diagnostics and changing lives of millions of people around the world today.
Donate to the Hahn Graduate Fellowship in Physics
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11701
|
__label__wiki
| 0.913981
| 0.913981
|
PlayStation 4 is like the PC of 2014 or 2015 says Quantic Dream Co-CEO
The PlayStation 4 has been compared to a PC from the future by Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere. The studio…
By Alex Co April 30, 2013 January 28, 2019 Share
The PlayStation 4 has been compared to a PC from the future by Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere.
The studio that showcased that creepy face guy back in February at the PlayStation 4 announcement say that they’re developing a brand new engine for the PlayStation 4, and that they hope to push to the most realistic and authentic performance possible.
While speaking to Gamespot, Guillaume de Fondaumiere said
“There are limitations on the PlayStation 3 and there will be limitations on PlayStation 4. With the PlayStation 4, it’s something that really is more like the PC of next year or two years.”
Quantic Dream’s is working on Beyond: Two Souls, which boasts a 10 hour campaign, it’s slated for an October release on the PlayStation 3. And just for the record, if you didn’t know; they’re the guys behind Heavy Rain.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11703
|
__label__wiki
| 0.775778
| 0.775778
|
Tag Archives: depression
Essays, Reviews
Unhinging Horror: An Anxious Response to the “madness” of Hereditary (2018) and The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
This post is, in part, a personal and very tendentious review of Ari Aster’s film Hereditary and Mike Flanagan’s Netflix mini-series The Haunting of Hill House. As such, it contains a number of spoilers for, and potentially disturbing images from, both. Caveat lector.
My response to both is shaped by broader concerns with the long and troubling history of representations of “madness” and “mental illness” in popular horror fictions (literary, cinematic, and televisual). In this respect, it is motivated in part by a panel I recently participated in at CanCon 2018, Ottawa’s s annual speculative fiction convention, titled “Horror and the Problematic Portrayal of Madness.” On this note, keep your eyes on this space for a forthcoming continuation of that discussion with my co-panelists, Nathan Caro Fréchette, Tonya Liburd, David Nickle, and Derek Newman-Stille.
This post is also in part a personal discussion of the relationship between anxiety, depression, grief, and the pleasures and problems of horror spectatorship from the point of view of a lifelong “horror fan.” My fandom (or, to use my colleague Aalya Ahmad’s preferred term, “fan(g)dom”) has, for better or worse, shaped my work and interests as a literature and film scholar, professional educator, and occasional writer of poetry and fiction.
It should be noted that throughout this piece, I mark out both the terms “madness” and “mental illness” (which often mean very different things) in quotation marks. In doing so, I do not intend to erase the realities, struggles, joys, sufferings, or triumphs of those who identify with these terms, or who have had these terms forced upon them. Rather, to mis-paraphrase a silly song, I want to hold these terms closely in quotation marks, while signalling that they do not, and probably cannot, have a neutral, transparent, cross-cultural or trans-historical meaning.
First, Hereditary.
I saw the film during its theatrical run with my wife and a friend. My wife enjoyed it, jumped at the jump-scary scenes, and was untroubled by it otherwise. It was, in her estimation, a “good horror film,” although not a great or especially original one. My friend and I, on the other hand, who both live with levels of anxiety that sometimes become difficult to manage (or function socially and professionally through) and who both consider ourselves to be horror film “connoisseurs,” began having the prodromal symptoms of an impending panic attack by the mid-point of the film. When we discussed it after the fact, we both used the words “deeply disturbing” and “powerful” to describe it.
These pre-panic symptoms, for me, peaked during the family dinner scene. The tense, unbearably emotionally fraught conflict between the members of the Graham family too closely resembled and amplified some of the most painful and confusing conversations I’ve had with family and loved ones over the years.
The guilt, resentment, helplessness, and next to total breakdown of effective communication between the Grahams massively spiked my anxiety. In light of the film’s conclusion, it becomes clear that none of the characters are talking about primarily what they think they are talking about during this scene; the entire conversation only expresses their thoughts and feelings insofar as it foreshadows the plot and structure of the film. This is technically impressive. It is also part of the film’s deliberate erasure of any agency its characters may, at first, appear to have.
This retrospective dramatic irony encapsulates how Hereditary ultimately unhinges its own apparent representations of “mental illness,” an unhinging echoed by much of the critical conversation around the film, much of which tends to break down into highly polarized comments such as, “it’s ridiculous to criticize a film’s representation of mental illness when it is ultimately about demonic possession!” or “to say anything positive about this film is literally to attack and erase those who live with mental illness!”
During this scene, I was on the verge of having to walk out of the film to try to get my heart-rate down, my circulation to extremities going again, and my mind from buzzing with a shit-tonne of awful anxious ideation.
Shortly after this scene, things started to slide seamlessly into spectacular and undeniable malevolent supernaturalism. Corpses in the attic becoming re-animate, spontaneous human combustion, menacing apparitions blossoming like spring flowers, acephalic ritualistic tableaux… an eruption of Grand Guignol that gave me a crashing, cathartic sensation of relief as my panic transmuted into a far more pleasurable feeling of weird familiarity – “right, I’m watching an over-the-top supernatural horror film, OK, I can just enjoy this for the delirious spectacle that it is becoming,” and my desire to walk out of the theatre ended.
That feeling is pretty much what I experience any time I am able to re-direct my rising anxiety and evade an impending panic attack (by vigorous exercise, long walks, meditation, pet-bonding, self-medication, absorbing my attention in a film sufficiently to ease the circulation of my thoughts around the painful rapid pace of my heart and strain of my breathing, or some other means.) As my heart-rate lowers, warmth returns to my extremities and my vision stops whiting out at the edges, a kind of quiet elation sets in; some kind of psychic disaster has been averted. My reaction to Hereditary emphasized for me that part of my life-long attraction to horror films stems from their ability to create this kind of catharsis, which, when it works, is hugely helpful to me in managing and transmuting my anxiety. Indeed, one blogger has written of understanding the film as being “about” anxiety itself, and therefore useful in understanding their own experiences living with it.
Because of the degree to which the first half of the film, with its cultivation of the “horrors” of “mental illness,” emotional trauma, and excruciatingly dysfunctional family relationships generated anxiety for me, its sudden and inevitable slide into flamboyant supernaturalism was anxiolytic. For many viewers, however, the moment this kind of dread dissipates is the moment the film either loses much of its power, or becomes unforgivably problematic. It has elicited what I think are some of the most incisive criticisms of the film. As one blogger puts it, Hereditary
“is ugly. At its core is a journey of abuse, grief and mental illness which posits that there is no good way to cope when one’s world is torn apart by any of these things. And as it goes on it morphs into a visceral, soul-crushing experience merged with bits of genre conventions that will have horror geeks patting themselves on the back while others will be left unsure how to feel about the whole thing.”
There is some truth in this assessment of the film. Given how heavily reliant, and lovingly referential, Hereditary is toward its horror-cinematic and literary inspirations (as opposed to the lives and fate of its characters) there is something to the idea that it fetishizes its conventions at the expense of its characters. However, I’m troubled by this writer’s characterization of the film’s reception being polarized between “horror geeks” (there is a long history of pathologizing Gothic and horror fictions, and those who create or consume them, in particularly gendered and classist ways that lurks behind a statement like this) and the rest of humanity (who are, presumably, more “humane,” or “sensitive,” or “sane” than those “geeks.”)
Lena Wilson puts it in a way that doesn’t automatically pathologize anybody who enjoyed or appreciated the film, while still underlining its most crucial problem:
“The literal destruction of their grieving family unfolds with dreadful inevitability, as both Annie and Peter ultimately die by their own hands. Their deaths, despite paranormal influences, can be interpreted as suicide, in light of the film’s overt references to mental illness. Despite ever-evolving diagnoses and new forms of therapy, the stigmatization of mental illness in our society is alive and well.”
Many critics have responded to the commercial success of and considerable critical praise for Hereditary by pointing out its lack of “originality.” As a review in The Economist puts it,
“Viewers may not guess every specific—because the specifics are wonderfully bizarre—but the sinister conspiracy plot is far less surprising than the one in “Get Out”, for instance. It is less original and resonant, too. The film sometimes pretends to be a classical tragedy about bereavement, motherhood and mental illness, but with its regular scares and its rudimentary plotting, “Hereditary” is fundamentally a hokey Halloween haunted-house chiller, complete with spooks, séances and people who are foolish enough to run upstairs rather than out of the door when they’re being chased.”
I wouldn’t argue with the claim that Hereditary is less original than Jordan Peele’s Get Out (that masterful film sets a tremendously high bar!) On the contrary, I think its relative lack of originality is part of what makes it so disturbing; it uses its generic precursors to produce a sense of fatalistic inevitability. That’s one aspect of Freud’s otherwise-superseded theory of the uncanny I think still holds water – that the feeling of the uncanny is always rooted in a disturbing familiarity.
Often the most disturbing films are the ones that do all-too-familiar things, just a little differently. I didn’t find Hereditary especially “original,” but I sure didn’t find it “hokey.” Had more of its audience felt this way, it would surely have disturbed, unsettled, or disgusted far fewer of them, myself included, and would clearly be a less divisive topic for discussion.
But it is certainly much more concerned with using its narrative and effects to create a sense of dreadful fatalism than in exploring in an open-ended and psychologically dynamic way the lives of its characters. The unfortunate members of the Graham family are all, ultimately, revealed to be little cogs in a massive sensory-affective machine designed to do nothing so much as generate a feeling of inescapable doom. This unflinching, relentless focus makes it both a powerful horror narrative, and a dangerous and distressing (non)portrayal of “mental illness.”
Nor does Hereditary “pretend” to be a “classical tragedy.” It’s pre-texts are not primarily Oedipus Rex or The Bacchae. They are, rather, classic psychological Gothic tales, from Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Maupassant’s “L’Horla,” through to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. In each of these fictions, a particular psychological disposition or state is inextricably linked to the inevitable destruction of a character or characters. In short, Hereditary‘s strengths, like its “sins,” are practically constitutive of this mode of horror.
Poe’s “Usher” is, I think, an especially apt point of comparison for Hereditary. It is a story that incorporates many phrases and images and ideas from earlier work, using them to create a sense of excessive familiarity and mechanistic inevitability. It banks on its readers’ prior familiarity with the conspicuous tropes of Gothic fiction to achieve its effects. The crumbling ancestral mansion, which will collapse at the conclusion, in an obvious echo of Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, as the “crack” emphasized throughout the tale reminds its readers, bringing the Usher family, prey to neurotic afflictions and phobias, crashing down with it. The symbolism in Poe’s tale between the haunted house, cracked and irreversibly collapsing, and the “mad” mind is forceful, and intricately interwoven into every sentence of the story, each element setting up the inevitable doom of its conclusion. Its “human” characters are automata, parts of its fatal machinery.
Given the massive scope of the tale’s influence, “Usher” is a crucial text for any consideration of the role “madness” plays in modern horror, and its influence is in no way limited by the lack of originality in its elements. For “Usher” is a Frankenstein’s monster of stitched-together parts. As I detail in the article “Ancestral Piles: Poe’s Gothic Materials,” Poe lifted elements from a hundred prior sources for it, many of them Gothic fictions; including Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland (which similarly marries “madness” to both heredity and fate), Sir Walter Scott’s translation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Das Majorat,” the structure and conclusion of the Grandfather of the Gothic, Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho and even Mary Shelley’s novel itself. The work he designed this re-organized engine to perform is the production of a singular effect; a powerful, intricate sense of passive wonder and horror in the face of inevitable doom.
Richard Ingram, who is credited with coining the term “Mad Studies,” writes that “mad studies–written in the lower case–has existed in many different times and places. For example, I see Nietzsche as a forerunner of Mad Studies. I think he was one of the people who was continuously writing about his own struggle with madness in his philosophy, before eventually being psychiatrized.”
The same could certainly be said (and has been said) of Poe, who was posthumously translated into a “madman” by Rufus Grisworld, romantically valourized as a martyr of madness by Baudelaire, and treated as a posthumous subject for literary-clinical investigation by Freud’s pupil Marie Bonaparte, among countless others. To what extent did Poe’s tales “problematically appropriate” the “madness” of others for commercial exploitation? To what extent did they codify and propagate the proto-clinical ideas of James Cowles Pritchard and other Victorian psychologists by embedding them in a hugely influential and highly compressed literary form, casting even contemporary mad-perceived or mad-identified folks (including viewers of Hereditary) under the vampiric shadow of long dead physician-philosophers? And to what extent are they, instead, in Ingram’s words, products of and testaments to Poe’s own “struggle with madness” (which need not mean Poe’s struggle with “insanity,” or with “mental illness,” or with “latent dementia praecox,” or “sublimated psychopathy” resulting from “sexual inversion.”)
Hereditary similarly exploits its own generic over-saturation to generate and/or discharge tension in (many members of) its audience. Like “Usher,” it synthesizes this generic determinism (the tendency that unifies all of its cinematic influences and conventions) with the idea that “madness” is a fatal sentence (whether it is understood through the lens of “mental illness”, or fatal supernatural machinery.)
Horror writer Thomas Ligotti, who often works in this mode, has described his own fictions as “a matter of personal pathology,” expressive of, and possibly therapeutically related to, his own lifelong experience of debilitating depression and anxiety. He describes this mode in his essay, “Consolations of Horror.” Speaking of “Usher,” he asks, “Did you ever wonder how a Gothic story like Poe’s masterpiece can be so great without enlisting the reader’s care for its characters’ doom?”
Ligotti contradicts analyses that cast empathy and emotional mirroring as the primary basis for horror fiction’s appeal – such fictions “work,” some would have it, because we “identify with” and “believe in,” and therefore feel alongside, their characters (for elucidations of this idea, see, for example, Noel Carroll’s classic study The Philosophy of Horror, 1990, and more recently, Mathias Clasen’s evolutionary psychological account of horror’s appeal in Why Horror Seduces, 2017.)
Ligotti proposes instead, “Unlike a horror story whose effect depends on reader sympathy with its fictional victims, this one doesn’t want us to get involved with the characters in that way. Our fear does not derive from theirs.” Despite its fundamental violation of this widely touted explanation of horror’s appeal (has any reader, with the exception of Antonin Artaud, strongly identified with and seen themselves accurately reflected in one of Usher’s characters?) “Usher” is widely recognized as among the most effective and influential horror tales ever written.
Ligotti suggests that “Usher” is so effective because:
“we don’t look over any character’s shoulder but have our attention distributed god-wise into every corner of a foul factory which manufactures only one product: total and inescapable doom. Whether a given proper noun escapes this doom or is caught by it is beside the point. Poe’s is a world created with built-in obsolescence, and to appreciate fully this downrunning cosmos one must take the perspective of its creator, which is all perspectives without getting sidetracked into a single one.”
Why are readers (at least, readers like Ligotti, and to some extent myself) drawn back to Poe’s tale, then? What kind of “pleasure” does it offer? Ligotti claims “the consolation” that “Usher” offers readers “is that we are supremely removed from the maddeningly tragic viewpoint of the human.”
This was also a large part of the weird aesthetic and emotional catharsis of Hereditary for me. At a certain point, I was freed from identifying with its human characters, their traumas, griefs, emotional sufferings too recognizably close to my own, and therefore generative of almost-unbearable anxiety.
Perhaps this sort of pleasure is more likely to be experienced by those with certain depressive and/or anxious tendencies? While I’ve never been labelled with a clinical diagnosis beyond depression and general anxiety, I experience many of the tendencies associated with a schizoid personality ( as a therapist once repeatedly pointed out to me, though “a personality style and a personality disorder are not the same thing.”). So, seemingly, do most of the strange, nebulous personalities that narrate Ligotti’s fictions. So do many of Shirley Jackson’s literary characters, including Eleanor of Hill House, with whom I have closely identified since first reading the novel at the age of 12.
Both Ligotti’s fictions and Hereditary seem to offer particularly schizoid resolutions to the anxieties of trying to negotiate emotional suffering through the fraught and confusing complexities of too-intimate interpersonal relationships.
Are these tendencies in me part of what made Hereditary‘s hinge so anxiolytic? Might it make sense to talk about such fictions as “schizoid horror” (extracting that term from its more restricted clinical use, which seems to be on the wane in contemporary psychiatry, while questioning the authority and consistency of its clinical conceptions themselves)? Or is this instinct to label and categorize likely to tend back toward pathologization?
Some viewers didn’t think Hereditary “owned” or “earned” the hinge whereby its “madness” swung from “mental illness” to “demonic occultism.” I think, narratively and structurally, it did. Nevertheless, Hereditary‘s hinge, its shift from “a family history of mental illness,” “DID,” “schizophrenia,” and “trauma” to “PAIMON!” and Phallocentric Goetic theurgy involves a very literal erasure of “mental illness,” along with the (illusory) psychological autonomy of its characters.
This is especially troubling to me because that hinge was the one on which my anxiolytic catharsis (as opposed to my appreciation for its ability to build and maintain anxiety and grief) depended. But I’ve been, in part, conditioned by many prior fictions to recognize, and appreciate, the smooth swing of that hinge, for it is hardly unique to Hereditary.
It is closely paralleled by many films that “bait” the audience with apparent representations of psychological alienation, and then switch them out for a paranormal reality, whether wonderful, horrible, or somewhere in between (from The Return to Oz through The Sixth Sense to Donnie Darko, it’s a common device.)
Mike Flanagan’s Haunting of Hill House series uses a similar hinge, although to different effect.
I have a lot of admiration for Flanagan’s series in general; it is in so many ways a beautiful, aptly haunting thing. Where Aster’s film is a love-letter to many different horror films (probably none more so than Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, however), Haunting is clearly a loving email (a sometimes meandering and sentimental one) to both Shirley Jackson herself, and to Stephen King (whose own early literary tributes to Jackson are marked by similar meandering and sentimental tendencies.)
It resects and re-stitches aspects of Jackson’s novel in fascinating ways. It also, ingeniously and defiantly, uses the expectations of viewers (like myself) who know and love the novel to mislead and re-direct attention. Where Hereditary uses its allusions to foreshadow and reinforce its viciously fatalistic vision, Hill House uses them to expand upon while departing from its source material. Their respective temporal structures emphasize this difference. Hereditary traps viewers claustrophobically in the present perception of the Graham family, while revealing that present to be merely an illusionary ignorance of how the past has already determined the future.
Hill House draws heavily on the analeptic structure King is so fond of using to explore the relationship between “adult” and “childhood” experience. It’s a structure especially evident in his novel It, which seems an important source for Flanagan’s series. The series uses this structure, entirely different from that of Jackson’s novel, to distance itself from the plot of the novel, and to displace its chilling conclusion, even while having Steven Crain’s (the homophony is no coincidence) character directly quote from it. In the series, the unhinging of the main characters from mental illness, and their suspension instead from the supernatural threat represented by the house (a threat redolent of King’s revision of Jackson via Lovecraft in Salem’s Lot and The Shining,) contains at least the possibility of freedom. Heredity, here, either familial or generic, need not be fatal.
Initially, the series’ nominal echoes of, but characterization and structural departures from, the novel bothered me. But it unfolds its differences from the novel with increasing fluency and impact as it proceeds, opening spaces clearly suggested by many of Jackson’s writings (and, of course, King’s). For example, one of the scenes that initially irritated me involved Eleanor’s famous “cup of stars” dialogue being transposed so that Mrs. Dudley delivers it to Nell, who is still a child. Up to that point, Mrs. Dudley (portrayed with impressive rigidity, which even more impressively dissolves later in the series, by Annabeth Gish) has seemed very much like the character of the same name in the novel, and it made no sense to me to place that quintessential speech in her mouth. But, like all the characters in the series, Mrs. Dudley is a far cry (in the night, in the dark) from herself in the novel, and the series eventually “earns” this transposition in a very poignant way.
However, as well as cultivating a Kingly expansivity quite removed from Jackson, the series strays too far into soap operatic, gothic melodrama for my tastes. So many scenes of women in long, flowing night-gowns wandering, imperilled, through the palatial house at night! Daphne du Maurier, get thee behind me!
Yes, there is an aspect of that in Jackson’s novel (and yes, it was amplified by the novel’s marketing and most of its covers in the 60s and 70s) but part of what makes her novel stunning is its stark paring-back and exposure of the underlying psychological mechanisms of the gothic romance.
The Internet is rife with responses to the series that emphasize, earnestly or otherwise, its fright-factor, ability to induce fainting, vomiting, etc. Some of these seem more like a William Castle-esque viral campaign than “authentic” self-reported responses to the series, but I have no doubt that many viewers were truly disturbed or triggered by some of its scenes.
I didn’t do any of those things (although I did cry a few times, and got some solid startles.) But there were a few moments in the series that had my anxiety rising into concerning territory (one advantage to Netflix being that I can turn the thing off and come back to it when I’m calmer; I had to do that while watching Flanagan’s earlier film Hush, which came close to causing me a panic attack.)
All of these moments in the series centred around Nell’s character. As I’ve already said, I’ve felt a kinship with the novel’s Nell, a lonely, longing, somewhat schizoid and Quixotic character since childhood. Her counterpart in the series (skillfully portrayed by Victoria Pedretti as an adult, and Violet McGraw as a child) really resonated with me. Her distraught phone calls to her family the night of her death, their belated realization that they weren’t there for her when she called, their guilt that they didn’t do enough to help her…. I had trouble sitting through that. It’s the kind of thing I dread having to face on a daily basis.
Strangely, though, it was the series’ portrayal of Nell’s sleep paralysis that most disturbed me. Those scenes very closely resembled by own experiences of sleep paralysis, particularly those that occurred when I was in my teens, before I had any idea what I was experiencing. I was terrified to talk about those experiences with anybody, because I was convinced they were indicative of either impending death or “going crazy.”
I experienced such “hag attacks” occasionally for many years, generally during periods of acute anxiety. The first episode occurred when I was 17. It wasn’t until I took an undergrad psych course 2 years later that I read about the phenomenon. The relief was overwhelming. “O THANK THE GODS, IT’S JUST SOME KIND OF MINOR NERVOUS SYSTEM GLITCH, I’M NOT EXPERIENCING DEMONIC OPPRESSION OR HAVING A SERIES OF STROKES OR DEVELOPING A PSYCHOSIS!”
The scene in which Nell describes her symptoms to a sleep technician (who later becomes her husband) who reassures her that they are normal, and normally harmless, really resonated with the relief I found at that revelation.
Sometimes, I take comfort in thinking about my nervous system, and my personality, as simpler and more mechanically reducible things than they are, things that could be “fixed” by some kind of minor “tweak” (thus my fondness for claiming that my most cherished literary works “pare back and expose” various “underlying psychological mechanisms,” a phrasing grounded in a particularly functionalist, and therefore probably ableist, conception of the mind, and one I often find it difficult to think outside of.)
But I want to come back to that narrative mechanism, that structural hinge, whereby throughout the series, most of the characters (and to a lesser extent, the audience) are led to believe their strange and tragic experiences result from a familial tangle of, probably hereditary, “mental illness,” “cognitive disorder,” or “emotional dysfunction…” all of which is ultimately explained by the cosmic threat presented by the soul-hungry house they had the misfortune of moving into (at least it isn’t a giant child-eating space-spider.)
Where in Hereditary, this hinge swings into a closing scene of delirious grotesquerie, in Hill House it opens the door on a curiously triumphant celebration of love’s posthumous persistence that clashes sharply with the resounding final paragraph of Jackson’s novel: “Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
King’s voice rings clearly in Flanagan’s revision, although the series resists the almost Tolkien-esque moral ontology that informs much of his supernatural fiction. In the series, as in It, love has a redemptive power. None of the Crains are, ultimately, alone, and none of the Crains are, ultimately, “mentally ill.” The narrative reinforces their father’s insistence that what they had come to believe were delusions, hallucinations, and paranoiac invasive thoughts were merely mis-interpretations of their relationship with a reality in which there are “more things than are dreamt of” in bio-medical psychiatry. More things, and more hungrily dangerous things. “Mental illness” ceases to exist; the only “madness” was in denying that such preternatural (to use Steven Crain’s preferred word) threats were real.
Despite this supernatural King-ification, there’s a way in which this is also a response to the role of “madness” in Jackson’s work itself.
There are many distinct parallels between Jackson’s textual representations of psychological alienation and the ideas of contemporaneous anti-psychiatric writers including R.D. Laing. Laing interpreted a wide variety of conditions, including notably schizophrenia, as being caused by social (and, with typical casual misogyny, especially maternal) influence. To reductively simplify, Laing thought insanity was a sane response to insane social pressures, including those imposed by “schizophrenogenic” mothers. This is a concept evident throughout Jackson’s work, and that of many of her horror-writing contemporaries, including Robert Bloch (Psycho) and Charles Beaumont (“Miss Gentilbelle.”) Laing’s views have been largely rejected by neurobiological psychiatry, although some of his therapeutic experiments arguably influenced contemporary socialization-focused approaches. But they were influential in Jackson’s time, and probably inform the way that both mother-figures and traditional societal influences function as an external menace, very much like a supernatural threat, in so many of her stories (as, certainly, does her own troubled relationship with both her mother and husband.) The series arguably culminates in a supernatural reification of this theory, as it is by first maddening mothers that the hungry house is able to claim many of its victims (most of whom are women.)
This leads me to the importance of sociologist Kathryn Church‘s caveat that “Mad studies doesn’t reject medical models of madness [but it puts] them into a historical trajectory, one that shows that psychiatry isn’t an absolute interpretation of human mental states.”
I think fiction can play an important role in delineating those trajectories, and that the way “madness” functions in the work of particular writers, film-makers, and artists (often quite removed from any supposed clinical or psychiatric “reality”) can be very revealing of this.
But it is unclear to me where fantastic, and especially horrific, fictions that darkly mirror certain “human mental states” fit into this crucially important historical and political examination. Is transforming the phenomenology of a deeply troubling “human mental state” into a fictional world in which it is the expression of very different conditions and physical laws ever NOT troubling, and potentially dangerous? Is it potentially a useful way of challenging the de-historicized absolutism of medico-psychiatric diagnosis? Are these prospects always, or ever, mutually exclusive?
Hill House’s closing scenes were, for me, hugely cathartic, but in an entirely different way from Hereditary‘s. The latter left me giddy and disturbed. The former left me crying, but somehow comforted, despite my reservations.
Hill House is “sad horror,” surely, but also loving, humane, hopeful horror. My experience of it, my appreciation for it, is no doubt in part because I’m grieving the sudden loss, a couple of months ago, of my mother, who first invited me in to Jackson’s Hill House.*
The feeling of loss, and of the felt presence of an absent, and much-missed, loved one (unmoored from any religious or metaphysical belief in an afterlife) is fertile ground in which the desire for the supernatural can grow. It’s a large part of my emotional reality these days, and may have made me especially responsive to the series. Hill House gave me an aesthetic outlet for grief, one intensified somehow by transient fright. But does that change its troubling transfiguration of “mental illness” into supernatural menace? Does that unhinge it in a potentially revelatory way? Does that necessarily make it less effective as a work of “horror?”
These are, at least to me, open questions, open doors, and I’m not even clear what kind of hinges their answers might swing on.
* I was about 12 years old when I read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, with its high praise for Jackson’s novel. I was talking to my mother about it, and she realized she owned a copy as part of the abridged Reader’s Digest book series she subscribed to, which we both read and talked about, so the novel is caught up in my memories of my Mother in stark contrast to the way Eleanor’s, and Jackson’s, mother’s shadow hangs over the text.
Tagged anxiety, Ari Aster, depression, edgar allan poe, fall of the house of usher, film review, hag attack, Hereditary, horror fiction, it, mad studies, madness, Mathias Clasen, mental illness, Mike Flanagan, Netflix, schizoid personality, shirley jackson, sleep paralysis, stephen king, The Haunting of Hill House, Thomas Ligotti
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11704
|
__label__wiki
| 0.732247
| 0.732247
|
How we found the NZDF was wrong on Hit & Run
by Sam Warburton
A year ago New Zealand's top soldier stood in front of the cameras and insisted that the book Hit & Run had got it wrong. This week, after a year's wait, an OIA request prompted the NZDF to admit the photos in the book had the right location after all. This is the story of that request
News broke on Tuesday that the New Zealand Defence Force had released documents that corroborated important parts of Jon Stephenson's and Nicky Hager's book, Hit & Run, and fatally undermined their central, crucial critique of the book.
Hit & Run: Why doesn't NZDF start by answering this question?
by David Fisher
NZDF has changed it's position on civilian casualties and never explained itself. It has two ministers with different versions. How does any government agency get away with this?
There’s so much to digest in the confusion surrounding the book Hit & Run.
But there is a key shift in the position of the New Zealand Defence Force that has become lost in the chaos swirling around the accusations made.
For six years, the NZ Defence Force maintained that claims of civilians casualties were “unfounded”.
Some questions for the NZDF
by Nicola Kean
Almost a week after the release of Hit & Run, we have more questions than answers from the Defence Force and the Government.
Here’s some that have been rattling around in my brain this week:
Killing in the name of?
by Andrew Geddis
Nicky Hager and John Stephenson’s book, Hit & Run, presents compelling evidence that our SAS was responsible for killing at least six Afghani civilians, wounding at least another fifteen, and handing over a man to be tortured for information. And then we were systematically lied to about what was being done in our name.
Think of a three-year-old girl. Maybe she’s your daughter. Maybe she’s your niece. Maybe she’s your friend’s child. But think of her.
The O'Donnell raid in Afghanistan: The seeds of the new Hager book
by Tim Watkin
The 2010 raid in Afghanistan detailed in Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson's new book, Hit and Run, was first revealed on a TV interview I produced in 2011. It's time for some official answers
I know as little as most of you about Nicky Hager's new book. It investigates an SAS raid in Afghanistan in 2010, after the death of Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell whilst on patrol that August.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11706
|
__label__cc
| 0.589964
| 0.410036
|
Sunflowers!
Posted on August 14, 2013 by Chris Helzer
The emotional response you have to this photo will say a lot about your background, experience, and cultural influences.
A profusion of annual sunflowers (Helianthus petiolaris) in sandhill prairie at The Nature Conservancy’s Niobrara Valley Preserve in north central Nebraska.
The sandhills of Nebraska consist of nearly 20,000 square miles of prairie. The scale can be hard to comprehend until you have driven through it for hour after hour, gaping at the beauty spreading out all around you. When I drove through a good portion of the eastern sandhills this week, a lot of it looked like this photo – covered with blooming yellow sunflowers.
Many readers of this post will be thinking, “Wow! What a beautiful year in the sandhills!” But I know others of you are thinking, “Ugh, what do we have to do to get rid of these invasive weeds?”
I’m going to get to that discrepancy, but let’s first back up and look at why the sunflowers are so abundant this year. First, the sunflower species we’re talking about here is an annual called plains sunflower (Helianthus petiolaris). It germinates from seed in the spring, flowers in the summer, and dies at the end of the same year.
During the drought of 2012, annual sunflowers were among the few plant species able to continue growing and flowering during the hot dry summer. Because of that, sunflowers were able to produce copious amounts of seed, many of which ended up on the ground at the end of the year. Few other grassland plants produced anything comparable to the seed crop of those sunflowers.
The spring of 2013 brought abundant rain to the dry sandhills. In addition, the plant litter from last year’s dry growing season was thin and sparse, allowing a lot of light to hit the soil. That combination of abundant light and moisture was exactly what all those plains sunflower seeds needed, and they germinated.
Of course, germination doesn’t ensure survival, and many annual plants germinate each year, only to be quickly overshadowed and outcompeted by strong perennial plants. Perennials have the advantage of a pre-existing root system that can monopolize moisture and nutrients from the soil while annuals are still struggling to get started. In years when perennial grasses and wildflowers are strong, there is very little space for annuals to grow, except in places where the soil and plant community were disturbed by digging animals or intensive grazing/trampling.
However, in the spring of 2013, not only were conditions perfect for plains sunflower germination, competing perennial plants were also weak from drought and grazing in 2012, leaving lots of open space belowground for sunflower roots to take advantage of. In short, you couldn’t have designed a better situation for the sunflower. It was one of the few plant species to produce seed in 2012, and then it got light, moisture, and weak competition in 2013. It’s no wonder the hills are yellow!
Some people will look at this photo and see an amazing abundance of pretty wildflowers. Others will see weeds running amuck. At the Niobrara Valley Preserve, last year’s wildfire increased the favorable conditions for plains sunflower by creating massive amounts of bare ground for germination. While it looks like a monoculture from a distance, hidden among the sunflowers are lots of grasses and other plants that are slowly regaining their vigor. By next season, this will be a very different looking prairie.
Ok, back to the perception issue. Sunflowers are one of the most popular and well-known flowers in the world. They are big, attractive, and easy to recognize. On the other hand, many farmers and ranchers have grown up learning that sunflowers (of any kind) are weeds. The presence of sunflowers in a field or pasture – especially an abundance of them – can be seen as a badge of shame for the landowner who is clearly not managing his/her weed problems adequately.
The important thing to remember if you’re a rancher, however, is that the sunflowers are not outcompeting perennial grasses. Instead, the sunflowers are opportunists, taking advantage of the fact that grasses are weak. As perennial grasses recover from last year’s drought and/or grazing, they will reclaim the root space they lost in 2012 and sunflowers will have much less room to grow next year. Plains sunflower is a native prairie plant, and it’s role is to fill the space left when other plants are weakened (similar to ragweeds and other opportunistic species). If sunflower wasn’t filling that space, another “weedy” species would, and the alternative could be much worse.
Some ranchers will be tempted to spray their pastures to kill off the “invading” sunflowers, but that’s actually a counterproductive strategy. First, the annual sunflowers are going to die at the end of the season anyway, so if you want fewer sunflowers next year, the best strategy is to focus on limiting the germination and growth of next year’s crop by allowing perennial grasses and wildflowers to regain their dominance. Second, herbicide spraying will kill a number of other plant species that are both valuable as forage and competitors with sunflowers and other annuals. Why spend money to weaken the long-term viability of your grassland?
It’s also important to remember that cattle do eat sunflowers – they particularly like them early in the season when the leaves and stems are tender, but will also seek out the nutritious buds and flowers later in the season. The evidence of that can be seen right now; pastures grazed at certain times this year have many fewer blooming sunflowers than those that haven’t yet been grazed this season. In addition, of course, sunflowers are among the most valuable grassland plants in a prairie for wildlife and pollinators. They produce large nutritious seeds for birds and other wildlife, and have abundant and accessible supplies of nectar and pollen that attract numerous pollinator species. In short, sunflowers may not be everyone’s favorite plant, but they’re far from a useless weed or invasive threat.
For those of you who started out reading this post as fans of sunflowers, good for you! If you get the chance, you should take a drive through Nebraska’s sandhills this summer and enjoy the scenery – it’s not likely that we’ll see another year like this for a while. For those who are appalled by the abundance of sunflowers this year, maybe you can take some comfort from the fact that it’s a temporary phenomenon, and one tied to a particular combination of weather factors more than anything you or others did as land managers. Things will be different next year.
Regardless of whether or not you like sunflowers, I guess there’s one thing we can all agree on. The year 2013 will be one to remember!
Note: Nebraska has nine species of native sunflowers, seven of which are perennials. All of them are valuable for wildlife and pollinators, and important components of a healthy grassland community.
This entry was posted in Prairie Management, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography, Prairie Plants and tagged 2013 sunflowers, are sunflowers invasive?, drought, grassland, grazing, helianthus annuus, herbicide, how do I get rid of sunflower, invasive sunflowers, livestock, nebraska, niobrara valley preserve, pasture, plains sunflower, prairie, sandhills, sunflower, taking over pasture, the nature conservancy, weeds, what do you spray on sunflowers, why are sunflowers everywhere by Chris Helzer. Bookmark the permalink.
31 thoughts on “Sunflowers!”
Tim Boucher on August 14, 2013 at 8:41 am said:
Great post. Most every spring, in South Africa there is an abundance of flowers (weeds!) in the Namaqualand area – and it has now become a great tourist attraction!
Gary Shackelford on August 14, 2013 at 9:08 am said:
Interesting and instructive post, as usual. I suggest that you record the place that each of the two photos was made and that you post follow-up images of the two sites one year from now, including in that follow-up post the images shown here. It would be a fascinating comparison.
Chris Helzer on August 14, 2013 at 9:27 am said:
Good idea Gary. I’ve got a few I can use for that.
Mike Henry on August 14, 2013 at 9:10 am said:
Then there are those of us from Kansas. Hey! That’s our state flower!
timupham on August 14, 2013 at 10:01 am said:
Sunflowers were a crop grown by the Caddo Indians.
Randall Herman on August 14, 2013 at 10:52 am said:
My first thought was of the Black Crowes’ song ‘She Gave Good Sunflower’.
Caroline Coleman on August 14, 2013 at 11:38 am said:
Sunflowers make me smile!
savannagal on August 14, 2013 at 12:19 pm said:
I think they’re beautiful, even if they are overabundant this year. I live in the suburbs of Chicago where there’s not a whole lot left to look at. I could sit and watch your prairie for hours, days even, and not get bored. It’s beautiful.
Cynthia on August 14, 2013 at 4:16 pm said:
You’ve given me a whole new perspective about this flower, that’s for sure. Great post.
Lan Shen on August 14, 2013 at 4:55 pm said:
Prairies seem to bloom exceptionally well after a drought. For us in Houston, the drought was 2011. In the middle of the Deer Park (in greater Houston) petrochemical industry, is a rare platinum quality 54-acre coastal tallgrass prairie remnant, which conservation groups are desperately trying to save (deadline Aug 20,2013, http://www.bayoulandconservancy.org/#!deer-park-prairie/c17e5). The following year in 2012 that prairie was ablaze with snowy orchids, followed by Texas coneflower, followed by Liatris pycnostachya, followed by gulf muhly and Salvia azurea. Stunning! See gorgeous photos at http://www.SaveOurPrairie.com. Unfortunately all that will be bulldozed to build a housing development unless a miracle happens. I’ve heard that prairies thrive in catastrophes.
James C. Trager on August 15, 2013 at 3:45 pm said:
Not quite on topic, but very important, Lan. Thanks for the notification. I’ve contributed.
Thank you very much for your contribution! We had good news. “Just yesterday evening Terry Hershey, Houston’s pre-eminent greenspace advocate, pledged $2 million to Bayou Land Conservancy to help save Deer Park Prairie.” The Hamman foundation just added $200,000 this morning. We still need 1.7 million more, but things are looking much brighter now for this piece of the coastal tallgrass prairie, once called “the rarest of the rare” (D. Ladd, TNC)
Brian on August 14, 2013 at 5:04 pm said:
I visited the Sandhiils in early July and was astounded by the numbers of annual sunflowers in bloom. Quite a sight in places. I live in western Colorado and we have some in the Four Corners area but not in those numbers. My Dad was a long ago rancher in western Nebraska on the short grass steppes of southern Sioux County and I remember as a kid that some years had large blooms. He told me that the cattle liked the flowers.
wintersl8944 on August 14, 2013 at 5:50 pm said:
Great photos of a great plant. I also enjoyed seeing the dead cedar trees in one of them.
John I. Blair on August 14, 2013 at 6:05 pm said:
A cousin of mine who summers in the Colorado Rockies north of Salida just sent me a photo of the remarkable spread of sunflowers blooming there right now, presumably for similar reasons as those operating in the Nebraska sandhills. And I recalled seeing, more than 60 years ago, the entire vast San Luis Valley (which centers on Alamosa) in Colorado, covered for mile after mile with the same type of sunflower — an incredible scene, surrounded by mountain ranges and with the Great Sand Dunes (now a National Park) for contrast in one corner of the valley. I’m from Kansas myself, and have special feelings for sunflowers. Thanks for sharing the photo and the lore about their place in prairie ecology.
John I. Blair
Patrick on August 14, 2013 at 7:04 pm said:
I’m reminded of that classic Byrd’s song, “turn, turn, turn” when I think of the ebb and flow of prairie forb and grass dominance.
Jameson Crumpler on August 18, 2013 at 10:26 am said:
Ah, Sunflowers! A cheery sign the ecosystem is working as it should.
bill eichner on August 21, 2013 at 10:11 am said:
We just traversed the Sandhills for a family reunion. The abundant and beautiful sunflowers were a special gift. I noticed they were interspersed with vigorous grass species–multiple beneficiaries of the 2013 rainfall. Thank you for the balanced post!
Pingback: A season in the Nebraska prairies, Part 2 | The Roaming Ecologist
Jo Haslow on October 2, 2013 at 11:49 am said:
Thank you for your article. I saw the sunflower phenomenon the middle of August between Merriman and Valentine and it took my breath away! I have lived in and around the sandhills for over 50 years and had never seen a sight like that! I took photos and plan to include a painting of sandhills and sunflowers as I prepare for a show at the West Nebraska Art Center in Scottsbluff. I will probably entitle the painting “The Year of the Sunflower”. All the while I have been wondering about the effect of the flowers on the grazing land and what next year might bring. You helped me understand things! My show is on Nebraska sights, out of the way places and my favorite scenes.
Jo Haslow
Pingback: Thoughts on the recent youth debate | Pacific Islands Conservation Initiative Blog
Pingback: Fenceline Timelapse | The Prairie Ecologist
truecotton on July 2, 2015 at 12:50 pm said:
Beautiful photos! What do you think this spot will look like this year? Do you know where in Nebraska you can find sunflower fields?
Betsy Carbo on August 17, 2016 at 8:56 pm said:
I have a related question (I hope). Today we visited the Vore Buffalo Jump in Beulah,WY and they were having an interesting problem. All of the wild sunflowers on the site had been dug around the stem 2-3 inches down and completely around the plant. Most were still thriving while others fell over and died. What could be doing this? Rabbits, woodchucks? Please help. Thank you, Betsy
Nelson on September 1, 2016 at 11:31 am said:
Looking for a perineal sunflower seed for a project in S/W Michigan , can anyone refer me to a seed supplier that I can contact .- Thank You.
Gene Finke on March 14, 2017 at 3:34 pm said:
Nebraska has nine species of native sunflowers, seven of which are perennials. All of them are valuable for wildlife and pollinators, and important components of a healthy grassland community. I would like to have a list of the nine sunflowers native to Nebraska. If possible please email me a list. Thank you.
Pingback: Popular Sunflowers | The Prairie Ecologist
Pingback: Nebraska – Viewfinder
Wild Way of Wonder on October 24, 2017 at 7:43 am said:
Thank you for your post! We have a three hungry dairy cows, who have eaten their pasture quickly and are waiting for some lucern that’s been grown for them… I was so relieved to see I could feed them sunflowers to top up as we had a bunch growing in our veggie garden. They were also quite relieved that I read your post and we got some fun pictures of them eating big beautiful yellow flowers! Mandy Liddle, Namibia
Dave McCarville on August 18, 2018 at 9:41 am said:
Traveling across IA, NE, and CO to and from Wisconsin I am struck by the beauty of the native sunflower mostly along fencerows. These just started growing in my daughter’s yard in suburban Denver and the finches and bees are loving it. I will try and establish them to grow along with my ironweed, mint, cup-plants and milkweed. I live in a semi-rural area of monocropping. The bees are diminishing. FYI, I have been a long-time of Nature Conservancy. Thanks for the insight.
Pingback: Admirable, Abundant, and Adaptable, But Not Aggressive | The Prairie Ecologist
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11709
|
__label__wiki
| 0.634143
| 0.634143
|
Yehuda Lave, Spiritual Advisor and Counselor
Theft of an object is theft, and theft of time is theft (Mesilas Yesharim, Chapter 11).
Stealing is abhorrent to most people. They would never think of taking something which does not belong to them. Still, they may not be bothered in the least by making an appointment and keeping the other person waiting for a few minutes. Rabbi Luzzato points out that this double standard is a fallacy, because stealing others' time is no less a crime than stealing their possessions.
Moreover, stealing time is worse in one aspect: stolen objects can be returned, but stolen time can never be repaid.
Not every lateness is a theft. Sometimes, circumstances totally beyond our control can cause us to be delayed. Still, many realistic factors can be foreseen and should be taken into account. If the usual travel time between two points is fifteen minutes, we should provide an extra few minutes for a very likely possibility - congested traffic. This is also dependent upon how important the situation is and what the position of the people waiting for you. If you are the reason the people are coming, for example you are the teacher giving the class, or you are the professional that the person is coming to see, there is really no excuse for being late. If the person loses their time because of you, the fact that there was traffic when you came, is no excuse. You should have factored that matter into when you left. This is the difference between someone who takes their responsibilties seriously and someone that lets life happen to them.
According to Jewish law, someone who stole an object from another cannot be forgiven by God until he or she has made restitution and received forgiveness from the owner. Without these two premises, even Yom Kippur does not atone one's sin. This rule also applies if one has caused another person a loss of time.
If someone has wrongfully infringed on our time, it is proper that we should call it to his or her attention. As with other offenses, we should try to sincerely forgive if the offender changes his or her ways. If we have infringed on someone else's time, we must be sure to ask forgiveness and to remember that teshuvah consists of a sincere resolution not to repeat the same act again.
Today I shall ...
... be extremely careful not to cause anyone a loss of time, and if I have done so, ask forgiveness.
Love Yehuda Lave
Jerusalem Elections – All you need you know!
A number people have asked about the procedure for the second round of mayoral elections.
This is what I know so far:
Date: 13th November.
Time: 1-10pm.
Where: The same polling stations you went to first time.
Take with you your teudat zeyhut.
Make sure to vote! From what I understand Lion is the better candidate. Please vote for him
In Europe, synagogues are protected like fortresses. It took decades to get there.
.By Cnaan Liphshiz October 29, 2018
BRUSSELS (JTA) — Will security at American Jewish institutions now mirror that of Europe, with its police protection, armed guards, panic rooms and sterile zones at synagogues?
It’s a possibility that is being debated more seriously than ever before following the Tree of Life Congregation shooting Saturday in Pittsburgh in which a gunman killed 11 people.
Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the Interfaith Alliance, told The Washington Post that posting armed guards outside synagogues in some places would be “prohibitive” to Jewish communal life itself.
But Gary Sikorski, director of security for the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, told the Detroit Jewish News that the idea, suggested by President Donald Trump after the attack, is “not a bad one.”
European security professionals say that even if Sikorski’s approach prevails, it will take at least a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars before U.S. Jewry’s security infrastructure matches the European counterpart.
“The security doctrine you see in Europe is the result of decades of evolution,” said Ophir Revach, director of the European Jewish Congress’ Security and Crisis Center. “It was built on lessons from terrorist attacks in the 1960s and adjusted constantly. It’s pretty comprehensive.”
Even if a critical mass of U.S. Jewish communities decide tomorrow that they want to replicate the European model, Revach said, “Optimistically speaking, it will take at least a decade to achieve.” When it comes to security, he said, “American Jewry is at the beginning of a long journey.”
In several European countries, synagogues are under constant protection of police or army troops. Most of them have volunteer guards, including armed ones. Many also have a security command room, where trained professionals or volunteers use elaborate video surveillance systems to monitor their premises, often while exchanging information with other Jewish institutions in real time.
These arrangements regularly prevent violence against congregants.
In 2015, a volunteer guard outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue was shot dead after engaging an armed Islamist who had intended to carry out a shooting attack inside the building, where dozens of people were celebrating a bat mitzvah. Dan Uzan’s intervention allowed police to shoot the assailant, who never made it inside the shul.
A year earlier, a dozen or so volunteer guards staved off dozens of rioters who had intended to storm the Synagogue de la Roquette in Paris as payback for Israel’s actions in Gaza. As 200 worshippers waited inside, the defenders held their ground for 20 minutes amid a vicious street brawl with the attackers until police finally arrived at the scene.
“Dan Uzan’s death was tragic, but from a security point of view it was a system that did what it needed to do,” Revach said.
Had the Tree of Life synagogue been guarded, “this attack may have been prevented,” he said. “Even armed perpetrators are deterred in a major way by guards.”
Some American synagogues, like Har Shalom, the largest Conservative synagogue in Potomac, Maryland, have an armed police presence during services and other events, The Washington Post reported. Community Security Service, a nonprofit, has trained volunteers at dozens of synagogues, mostly in the New York area. In Teaneck, New Jersey, a suburb with dozens of synagogues, many have a police presence out front and CSS-trained congregants on patrol.
Others have a closed-doors policy in which visitors must request entry through an intercom system.
The Great Synagogue of Copenhagen was the site of a deadly attack in 2015. (Wikimedia Commons)
In recent years, more and more Jewish federations, the communitywide fundraising groups, have hired full-time security directors for their facilities and to advise their donor agencies. The Secure Community Network, the security arm of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, was formed in 2004. Since then, the number of federations with full-time security directors grew from two to 30, according to the Post.
Federal money is available for beefing up security at Jewish institutions. In fiscal year 2018, Congress appropriated $50 million for nonprofit security through something called the Urban Area Security Initiative; much of the money goes to Jewish institutions.
But many American synagogues, including Tree of Life, had been leaving their doors open on Shabbat — a scenario that became unthinkable years ago in Western Europe, where jihadists have carried out several deadly attacks in recent years on Jewish targets.
Joel Rubinfeld, the president of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, remembered feeling “simultaneously envious and worried” when he was greeted recently to a major New York synagogue by a concierge in his 70s — and no one else.
Before 2015, even at-risk synagogues like the Grand Synagogue of Marseille, France, had lax security and at times open doors. But the attacks in Paris that year prompted all but the most distant synagogues of Western Europe to abandon the open-door policy they used to have.
European synagogues by and large now employ a multilayered defensive doctrine of several threat circles in cooperation with law enforcement.
“It accounts for all kinds of scenarios, not just a shooting but also a car bomb, firebombs and snipers,” Revach said.
Each scenario requires building adjustments, sometimes just adding a security barrier and at other times replacing windows with bulletproof glass. Then there’s the need to set up international, national and regional situation rooms to help communities coordinate their activities.
“Just setting up the physical elements … takes years,” Revach said.
If American Jewry quickly ups the security arrangements around its institutions, “there’s still the issue of awareness,” said Sammy Ghozlan, a retired police commissioner and the president of the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism in France.
“It’s not enough to build a security,” he said. “You need a community that’s drilled at maintaining it even when nothing happens year after year, so that when the threat does appear, it is met. It needs to be hardwired into you.”
American Jewry is facing a “monumental challenge” if it seeks to adopt the European security model, Ghozlan said.
“It will take them at least 15 years,” he said, noting that American Jewry is “far larger and more far-flung” than its European counterpart, making the task more complicated than in France.
Ghozlan nonetheless believes that American Jews will rise to the challenge.
“We are witnessing a Europeanization of the situation in the United States for Jews,” he said. “It takes time for a worldview to change, but I believe American Jews have the resources and resourcefulness to fix the security problems exposed in Pittsburgh.”
French soldiers patrol in front of a synagogue outside Paris as part of France’s national security alert system, Jan. 21, 2015. (Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images)
Palestinians: Don’t Kill American Jews, Only Israelis; Shooting 'Not Hate Crime', Says DC Professor
Have the Palestinians reformed, or is their new message: Don’t kill American Jews, but continue to kill Israeli Jews?
By: United with Israel Staff and PMW
In a rare move, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Saturday’s murder of 11 Jews in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh by the anti-Semite Robert Bowers.
The ministry condemned the “terror attack” that “cost the lives of Jewish American citizens,” referring to the neo-Nazi ideology as “based on the supremacy of the white race and its hegemony.”
Palestinian Media Watch, a watchdog that monitors Palestinian incitement and anti-Semitism, pointed out that this condemnation of the murder of Jews is a remarkable change from the standard Palestinian Authority (PA) message to Palestinians, which usually consists of a call to murder Jews.
PMW noted that for years, PA policy has been to present the conflict with Israel as both a nationalistic war to destroy Israel and an Islamic war to kill Jews. Indeed, the messages of the PA leadership since it launched its terror campaign against the Jewish state has been to kill Israelis because they are Jews.
As recently as last week, PMW reported on an anti-Semitic sermon in which the Palestinian preacher taught that Hitler was one of a series of people sent by Allah throughout history to punish the Jews because of their evil behavior.
“Does the PA’s condemnation of the murder of American Jews mean that their religious ideology has undergone a change and they will no longer demonize Israelis because they are Jews, nor promote the murder of Israelis because they are Jews? Or does it mean that the new PA message is: Don’t kill American Jews but continue to kill Israeli Jews?” PMW asked.
Numerous Palestinian Calls to Kill Jews
PMW has recorded numerous instances starting from the PA’s terror campaign in 2000 in which the PA expressed its policy demonizing Israelis because they were Jews and calling to kill Israelis specifically because they were Jews.
For instance, Dr. Ahmed Yousuf Abu Halabiah, a member of the Palestinian Shari’ah Islamic religious law courts stated on PA TV in 2000 that “the Jews are the Jews, whether Labor or Likud, the Jews are the Jews. They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars… They must be butchered and they must be killed, as Allah said [in the Quran]: ‘Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands. He will humiliate them, and grant you victory over them.'”
He added that “the Jews are like a spring: As long as you step on it with your foot, it doesn’t move. But if you lift your foot off the spring, it hurts you and punishes you.”
Dr. Mahmoud Mustafa Najem, a PA religious figure, said in 2002 that “the Prophet Muhammad, whom the Jews tried to murder more than once, by poisoning, by witchcraft by throwing stones at him and by all kinds of political assassination. He warned us of the Jews, the evil of the Jews and the deceit of the Jews… He waged war on them and expelled them from Arabia, saying: ‘There shall not be two religions in Arabia.’ He explained the character of the Jew in the Quran and in the Sunna (Islamic traditions) so that we would beware of them all the time and so that we would know how to deal with the Jews … Say to the Jews: ‘Expect your graveyard! Expect the final battle.'”
‘Jews Are the Cause of All Catastrophes’
Ibrahim Mudayris, official, PA Ministry of Religious Trusts and Religious Affairs, stated in 2004 that Allah changed the direction of prayer from Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem to Mecca because of “those [Jews] who are the cause of all catastrophes on earth. The reason for it is those [Jews] who spit their poisons at the international and regional level, those [Jews] who are the reason for every disaster of the world.”
Dr. Tayseer Al-Tamimi, Chief Justice of the PA’s Religious Court and Chairman of Supreme Council of Islamic Law, stated in 2009 that “concerning the Jews, the Holy Quran says that they lack understanding, are void of wisdom, know nothing, violate agreements, etc. However, the Jews were known – it was known about them throughout history – that they make false claims, lies, forgery, slander, and fabrications, in order to justify their aggression, land theft, defilement of holy sites, appropriation of land, destruction of homes, murder of children, women, and the elderly.”
Imad Hamato, appointed by Mahmoud Abbas to serve as dean of the Gaza Al-Azhar schools, stated in 2015 that “humanity will never live in comfort as long as the Jews are causing devastating corruption throughout the land. Humanity will never live in peace or fortune or tranquility as long as they are corrupting the land. An old man told me: If a fish in the sea fights with another fish, I am sure the Jews are behind it. As Allah says: ‘Every time they kindled the fire of war [against you], Allah extinguished it. They strive throughout the land [causing] corruption, and Allah does not like corrupters.'”
A Washington-based professor spews hatred only a day after the attack!
Abeer Kayed, professor of political science at Howard University, Washington D.C., said that “the media” tries to distort the motive behind the Pittsburgh synagogue attack, which she claims was “strictly political” and “not a hate crime.”
Kayed further alleged that t“the power of the Zionist lobby” is to blame, referring to the “the historical significance of the role of the Jews in American life.”
It is “as if they get the credit for the existence of the United States,” she said.
She also said President Trump was responsible because the “hatred and racism in his rhetoric” motivated such crimes.
Her remarks were broadcast by the UK-based Al-Araby TV channel a day after the attack.
8:00 AM: I made a snowman.
8:10 A feminist passed by and asked me why I didn't make a snow woman.
8:15 So, I made a snow woman.
8:17 My feminist neighbor complained about the snow woman's voluptuous
chest saying it objectified snow women everywhere.
8:20 The gay couple living nearby threw a hissy fit and moaned it could
have been two snow men instead.
8:22 The transgender ma..wom...person asked why I didn't just make one
snow person with detachable parts.
8:25 The vegans at the end of the lane complained about the carrot nose,
as veggies are food and not to decorate snow figures with.
8:28 I am being called a racist because the snow couple is white.
8:31 The Muslim gent across the road demands the snow woman wear a burqa.
8:40 The Police arrive saying someone has been offended.
8:42 The feminist neighbor complained again that the broomstick of the
snow woman needs to be removed because it depicted women in a domestic role.
8:43 The council equality officer arrived and threatened me with eviction.
8:45 TV news crew from the ABC shows up. I am asked if I know the difference
between snowmen and snow-women? I reply, "Snowballs" and am now called a sexist.
9:00 I'm on the News as a suspected terrorist, racist, homophobic,
sensibility offender, bent on stirring up trouble during difficult weather.
9:10 I am asked if I have any accomplices. My children are taken by social
9:29 Far left protesters offended by everything are marching down the
street demanding that I be beheaded.
There is no moral to this story. It's just a view of the world in which we live today.
The Pittsburgh Synagogue, Anti-Semitism And Trump
By Dennis Prager - 24 Heshvan 5779 – November 1, 2018
All my life I have reminded fellow Jews in America that we are the luckiest Jews to have ever lived in a non-Jewish country. I know what I’m talking about. I wrote a book on anti-Semitism, taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College, and fought anti-Semitism since I was 21 when Israel sent me into the Soviet Union to smuggle in Jewish religious items and smuggle out Jewish names.
Even after the massacre of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue, this assessment remains true.
But the greatest massacre of Jews in American history is a unique American tragedy. It is a tragedy in part because America has finally made the list of countries in which Jews were murdered for being Jews. While this was probably inevitable, given that 330 million people live in America, it is painful – equally for me as an American and as a Jew.
And second, while there is no difference between the murder of Christians at a church and the murder of Jews in a synagogue with regard to the loss of life and the suffering of loved ones, there is something unique about the murder of Jews for being Jews: Anti-Semitism is exterminationist. Anti-Semites don’t just want to persecute, enslave, or expel Jews; they want to kill them all.
On Passover, Jews read the Haggadah. In it are these words: “In every generation, they arise to annihilate us.” Not “persecute” us, not “enslave” us. “Annihilate” us.
So, when the murderer yelled, “All Jews must die,” he encapsulated the uniqueness of anti-Semitism.
There is another unique aspect to anti-Semitism: It destroys every society in which it grows. The animating force within Adolf Hitler was Jew-hatred. More than anything else – desire for German “Lebensraum,” hatred of Bolshevism, a view of Slavs as subhuman – it was anti-Semitism that invigorated him. Anti-Semitism was not a Nazi scapegoat; it was the Nazis’ raison d’etre.
The results of German anti-Semitism for Germans alone: more than 5 million dead, including half a million German civilians; 130,000 more civilians murdered by the Nazi regime; 12 million Germans expelled from East Europe, 2 million of whom died; innumerable rapes of German women; Germany divided in two for half a century – and the loss of a sense of self and reputation.
I have no idea if, outside the universities and the Israel-hating left, there has been an increase in anti-Semitism in America. I wish I could trust the Anti-Defamation League, other Jewish organizations, and Jewish community newspapers. Sadly, only Jews on the left do, because most of these organizations have a left-wing, anti-Trump agenda.
Here’s a perfect example:
The mainstream left-wing media, along with left-wing Jewish organizations and media, told us every day for months after Trump’s election that anti-Semitism had greatly increased. They cited the great number of Jewish Community Centers that received bomb threats.
It turned out, however, that about 90 percent of those threats were called in by a mentally-disturbed American Jewish teenager living in Israel, and the other 10 percent were made by a black radical seeking to frame his ex-girlfriend. So, the claim eventually vanished from the news – with not one Jewish or non-Jewish organization or media outlet apologizing for crying anti-Semitic “fire” in a crowded theater.
The dishonest now have the Pittsburgh massacre to blame on Trump. But that’s as big a falsehood as blaming Trump for the bomb threats. In reality, the Pittsburgh murderer criticized Trump for his close connections to Jews and Israel.
For Jews to blame the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman – the only president with a Jewish child and Jewish grandchildren, moreover – for increasing anti-Semitism is another example of a truism this Jew has known all his life: Unlike Jewish liberals, who get most of their values from Judaism, Jewish leftists are ethnically Jewish but get their values from leftism.
The biggest increase in anti-Semitism in the last 10 or so years has come from the left. Just ask young Jews who wear yarmulkes or are vocally pro-Israel on most American college campuses. And this generation’s threat of Jewish annihilation comes from Israel’s Iranian and Arab enemies.
As a Jew who attends synagogue every Shabbat, and as an advocate for the carrying of concealed weapons, I fervently pray we will not need armed guards at American synagogues. America’s uniqueness has been exemplified by the fact that Jews do not need armed guards in their synagogues.
May it always be so.
Even people who don’t love Jews – who only love America – need to fight anti-Semites. For as the Jews go, so goes the fate of the nation in which they live.
See you tomorrow
Rabbi Yehuda Lave
2850 Womble Road, Suite 100-619, San Diego
You received this email because you signed up on our website or made purchase from us.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11710
|
__label__wiki
| 0.619007
| 0.619007
|
GMA 'Relieved' by Trump's Steel, Aluminum Tariff Exemptions
Following President Donald J. Trump's March 8 authorization of steel and aluminum tariffs, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) expressed gratitude for the carve-outs included for U.S. allies.
“GMA is relieved that the Administration provided provisional exemptions to the steel and aluminum tariffs for Canada and Mexico and will establish a clear process for other key allies to apply for similar exemptions," the trade organization said. "We are encouraged by the inclusion of a product specific exclusion process, which could mitigate some impacts on food, beverage and consumer product packaging. GMA is still reviewing the effects of the announced tariffs on our member companies to see whether the flexibility provided in the proclamations will alleviate the most severe impacts of the tariffs on the prices of food, beverage and personal care products.”
Earlier in the week, GMA sent a letter to President Trump raising its “deep concern” about the proposed global tariffs, and urging the chief executive to reconsider such a policy.
The “tariffs will disrupt global supply chains, increase the cost of foods and beverages for hard-working families, and jeopardize positive economic gains achieved through tax reform,” noted GMA President and CEO Pamela G. Bailey in the letter.
Further, Washington, D.C.-based GMA asked that any tariffs enacted on steel and aluminum imports be targeted rather than applied globally, and recommended the adoption of a process enabling food, beverage and consumer product manufacturers and their suppliers to seek exclusions on packaging materials with no national security application.
The letter also noted that the food and agriculture sectors have faced significant retaliation from foreign trading partners in the past when the United States has implemented similar policies, and that there are already strong indications that this will happen again if tariffs are enacted. “At a time when food and agriculture exports contribute to a trade surplus, these tariffs will expose approximately 9 percent of total U.S. exports to possible retaliation,” Bailey wrote.
“Global tariffs on steel and aluminum will have a unique impact on foods and beverages, acting as a tax on consumers and creating competitive dislocations in the marketplace,” she added. “We support your efforts to strengthen the U.S. domestic manufacturing base, but the proposed global tariffs will injure downstream purchasers of these products and add hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs to food and beverage manufacturing. Resources that would have gone into investments in innovation, equipment and workforce expansion will instead be diverted to offset additional manufacturing costs.”
The letter cautioned that any increase in costs of foods and beverages resulting from steel and aluminum tariffs would affect all Americans, but especially those consumers who depend on shelf-stable canned products, and that even a slight price increase of such products would cause hardships for such families.
According to GMA, exports of food, beverages and feed are crucial to the U.S. economy, totaling $133 billion last year.
In related news, the National Retail Federation (NRF) referred to the proposed tariffs as "an unnecessary tax on every American family and a self-inflicted wound on the nation’s economy."
After President Trump's action, NRF VP for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said: “With steel and aluminum tariffs already in place, new tariffs on goods from China being threatened and the ongoing threat of NAFTA withdrawal, we could very quickly have a trade war on our hands. The immediate impact would be higher prices for American consumers that would throw away the gains of tax reform and put a roadblock in front of economic growth."
Tax reform's benefits would be countered, according to the organization, "by higher prices ranging from canned goods to cars to electronics."
Retailers Decry Additional Tariffs
Retail, Food Industries Pleased by Lifting of Key Steel, Aluminum Tariffs
Grocers Cheer Signing of NAFTA Successor
Retailers, Others Warn of Tariffs’ Harm
Retailers Urge Trump to Rethink Tariffs on Chinese Goods
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11713
|
__label__wiki
| 0.909969
| 0.909969
|
Fighting future pandemics
Rachel Thomas
Submitted by Rachel on October 12, 2017
An influenza pandemic is still one of the greatest threats to humanity. During the pandemic in 2009 over 60 million people caught the H1N1 influenza virus in the United States: over 274,000 of these required hospital and, sadly, over 12,000 people died. Now a groundbreaking project is allowing every person in the UK to contribute to research to combat future pandemics.
Julia Gog, Professor of Mathematical Biology from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge, and her team are working with the BBC on an innovative project, BBC Pandemic, combining outreach, citizen science and new mathematical research.
"Our motivation for doing this is to build better models for [disease] spread in the UK," says Gog. Any UK resident can contribute to the data collection via the BBC Pandemic app on their smartphone (via the App Store or Google Play).
"The immediate outcome will be running some simulations of pandemics for a programme for BBC 4, which will be broadcast in early 2018," says Gog "But the other part is we will be collecting the data so we can study it, and [the data] will be available to other scientists. The point is to understand how people move, as we want to make better models for pandemics and other infectious disease [outbreaks] in the UK."
Spreading disease
When modelling how a disease spreads, says Gog, you want your models to be tractable, and simple enough so you can understand what's gone into them. "But the temptation is just to put in more and more detail, and then you've got to model how everyone moves."
Instead it's easier to use models that are more transparent, and that you can simulate quickly and repeatedly. "The project we have been working on for the last few years is based on [data] from the 2009 pandemic of an influenza-like illness in the US." Here, rather than modelling how the disease spreads between individuals in the population, Gog and her colleagues model how diseases spread between larger units representing cities, towns or villages. These models are based on movement between these city (or town or village) units, which depend on the distance between them, their size and their proximity to other large cities.
Gog and her colleagues have been using the data on how the 2009 pandemic spread to infer the movement patterns between city units. This is because there are not many data sets that specifically gather this movement data. Those that do exist, some collected by apps and some by surveys, are not on the scale the BBC Pandemic project promises and do not connect the information in this way. "We don't think any other studies will be comparable to this one, and certainly not in the UK."
Spreading knowledge
"The big one for us is that this data set will be available to all scientists. I don't know anything like it," says Gog. "They can have all of it!" Thanks to the careful way the data is collected, anonymised and shared, and the permissions for its use that are gathered through the app, it will be the first time such a data set will be made available like this. There is already a great deal of interest from other scientists who were not expecting to have such access to the data. Early on in the project Gog and her colleagues will write a paper to show how the data was gathered, how it is valid, and to encourage other scientists to use the BBC Pandemic dataset.
The scale and public visibility of this project, thanks to the collaboration with the BBC, is extraordinary, but it's not the first time Gog has enabled ordinary members of the public to become active contributors to scientific research. "Putting together outreach and basic science is pretty unusual but we've done it before, so we had evidence it would work," says Gog. This was work with Millennium Mathematics Project's Motivate programme, where Gog and colleagues worked with secondary school students who visited collaborating primary schools and gathered data on social networks within the classes.
"It was primarily about outreach, and secondarily about gathering a beautiful dataset, and both flew." The papers on the Motivate dataset, regularly referred to in the literature, provide data that shows how social mixing patterns in schools change with age and gender. The Motivate project also involved other members of the BBC Pandemic team: Andrew Conlan (now at the University of Cambridge's Department of Veterinary Medicine) and Adam Kucharski (now at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), who were respectively a postdoc and PhD student in Gog's Disease Dynamics research group in DAMTP at the time. (Conlan and Kucharski subsequently ran a similar project with the Millennium Mathematics Project. You can read about it here.)
It is inevitable that another pandemic will strike, and research like this will help governments decide the best response, whether it is closing schools or issuing vaccines. And through innovative projects like this, everyone can help fight the threat posed by influenza and other highly infectious diseases.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11715
|
__label__cc
| 0.749229
| 0.250771
|
Call for Applications: Visiting Scholars in the Social Sciences from Arab Universities
Opportunities September 12, 2014 Cortni Kerr
The Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota announces the availability of a limited number of fellowships for social scientists from Arab universities to spend a semester in residence at the Humphrey School in the Spring semester of 2015. The fellowships are funded by Andrew Carnegie Centennial Fellowship, a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The visiting scholars will work closely with Professor Ragui Assaad, Professor James Ron and other faculty members at the Humphrey School and the University of Minnesota on research relating to youth and gender, human rights, and mobilization in the context of the Arab Spring. Sub-themes include, but are not limited to:
– Youth unemployment and school-to-work transitions
– Transitions to adulthood, including transitions through schooling, work, marriage and sexuality
– Inequality of opportunity in education and labor markets
– Obstacles to youth and women’s employment and ways to overcome them
– Informality, poverty, social protection, and job quality
– Migration, displacement, and refugees
– Youth social movements and mobilization
– Multi- and cross-generational political activism
– Youth civic and political engagement
– Role of youth and youth groups in transitions to democracy
– Participation in local movements and organizations for human rights, broadly construed
– Popular attitudes towards human rights
– Analysis of public opinion and household surveys
Visiting scholars must be a member of the staff of a university situated in the Arab World and be in a social science or related discipline and is working in areas relating to the above research theme and sub-themes. The ideal candidate is a junior faculty member who has obtained his/her PhD in the past five years, but pre-doctoral candidates (ABD status) and those with more than five years since the PhD will also be considered.
Logistical Arrangements
The fellowship will cover economy class round-trip air fare and will provide the visiting scholar with housing, health insurance and a monthly stipend to cover expenses while in residence in Minnesota. The duration of the fellowship is negotiable, but is not to be inferior to three months or exceed six months. The visiting scholar will be provided with a university ID, access to university libraries and to the internet, and a place to work.
Interested candidates should send the following:
– A cover letter detailing:
o The research project the candidate would undertake during the fellowship;
o A description of previous research and academic preparation; and
o A statement of why and how a fellowship at the University of Minnesota may benefit, deepen, or extend his/her own research.
– A detailed curriculum vitae
– A sample of written work (published paper, conference paper, book chapter, etc..)
These materials should be sent by e-mail to Donna Kern (kernx008@umn.edu)
Any questions should be directed to Professor Ragui Assaad (assaad@umn.edu)
The application deadline for fellowships during the Spring semester of 2015 is September 30, 2014.
POMEPS Conversations 36 with Tarek Masoud ~ 9/9/14
POMEPS Conversations 37 with Kaveh Ehsani ~ 9/12/14
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11719
|
__label__cc
| 0.747991
| 0.252009
|
Park Scholar Media Mentions
The following Park community members and Park Scholar initiatives have received media attention in recent weeks:
Joy Tongsri, Associate Director, Park Scholarships
Joy Tongsri, Associate Director for the Park Scholarships program, was featured on the university’s Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity website for her work as a longtime member of the NC State chapter of the National Coalition Building Institute and deep commitment to supporting diversity education initiatives across campus.
sPark 2016 participants celebrated with a 20th anniversary cake designed by Kim (Bell) Bloomfield ’02
On April 1-2 the Park Scholarships program welcomed 150 current scholars, alumni, faculty, family, and friends to NC State’s campus for the first biannual sPark. This symposium was a wonderful way to celebrate the Park Scholarships program’s 20th anniversary, and featured sessions on topics ranging from climate change to food security to human-centered design. Among the many engaging conversations, both formal and informal, that occurred during sPark was a session about “How to Become an Education Advocate.” Presenter Nation Hahn blogged about his experience on this panel.
The Park Class of 2019 toured tour Scotland Correctional Institution in Laurinburg, N.C. with Learning Lab I speaker Noran Sanford and some of the youth he serves through GrowingChange – Spring 2016
Learning Lab I is an annual experience designed and implemented by freshman Park Scholars. Students gain insight into leadership through the lens of a challenge currently facing the state of North Carolina. In March the Class of 2019 met with law enforcement officials, academics, and nonprofit organization representatives in and around the state’s Sandhills region to investigate how they are addressing issues related to at-risk youth and the criminal justice system in North Carolina. Specifically, they explored socioeconomic factors that contribute to the stigmatization of at-risk youth, how leaders work to prevent criminal activity in at-risk youth, and how they help rehabilitate those who engage in criminal behavior. Their interactions with GrowingChange’s Noran Sanford and his “Flip the Prison” initiative were highlighted in a Laurinburg, N.C.-based newspaper.
Brandon Buskey ’02
Brandon Buskey ‘02, part of the American Civil Liberties Union Criminal Law Reform Project since 2012, was quoted in a recent news story questioning the constitutionality of delayed trials in Mobile, Ala. Brandon’s work with the ACLU focuses on reforming pretrial justice, expanding the right to counsel, juvenile sentencing, and residency restrictions for former sexual offenders.
Samuel Shain ’19
Samuel Shain ‘19, who is majoring in business administration and international studies with concentrations in entrepreneurship and global sustainability and development, was one of five students selected for the NC State Poole College of Management’s inaugural Global Corps. The goal of this student organization is to increase international awareness and study abroad participation among the college’s underrepresented students.
Avi Aggarwal ’16
Avi Aggarwal ‘16, a chemical engineering major, is part of a team of four students behind BloomUnique, an engineering entrepreneurship class project-turned-startup. As part of BloomUnique’s customizable jewelry design process, the team developed a new form of clasp for connecting necklace components, which they plan to patent.
Lauren Frey ’17
If you’re walking through NC State’s Talley Student Union, you’re likely to see the smiling face of Lauren Frey ’17 on the building’s electronic billboards. Majoring in environmental sciences and women’s and gender studies, Frey is being featured for her volunteerism with the university’s Women’s Center. She will intern with the center this summer.
Finalists for the Park Class of 2020
Our newest Park Scholars are receiving recognition in their hometown newspapers! Check out Mallory Alman ‘20, a chemical engineering intent from Ashbrook High School in Gastonia, N.C., and Clay Honeycutt ‘20, a biological engineering intent from Midway High School in Newton Grove, N.C.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11728
|
__label__cc
| 0.735496
| 0.264504
|
Happy Thanksgiving – Legacy & Responsibility
Published on November 24, 2016 November 21, 2016 by Peggy McAloon
Thanksgiving: Legacy & Responsibility
There are still wild places in the United States where we can stand and try to imagine what it was like on that first Thanksgiving in Plymouth. In 1621 the colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast to celebrate new beginnings and the bounty of the promised land.
A Land Like No Other
I love to stand at the headwaters of the Mississippi or the edge of the woods in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. At those times, I can close my eyes and imagine the first Burton to arrive in the United States bearing one of the original land grants from the King of England. We all love the wild places we have protected in this great land. I pray we have the sense to continue to protect them from environmental damage.
It was a former slave who taught the pilgrims on the Mayflower how to cultivate corn. He helped them catch fish from the streams, avoid poisonous plants, and extract the sap from the Maple trees. Squanto was a member of the Pawtuxet tribe. A British Sea Captain kidnapped him and sold him into slavery before his escape to London. Eventually, he caught an exploratory vessel back to the North American continent. By then he’d learned the English language and was willing to help the new arrivals to what is now the United States of America.
The story of Squanto is a story I want you to remember. Never forget it was a former slave to our British predecessors who helped save those who survived their first winter on the Mayflower anchored along the shoreline. In these days of increased division among our people, we need to remember we shared this journey with those who gave their blood, sweat, and tears to make our existence possible. I find it difficult to accept that some citizens prefer to ignore how much they owe to the people they now refuse to include in their social circles.
An Indian Slave Gave Guidance
It would appear the early colonists also forgot how the Indian slave helped ensure a successful inroad into this new country for the white man. There are very few stories you can find about harmony between the white settlers and the Native Americans. You’ll rarely find it outside of the story of Squanto and that first Thanksgiving.
During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress declared one or more days of Thanksgiving each year. President George Washington made the very first Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789. It was a way to celebrate the country’s success in the War of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution.
My mother, her sister, and Grandma Burton spent years researching the Burton family. They traced the ancestral lines back to become a Daughter of the American Revolution (DAR), and then a Daughter of the American Colonists (DAC). Those of us who settled this land encourage its citizens to live by the highest standards to this day.
A Thanksgiving Date is Set
We should express Thanksgiving Gratitude every day of the year.
For two centuries, the colonists celebrated the harvest and the tradition of showing thankfulness in the individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until during the Civil War that Abraham Lincoln declared in 1863 that we celebrate Thanksgiving in November.
The author of the favorite childhood poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Sarah Josepha Hale, launched a 36-year campaign to establish a national Thanksgiving holiday. She published editorials and sent letters to governors, politicians, and Presidents to declare a national day of celebration.
Those letters helped spur President Lincoln to put an end to the controversy and announce a National Thanksgiving Holiday. The Thanksgiving Holiday has survived all these years in spite of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt to move the date during the Great Depression to spur retail sales.
For generations, Americans have recognized the need to show gratitude.
The thing is, I believe we can dig deeper. You and I need to understand that this journey isn’t taken alone. It includes far more people than we will ever get to know. We can’t possibly thank them all in person, but we can make an effort to be kinder to those not like ourselves in the spirit that their ancestors may have provided the very thing our ancestors needed to survive. Why is it so difficult to work together to ensure a healthy and cooperative nation?
Sharing Your Thanksgiving Story
I won’t tell you what to share with your children. You are the one who gets to choose whether they hear about life from a compassionate voice or a judgmental one.
We each have a history that includes both good and bad.
This is our heritage, not our children’s. They have a right to make their own determinations about what is good and bad in life.
We can protect them from the evils that surround us. But, we cannot conjure up an evil that never existed in the first place.
We alone can determine how deeply we imprint the souls of our children.
What we need to remember on this Thanksgiving Day is that our message needs to be one of hope.
A lesson in humanity, forgiveness, and understanding will enable our children to reach the pinnacle heights of their abilities.
What too many people have failed to understand is that by mandating our will on our children, we deny them of the very democracy we cherish. They no longer have the right to discover the joys and blessings that will fill their lives. Instead, they sink in the garbage we created in our personal journey.
Our distrust and hatred can only limit the potential these amazing young people hold for the future.
I hope you will choose the path of allowing your child to discover the world through untarnished eyes. Share with them the purity of hearing, the gentleness of touch, the freshness of the air we breathe, and the changing tastes of each season.
If you simply let them discover this great land all over again, I think you’ll be amazed at the beauty they’ll encounter from shore to shore.
It is, after all, up to them to forge their future. The children never were expected to relive your life. Please use the comments below to share one of your precious Thanksgiving memories!
Click on this link to the Thanksgiving Story for your Children, from the History Channel.
Happy Thanksgiving to All!
This entry was posted in Thanksgiving
Tagged with Hope, pilgrims, Plymouth, Thanksgiving
Bookmark this article Happy Thanksgiving – Legacy & Responsibility
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11731
|
__label__cc
| 0.590765
| 0.409235
|
HomePosts tagged 'Green Bay Packers'
All In The Cards: Recapping The Stupidly Crazy End To Arizona’s Win Over Green Bay
January 19, 2016 qsaturda All In The Cards Aaron Rodgers, All In The Cards, Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, Carson Palmer, coin toss, game recap, Green Bay Packers, NFC Championship, NFC Playoffs, NFL, NFL Playoffs, Quinn Saturday
Anything can happen in the NFL playoffs. If someone ever questions that fact, show them the Green Bay-Arizona game from this past weekend. The amount of insane things that happened in that game still boggles my mind and the mind of many other football fans even a few days removed from watching the spectacle. So for part one of All In The Cards’ coverage of the Arizona Cardinals this week, I will go over every crazy situation, one by one, from the fourth quarter and overtime of Saturday night’s thriller. Prepare yourself for some strong opinions, especially about a certain coin toss. I hope you enjoy and if you do make sure to follow me on Twitter @QTipsforsports or just search the hashtag #Allinthecards for in-game thoughts and analysis. Let’s go over the weirdest hour of sports I can remember:
Start of the 4th Quarter: Green Bay 13, Arizona 10
Palmer’s 2nd INT: This drive started late in the third quarter and the first play was yet another reminder that the NFL desperately needs to properly define a catch. I personally think that four steps and a knee down should constitute a catch regardless of if the ball came out at the end. I know that in a similar situation last playoffs that Dez Bryant was called for an incompletion but the differing of calls only illustrates why this needs to be fixed, not that the call was wrong.
Now to the interception. While the pass was much shorter than it needed to be, the real cause behind this interception was the fact that Green Bay wasn’t afraid of Arizona running the ball. The play started as a play-action pass that immediately got snuffed out by a blitzing linebacker. It was a good risk considering the Cardinals only rushed for 40 yards on 19 rushing attempts. With the added pressure, Carson Palmer threw off his back foot and was unable to put enough behind his pass as Damarcus Randell incepted a pass that should have been out of his reach. Palmer had some bad throws Saturday night, but this one was a little more understandable. (Green Bay 13, Arizona 10 – 14:10 left)
The tip-drill, go-ahead score: This entire drive was a soap opera. The first play was a miscommunication between Palmer and Andre Ellington, not a great first pass after a back-breaking interception. What does Palmer do the next play? Throw a picture-perfect pass just above Packer linebacker Jake Ryan’s outstretched arms to John Brown. At this point we have now entered into “full gunslinger” mode for Palmer. Two plays later Larry Fitzgerald shakes two defenders and reaches out the ball for the first down marker and barely gets it by the narrowest of margins. Then during the Cardinals’ first play in the redzone, Palmer forces a pass to Michael Floyd that cornerback Sam Shields lets bounce off his hands. That pass was much worse than the endzone interception the previous drive and probably would have ended the game. Yet the game didn’t end as a pass between two defenders to David Johnson gets the Cardinals another first down, this time by an even smaller margin than Fitzgerald’s first down.
The true madness began the next play. Arizona ran a pick play with Jaron Brown to get Fitzgerald open on a slant route in the middle of the field. Yet despite Brown’s best (and probably illegal) effort, a defender was able to get an arm and break up the pass. However, instead of the pass falling to the ground, the ball jumped into the air only to land in Floyd’s hands in the back of the endzone. In the span of a second, it went from being a touchdown, to a probable interception, to a touchdown. At this point it seemed that the Cardinals uncharacteristically lucky season after decades of heartbreak would continue. (Arizona 17, Green Bay 13 – 3:44 left)
Arians passes on 2nd down: Then Bruce Arians’ aggressive approach backfired on him. I was really disappointed in the numerous amount of people who questioned Arians and said the pass was a dumb play call after praising him for doing the exact same thing earlier in the season and succeeding. Should he have run the ball? Of course he should have but this is who Arians is and the Cardinals and their fans know and accept Arians’ aggressive approach. Palmer completes that pass to Fitzgerald (or draws a pass interference call) and the game is over. As Arians says, “no risk it, no biscuit.” (Arizona 20, Green Bay 13 – 1:55 left)
Rodgers throws two Hail Marys: After the Cards finally got their first and only sack of the game, it looked like it was over at fourth and 20. Then Rodgers escapes to his left and, with Calais Campbell chasing him, throws a laser to Jeff Janis who was able to get behind the defense thanks to Rodgers extending the play. Then Rodgers decides not to spike the ball and runs another play which not only runs 20 seconds off the clock but an illegal shift by Richard Rodgers stops the clock and backs the Packers up five yards.
At this point Rodgers has two shots at the endzone. Both times, the Cardinals sent seven men on the blitz to hurry up Rodgers’ throw. The first time it worked perfectly as Rodgers kept backpedaling until he threw it away. However the second time Rodgers escaped to his left and threw up a beautiful pass to Janis for the game-tying touchdown. It should be noted that the reason Janis beat Patrick Peterson to the ball was because earlier in the drive Janis got behind the coverage and played deeper so it wouldn’t happen again. That backfired as Janis was able to get in front of the pass to complete the hail mary.
One thing that should be discussed is whether or not Mike McCarthy should have gone for the win with a two-point conversion instead of opting for the extra point to send the game to overtime. To me, the decision should be based on whether or not you believe in momentum. If you do, then you should go for the kill now immediately with the Cardinals still trying to get their head around the fact that the Packers just scored. If you don’t believe in momentum, then you go with the sure bet and go to overtime. There isn’t really a right or wrong decision; it just depends on your philosophy. (Arizona 20, Green Bay 20 – end of regulation)
The overtime coin toss: This may be the most stupid controversy I have ever seen and the fact that some people think that the coin flip prevented the Packers from winning is so asinine that it had me tearing my hair out just reading and listening to this.
First off, in the NFL rulebook it is not stated anywhere that the coin needs to flip on a coin toss. The referee Clete Blakeman was not obligated to do-over the coin toss but did do it because he thought the first toss wasn’t fair. I personally was okay with doing another toss, but the Packers shouldn’t have acted like it was their right to have a do-over. It was a nice gesture by Blakeman and with the Cardinals winning both tosses, the situation should have ended there.
Then Rodgers made his postgame statements. I met Rodgers for a short time back when he was Brett Favre’s backup and from what I can tell he is a good person. Honestly, I think his remarks after the game were just a result of him being frustrated the Packers lost. That being said, I blame him for making this a bigger controversy than it ever needed to be in the first place. He may have just been letting off steam but he needs to realize that he is one of the key players in the NFL and if he complains about something the masses will respond to that complaint.
Rodgers said after the game that he was upset he didn’t get to choose which side of the coin he wanted on the retry. Rodgers said he chooses which side to call based on which side is showing. On the first flip heads was showing so Rodgers called for tails. Since the coin didn’t flip it landed on heads. When Blakeman went for the second toss, he flipped the coin with tails showing. Because of that, Rodgers said he wanted to change his call to heads. The coin landed on heads again and the Cardinals won the toss again.
Some people think Rodgers should have been allowed to change his call but that’s ridiculous. He was already given a gift in the form of a second toss, so also asking to change your call sounds greedy. Also I’ve watched the whole exchange numerous times and I still don’t see how Rodgers could have had enough time to notice the coin being turned over, think about his coin toss ritual, and try to ask for the chance to change his mind. To me this sounds like hindsight bias, with Rodgers trying to come up with an excuse for the Packers losing. Again it probably wasn’t intentional but he can’t make those kinds of statements.
Fitzgerald takes over: Then Fitzgerald made overtime end so quickly that now people are complaining that this set of overtime rules are unfair because Rodgers didn’t get a chance to go back on the field. If Rodgers wants to look for an excuse for why the Packers lost, he needs to look no further than his defense letting Fitzgerald turn a 15-yard pass into a 75-yard completion. Fitzgerald is very shifty but for him to get so wide open and then have four defenders fail to tackle him is a complete defensive breakdown. You can be disappointed Rodgers didn’t get a chance to respond, but don’t ask to change the rules because the Packers couldn’t stop the Cardinals from scoring a touchdown.
Fitzgerald ended the game two plays later on unique play design where Palmer ran what looked like an option run but instead threw a shovel pass to Fitzgerald. It capped possibly his greatest postseason performance and that is saying something. Look at his playoff game log:
vs. Atlanta – 6 receptions, 101 receiving yards, touchdown
at Carolina – 8 receptions, 166 receiving yards, 2 touchdowns
vs Philadelphia – 9 receptions, 152 receiving yards, 3 touchdowns
vs Pittsburgh – 7 receptions, 127 receiving yards, 2 touchdowns
vs Green Bay – 6 receptions, 82 receiving yards, 2 touchdowns
at New Orleans – 6 receptions, 77 receiving yards
at Carolina – 3 receptions, 31 receiving yards
vs Green Bay – 8 receptions, 176 receiving yards, touchdown
His three games with 150+ receiving yards are already the most in NFL playoff history and he’s scored 10 receiving touchdowns in one fewer game than the great Jerry Rice, which is amazing considering two of those games were throwaways because of bad quarterbacks (three quarters of Matt Leinart vs Saints and a whole game with Ryan Lindley vs Panthers last year). Fitzgerald looks like a man on a mission and I don’t know if anyone can stop him.
How I Did With My Divisional Round Picks:
Arizona 34, Green Bay 20 (OT) (1-0 this weekend, 3-2 in playoffs)
New England 27 Kansas City 20 (2-0, 4-2)
Carolina 31, Seattle 24 (3-0, 5-2)
Denver 23, Pittsburgh 16 (4-0, 6-2)
All In The Cards: Super Bowl Scenarios For All 12 Playoff Teams
January 6, 2016 January 7, 2016 qsaturda All In The Cards All In The Cards, Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, NFL, NFL Playoffs, Pittsburgh Steelers, Quinn Saturday, Seattle Seahawks, Super Bowl 50, Super Bowl Scenarios, Washington Redskins, Week 17
The long, brutal NFL season came to an end for 20 teams this week but for 12 teams the season has just begun. In a one-and-done tournament anything can happen so it’s pointless to say that only these certain teams can make the Super Bowl because in reality all 12 of these teams proved they are good enough to win two or three games in a row. So for this week’s All In The Cards I’m going to list the best-case scenario for each team to make a run to the Super Bowl. I hope you enjoy and if you do make sure to follow me on Twitter @QTipsforsports or just search the hashtag #Allinthecards for in-game thoughts and analysis. Before we get to the scenarios, here’s a look at how I did with my week 17 picks:
Seattle 36, Arizona 6 (0-1)
Buffalo 22, New York Jets 17 (0-2)
Miami 20, New England 10 (0-3)
Pittsburgh 28, Cleveland 12 (1-3)
New Orleans 20, Atlanta 17 (2-3)
Philadelphia 35, New York Giants 30 (2-4)
Indianapolis 30, Tennessee 24 (3-4)
Cincinnati 24, Baltimore 16 (4-4)
Houston 30, Jacksonville 6 (5-4)
Detroit 24, Chicago 20 (6-4)
Washington 34, Dallas 23 (7-4)
Carolina 38, Tampa Bay 10 (8-4)
Kansas City 23, Oakland 17 (8-5)
San Francisco 19, St. Louis 16 (8-6)
Denver 27, San Diego 20 (9-6)
Minnesota 20, Green Bay 13 (10-6)
Super Bowl Scenarios For All 12 Playoff Teams:
Carolina Panthers: There are several ways the Panthers can make the Super Bowl but I’m looking specifically at the most optimal way. Well the most optimal way would be to avoid great vertical passing teams. While the Panthers do host a great secondary, the recent injury to Charles Tillman now means that half of the starting secondary is done for the season. Not to mention that since the loss of their other defensive back Bene Benwikere the Panthers have given up a lot more passing yards than normal. They still have Josh Norman but it would be better for this team if they avoided the Seahawks and the Cardinals and instead faced the Redskins and the Vikings over the next two rounds.
Arizona Cardinals: The Cardinals were humbled last week by the Seahawks and should be focused against whoever they face in the playoffs. Having said that, the Cardinals would like to avoid the Vikings and Packers as both teams have extra motivation in the form of previous losses if they faced the Cards again. Instead, the Cards would probably want the Redskins. For the NFC Championship, I know the Cardinals want revenge against the Seahawks and want to have the game at home, but the better matchup is against Carolina. The Panthers may have homefield but they will be missing half of their secondary. Josh Norman may well be the best corner in the NFL, but not even he can cover Larry Fitzgerald, Michael Floyd, and John Brown all at the same time.
Minnesota Vikings: As a 3-seed, two-thirds of your playoff run have already been determined. The Vikings will need to defeat both the Seahawks and the Cardinals to advance to the NFC title game. In that game they would probably want to play at home so that leaves two options: the Packers and the Redskins. We’ve already seen the Packers come to Minnesota and it wasn’t pretty, plus the fact that the Packers would get this far means they have turned their offense around. Instead, the optimal matchup would be against a Redskins team that sometimes has trouble playing well away from home.
Washington Redskins: It’s easy to find the Redskins’ best route to the Super Bowl as all they have to do is follow the same road that the 2008 Cardinals took for their only Super Bowl appearance. Both teams were 9-7 division winners stuck in the 4-seed and facing teams that were favored over them. The Redskins are more than capable of taking care of the Packers as long as Green Bay continues to play like it has during the second half of the season. Then the Redskins will need to catch the Cardinals napping and upset them in Arizona. That task will be harder considering the Cardinals will likely be very focused after getting annihilated right before the playoffs. Finally, despite the fact no one wants to face the Seahawks, the Redskins would favor that matchup for the sole reason of having another home playoff game, where Kirk Cousins has been at his best this year.
Green Bay Packers: Like the Redskins, the Packers also have a blueprint for how to make a Super Bowl run but it will require Aaron Rodgers to perform on a 2011 Joe Flacco-level. After a win against the Redskins, the Packers will want to get revenge on the Cardinals and hope the team is still out of sorts from the Seattle loss. Then the Packers will want the Seahawks so they can host the game at Lambeau Field. It will be a difficult task to beat the Seahawks even at home but if Rodgers is playing like ’11 Flacco, he can lead Green Bay to another Super Bowl appearence.
Seattle Seahawks: Unfortunately for the Seahawks, a trip to their third straight Super Bowl requires a win over the Panthers at Carolina after taking care of the Vikings. That leaves us with three potential teams for Seattle to face in the NFC Championship. While the Cardinals, Packers, and Redskins all play very well at home, only at one of those places does the Seahawks also play very well in and that’s University of Phoenix Stadium. Even though the Cardinals will likely be out for blood after the Seahawks destroyed them during week 17, the Seahawks need to play at a place they are comfortable in after playing two other tough road games.
Denver Broncos: Looks like Peyton Manning is back at QB for the Broncos, but even if Brock Osweiler returns under center the Broncos will only go as far as their running game and their defense. Both the Steelers and the Chiefs have beaten the Broncos during the season and can do it again in the playoffs so the favorable first matchup would be against the Texans. Despite Houston’s improved quarterback play, I’d still take the Broncos defense 10 out of 10 times in that matchup and a heavy dose of the run game means fewer dropbacks where J.J. Watt can obliterate whoever is playing quarterback. In this scenario Denver would either face the Patriots or the Bengals and even though the Broncos have already beaten both of them I think they’d rather not have to go against Tom Brady again, especially considering Brady’s history over Manning in the playoffs. The Bengals, with a less than 100% Andy Dalton would be the slightly easier path to the Super Bowl.
New England Patriots: Everything will depend on how healthy Julian Edelman and any other returning starter really are when they suit up in two weeks and whether or not they are rusty. If they are fine then it won’t matter who the Patriots face. However if they aren’t, things get a lot more difficult. At that point all five AFC teams would give the Patriots trouble so the best-case scenario would call on New England to win psychological matchups against teams and players who seem to fold in high-pressure situations. Andy Dalton would usually be the poster boy for this kind of situation but the Bengals’ main demon is winning a playoff game and they’d accomplish just that if they would eventually face the Patriots. So instead, the psychological matchup would be against Andy Reid, Alex Smith, and the Chiefs. That would leave a psychological matchup with Peyton Manning, Gary Kubiack, and the Broncos as the favorable AFC Championship opponent.
Cincinnati Bengals: As I previously stated with Minnesota, there’s not much wiggle room for teams with the 3-seed. The Bengals already know they will need to beat the boom-or-bust Steelers and then they’ll have to beat the Patriots. Anything can happen with the Steelers so a little bit of luck will be needed to get past them but they’ll either need a 100% Andy Dalton or a rusty Patriots group to advance to the AFC Championship. In the AFC title game, they would love to face the Texans as one of that defense’s only weaknesses is the play-action pass and even at 80% Dalton is still one of the best play-action passers in the NFL.
Houston Texans: Beating the red-hot Chiefs will be tough but after that the road to the Super Bowl isn’t that far-fetched of a possibility. You have to think that J.J. Watt would be licking his chops to get an opportunity to attack a patchwork Patriots offensive line in the next round. No one wishes to face the Patriots, but with many of their key contributors just coming back from injury it would be easiest to get them early when those players may still be rusty. From there the best matchup would be the turnover-prone Broncos, especially if Peyton Manning is playing quarterback.
Kansas City Chiefs: The Chiefs may have the longer winning streak, but the Texans are playing better as of late. It will be a tough task for the Chiefs to advance but they are more than capable of winning this game. As I’ve already stated in other sections, you never wish to face the Patriots but if you’re going to face them, do so in the divisional round when the injured players may not be all the way back. While a rubber match with the Broncos would be an advantage for the Chiefs, an even bigger advantage would be having a home playoff game, which only happens if they face the Steelers.
Pittsburgh Steelers: The Steelers will have the benefit of likely facing an Andy Dalton-less Bengals for their first game. From there the Steelers would have to face the Broncos, who the Steelers beat just a couple of weeks ago and would likely face Peyton Manning in a bad weather game, which always favors Pittsburgh. Then in the AFC Championship, the best best to advance to the Super Bowl would be drawing the Texans because unlike the Chiefs and Patriots, the Texans are more susceptible to turnovers, which the Steelers’ defense needs to thrive.
*Big shout out to Bill Barnwell’s article for helping me determine some of the best paths for teams to take.
All In The Cards: Midseason Grades For All 32 Teams (Week 9/Bye Week)
November 7, 2015 November 14, 2015 qsaturda All In The Cards All In The Cards, Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills, Bye Week, Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Detroit Lions, Game Picks, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, Midseason Awards, Midseason Grades, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, New York Giants, New York Jets, Oakland Raiders, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, Quinn Saturday, San Diego Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks, St. Louis Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Titans, Washington Redskins, Week 9
Welcome to a special bye week edition of All In the Cards! Just because the Arizona Cardinals have off this week doesn’t mean that I get the week off too. However, this week I’m going to take a different approach. Since the Cards’ bye week just happened to land at the midpoint of the season, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to give my midseason grades for every team as well as my midseason awards. I hope you enjoy and if you do make sure to follow me on Twitter @QTipsforsports or just search the hashtag #Allinthecards for in-game thoughts and analysis. Without further ado, let’s grade every team so far this season based on expectations:
Midseason Grades:
AFC East:
New England Patriots: A+
If any team deserves an A+, it’s the Patriots. You would think they would be satisfied finally earning their fourth Super Bowl last year, but this team is gunning for history. Five championships would permanently cement Tom Brady and Bill Belichick as the best in NFL history at their positions. This team has a good chance to complete their second perfect regular season.
New York Jets: B
Todd Bowles has done wonders for the Jets, as they team has already taken on his personality. The defense is a typical aggressive Bowles defense and the offense has been better than expected thanks to the offseason additions of Ryan Fitzpatrick and Brandon Marshall. Tendency to beat themselves and the recent loss to the Raiders prevented this from being an A.
Buffalo Bills: C
The Bills had such a great start to the season, but injuries have hampered what looked like a promising season, especially on the offensive side of the ball. Key offensive players such as Tyrod Taylor, LeSean McCoy, and Sammy Watkins have all missed playing time. The offense will be fine when everyone is healthy. The real surprise is the defense, which started off really well but has been burned multiple times the past few weeks.
Miami Dolphins: C-
The Dolphins under Dan Campbell would probably get a B+/A- grade, but I’m grading the entire first half of the season so that includes the ugly start under Joe Philbin. While the Dolphins have played great lately (minus the blowout loss to New England), this was a team expected to compete for the AFC East so a record of 3-4 is still disappointing. They still have a chance to turn things around a compete for a wild card.
Cincinnati Bengals: A+
I expect the Patriots to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl, but if they don’t it will be due to the Bengals beating them. What’s so cool about this team in particular is that an organization is finally being rewarded for years of development as players like Andy Dalton and Tyler Eifert are having career years. As long as Dalton doesn’t revert, I think this team has to be considered one of the favorites.
Pittsburgh Steelers: B-
The Steelers haven’t had the best of luck, never really having a healthy Ben Roethlisberger and Le’Veon Bell at the same time. Luckily the defense has been better than expected, which is why the team was able to stay afloat when Big Ben was out. They have an uphill battle with the loss of Bell and a tough second half schedule, but this team has already shown this season they can grind through the hard times.
Baltimore Ravens: D+
I could be mean and give the Ravens a failing grade, but the truth of the matter is that the Ravens are a decent team but have been really unlucky. In all six losses,they have had the ball late in the fourth quarter with a chance to win. To me, the crunch time struggles has more to do with Joe Flacco’s unfamiliarity with Marc Trestman’s system and his receivers than it does with Flacco himself.
Cleveland Browns: C
Despite their record, the Browns been a decent surprise and have played good teams (such as Oakland, Denver, and Arizona) really tough. However, it’s the record that gives them a C grade and makes this season seem like another disappointment. There’s also the fact that the Manziel vs McCown debate doesn’t really have a definitive answer, which is hurting the identity of this offense.
Indianapolis Colts: D
Despite all the turmoil Indianapolis has gone through this season, the Colts still lead the AFC South. For that reason alone, no matter how badly they have underachieved, I can’t give them a failing grade. What’s sad is that all three of the Colts’ wins have come against other AFC South teams. What’s even sadder is that all they need to do is win their other three games against the AFC South and they’ll win the division.
Houston Texans: C
Some people are calling the Texans’ first half of the season a disappointment but I didn’t expect a lot out of the Texans this season anyway. The fact that they have switched between quarterbacks, watched their franchise running back get injured again, and have seen their once strong defense get humiliated multiple times, just makes the fact that they are tied for first in their division both impressive and sad.
Jacksonville Jaguars: B-
While this may look like your typical 2-5 Jaguars team at a glance, what we have here is a scrappy team that is finally showing progress but still can’t get over the hump. Besides getting annihilated by the Patriots, Jacksonville has been competitive in every one of its games. We are also seeing some promise from young guys like Blake Bortles, Allen Robinson, and T.J. Yeldon. The wins should come soon if they continue to improve.
Tennessee Titans: C-
A lot has happened since the Titans blew out the Buccaneers in week one. For one thing, the Titans have a new head coach because they haven’t won since. However, I expected this kind of season from the Titans so I’m not going to give them too terrible of a grade. Being only two games behind the Colts in the AFC South, I think the Titans will try to make a second half push, even though getting another top five pick would be a better plan.
Denver Broncos: A-
The reason the Broncos are the only undefeated team not to get an A+ from me is because the defense has deteriorated a lot faster than expected. They seem to have a plan going forward, becoming more of a running team, but sooner or later they will need Peyton Manning to throw to win an important game. I still think he can do it but he’s no longer a sure bet. However, that defense is a sure bet.
Oakland Raiders: A+
It’s been a while but there is finally light in the Black Hole. The emergence of Derek Carr has given the Raiders a shot at making the playoffs for the first time in 13 years. Like Jacksonville, Oakland is also seeing improvement from its young skill position players (Amari Cooper and Latavius Murray) and were able to hit the jackpot with the Michael Crabtree signing. Jack Del Rio won’t win Coach of the Year, but he deserves consideration.
Kansas City Chiefs: C
Everything looked like it was going downhill when Jamaal Charles was lost for the season, but the Chiefs have rebounded to win their last two. While they find themselves still very much in the playoff picture, I think the Chiefs will not be able to find reliable offense often enough to stay in the playoff race. If anything, the rest of this season can be used as a test to see if Alex Smith is this team’s answer at quarterback.
San Diego Chargers: D+
I knew the Chargers were going to bad, but watching Philip Rivers trying to single-handedly keep this team afloat is heartbreaking. The Chargers really need to improve their running game as it ranks as the fourth worst in the NFL (86.4ypg). Not only that, but the defense allows the sixth most points per game (28.4). If the Chargers are able to win three more games I would call that a success.
New York Giants: C
Starting the season 0-2, winning your next three games then losing by 20 on national television to one division rival only to beat another division rival the next week? Yep, sounds like a typical Giants’ season to me. The only real problem I see going forward has to do with the defense allowing 52 to New Orleans. Defenses have hard time recovering after giving up so many points so that will be something to watch the rest of the season.
Washington Redskins: B-
I honestly thought the Redskins would only have one win at most and a new head coach by the time week nine came rolling along. However, I have been really surprised by the toughness this Redskins team has shown as they have battled every game, even against some good opponents. I don’t know if they can keep it up, but they have definitely been one of the pleasant first half surprises in the NFL.
Philadelphia Eagles: C-
The Eagles had one of the most bizarre and confusing offseasons that I can remember so it is only right that their season has also been bizarre and confusing to this point. Defensively the Eagles are better than expected, but that revamped offense has been hit-or-miss with Sam Bradford really struggling at times. If Bradford can’t string a series of good games together I don’t see the Eagles making the playoffs.
Dallas Cowboys: D
I wanted to give the Cowboys a pass or at least an incomplete grade due to the absence of Tony Romo, but the way they have handled Greg Hardy’s recent troubles is going to doom this team before Romo can get back on the field. Such a shame too as they looked very promising during those first couple of games, especially on offense post-DeMarco Murray. However, it looks like their window of opportunity has finally closed.
Green Bay Packers: A
Even after a loss to undefeated Denver, I would have considered still giving the Packers an A+, but it was how they lost that game that made me slightly downgrade them. While the Broncos defense is without a doubt the best in the NFL, they completely shutdown the Packers offense. It’s only one loss and the Packers will be fine, but now we know there is a way to stop Rodgers and company. However only a few teams are capable.
Minnesota Vikings: A
It seems like ages ago that this same Vikings team was handled by the San Francisco 49ers 20-3. Since then the Vikings have won every game save a three-point loss to the Broncos. They haven’t been pretty, but this isn’t college football so you don’t need style points. All you need is wins and the Vikings keep finding ways to win. Reminds of last season’s Arizona Cardinals in some ways, especially how the Vikings’ defense has played.
Chicago Bears: C-
The Bears are a hard team to evaluate because they are only two two fourth quarter stops away from being 0-7. Yet this team has played much better than a potential winless team, especially when the got Jay Cutler back from his hamstring injury. I don’t think they are going anywhere this season, but if they can continue to improve as the season goes along, I think John Fox’s team be set up for the long run.
Detroit Lions: F
Every team has a bad day now and again, so I was going to look past the Lions debacle against the Cardinals. I was going to look past the fact that Detroit was the last team to pick up its first win. However, when you mess up so bad (firing your offensive coordinator and then losing 45-10 to the Chiefs the next week) that your owner fires both your general manager and team president midseason, I have no choice but to fail you.
Carolina Panthers: A+
Each week the Panthers remind me more and more of the Seahawks team that won the Super Bowl just a couple of years ago. Their defense has passed all expectations and somehow Cam Newton is making it work on offense with only Greg Olsen and Ted Ginn Jr. as reliable receivers. It’s really hard to believe this is almost the exact same team that made it to the playoffs on a technicality. They will have earned it this year.
Atlanta Falcons: A
The defense has completely transformed under new head coach Dan Quinn, while Matt Ryan and the offense have been reborn in Kyle Shanahan’s offensive scheme. The only thing keeping the Falcons from a perfect grade is the fact that they have had to rely on huge second half comebacks to earn the majority of their wins this season. While a win is a win and there are no style points, relying on comebacks can backfire very badly.
New Orleans: C
After a 1-4 start, the Saints have won three in a row and they have been against decent teams. There was a huge transition for the offense to start the season with the departure of Jimmy Graham but it seems Drew Brees feels comfortable again based on his seven-touchdown performance against the Giants. The defense still needs a lot of fixing and will probably prevent them from making a run at the playoffs.
Tampa Bay: C
Everyone knew this would be a transition year for the Buccaneers and it has played out exactly like one to this point. This team is constantly learning and sometimes you have to fail to properly learn. That’s what happened recently when the Bucs lost after blowing a big lead against the Redskins and then holding on the next week when they blew another lead to the Falcons. Things seem to be going right on track.
Arizona Cardinals: A-
I’ll go more in-depth on my midseason evaluation of the Cardinals during my week nine recap, but the short version is that the Cards left some wins on the table. For as well as the Cardinals have played this season they should have won against St. Louis and they should have been able to adjust to the Steelers change at quarterback. The only surprising thing from the Cardinals has been the rebirth of Chris Johnson.
St. Louis Rams: B+
The Rams were a mess offensively to start the season, but they have since found their identity thanks to a historic start by running back Todd Gurley. With that front seven and Gurley to eat up time on the offensive end, opponents face a huge challenge when trying to overcome a deficit. Rams’ management has spent years planning this team out and they are finally starting to see the fruits of their labor.
Seattle Seahawks: C+
The Seahawks have had a roller-coaster of a season so far and even though they haven’t performed as well as they did the last two seasons, the fact is that they sit at .500 with a huge opportunity to get within one game of the NFC West lead if the beat the Cardinals. The most surprising thing we’ve seen from the Seahawks is that the defense, and specifically the secondary, hasn’t been consistently great, which could cost them later in the season.
San Francisco: D-
All you need to know about the 49ers’ season is that they are benching Colin Kaepernick for Blaine Gabbert. The only reason I don’t give them a failing grade is that they have been competitive in quite a few games and even have the upset win over the Vikings. Other than that, this was the down season every 49ers’ fan was dreading after they fired John Harbaugh.
Midseason Awards:
MVP: Tom Brady
Offensive POY: Philip Rivers
Defensive POY: Aqib Talib
Rookie of the Year: Todd Gurley
Comeback POY: Chris Johnson
Coach of the Year: Bill Belichick
Assistant Coach of the Year: Wade Phillips, Denver Broncos Defensive Coordinator
My Week 9 NFL Predictions:
Cincinnati 27, Cleveland 13
Miami 23, Buffalo 20
Green Bay 24, Carolina 17
New Orleans 31, Tennessee 16
Pittsburgh 23, Oakland 21
Minnesota 19, St. Louis 16
New England 38, Washington 17
New York Jets 24, Jacksonville 14
Atlanta 28, San Francisco 10
New York Giants 38, Tampa Bay 34
Denver 27, Indianapolis 17
Philadelphia 31, Dallas 20
Chicago 27, San Diego 21
Week 8 Record: 9-5
Season Record: 79-41 (.658)
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11733
|
__label__wiki
| 0.889775
| 0.889775
|
Exclusive Data: City Schools vs. Suburban Schools, See Where Security Officers Outnumber the Counselors
In suburban districts surrounding four major cities, counselors and social workers outnumber security.
In the Chicago Public Schools, where Dexter Leggins works and sends his children, students are more likely to encounter a security officer than a counselor or a social worker.
But according to data obtained by The 74, that’s not the case in districts like Naperville and New Trier Township that ring a city struggling with the highest number of shootings and homicides it’s seen in 20 years.
Leggins serves as a “peacekeeper” at a Chicago public school, facilitating its restorative justice program, an approach to discipline that stresses mediation and conflict resolution over punishment. Leggins said he’s seen school security officers escalate situations with students that should be handled by educators, sometimes ending with a student’s arrest.
“Counselors in schools [are] much better than having police in schools,” he said.
In an exclusive report last year, The 74 used data to show that the country’s 10 largest school districts — including New York City, Chicago, Miami-Dade, and Houston — employ more security than counselors. In Chicago, for instance, there are 1,065 counselors and social workers, compared with 1,379 security personnel.
(The 74: Data Show 3 of the 5 Biggest School Districts Hire More Security Officers Than Counselors)
But this lopsided ratio — where school personnel concerned with security and order outnumber those focused on students’ academic, social, and emotional issues — doesn’t hold true in many nearby suburbs.
The 74 filed public records requests with various school districts surrounding New York City and Chicago and in the Houston metropolitan areas, as well as the state of Florida. The 21 districts surveyed included mostly affluent, whiter enclaves as well as a handful of high-poverty suburban areas.
The data illustrate just how stark the differences are between the urban districts and their suburban neighbors. Across the four regions, all but one of the suburban districts surveyed employed more counselors and social workers combined than security.
The only outlier was the East Ramapo Central School District, a largely poor district north of New York City that has become known for having an elected school board controlled by members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community whose children attend private religious schools. The board and the administration have been heavily criticized in recent years for their budgeting and management policies.
But East Ramapo was the exception.
In Naperville Community Unit School District 203, about 30 miles west of Chicago — where about two in three students are white and fewer than one in five qualifies as low-income — there are more than twice as many counselors and social workers as security staff. Similar numbers hold in several other suburban Chicagoland districts as well.
This pattern wasn’t necessarily because the suburban districts had more counselors and social workers; sometimes, it was driven by the relatively large numbers of security personnel in city districts. For example, New York City and Miami-Dade generally had as many or slightly more counselors and social workers per student than the comparison districts, but many more security officers.
Houston, on the other hand, had far fewer counselors and social workers per student than the surrounding districts surveyed.
“We work with a lot of communities where young people are going to school with high security and a lack of counselors, and I think [the data] is very telling about what we’ve heard from communities across the country that there is not enough investment in social workers and counselors,” said Nancy Treviño of the Dignity in Schools Campaign, which advocates for reducing punitive approaches to school discipline.
Stark disparities
The 74’s data are in line with a national report showing that schools in cities, and schools serving large numbers of students of color or those in poverty, are significantly more likely to employ security staff than whiter, wealthier suburban districts. Even the nomenclature can change with the geography. In some well-to-do suburban districts, security personnel go by softer titles, like pupil personnel assistants or campus activity attendants.
The 74’s data come from a small sample of districts that may not be entirely representative of larger suburban areas. The information was collected over the course of several months last year, so it may not reflect more recent staffing changes.
The results are perhaps unsurprising, but they highlight stark disparities regarding the role of security in urban districts. Significant attention has recently been paid to law enforcement in schools: Federal data show that 1.6 million students attend a school that has security officers in the building but no counselors, and a number of videos have recorded school security officers engaging in violence against students.
Many of these officers receive limited training in dealing with children, especially those who may have cognitive or emotional disabilities and are more likely, data show, to be subjected to harsh discipline in school.
In September of last year, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance on the deployment of officers in schools, stating that ordinary discipline problems should be handled by educators, not law enforcement. It is not clear whether that directive will be maintained by the Trump administration.
Jadine Chou, chief of safety and security at the Chicago Public Schools, said security staff can play a positive role in schools.
“Around the country there’s a paradigm that the presence of security officers inside a school must mean that there’s an increased focus on enforcements, arrests, actions like that,” she said. “At CPS … we [have] worked really hard to change this paradigm.”
She said that some students say security officers make them feel safe and pointed out that many of the district’s security personnel are themselves graduates of the city’s schools. They play a positive role in a school’s culture, building relationships with students, she said.
“We’ve overhauled [security officers’] job descriptions, we’ve overhauled the training, which we do regularly,” Chou said. “Every session with the security officers is [about] how do we make you more supportive and helpful to create a safe, supportive environment that’s welcoming to our students.”
Suspensions, expulsions, and police notifications are all down significantly in Chicago, according to Chou.
Research involving school security is limited, though one recent study found that the presence of security personnel in schools increased safety but also made it more likely that students, particularly those under the age of 15, would be arrested.
Advocates fear that such staff contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline, where students, particularly black males, who are more likely to be suspended and expelled, end up in the criminal justice system.
On the other hand, studies have consistently found that school counselors can have positive effects on student behavior and academic achievement. In addition to helping students navigate classes and peer relationships, counselors play a critical role in assisting students with college admissions, a need that is greater for poorer students of color who may be the first in their family to apply.
Suburbs vs. cities
The overarching trend is clear across four disparate geographic areas: While urban areas employed more security than counselors and social workers, the opposite was true in all but one of the 21 suburban areas for which The 74 collected data.
However, specifics of this pattern varied significantly from area to area. For instance, New York City has a comparable, and in some cases greater, number of counselors and social workers per student versus the five surrounding districts that were surveyed. However, the city had a significantly larger number of security personnel: about three or four times as many as some other districts.
One highly affluent Westchester County district, Scarsdale, doesn’t employ security at all.
Notably, New York City has launched an initiative to significantly expand the number of counselors and social workers in grades 6–12 in certain high-need areas such as the South Bronx and Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Source: Data compiled through public records requests, district spokespeople, and publicly available information.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Public Schools employ somewhat fewer counselors and social workers than most suburban districts examined. Glenbrook and New Trier — wealthy, largely white districts north of Chicago — have significantly more of all three (security, social workers, and counselors) per pupil. Those two districts, though, encompass only high schools, so the numbers may not be directly comparable to Chicago’s, since high schools generally have more counselors and security than elementary schools.
The only surveyed district in the area with fewer counselors and social workers per student than Chicago was District U-46 in Elgin, which serves largely students of color from low-income households. These results may be a reflection of funding disparities in the state. A report from the Education Law Center found that, on average, affluent school districts in Illinois spend significantly more money per student than high-poverty districts, $13,235 per pupil versus $10,176.
Chou, of Chicago Public Schools, said the key to evaluating a district is determining what role different staff members play in schools.
“This should not be a debate about security officers versus counselors,” she said. “What we’ve been able to do, and what school districts should do, is, let’s look at their individual roles and let’s look at what we can do to make the roles we do have in place as effective as possible.”
In Florida, districts cover large geographical areas encompassing entire counties, so The 74 collected data on districts around the state to compare to Miami–Dade County Public Schools. Miami-Dade employs slightly more counselors and social workers per student than the four other Florida districts examined.
Miami-Dade also had substantially more security staff per student than the other surveyed Florida districts — often several times as many. A district spokesperson did not respond to a request for to comment.
In the Houston area, the disparities are the most pronounced in terms of access to counselors and social workers. Though the Houston Independent School District generally had a similar number of security personnel as the five surrounding districts examined — a few less than a couple, a few more than others — the city’s schools have far fewer counselors and social workers.
All six surveyed districts had substantially more counselors and social workers than Houston, which has approximately one counselor or social worker per 1,000 students; the six surrounding districts generally had about twice as many counselors and social workers per student as Houston. The American School Counselor Association recommends one counselor for every 250 students.
Lila Hollin, a spokeswoman for the Houston schools, said the Houston Endowment last year awarded the district an $8.5 million grant to hire college access coordinators to help guide students through the college application.
“HISD is committed to ensuring that students have access to counseling services, whether that’s through a dedicated HISD counselor or a service plan as implemented by a campus professional,” Hollin said in email.
Hollin also noted, “Earlier this year, the HISD Board of Education explored increasing the number of counselors assigned to schools. However, that proposal was put on hold as a result of the impending loss of $162 million in HISD taxes because of the state’s school finance law.”
Data Appendix
Counselors: 2,902
Social workers: 1,275
Security: 5,200 (including 200 uniformed NYPD police officers)
Students: 984,130
76.5% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch
40.5% Hispanic, 27.1% black, 15.5% Asian, 14.8% white, 2.1% other
East Ramapo Central School District (Spring Valley)
Counselors: 15
Social workers: 0
Security: 29
53% Hispanic, 37.1% black, 4.5% Asian, 4.4% white
Great Neck Public Schools
Security: 8
52.2% white, 35.8% Asian, 8.7% Hispanic, 1.9% multiracial, 1.2% black
Greenwich (Connecticut) School District
Social workers: 10.6
64.4% white, 20.5% Hispanic, 8.4% Asian, 3.8% multiracial, 2.8% black
Montclair (New Jersey) Public Schools
16% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch
50.4% white, 27.7% black, 11.4% Hispanic, 5.7% Asian, 4.7% multiracial
Scarsdale Union Free School District
Counselors: 12.3
0% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch (does not offer federally subsidized lunches)
Chicago Public Schools
Counselors: 736
Social workers: 320
Security: 1,416
45.6% Hispanic, 39.3% black, 9.4% white, 3.6% Asian, 1.1% multiracial
Aurora East Unit School District 131
Social workers: 31
Students: 14,799
86.1% Hispanic, 7.9% black, 3.4% white, 1.4% multiracial
Barrington Community Unit School District 220
Security staff: 16 (1 police liaison officer)
67.7% white, 17.7% Hispanic, 12.5% Asian, 2.1% black
Glenbrook High School District 225 (Glenview)
Security staff: 33
65.7% white, 15.4% Asian, 9.7% Hispanic, 4.9% black, 4.1% multiracial
New Trier Township High School District 203 (Winnetka)
3.9% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch
85.3% white, 7.4% Asian, 3.9% Hispanic, 2.7% multiracial
School District U-46 (Elgin)
50.8% Hispanic, 29.9% white, 8.5% Asian, 6.5% black, 3% multiracial, 1.2% American Indian
Miami–Dade (Florida) County Public Schools
Security: 1,839 (189 police officers)
69% Hispanic, 22% black, 7% white
67% white, 14% black, 10% Hispanic, 5% multiracial, 3% Asian
Sarasota County Schools
64.9% white, 19% Hispanic, 8.6% black, 4.5% multiracial, 2.5% Asian
Seminole County Public Schools
52.1% white, 24.8% Hispanic, 14.5% black, 3.5% multiracial
Security: 12 (St. Johns County sheriff’s deputies)
73% white, 7.3% black, 6.8% Hispanic, 5.6% unreported, 3.8% Asian, 2.7% multiracial
Counselors: 167 counselors
Social workers: 32 social workers
Security staff: 250 (210 classified police officers)
62.1% Hispanic, 24.5% black, 8.5% white, 3.8% Asian, 1% multiracial
Aldine Independent School District (Houston)
Security staff: 62 (50 police officers)
72.2% Hispanic, 23.8% black, 1.9% white, 1.3% Asian
Clear Creek Independent School District (League City)
49.3% white, 28.7% Hispanic, 9.8% Asian, 8.1% black, 3.8% multiracial
Katy Independent School District
Security staff: 109
37.9% white, 33.4% Hispanic, 14.2% Asian, 9.9% black, 4.2% multiracial
Montgomery Independent School District
Security staff: 5
79.3% white, 13.9% Hispanic, 3% black, 2% multiracial
Pearland Independent School District
Security staff: 39 (10 SROs and 29 contracted security officers)
37.6% white, 30.3% Hispanic, 15.4% black, 10.2% Asian, 2.8% multiracial
Royal Independent School District (Pattison)
Counselors: 5
71.5% Hispanic, 16.7% black, 10% white, 1.7% multiracial
Tagged cops in schools police in school security resouce officer
Dayton, Oh. (April 10, 2017) On Tuesday April 11th, 2017 Racial Justice NOW! (RJN!) will be hosting...More
No Comments on "Exclusive Data: City Schools vs. Suburban Schools, See Where Security Officers Outnumber the Counselors"
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11739
|
__label__wiki
| 0.846604
| 0.846604
|
Tag: Emma Elizabeth Buxton
This is the much-delayed, third and last installment in my series of posts on the Halls, the maternal ancestors of my grandfather Frederick England’s mother Maud Ling. In it I will be focusing on the children of Charles Buxton (1826-1903) and Miriam Hall (1833-1910) of Alfreton, including William, John Samuel, Emma Elizabeth, Rose Ellen, Frederick Charles, George Henry and Alfred Buxton, as well as Maud Ling’s mother Mary Ann Hall. For the history of the Hall and Buxton families up to this point see Halls that echo still parts one and two.
By the time Charles and Miriam Buxton died in 1903 and 1910 respectively, their surviving children had all established careers and families of their own. Although the Devonshire Arms inn passed out of the family’s hands shortly after Charles’s death (by 1911 it was under the management of Joseph Shearman), a number of his children appear to have followed him into the fish, fruit and grocery trade. The first to do so was his eldest son William Buxton (b. 24 September 1856, Alfreton, Derbyshire), who by 1881 had opened a fruiterer’s shop at 27 King Street, a few minutes up the road from the Devonshire Arms. That year’s census records him living with his wife Eliza (née Bent), with whom he went on to have seven children before her death in 1899. On later censuses William was shown working as a ‘fruit hawker’ in Brampton in 1891, and then at Chesterfield ten years later, where he was living with five of his children at 117 Chatsworth Road.
‘A Fruit Hawker’, c. 1900, London (via Old Photos UK).
The dates and locations may be significant here, for as we saw in Travelling with the Lings (part 3), several members of the Ling family were also working as hawkers in Brampton and Chesterfield in those same census years. William would undoubtedly have known the Lings through his older sister Mary Ann, who had married John Ling in 1871, but his proximity to them over such a long period suggests there may have been a history of personal and business connections between the two families which the census only hints at. It is possible this Buxton-Ling relationship predated even John and Mary Ann’s marriage, as John’s father George Ling was an innkeeper and publican based on King Street (see Travelling with the Lings (part 2)), just like Charles Buxton. George and Charles could have been old friends or business contacts who wanted to cement a profitable partnership through the marriage, or perhaps they had been rivals who saw it as a means of ending a feud.
Whatever its origin, it is clear this relationship between the Lings and the Buxtons remained strong over at least two generations. For example, Charles and Miriam’s second son John Samuel Buxton (b. 8 July 1859, Alfreton, Derbyshire) was for a time guardian to one of John and Mary Ann Ling’s daughters (a point I will return to shortly). In addition, Samuel, as he was commonly known, appears to have been cut from similar cloth to his brothers and sisters-in-law on the Ling side, as like them he was no stranger to physical altercations and occasionally found himself in trouble with the authorities.
Aged twenty one he had married a woman from Somercotes named Mary Stanton, and shortly afterwards moved with her to Skegby in north Nottinghamshire where he worked as a coal miner. By the time his first son was born in 1884 however they had moved back to Alfreton and Samuel and was employed as a county court bailiff. That same year he was named in the local press in connection with an illegal raffle which took place at the Queen’s Head inn without the landlord’s knowledge (The Derbyshire Times, 15 October 1884, p. 3, col. 5). A clock belonging to Samuel had been the main prize. A somewhat more serious allegation came the following year when he was charged with making an affray alongside Samuel College of Wessington at Oakerthorpe. Both men were bound over in the sum of £5 to keep the peace for three months (Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal, 26 June 1885, p. 6, col. 6).
As a county court bailiff, charged with recovering debts by forcibly entering people’s homes and seizing their property, Samuel would undoubtedly have had made a few enemies over the years, so violent exchanges like the one described above are hardly surprising. Bailiffs were widely resented by the working classes for whom they represented an iniquitous system which favoured the rich, as Kruse describes in The Victorian Bailiff: Conflict and Change (2012, Preface):
Distress [debt collection through property siezure] was compared to the bastinado used to oppress farmers in the East, an “injurious grievance” which resulted in the cottages of the poor being ransacked. These attacks developed into a full blown campaign for abolition of distress late in the [Nineteenth] century, but the bailiff in all these instances suffered for no fault of his own and was condemned however blameless his actions.
From the story below, taken from the Heanor petty sessions, it is clear Samuel occasionally found himself on the receiving end of this widespread popular anger:
‘Assault on bailiffs’. Source: The Derby Mercury, 19 December 1888, p. 3, col. 4 (via The British Newspaper Archive).
Another story published nine years later reveals Samuel was also accused of “wilful and corrupt perjury” by a local farmer, who alleged that £1 in rent arrears had been wrongfully seized before it was due (The Derbyshire Times, 23 January 1897, p. 3, cols. 3-4). The charges were dropped after five hours’ deliberation, but together with his earlier assault the story clearly illustrates the thankless nature of his work and the hostility he would have faced on an almost daily basis. The engravings below from The Illustrated Police News depict similarly fraught encounters between bailiffs and tenants which would have proved popular with contemporary readers.
‘The Bailiff and the Collier’. Source: The Illustrated Police News, 13 September 1879, p. 1 (via The British Newspaper Archive).
‘Bailiffs Assaulted’. Source: The Illustrated Police News, 25 June 1881, p. 1 (via The British Newspaper Archive).
Samuel appears to have left his regular employer Messrs W. Watson & Son shortly after this incident, and sued them for £10 2s. 9d. in overdue wages (The Derbyshire Times, 30 April 1898, p. 6, col. 6). The firm issued a counter-claim of £5 18s. 5d., alleging he had been drunk on duty and had left a repossessed house unguarded. A lively scene ensued at Alfreton County Court when upon hearing these allegations Samuel called his accuser a rogue, and said he would rather leave the court than stay and listen to their falsehoods. According to the report, “Buxton was then removed from the Court room to an ante-room, where he was kept until the business had been transacted”. Despite his protestations, a string of witnesses came forward to corroborate the firm’s claims, saying “he was drunk all the time”. The judge let him off with a warning but said he should not have been so foolish as to act in the manner he did, especially as he had been serving as a representative of the court.
It is possible Samuel’s drinking and erratic behaviour had been triggered by his wife Mary’s death two years earlier. There is a record of him auctioning off his household furniture and general effects on 19 September 1896, shortly after relinquishing his property at 27 King Street (The Derbyshire Times, 16 September 1896, p. 2, col. 6), and by the following census in 1901 he had moved back in with his mother and father at the Devonshire Arms. His occupation was recorded as ‘labourer’. Over the following decade however his fortunes appear to have steadily improved, as by 1911 he had married again to a woman named Elizabeth. That year’s census shows them living together with their children at 151 King Street, and records his new occupation as a furniture dealer.
Before moving on to Charles and Miriam Buxton’s other sons and daughters, a few words on Samuel’s children. Although it’s not entirely clear from the censuses, from looking at the local parish registers he appears to have had a total of nine children, four with his first wife Mary and five with Elizabeth. A tenth child, ‘Maud Buxton’ is shown living with him and his family at 27 King Street in 1891, however after a thorough search I have been unable to find any other mention of this child, and it is my belief that this is actually Maud Ling, my great-grandmother and Samuel’s niece by his sister Mary Ann. Why Maud would be living with her aunt and uncle at this time instead of with her brothers and sisters in Doncaster is unclear, as is the reason why she was incorrectly recorded as Samuel’s daughter. Whatever the reason it is notable that while her siblings all went on to embrace travelling lifestyles under the influence of their itinerant pot dealer father John Ling, Maud, under Samuel’s guardianship, remained in Alfreton and married local miner Tom England. We will return to Maud and her family at the end of this post.
Charles and Miriam’s next child after Samuel was Emma Elizabeth Buxton, who was born in Alfreton on 15 February 1863. The censuses of 1881 and 1891 show her assisting her parents at the Devonshire Arms inn (perhaps as a cook or bairmaid), but sadly she died prematurely at the age of thirty two. Her younger sister Rose Ellen was born four years later on 18 March 1867, and married a greengrocer from Coventry named William Henry Beresford. She had one daughter with the unusual Old Testament name Mahalah. Like many of her siblings Rose spent most of her life on King Street, first at the Devonshire Arms and then at number 122 in 1891, when she was recorded as a dressmaker, and at number 46 in 1911. Her last known address was the Midland Hotel in Ripley where she died on 28 August 1925.
According to her probate record, in the year Rose died her effects were valued at £295. There is a stark contrast here with her younger brother Frederick Charles Buxton (b. 11 Mar 1870), Charles and Miriam’s third son, whose estate was worth £8,337 2s. 7d. by the time he died. Like his older brother William, Frederick was a fruiterer and greengrocer but also sold fish and game from his shop at the junction of Alfreton High Street and Bonsall Lane. The photograph below from Around Alfreton shows Frederick’s shop at around the turn of the century. The figures in the foreground are almost certainly Frederick himself and his daughter Lucy Buxton (b. 8 February 1899, Alfreton, Derbyshire).
Buxton’s fishmonger’s and fruiterer’s shop, c. 1904, Bonsall Lane, Alfreton (Alfreton and District Heritage Trust, 1994, 68).
Lucy was one of two children by Frederick’s first wife Lucy Matilda Thomas, who he had married at the age of twenty one in her home parish of St. Cuthbert’s in Wells, Somerset. Lucy Matilda died in early 1899, possibly while giving birth to her daughter, but within a year Frederick had already remarried. His second wedding to Scottish-born Mary Ann Taylor took place on 31 January 1900 and they went on to have three sons together. Further details from Frederick’s life can be found in his obituary in the The Derbyshire Times, which described him as one of Alfreton’s best-known residents.
‘Mr. F.C. Buxton: An Alfreton Tradesman’s Death’. Source: The Derbyshire Times, 6 August 1937, p. 13, col. 4 (via The British Newspaper Archive).
Given the respect and status Frederick seems to have enjoyed in the local community it is highly likely his nephew Charles Frederick Ling was named after him. My grandfather Frederick England was in turn probably named after one or both of these men (his great-uncle and maternal uncle respectively) and I got my middle name from him. Therefore, through the transmission of this one name it is possible to trace the legacy of an individual born in 1870 across four generations, four families, and four individuals separated by more than a century.
Charles and Miriam’s fourth son George Henry Buxton was born three years after Frederick on 14 April 1873. Like his older sister Emma, George started out assisting his parents at the Devonshire Arms before working as bricklayer’s labourer and coal hewer. In 1899 he had married a Nottinghamshire woman named Alice Morton with whom he had four children. The 1901 census records him living next to his brother Frederick’s shop on Bonsall Lane, but by 1911 he was living just off King Street at 5 Independent Hill. His probate record from 1953 shows he was still living there when he died at the age of eighty, and his effects were valued at £593 5s. 11d.
Unlike some of his siblings, George’s name does not appear much in local newspapers, and therefore we know little of his personal life beyond what was included in the census and other official records. The only significant story to mention George (reproduced below) recounts an incident at the King’s Head inn when he and his younger brother Alfred were fined for refusing to leave the premises after mocking a female singer (The Derbyshire Times, 7 June 1899, p. 3, col. 4):
‘A Lady Singer And Her Audience: Unappreciative Alfreton Men Get Into Trouble’. Source: The Derbyshire Times, 7 June 1899, p. 3, col. 4 (via The British Newspaper Archive).
Although this seems to have been George’s first and only brush with the law, this was not the case for Charles and Miriam’s youngest son Alfred. Born on 2 March 1877, at the age of fifteen he had already been fined £1 4s. 2d. for “using obscene language to the annoyance of passengers on the street” alongside two other boys. All three had received cautions before (The Derbyshire Courier, 27 December 1892, p. 3, col. 4). Shortly after his assault charge at the King’s Head in 1899 however he appears to have put such youthful misdemeanors behind him, and following his marriage to Harriet Jackson on 21 December that year there were no further stories like this in the press. The couple lived at West Street in South Normanton for a time, where the 1901 census recorded Alfred as a sawyer, before moving to 14 Amber Row in Wessington. Here Alfred worked as a labourer at the local coal mine before being promoted to colliery banksman.
Unusually for a thirty seven year old man in a reserved occupation, on 21 January 1915 Alfred enlisted for military service in the Great War and was appointed to the Royal Field Artillery. According to his service record he was posted to the No. 6 Depot at Glasgow on 23 April as part of the 31st Reserve Battery, where he would have served in a remount training unit preparing horses for the frontline. On 13 March the following year he was transferred to the 5th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers for two months before being discharged with pay on 2 May. There is a brief note in his service record where his commanding officer described his character as “Very Good, Sober, Thoroughly Trustworthy”.
‘A frisky horse tries to do the foxtrot’. Source: The Daily Mirror, 12 February 1916, p. 6 (via The British Newspaper Archive).
In light of these commendations the events of four years later come as an even greater shock. On 25 June 1920 Alfred and his wife Harriet were questioned by a coroner following the ‘discovery’ of a stillborn infant’s body buried in their garden (The Belper News, 2 July 1920, p. 8, col. 4). The couple were accused of concealing the birth, a crime which carried a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment, and a trial was held to determine their fates. A witness statement recorded in the local press gives a detailed and moving account of the incident and how the police came to learn of it (The Belper News, 6 August 1920, p. 8, col. 3):
‘Alleged Concealment Of Birth: Alfreton Couple Committed For Trial’. Source: The Belper News, 6 August 1920, p. 8, col. 3 (via The British Newspaper Archive).
Following a special magisterial sitting the couple were acquitted, as there was no evidence they had ever attempted to conceal the birth (The Nottingham Evening Post, 8 November 1920, p. 2, col. 1), but having a private tragedy like this play out on such a public stage for several months must have made their victory a bittersweet one at best.
The unnamed stillborn infant at the centre of this case would have been Alfred and Harriet’s seventeenth child since their marriage. By the time of their trial the family had moved back to Alfreton and were living at Outseats Terrace, and this was still Alfred’s address when he died at the age of sixty nine on 12 June 1946. His probate record from the following year gave the value of his personal effects as £619 4s. 7d. Although no photographs of Alfred have surfaced yet, the picture below shows his eldest daughter, Ada Spencer (née Buxton), with two of his grandchildren.
Alfred Buxton’s daughter Ada (right) with her children c. 1935. The man on the poster Jack Lees was the Labour MP for Belper between 1928 and 1931. Courtesy of D. Bowbanks.
Having looked at Charles Buxton and Miriam Hall’s seven legitimate children, let us return now to Miriam’s first child, Mary Ann Hall. Born in Alfreton on 29 November 1851, Mary Ann’s first five years were spent living with her mother’s family in Carlton, Nottinghamshire. Following her mother’s marriage to Charles in 1856 however it appears she quietly dropped the Hall name and was thereafter known as Mary Ann Buxton. The question of her paternity was discussed at length in the previous post, and the reasons for my conclusions will not be repeated here, but it seems quite possible that Charles himself had been her biological father all along. This would certainly explain why he appears to have been so ready to bestow his family name on her, and why he is explicitly recorded as her father in both the 1861 census and in Mary Ann’s marriage certificate from 21 March 1871.
Mary Ann’s marriage to the general dealer John Ling and her children by that union were described in Travelling with the Lings (part 3), but here follows a summarised account of their years together. After their marriage they lived at 135 King Street in Alfreton for around six years, during which time Mary Ann gave birth to three children, before moving to Ripley High Street in about 1877. Here Mary Ann had two more children, including my great-grandmother Maud Ling (b. 17 April 1881), and from the 1881 census we can see that both she and her husband John had begun specialising as earthenware dealers by then.
At some point before the birth of her sixth child in 1888 the family (minus Maud) relocated to Doncaster, possibly via Brampton, where they continued to trade as glass and china dealers at number 34 Silver Street. Interestingly, in the 1893 West Riding edition of Kelly’s Directory only Mary Ann’s name is recorded, suggesting she had taken over the day-to-day running of the business. One possible explanation for this could be that her husband’s health had already begun to fail by this point, as on 13 December the following year he died of lung congestion at the family home at 12 Silver Street, just three months after the birth of their last child, Olive Emma Ling.
By 1901 Mary Ann had moved the family’s china business back to Alfreton and was living with her daughters Maud and Olive above their shop at 16 King Street. That year’s census shows them sharing their home with a thirty eight year old lodger from Poland named Louis Goodman, a travelling draper and hawker. The pictures below show their former home on King Street as it appears today.
The site of Mary Ann Ling’s china shop at 16 King Street, Alfreton (now Broadbent’s Solicitors), 2011.
16 King Street from the back, 2016.
For an idea of what Mary Ann’s shop might have looked like at the time, this photograph of Arthur Smith’s china and general goods shop at 134 King Street circa 1911 may provide some insight.
A. Smith’s china shop at 135 King Street, Alfreton, c. 1911 (Alfreton and District Heritage Trust, 1994).
It is even possible Smith’s business was a continuation of Mary Ann’s, considering its location and the type of goods they sold. Indeed it would have made sense for her to sell her business at around this time, as on 9 November 1910 Mary Ann had married her second husband Thomas Bestwick, the recently widowed publican at Alfreton’s Railway Hotel, at the United Methodist Chapel in Somercotes. The 1911 census shows her and Thomas running the pub together at 105 King Street alongside her youngest daughter Olive and three-year-old step-son Melville Bestwick. Her age is recorded as fifty eight, however we know from her birth certificate Mary Ann was actually fifty nine at the time, a rather scandalous eleven years older than her new husband.
The Railway Hotel at 105 King Street, Alfreton in 1987 (via Picture The Past).
As this is the last census currently open to the public, Mary Ann’s movements after this date become harder to trace. We know her husband Thomas died on 1 February 1929, and that according to his probate record his last address had been ‘Holly House’ on South Moor Lane in Birmington, near Chesterfield. Presumably Mary Ann had been living with him at the time. Ten years later the sale of this house was recorded in a local newspaper:
The sale of Thomas Bestwick’s home Holly House in Brimington. Source: The Derbyshire Times, 10 February 1939, p. 11, col. 5 (via The British Newspaper Archive).
Sadly we know from her death certificate that Mary Ann’s final days were spent at Storthes Hall Mental Hospital near Huddersfield, where she was admitted on 19 April 1938, three months before she passed away on 30 July. The cause of death was identified as lobar pneumonia, and she was said to be eighty eight years old, although she was in fact only eighty six. Perhaps the most intriguing detail on her death certificate however is the entry in the ‘Rank or Profession’ column, which reads “of Caravan, Toll Gate Hotel Yard, Old Mill, Barnsley U.D”. This was both her last known address and that of her travelling showman son, Charles Frederick Ling, her next of kin in the hospital’s admittance records. According to one researcher, Mary Ann had been travelling ever since her husband’s death in 1929 (Steve Smith, e-mail message to author, 11 September, 2016), but even before this she and Thomas had apparently been operating automatic machines at fairs throughout the Nineteen Twenties. Despite having also been a Hall, a Buxton and a Bestwick in her time, perhaps Mary Ann had always felt most at home travelling with the Lings?
L-R: Miriam Buxton (née Hall), her great granddaughter Isabella Cicely Hobson, granddaughter Annie Elizabeth Hobson (née Ling), and daughter Mary Ann Ling (formerly Buxton, née Hall) c. 1907. Source: Courtesy of the National Fairground Archive.
William Henry Hall and Olive Emma Ling’s wedding, c. February 1921, Chesterfield, Derbyshire. Olive’s mother Mary Ann Bestwick (formerly Ling, formerly Buxton, née Hall) is on the second row, fourth from the right. Courtesy of the National Fairground Archives.
L-R: My great-aunt and Harry England’s wife Ethel May England (née Buxton, no relation), my great-great-grandmother Mary Ann Bestwick (formerly Ling, formerly Buxton, née Hall), my great-grandmother Maud England (née Ling), and my great-grandfather Tom England, c. 1935.
The influence of the Hall and Buxton families on the Lings and Englands can be seen in their shared network of personal and business connections, as well as the names they passed on to their children, but perhaps most of all in the long shadow cast by a persistent rumour concerning Mary Ann’s missing fortune. Growing up my mother remembers her father Frederick England claiming there was “money in probate” on numerous occasions, and a series of letters from the Belper Register Office seems show how this elusive wealth was connected in his family’s mind with Mary Ann. Two of these from September 1949 refer to searches for her death certificate, as well as those of her parents Charles and Miriam, which they presumably needed in order to find the corresponding entries in the National Probate Index. It is not clear how far they got but the value of Mary Ann’s effects at the time of her death was just £280 12s. 2d. Even when one adds the £123 left by her father and her mother’s £985 17s. 1d. the sum total hardly justifies the legendary status it acquired. It is possible the rumour’s origins lay with Mary Ann’s second husband Thomas Bestwick, who left behind a personal fortune worth £3,833 3s. (approximately £128,100 in today’s money), but then again it could also just have been wishful thinking on my family’s part. The search continues.
Baker, Chris. “Royal Artillery depots, training and home defence units”. The Long, Long Trail. Accessed 17 July, 2016. http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/regiments-and-corps/the-royal-artillery-in-the-first-world-war/royal-artillery-depots-training-and-home-defence-units/.
Alfreton and District Heritage Trust. Around Alfreton. Bath: Chalford, 1994.
Kruse, John. The Victorian Bailiff: Conflict and Change. [s.l.]: Bailiff Studies Centre, 2012.
Author Robert JonesPosted on 19 July, 2016 4 October, 2016 Categories Bestwick family, Buxton family, Hall family, Ling familyTags 31st Reserve Battery, 5th Battalion, Ada Buxton, Ada Spencer, Alfred Buxton, Alfreton, Alice Buxton, Alice Morton, Arthur Smith, Bailiffs, Birth concealment, Brampton, Bricklayers, Brimington, Carlton, Charles Buxton, Charles Frederick Ling, Chesterfield, China dealers, Codnor and Loscoe, Colliers, Derbyshire, Devonshire Arms, Doncaster, Earthenware dealers, Eliza Bent, Eliza Buxton, Elizabeth Buxton, Elizabeth Lane, Emma Elizabeth Buxton, First World War, Fish hawkers, George Henry Buxton, George Ling, Glasgow, Harriet Buxton, Harriet Jackson, Hawkers, Huddersfield, Innkeepers, Inns, James Bird, John Samuel Buxton, King's Head, Lucy Buxton, Lucy Matilda Buxton, Lucy Matilda Thomas, Mahalah Rosalind Beresford, Margery Spencer, Mary Ann Bestwick, Mary Ann Buxton, Mary Ann Hall, Mary Ann Ling, Maud England, Maud Ling, Midland Hotel, Miners, Miriam Buxton, Miriam Hall, Nottinghamshire, Oakerthorpe, Olive Emma Ling, Publicans, Pubs, Queen's Head, Ripley, Rose Ellen Buxton, Royal Field Artilliery, Royal Fusiliers, Royal Oak, Sawyers, Skegby, Soldiers, Somercotes, Stillbirths, Storthes Hall Mental Hospital, Wessington, Willam Buxton, William Gilbert, World War I, Yorkshire1 Comment on Halls that echo still (part 3)
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11741
|
__label__cc
| 0.628615
| 0.371385
|
Running is usually such a positive and uplifting sport that the occasional sad story gets, I think, an unusual amount of attention. Not just in the running community, but even in the national news.
In the “sad” category I include runners who die during an event, or leave us too early due to disease (R.I.P., Gabriele Grunewald), and also those who are disqualified or banned due to cheating. I include cheating because while it’s a human failing as opposed to a physical one, it’s just as pointless in the end.
The most recent example is Dr. Frank Meza, who was disqualified from this year’s Los Angeles Marathon after evidence surfaced that he’d cut the course. The story is doubly tragic because shortly after his disqualification, he was found dead in the Los Angeles River. The cause is not official as I write this, but it may have been a suicide.
This story baffles me. Dr. Meza was 70 years old, a lifelong runner, former high school track coach, and mentor of Latino students. People who knew him speak of the positive effects he’d had on them and the community. In his sixties he began to run marathons in under three hours – a mark of prestige at any age – and at the 2019 LA Marathon he finished in 2 hours 53 minutes, a record time for his age group. By all accounts, a real “feel good” story, right?
Except he may have faked it. And not just at this marathon. His 2015 finishing time was also under investigation, and the California International Marathon disqualified him twice, then banned him. He denied all allegations of cheating, and agreed to run a future marathon with an official monitor. But his death ends any chance to clear his name.
I don’t know if Dr. Meza cheated, or if he did, at how many races. But the preponderance of evidence suggests he was not as fast as his finishing times indicated. If so, I have a simple question that we may never know the answer to:
Cheating is as old as competition. I get that. The prestige that comes from winning can tempt people to reach for it any way they can. But Dr. Meza wasn’t attempting to win the marathon, qualify for the Olympics, or get sponsored. We’re talking about an age group award, which comes with nothing other than a hearty handshake and maybe a paperweight or similar tchotchke. Even setting an apparent record age group time wouldn’t have meant lasting fame or fortune.
Some of my more notable age group awards. (Yes, that is a roll of toilet paper on the right.)
Was it worth exposing himself to the scrutiny that would inevitably follow a record time? Was a fleeting mention buried somewhere in the LA Times worth risking his lifetime reputation of community service and inspiration to others? Was his ego that fragile that he couldn’t accept being anything but a champion?
For an amateur runner like Dr. Meza, or me, I find cheating to be especially pointless. For the real competition is not against others, but ourselves. Even with the support of crew, coaches, or other runners, in the end your performance is based on your own training, ability, and desire. It’s wanting to know how good we can be, or to break through what we thought our limits were, that keeps us going.
Sure, cheating hurts others if you take away an award or recognition that rightfully belongs to someone else. But mainly you cheat yourself. Even professionals do. Does Lance Armstrong ever wonder how good he could have been if he’d raced clean? I bet he does. But no one, including him, will ever know. And that’s a shame.
Perhaps Dr. Meza’s wife, even if inadvertently, summed it up best. “Running was very important to my husband,” she said, “and now unfortunately he won’t run marathons anymore.”
And that’s sad.
Posted in Life Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, Running & Cycling
Tagged allegations, amateur, cheating, competition, death, Dr. Frank Meza, Los Angeles Marathon, pointless, runner
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11744
|
__label__cc
| 0.545311
| 0.454689
|
Professor William Maley AM
Inside a war-torn country
Q&A: Professor William Maley AM
Following a 40-year fascination with the political situation in Afghanistan, Professor William Maley AM has released his third book on the country, Transition in Afghanistan: Hope, Despair and the Limits of Statebuilding. The book explores the difficult task of statebuilding after severe disruption, and seeks to identify what has gone wrong and why.
What is the current situation in Afghanistan?
After the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, Afghanistan has been going through a process of statebuilding. The broad thrust of my new book is that the transition to a more stable state in Afghanistan has been thrown off course by two developments: the internal development of a neo-patrimonial political order which has become entrenched, making it very difficult for any other political order to take root; and the external development of a ‘creeping invasion’ from neighbouring Pakistani territory, where sanctuaries for the Taliban still exist.
While various milestones for the transition process have been met, there were some major issues relevant to the future of Afghanistan which haven’t been addressed. This embedded neo-patrimonial system, where the power hierarchy is based on relationships and reciprocity entwined with formal political institutions, has interfered with the achievement of some of the higher level objectives, such as free and fair elections and the promotion of human rights.
It’s important to consider the timeframe here. If it took 30 to 40 years for the country to get into a mess – it’s pretty realistic to think it’s not going to get out of that mess in a much shorter timeframe. Political scientists tend to emphasise the need for patience, learning and adjustment of attitudes on the part of actors on the ground, while states have an inclination to want to see this transition progress as quickly as possible.
There is a lot to be said for ‘allowing the pot to simmer for a reasonable period of time before you taste the recipe’.
How did you first get interested in researching the political situation in Afghanistan and what has kept you interested for so long?
I was planning a PhD dissertation on the Soviet Union, and my cousin travelled to Afghanistan in the early 70s, which piqued my interest in that country. Then in December 1979, my two interests came crashing together when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
I’ve always been interested as a political scientist in how one goes about studying politics when formal institutions give you only a small picture of what political life actually involves.
In countries like Afghanistan, the level of political institutionalisation tends to be lower, so you have to probe through evidence of informal rules and understanding in order to get a sense of the dynamics of the political situation.
So much of what goes on politically is based on relationships, reciprocity, solidarity and historical affinities between different groups. Networks and patronage are much more difficult to study than just the operation of formal institutions, but they stretch you intellectually, which was very interesting to me.
How do you build your understanding of the situation and the region?
For countries with a lower level of formal institutions, you need to be a ‘political detective’ to get the richest political understanding. You can’t just rely on official reporting and the free press to tell the story.
As my PhD supervisor at ANU – one of the most eminent Sovietologists in the world, T. H. Rigby – told me, ‘you should never underestimate the value of simply getting the smell and feel of a political situation’. In order to do that you need to get ‘out and about’, in the thick of it.
Really, what you are doing is relying on the integration, almost subconsciously, of very large volumes of information about how a political system functions. That then underpins what might look like instinct, but is actually more – it’s tacit knowledge and understanding.
For my research, I tend to get out and about a lot. I have travelled to different parts of Afghanistan at different times – before, during and after the Taliban period – so I am able to compare the atmospherics in different periods, right down to people’s willingness to talk in public places.
There are advantages in being an academic because people will often talk much more candidly to academics than they will to people they see as representatives of foreign governments.
I try to visit Afghanistan at least once a year, in between teaching diplomacy here at ANU. Getting to Afghanistan is a lot easier than it used to be. I used to have to cadge a lift on a UN or Red Cross flight, but these days I can leave Canberra on a Monday evening, and be in Kabul by Tuesday lunchtime.
What would you like people to know about Afghanistan?
There are three things about Afghanistan that are often overlooked.
First, since 2001, the thing that has irreversibly changed Afghanistan the most is globalisation and technology – not the military presence, or constitutional change – but those two factors together have created a space for the forces of globalisation to find their way into Afghanistan.
The access that everyday Afghans now have to telecommunications, in a cheap, highly competitive mobile phone market, and television, with solar-powered units in small villages, has enabled them to be connected to a wider world in a way that had never previously been possible.
Second, as a result of the international presence, the level of empowerment of Afghan youth is much greater. They are the future of the country and have opportunities that would never have previously been available to them.
And finally, in a country as war-torn as Afghanistan, it’s easy to overlook the fact that it was only a very small minority – no more than 100,000 people in a population of 30 million – who have caused all the trouble. The vast majority of Afghan people are very friendly and hospitable and just trying to get on with their lives in very difficult circumstances.
Professor Susanne von Caemmerer, BA '76, PhD '81
Adding meaning to the campus
Taking students inside
A smart energy future
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11748
|
__label__cc
| 0.709315
| 0.290685
|
Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated w...
Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated wastewater for human enteric viruses
Standard Standard
Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated wastewater for human enteric viruses. / Farkas, Kata; Marshall, Miles; Cooper, David ; McDonald, James; Malham, Shelagh; Peters, Dafydd E.; Maloney, John; Jones, Davey L.
In: Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Vol. 25, No. 33, 01.11.2018, p. 33391-33401.
Farkas, K, Marshall, M, Cooper, D, McDonald, J, Malham, S, Peters, DE, Maloney, J & Jones, DL 2018, 'Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated wastewater for human enteric viruses', Environmental Science and Pollution Research, vol. 25, no. 33, pp. 33391-33401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3261-y
Farkas, K., Marshall, M., Cooper, D., McDonald, J., Malham, S., Peters, D. E., ... Jones, D. L. (2018). Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated wastewater for human enteric viruses. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 25(33), 33391-33401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3261-y
Farkas K, Marshall M, Cooper D, McDonald J, Malham S, Peters DE, Maloney J, Jones DL. 2018. Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated wastewater for human enteric viruses. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 25(33):33391-33401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3261-y
Farkas, Kata et al. "Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated wastewater for human enteric viruses". Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 2018, 25(33). 33391-33401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3261-y
VancouverVancouver
Farkas K, Marshall M, Cooper D, McDonald J, Malham S, Peters DE et al. Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated wastewater for human enteric viruses. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 2018 Nov 1;25(33):33391-33401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3261-y
Farkas, Kata ; Marshall, Miles ; Cooper, David ; McDonald, James ; Malham, Shelagh ; Peters, Dafydd E. ; Maloney, John ; Jones, Davey L. / Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated wastewater for human enteric viruses. In: Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 2018 ; Vol. 25, No. 33. pp. 33391-33401.
T1 - Seasonal and diurnal surveillance of treated and untreated wastewater for human enteric viruses
AU - Farkas, Kata
AU - Marshall, Miles
AU - Cooper, David
AU - McDonald, James
AU - Malham, Shelagh
AU - Peters, Dafydd E.
AU - Maloney, John
AU - Jones, Davey L.
PY - 2018/11/1
Y1 - 2018/11/1
N2 - Understanding the abundance and fate of human viral pathogens in wastewater is essential when assessing the public health risks associated with wastewater discharge to the environment. Typically, however, the microbiological monitoring of wastewater is undertaken on an infrequent basis and peak discharge events may be missed leading to the misrepresentation of risk levels. To evaluate diurnal patterns in wastewater viral loading, we undertook 3-day sampling campaigns with bi-hourly sample collection over three seasons at three wastewater treatment plants. Untreated influent was collected at Ganol and secondary-treated effluent was sampled at Llanrwst and Betws-y-Coed (North Wales, UK). Our results confirmed the presence of human adenovirus (AdV), norovirus genotypes I and II (NoVGI and NoVGII) in both influent and effluent samples while sapovirus GI (SaVGI) was only detected in influent water. The AdV titre was high and relatively constant in all samples, whereas the NoVGI, NoVGII and SaVGI showed high concentrations during autumn and winter and low counts during the summer. Diurnal patterns were detected in pH and turbidity for some sampling periods; however, no such changes in viral titres were observed apart from slight fluctuations in the influent samples. Our findings suggest that viral particle number in wastewater is not affected by daily chemical fluctuations. Hence, a grab sample taken at any point during the day may be sufficient to enumerate the viral load of wastewater effluent within an order of magnitude while four samples a day are recommended for testing wastewater influent samples.
AB - Understanding the abundance and fate of human viral pathogens in wastewater is essential when assessing the public health risks associated with wastewater discharge to the environment. Typically, however, the microbiological monitoring of wastewater is undertaken on an infrequent basis and peak discharge events may be missed leading to the misrepresentation of risk levels. To evaluate diurnal patterns in wastewater viral loading, we undertook 3-day sampling campaigns with bi-hourly sample collection over three seasons at three wastewater treatment plants. Untreated influent was collected at Ganol and secondary-treated effluent was sampled at Llanrwst and Betws-y-Coed (North Wales, UK). Our results confirmed the presence of human adenovirus (AdV), norovirus genotypes I and II (NoVGI and NoVGII) in both influent and effluent samples while sapovirus GI (SaVGI) was only detected in influent water. The AdV titre was high and relatively constant in all samples, whereas the NoVGI, NoVGII and SaVGI showed high concentrations during autumn and winter and low counts during the summer. Diurnal patterns were detected in pH and turbidity for some sampling periods; however, no such changes in viral titres were observed apart from slight fluctuations in the influent samples. Our findings suggest that viral particle number in wastewater is not affected by daily chemical fluctuations. Hence, a grab sample taken at any point during the day may be sufficient to enumerate the viral load of wastewater effluent within an order of magnitude while four samples a day are recommended for testing wastewater influent samples.
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3261-y
DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3261-y
SP - 33391
EP - 33401
JO - Environmental Science and Pollution Research
T2 - Environmental Science and Pollution Research
JF - Environmental Science and Pollution Research
IS - 33
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11750
|
__label__wiki
| 0.615086
| 0.615086
|
Resonance at SOMA Towers
Paul Rosenberg
Paul Rosenberg (bass) has been a singer since toddlerhood when at not even two years old, as legend has it, he mimicked Frank Sinatra singing “Just in Time” as it played through a car radio. Paul worked as an actor in mostly musical theater and cabaret in Colorado and Chicago from 1980 through 1993 when he transitioned to a happy amateur with a steadier income. Paul’s small ensemble experience began in 1972 when at age 14 he joined the professional swing choir, The Kids from Illinois. This gave him a taste for small ensemble singing that continued with several different groups through high school and college, re-emerging in 1995 when he joined the men’s octet, The Windy City Slickers and again in 2000 with his founding membership in Captain Smartypants, with whom Paul performed for 15 years. Paul is grateful and proud to be a part of Princess Guy, a truly collaborative vocal ensemble that collectively charts its own course as a creative venture, a project in which artists are the masters of our own fate. Paul is Jewish, American, a princess and the husband of Eric Lane Barnes because somewhere along the line, he must have done something good.
Website: pixeltech.net
288 106th Avenue NE
info@resonance.events
© 2018 Resonance at SOMA Towers. All rights reserved.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11751
|
__label__cc
| 0.591047
| 0.408953
|
SF/Fantasy
McBain One Shot
Reviews by Steve
Reviews of things various and diverse
Follow Reviews by Steve on WordPress.com
SF/Fantasy (12)
Alternate History (2)
Epic Fantasy (4)
Post-Apocalyptic (2)
Bongo (1)
McBain One Shot (1)
TWD (3)
Previews (42)
Reviews by Hayden (1)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (28)
Ash vs. Evil Dead (2)
Fear the Walking Dead (2)
Killjoys (1)
Marvel's Agent Carter (3)
The Last Ship (6)
Pit Fight: A Review of The Walking Dead Season 7, Episode 10 “New Best Friends”
When They Came For Me: A Review of The Walking Dead Season 7, Episode 9 Mid-Season Premiere – “Rock in the Road”
No Bothans Died to Bring You This Review: A Review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Under Pressure: A Review of Sing
The Breaking of Rick Grimes: A Review of The Walking Dead Season 7, Episode 1 “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be”
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Bye, Boooooook! A Review of Bongo Comics McBain One-Shot
Posted: February 8, 2015 in Bongo, Books, Comics, Graphic Novel, McBain One Shot, Reviews
Tags: Andrew J. Pepoy, Bongo Comics, Jason Ho, John Delaney, Karen Bates, Matt Groenig, McBain, McBain poster, Mike Rote, Nathan Kane, one-shot, Simpsons, Terry Delegeane
Writer: Nathan Kane
Penciller: John Delaney
Inker: Andrew J. Pepoy
Letterer: Karen Bates
Editors: Karen Bates & Terry Delegeane
Cover Artists: Jason Ho, Nathan Kane, Mike Rote
When you’re facing mercenaries who want to kill your daughter? An alien predator who hunts humans for sport? A television game show host who wants to play for blood? Who do you call? McBain!
McBain #1 is the latest of Bongo Comics’ Simpsons One-Shots, and it plays with the conventions of what makes a comic in appropriately larger-than-life ways. In order to review this comic, it is important to look at the two defining characteristics of this edition: the story, and the presentation. Click below to read the rest of the review.
Hard-Boiled Vancouver: A Review of Sam Wiebe’s Last of the Independents
Posted: September 15, 2014 in Books, Hard-Boiled, Mystery, Reviews
Tags: Ben Loeb, Django Szabo, Hastings, Katherine Hough, Last of the Independents, Michael Drayton, missing child, Mystery, Sam Wiebe, Vancouver Noir, Vancouver Noir Book 1
Series: Vancouver Noir, Book 1
Pages: 336 (Trade Paperback)
Publisher: Dundurn
This is the debut novel of Vancouver writer Sam Wiebe, and the first in his proposed Vancouver Noir series following the cases of Michael Drayton, former Vancouver Police (VPD) officer and current independent private-eye. Independents was the unanimous winner of the Unhanged Edgar Award in 2012, an award given for the best unpublished mystery novel in Canada. Fortunately for us, Dundurn picked up Wiebe’s book, and we can now settle down to an evening or two of highly entertaining modern noir.
Before I get into the meat of the review, I need to come clean: I know Sam Wiebe. He was a student of mine at SFU back in the Fall of 2008, when I was his TA in English 399. In my defense, I gave his first assignment a C+ – a grade for which he promptly took me to task, a grade which he was able to successfully argue against for a review and upgrade. While I did adjust his grade in that case, it wasn’t due to any sympathy or lack of resolve on my own part – it was because Sam was able to argue pertinently and to-the-point. In fact, Sam’s formidable in-person nature – strong-willed without bullying, intelligent without condescension, a strong sense of justice – also comes through in his writing. Michael Drayton, Wiebe’s creation, is one of the more complete characters I have read in some time. Click through for my full review.
Breaking the Stone: A Review of The Wheel of Time Book Three: The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan
Posted: September 9, 2014 in Books, Epic Fantasy, Reviews, SF/Fantasy
Tags: Aiel, Callandor, Egwene al'Vere, Elayne Trakand, Faile, Loial, Mat Cauthon, Moiraine Damodred, Nynaeve al'Meara, One Power, Perrin Aybara, Rand al'Thor, Robert Jordan, Saidin, Saidir, Siuan Sanche, Tar Valon, Tarmon Gai'don, Tear, The Dragon Reborn, Verin Sedai, Wheel of Time, Wheel of Time series, Zarine Bashere
Series: The Wheel of Time, Book 3
Pages: 704 (Mass Market Paperback)
Publisher: Tor Fantasy
Reading the third book in the main sequence of Jordan’s Wheel of Time, I see the story just starting to hit its stride. The main characters are now well developed, and our sympathies as readers are beginning to spread out to multiple perspectives and agendas. The Dragon Reborn is all about Rand al’Thor coming to grips with who he is, and what his place is in the world – things every person goes through at some point in their life, whether they’re intended to save the world or not.
My reviews of other books in The Wheel of Time series:
Prequel: New Spring, reviewed May 28, 2014
Book One: The Eye of the World, reviewed May 29, 2014
Book Two: The Great Hunt, reviewed June 22, 2014
<<Spoiler Alert: Again, I am including a spoiler alert for this review, despite the book originally coming out over twenty years ago – if you haven’d read it, it’s still new to you. This review contains plot and character details from this book, as well as from previous books in the series. If you wish to remain spoiler-free, do not click through.>>
Burning Man: A Review of Homeland by Cory Doctorow
Posted: September 3, 2014 in Books, Reviews, SF/Fantasy
Tags: Black Rock City, Boing Boing, Burning Man, cold brewed coffee, Cory Doctorow, Craphound, Dungeons and Dragons, EFF, Homeland, leaks, Little Brother, Marcus Yallow, Masha, Severe Haircut Lady, Snowden, Wil Wheaton
Series: Sequel to 2008’s Little Brother
Pages: 448 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Tor Teen
Reading the sequel to what has been one of my favorite novels of the 21st century (so far) is an exercise destined to have a hard time living up to expectations. While Doctorow’s Little Brother is, in my opinion, an important book, Homeland does a good job of being entertaining, but seems just a little too self-aware to live up to its predecessor. Click through after the break to get my breakdown of what works – and what doesn’t – in this book of rebellious youth growing up.
Sounding the Horn: A Review of The Wheel of Time Book Two: The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan
Posted: June 22, 2014 in Books, Epic Fantasy, Reviews, Series, SF/Fantasy
Tags: Aes Sedai, damane, Egwene al'Vere, Elayne Trakand, Horn of Valere, Hurin, Ingtar, Liandrin, Loial, Mat Cauthon, Min, Nynaeve al'Meara, Padan Fain, Perrin Aybara, portal stones, Rand al'Thor, Robert Jordan, Seanchan, Selene, Shienar, The Wheel of Time
Reading the second book of a fourteen book (fifteen, if you count the prequel) series feels somewhat like still being in the beginning, despite having now read well over a thousand pages set in Jordan’s world. In this, my third review in my reread of Robert Jordan’s epic The Wheel of Time series, I find myself thoroughly enjoying the way so far, and ready to go ever onward. Click through to read my take on The Great Hunt.
<<Spoiler Alert: While it feels a bit odd giving a spoiler alert for a book that is over twenty years old, there are always new readers discovering Jordan and his epic series. This review contains plot and character details from this book, as well as from previous books in the series. If you wish to remain spoiler-free, do not click through.>>
I Am Your Father: A Review of Darth Vader and Son by Jeffrey Brown
Posted: June 8, 2014 in Books, Childrens, Reviews
Tags: cartoon, children's book, comic, Darth Vader, Jeffrey Brown, Luke I am your father, Luke Skywalker, no I am your father, Star Wars, Vader
Pages: 64 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Chronicle Books
I have a lot of children’s books here at home. Being a father and a bibliophile means that most trips to the mall involve purchasing a new book or two for my son (as well as a new book or two for myself – I need to stop going to the mall so often). For the most part, I won’t be reviewing them here – there are plenty of wonderful bloggers and review sites out there that already do that job much better and with more knowledge than I can claim to have in the area. However, I will gladly make exceptions if, on occasion, I get a book for my son that also entertains and/or tickles me as I read it. This is one such book – and it is, in some ways, written more for me than it is for my four-year old boy.
Fight the Power: A Review of Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Posted: June 7, 2014 in Books, Dystopian, Reviews, SF/Fantasy
Tags: Ange, Big Brother, Boing Boing, civil rights, Cory Doctorow, Creative Commons, Darryl, Doctorow, Homeland Security, Jolu, Little Brother, m1k3y, Marcus Yallow, San Francisco, Severe Haircut Lady, surveillance culture, terrorist attack, Van, w1n5t0n, Winston Smith
Pages: 416 (Paperback)
Cory Doctorow first came to my attention when I picked up a copy of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Its combination of absurdism and new paradigms in a realistic future setting hooked me on his writing, and I quickly came to be a semi-regular follower of Doctorow’s website, Boing Boing. He’s a huge believer in and supporter of the Creative Commons, and he puts his money where his mouth is – each of his books is available for free download, forever. That said, he still sells strong numbers, and has even increased his audience through this rather unorthodox approach. Lest this become a review of the man rather than the book, I’ll start talking about my favorite of all his works (so far): Little Brother.
Science 101: A Review of Physics for Future Presidents by Richard A. Muller
Posted: June 4, 2014 in Books, Climate Change, Non-Fiction, Physics, Reviews, Science
Tags: Climate Change, energy, Global Warming, lay science, nuclear weapons, nukes, physics, presidents, Richard A Muller, space, terrorism, UC Berkeley
Publisher: W.W. Norton and Company
This is the eighth science-themed book I’ve read this year, and while it is one of the least specific, covering a range of topics, it is also quite interesting. Muller’s purpose in writing this book is laid out right in his title: he wants to be able to explain, in layman’s terms, the important scientific questions (or policy decision informed on science) that a new President must face. While the odds that I’ll one day become President are pretty long (seeing as how I’m not American), I still found the book to be both informative and accessible.
Enter the Dragon: A Review of The Wheel of Time Book One: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
Posted: May 29, 2014 in Books, Epic Fantasy, Series, SF/Fantasy
Tags: Aes Sedai, Egwene al'Vere, Emond's Field, Eye of the World, Lan Mandragoran, Loial, Mat Cauthon, Moiraine Damodred, Nynaeve al'Meara, Ogier, Perrin Aybara, Rand al'Thor, Tar Valon, The Dragon Reborn, the Ways, Wheel of Time
I originally read Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series beginning in 2002 when I was living in Japan. My friend Mike introduced me to Mr. Jordan’s fantastical world, and I was hooked from the very beginning. At that time, there were nine books out in the series, Jordan having released them at a pace of almost one a year (take that, George RR Martin!). A tenth came out in 2003, and eleventh in 2005. Then, nothing. Jordan got sick, and passed in September of 2007, leaving his series unfinished, and his fans both saddened and disappointed. That was not, however, the end of The Wheel of Time.
Beginnings: A Review of The Wheel of Time Series Prequel, New Spring by Robert Jordan
Posted: May 28, 2014 in Books, Epic Fantasy, Reviews, Series, SF/Fantasy
Tags: Aes Sedai, Books, epic, Fantasy, Jordan, Lan Mandragoran, Moiraine Damodred, New Spring, Oliver Rigney Jr, Prequel, Review, Robert Jordan, Siuan Sanche, Tar Valon, the Dragon, The Wheel of Time, Wheel of Time series
Date: January, 2004
New Spring was originally published as part of an anthology in 1999: Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, edited by Robert Silverberg. I came across this volume in a library years ago, but never got around to reading it. A few years after the original version, Robert Jordan decided to flesh out the novella into a full novel as the first of an intended prequel trilogy, and it was republished on its own. This is the version that I’ll be reviewing here. I had the book for several years before starting it; however, recently, I’ve decided to give the entire Wheel of Time series a reread, now that Brandon Sanderson has completed his “collaboration” with the original author, Robert Jordan, who passed away seven years ago leaving the series unfinished. Sanderson has, by all accounts, done a yeoman’s job, in the process writing three new volumes to finish the series. Over the next year or so, I’ll be revisiting the series (and reading four of the volumes for the first time), beginning with this, the only prequel Jordan completed before his untimely death. Click through after the break for my review.
My other reviews in The Wheel of Time series:
drinktolive
Narrowback Slacker
Sociologist Novelist
The Wise Sloth
Rogue Alchemy
The Arts - JustMeMike's New Blog
Mesh The Movie Freak
i'm a movie nerd
CHANGE IT UP EDITING
islands of stability
The Most Happy
GRRuMblers
"The Brotherhood of Evil Geeks"
GlennDeefholts's Blog
Pieces of Darkness
A lady's got to know her limitations.
the dualistic writing life...
This site has moved to thewisesloth.com
Wise as a Serpent; Gentle as a Dove
Art, Movies, Travel, TV Drama Series & More
Movies, TV Shows and Whatnot
random thoughts from a self-confessed movie junkie
I love words. Especially yours. Let me help you say it the way you mean it!
All my aimless thoughts, ideas, and ramblings, all packed into one site!
Fresh and Relevant Speculative Fiction News
Entertainment for the Modern Villain
A Collection of Caliginous Choppings
A continuing mission to produce flash fiction stories in 300 words (or less)
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11752
|
__label__cc
| 0.749563
| 0.250437
|
The Guild House
Su-S, 6:30am - 11:00am
Su-S, 11:00am - 4:00pm
Su-S, 4:00pm - 12:00am
http://theguildhousecolumbus.com
About: The Guild House
Our culinary team, or “culinary guild,” is proud to debut The Guild House, an artisan eatery featuring creative American cuisine available for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The Guild House proudly sources locally grown ingredients whenever possible. The chefs collaborate to create seasonal offerings that are regionally and globally inspired, all with artistic technique in an energetic and inviting space. Their wine list includes wines from around the world that are diverse and carefully selected, and bar chefs craft fresh-squeezed juices and spirits with skillful passion.
Re-purposed wood, local art and contemporary accents lend to The Guild House’s cosmopolitan character – suitable for revelry or relaxation. The atmosphere is complemented by the perfect blend of genuine hospitality from the heart. There’s a lot of love on every plate.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11753
|
__label__cc
| 0.541089
| 0.458911
|
On The Hero’s Journey with the Serpent
At risk of hurling a blogging non sequitur at readers, the Fretful Midge jumps to one of her passions: The Hero’s Journey. Today, I finished a Hero’s Journey Writing Workshop series with one of the most wonderful groups I’ve ever worked with. Not only did they all show up every week, but they showed up to write prose of the most amazing depth and beauty. By the crashing waves of Bray’s seafront, we had our last workshop today, the stage of the journey in its final stages: The Master of the Two Worlds, in which the Hero has received the Ultimate Boon, crosses the Return Threshold, and must find their way back to the Ordinary World, keeping a balance between that and the Special World.
Oh, the return. We all know what it’s like to return from an amazing adventure, and with photos in tow, we attempt to convince friends and family that THIS is the place to go, and please, oh please listen to me recount every detail of what happened. NO! They say. I DO NOT HAVE TIME. And why do they not have time? Apart from being envious, they may also be threatened by you, an emissary of another spatio- temporal reality that… actually has nothing at all to do with theirs. Or so they think. And isn’t it excruciating when the Returnee is particularly good at photography, and inflicts you with a slide show? Ho, ho!
But the thing is, it was just the same for Jesus, and for Buddha, and for Mohammed. And the same for Rip Van Winkel, and poor old Gulliver, who returned, sadly, empty handed and with nothing but their tales to tell, at the end of their extraordinary cavortings. Gulliver was deemed mad by the Royal Geographic Society, after recounting his tales of Lilliput, Laputa and the Land of Houyhnhnms. (Houyhnhnms are a race of intelligent horses described in the last part of Jonathan Swift’s satirical Gulliver’s Travels). But this is how it is for every traveller, I believe.
But for the Spiritual journey-er, it is an even more explosive reception, the Mastery of the Two Worlds… What do you do with your message, your gift, your boon of Wisdom, when you return? Are you stoned, slated or worse again, crucified?
We each go through Hero’s Journeys every day. For there are micro and macro versions of this never-ending spiral. It’s like Yeat’s Gyre, or the Serpent shedding its scales. The serpent, demonised by the Western World as an evil, poisonous and devious creature of sin, condemned from the Garden of Eden for Eternity, is a creature revered in the East. The power, our power, resides at the base of our spine, and this in the Vedic tradition is likened to a snake coiled at the base, and over time and with much yogic practice, it climbs up through the body, clearing out the debris of conditioning, delusion and ignorance along the way, until it reaches the crown, where the practitioner becomes enlightened.
Woman brings life into the world. Eve is the mother of this temporal wold. Formerly you had a dreamtime paradise there in the Garden of Eden – no time, no birth, no death – no life. The serpent, who dies and is resurrected, shedding its skin and renewing its life, is the lord of the central tree, where time and eternity come together. He is the primary god, actually, in the Garden of Eden. Yahweh, the one who walks there in the cool of the evening, is just a visitor. The Garden is the serpent’s place. It is an old, old story.
The Hero’s Journey undertaken is an act of uncoiling that latent inner serpent, shedding the old skins, and growing a new one, infused with wisdom in insight. It is a transformation of the human spirit. Because it’s like this:
“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11756
|
__label__cc
| 0.605411
| 0.394589
|
A Series of Unfortunate Events – Interview with composer Jim Dooley
By jvonn66 13 July 2018 9 August 2018
Leave a Comment on A Series of Unfortunate Events – Interview with composer Jim Dooley
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events has stood out for being a children’s book series that didn’t believe in happy endings. The well-known story, which was first published in 1999, follows three young siblings (Klaus, Violet and Sunny Baudelaire) whose parents die in a fire and are placed in the care of one crazy guardian after another, all while being hunted by an evil distant relative (Count Olaf) who is only interested in their enormous fortune. The books spawned a 2004 feature film starring Jim Carrey and a Netflix series, now in its second season.
We decided to speak to one of the creatives of the hit Netflix show, Emmy winning composer Jim Dooley. In the below exclusive interview he talks about everything from what surprised him most in the second season to his influences for the score.
-What was your creative process like for A Series of Unfortunate Events?
It all begins with Barry Sonnenfeld. We had an initial creative meeting to discuss where the show was and where it was going. After that I started putting together a musical palette specific to the show by recording new custom instruments such as the Bass Flapamba, Stone Marimba, and Tuned Anvils. Then I sat down and wrote out new thematic material for the show before actually working to picture.
-Now that Season 2 has been streaming for a while we can ask, what was your biggest surprise with Season 2?
Both the deaths of Jaques and Olivia were a big surprise. I have not read the books and I don’t read the scripts too far ahead so that the score doesn’t give anything away due to the ‘omniscient composer effect.’ I tried to do something special for the demise of their characters.
-When you were first scoring ASOUE was there things musically you knew you wanted to avoid? Why?
I don’t know if I was necessarily trying to avoid anything in particular. My goal, however, was to create a musical world almost devoid of hope. The score is there to add a bit of whimsy in a dark world that is set against our heroic children.
-Did you draw from any influences to create the ASOUE score? If so, what were they?
I definitely took a bit from Bernard Herrmann’s score to Journey to the Center of the Earth. Whenever Lemony Snicket is narrating, I wanted to give him something that had a mood devoid of light and hope.
-Which episode from Season 2 was your favourite to score? Why?
‘Carnivorous Carnival Part 1’ is my favourite because it created one of the greatest challenges. It opens with a party and dancing. I had to score the action as well as a caper that is going on. It was very tricky but it turned out well I think.
-Imaginary wise, ASOUE is very similar to one of your previous shows, Pushing Daisies. When doing a show that is very over the top like this, is it harder or easier to score?
After scoring Pushing Daisies, ASOUE was like putting on a well-worn piece of clothing. It had all the marks of many years of use and fit like a glove. The sheer amount of music makes the show difficult to score, just like Pushing Daisies. I am fortunate to have a great team of people on the show that help me get to the finish line with great success. From the assistants to the editors and all over the show, it’s a great team.
-What Netflix shows are you currently watching? Musically which one stands out the most for you?
I just binge watched the second season of GLOW. That is fantastic! I can’t wait for season three! The score is great and the song placements were brilliant.
Tags: A Series of Unfortunate Events Jim Dooley
Previous Entry Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor: Ghost Ship – Comic Review
Next Entry Looking back at… Mission: Impossible
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11762
|
__label__wiki
| 0.620671
| 0.620671
|
Pédopornographie: les réseaux se portent bien, merci – donde vamos
Posted on July 18, 2017 by societyissinister.com
REBLOGGED IN ENGLISH FROM SOURCE LINK AND ORIGINAL POST VIA:
http://dondevamos.canalblog.com/archives/2011/01/16/20143485.html
Child pornography: networks are doing well, thanks
By Ceri
Mini Foreword:
For once, I will evoke a problem that has caught my attention for several years and that can be worth a few sleepless nights to the most seasoned.
This is called a generic term “pedophile networks”. It will take several parts to go – a little – in detail, in order to have a chance to fully understand how things work.
When one says “pedophile networks”, especially in the plural, this often leads to reflections such as “conspiracy theory”.
Yet these networks exist and are innumerable today especially because of the Internet. We remember: Dutroux or Emile Louis were isolated predators, Dominique Baudis was wrongly accused because he is a notable in a case related to the Allègre affair, Outreau’s case was bogus, In short: the network is never heard, except to say that it is “conspiracy theory”.
Without going so far as to speak of “conspiracy”, it must be said: there are many networks of pedophiles, not just on the Internet, since we must provide the “raw material”: children.
And these networks work together. In some of these networks, there are powerful people in politics or economics, and obviously these people are protecting themselves.
Not plots, but networks.
We will first make a sort of state of play in Part I, then we will address the Dutroux affair and the network that was behind in Part II, which will be quite long.
Then we shall see the Allègre affair more closely, that of the disappeared of the Yonne, and some others less known.
The modern network, or pedophile network
To make a network, you must be at least two. On the pedophile side, the old version of the network is an incestuous father (for example), who “lends” his child to the neighbor for free or for some advantage.
The network kept a “local” dimension and more or less confidential.
Today, the incestuous father is connected to the Internet.
And he no longer simply rapes his daughter, he films this rape to broadcast on the web or rather to exchange the film against another film or for money.
At the extreme, it is also possible for pedophiles to order a child rape film, in such and such a way and for such and such a sum, from the other end of the planet.
And the movie, once on the web, can be shared with a lot of people. The network, then, is international and concerns hundreds or even thousands of people.
In Japan, cases of child pornography increased by 60% between the first six months of 2009 and the first six months of 2010.
In part pedophile Because the police are quite serious about it, but also because the supply and demand in this area are constantly growing , training each other.
600 cases were recorded in Japan at the beginning of 2010, concerning 295 children, twice as many as in 2009.
In Belgium, a case concerning child pornography is open every day , but as long as they only look at the images pedophiles Do not risk much: one year’s imprisonment (and again, the first time they will have only a reprieve), and maximum ten if they produce the said images.
There are still old-fashioned networks, where parents simply deliver their children to a neighbor , and almost every time they are financially, socially and culturally disadvantaged families who rent the children to someone who , By definition, has more money than them.
And there are those who also film, many since the time of the VHS, even more since the digital age. Why film?
Some people just watch videos quietly at home, others exchange them for a new video, or resell them.
And it sometimes becomes a quasi-industrial production .
The Belgian Church could also be described as a pedophile network, since the hierarchy systematically arranged to stifle all affairs, as in Ireland or Portugal [ 1] , moreover.
The child porn industry
Today, pedophiles are regularly arrested and thousands of pornographic pornographic images, including entire rape videos, have been stored on their hard drives, even to the most abominable.
Child pornography is linked to the sexual exploitation of children and constitutes a serious violation of human rights .
A pedophile will have 100,000 photos and 200 videos , the other a CD-ROM of 8,000 photos, another (like Mrs. Hissel, the former lawyer of parents of a small victim of Dutroux) will have 7,500 , another will store 600 videos and 4.000 photos, another will have 15,000 ,350,000 (and 1,400 videos) 2] or perhaps 3 million …
The arrests are recurrent and it makes sense: with these techniques of diffusion , the network quickly takes on proportions dantesques.
What we forget, these gentlemen especially, is that behind every photo and video, there is a child who is abused, sometimes babies.
And it really makes a lot of children.
On the Internet, it is now quite simple to get in touch with pedophiles, or simply to fall on a forum where one exchanges pornography pedo.
“Supply” is important, and also motivates an additional demand, as shown in some cases where normal a priori types start looking at thousands of images of child rape, and respond to the judge that “Internet encourages this kind of facts … ”
This is how he joins a criminologist psychologist, Roland Coutanceau, who explains that certain individuals ,” by dint of seeing these images, will drift towards the temptation to take action ”
In 2007, 132 people holding such images had been arrested in France.
They were also accused of having exchanged images, some of which, on a server in France, had been downloaded by more than 10,000 people.
In the end, 1.4 million photos and 27,000 videos were seized in this case. France would be the second European country in terms of child pornography behind Germany, and 4th in the world.
But where do all these children come from?
Some come from here, others from Eastern Europe, where orphanages are very popular with pedophiles, Maghreb and Latin America, where a Brazilian network for the production and distribution of child pornography films has been dismantled. 2009, in fact no country should be spared.
At the end of 2010, a Bulgarian network which had produced several hundred pedophile films, which was then broadcast on the Internet, was dismantled.
In Amsterdam, at the end of 2010, the cops finally got hold of a Latvian who had raped children in crèches, mostly filming the scenes.
His films were watched throughout the United States .
The Belgian news agency said: ” When the suspect was arrested, the police seized several computers, the contents of which were particularly well protected by encryption techniques, according to Commissioner Welten.
It is not known at this time whether there is a network of child pornography “Yes: since the Dutroux affair, the word “network” is taboo in Belgium.
All these movies report, and some put up 500 euros a month to buy movies and photos.Recently, a 29-year-old father who advertised “renting or buying girls” was pinched.
Not by the police: by journalists, who then swung it.But, in short.
The guy asked for 1,500 to 15,000 € for a child from a Romanian or Polish orphanage.
Recently, Australian investigators find on the Internet videos in which girls who speak Flemish are abused by their
coup_filet_pedophilie_telechargement_videos_h_L_1
And then the trail (Operation Koala ) goes up to their father , a certain Pascal Taveirne, who sold these videos 3] to other pedophiles.
One of them, an Italian, put them online, as well as videos of the rapes of 21 Ukrainian girls aged 9 to 16 “leased” for 30 or 40 euros .
In particular, these videos were found in Mr. Hissel’s computer , as well as in the computers of 2,500 other pedophiles.
While some videos are made by isolated amateurs, this is not always the case, and some people have the main occupation to prostitute children and of course to film them to maximize the gains.
Some of the images that Mr. Hissel looked at were produced by a group of perverts called the “Zandvoort Network”, which we will address just below.
In terms of child pornography, we can talk about industry because of the revenue generated by the sale of images, but also by the provision of the servers that host all the sites concerned.
Unfortunately, no study has been conducted on the financial flows behind this business of the most vile.
It is considered that the leader in this field had already managed to have a turnover of more than 20 million dollars in 2004, worthy of the largest producers of normal porn movies in France.
The leader of the porno porn on the net, who had several websites and also produced some images, was selling at that time about 1,500 access to his catalog every day at $ 40 registration.
And one of the perverse effects of laws like LOPPSI is to favor the specialization of server providers for pedophile sites.
The concealment and techniques to escape the filtering of these sites demand means and have a cost, which directly enriches a mafia essentially installed in Russia for the moment.
The main reason is that pornography in general has been banned for a long time, and that this industry is bypassing censorship on the Internet and elsewhere for a long time.
In short: at every legal and technological barrier, the proponents of this business find parades , such as using spam sent to known pedophiles with a link referring to a pedophile site whose address changes permanently, then send it back to another Hidden site, use a discrete payment system, specially created for this type of transactions, or go through Trojans by infected computers to upload images …
The images, once sold, are quickly worthless since they are broadcast on a large scale and there is no copy right.
As a result, it is always necessary novelty, new kids, new movies and if possible, more and more trash
The so-called “Zandvoort” network
We wondered who produced these images?Well, there are kinds of studios, such as the one that was dismantled in Ukraine in 2004 : a pseudo model agency recruited 8 to 16 year old girls to film pornographic films.
1,500 children would have passed through this agency.
But we also have networks at home, such as the Zandvoort network, which has put online tens of thousands of pedophile images from Holland, some of which are produced in-house.
With this affair, one sinks in the bottom of the glaucous.
To try to be more or less understandable, it is better to take the events in order.
For what is striking in this story, as in many other cases of pedophilia, is the incredible slowness of the judicial machinery, coupled with an obstruction that is unparalleled.
The case of Zandvoort (named after a Dutch town near Haarlem) broke out in 1998 when Marcel Vervloesem, founder of the Belgian associationMorkhoven 4] presents to the police a CD ROM containing thousands of pornographic photos.
On the CD ROM, 8,700 children, sometimes babies, victims of rape and barbaric acts.
Some children have probably been drugged before undergoing these acts because they do not react, or few, have the look in the vague.
Vervloesem, who was investigating the disappearance of the young Manuel Schadwald in Berlin in 1993, obtained this CD-ROM from Gerrit Ulrich, a Dutch pedophile who had a real workshop for producing pornographic films and CD with eight computers Rotating continuously.
He handed him this CD ROM because he felt threatened and tried to cover himself up by accusing the other members of the network.
After delivering these photos, Ulrich is also murdered in Italy by Robbie Van der Plancken A young man whom he had initiated into prostitution since he was 12 years old.
Vervloesem found himself questioning witnesses in the Dutch child pornography world by investigating the disappearance of a young German, Manuel Schadwald, five years earlier, because he would have been seen in this environment on several occasions.
Disappeared at 12 years 5] , he was taken directly to Holland in a brothel held and frequented by pedophiles.
His parents recognize him on videos taken in Madeira, which lead to the “Temse Madeira” (Thames Madeira) network, where the boss of a pedophile bar in Temse (Thames) organized trips and cruises (notably on the sailboat “Apollo” “), During which they abused young children while filming.
Incidentally, Apollo is also the name of the website through which Ulrich sent his videos.
In this network, there are very undesirable people, such as Norbert de Rijck 6] , Lothar Glandorf 7] , which removed Schadwald [ 8], or
551_mesures_vatican_pedophilie
Robbie Van der Plancken (his accomplice), but otherwise we will not get away (we’ll talk later about Glandorf).
Back to Ulrich and the CD ROM: in fact, he had given eight CD ROMS to Vervloesem, with over 93,000 photos, 47,000 of them “unpublished”, all handed over to the Belgian police then to Interpol 9].
In 1999, the public prosecutor’s office in Antwerp received the CD ROMS and was quick to file the file [ 10] , then the CDs disappear and Vervloesem is pursued for possession of pornographic material.
Police operations stop some consumers of these videos, but for the rest, business continues, while the Roma CDs disappear from the Antwerp court.
One could also speak at length about the treatment reserved for Marcel Vervloesem , who has updated this network: he spent several years in prison 11] in spite of his diabetes, in want of care, and has to undergo a lot of defamatory attacks and slanderous denunciations.
But in these files, many witnesses are craving for suicide, or die in car accidents.
The so-called Zandvoort network was in fact connected with many other groups of pedophiles, who also had their production system.
The Koala operation, carried out by Europol since 2006 to find the clients of an Italian pedophile site and Pascal Taveirne’s small productions, led to the arrest in France of a certain Dr. Chung (71) and his friend Malgarini (51 ), For having had sex (eg, $ 5 for an 8-year-old child) with under-15s in Thailand and Cambodia between 2003 and 2007.
Of course, both were filming their exploits.
But it must be said that in our country very few pedophiles were harassed (apparently 21), and in total only 92 people were arrested in Europe following Operation Koala.
But, apart from these rare arrests, the case ended in France by a non-place in 2003, causing all the investigation to be trapped.
In fact, some pedophiles have so much provided address books that there are types of other pathways across the country.
Thus, an English pedophile named Warwick Spinks, who took five years in prison in 1994 12) (but was released under conditions, not observed of course in 1997) and liked Madeira and the young boys there, was in contact with members of the Thames-Madeira and Zandvoort networks (like Glandorf ).
Spinks had become a pro in the trade of young children in Dutch brothels and apartments, and child pornography images sold for several at prices such as $ 5,000, a tariff that no longer concerns the proletarians.
He was able to buy many properties around the world with this money.
A young man who knew him well told him that he had seen the video of a child’s rape and death , all filmed by Spinks and his friends while they were in a boat .
Other videos of this type are mentioned by different witnesses in this case: in the end we suspected Spinks of the murders of five boys .
Spinks, like some of his British counterparts, were touring gay bars in Amsterdam, bringing young boys from Cardiff and London, and then from the East after the fall of the USSR.
The Dutch police estimated that about 250 pedophiles gravitated in these bars.
Strangely enough, the Dutch told Scotland Yard that they would not inquire about it, and the local police in England, for want of means, were said to have done so.
In short, released conditionally after two and a half years in prison, Spinks disappeared from the traffic and it seems that he is still on the run
So we have a kind of nebula of pedophile websites and networks, a multitude of child victims worldwide, and an almost total omerta except on the few guys who get stuck to download these images.
We will see in the following sections that there is also a fierce judicial obstruction in many cases where we refuse to see any network whatsoever despite the evidences.
[1] In the case of the Portuguese orphanages in Casa Pia where pedophiles reigned, which broke out in 2002, it is interesting to note that the children were also taken to isolated individual houses.
It is also important to know that everyone knew for years what was happening, but of course the authorities did not react.
However, in this case, the arrest of a former chauffeur of Casa pia, Carlos Silvino, accused of pedophile acts since 1975 and suspected this time of serving as a matchmaker, led to the arrest of personalities such as An ex-ambassador to UNESCO, a former minister of labor … It took eight years for … six convictions to fall , the heaviest being 18 years in prison for Silvino, the only one to have recognized the facts .
[2] Dutchman arrested in 2009 was caught because he reported a breakdown in the digital photo editor of a supermarket, while he was developing his pedophile photos.
The employees saw that the machine was stuffed by these photos and reported the facts.
[3] Taveirne reportedly received € 3,200 from these videos.
Apparently, some videos were made to order, at a price of 250 € to film the little ones in lingerie, or 750 € to film them or one of their friends being raped by their father, for example.
[4] This Non-Profit Association (like an asso 1901 law) fights for the rights of the person, in prison, in psychiatry, for the rights of the children etc.
As of 1992, the non-profit organization is on the trail of a group of guys who pay children Psychiatric institute of Antwerp to pose on porn pictures in different bars.
And the legal troubles began for Morkhoven.
[5] Shortly before his disappearance, he was reportedly seen at the Zoo station in Berlin, a prostitution center in the German capital.
Manuel Schadwald was young, of course, but it happened that young people who disappeared in these networks were “hooked” by the network some time before their disappearance;
Which did not prevent the police from considering it as an escape.
The Zoo is the station where the trains from Eastern Europe arrive, and about 700 Eastern European boys aged 12 to 17 were prostitutes in the early 2000s.
[6] Following a search at his home in 1992 and the seizure of pedophile photos, De Rijck was sentenced in 2001 to five years in prison for sexual abuse committed on ten boys aged 11 to 16 from families Poor in Madeira in 1991.
[7] Glandorf took only six years in prison in 1995, following the closure of two bars in which children (including Manuel Schadwald) were prostitutes in Rotterdam at the end of 1994.
Glandorf was one of the owners, Been convicted of trafficking in human beings, including the debauchery of minors under 16 years of age.
Yet he had also sold “hundreds” of young boys.
[8] According to the Guardian , it was the police in Rotterdam who saw Schadwald entering a bar with Glandorf in September 1994.
Children who escaped from a brothel in Glandorf in 1993 also told Police that they had recognized Schadwald in the bars.
[9] As a result, various police operations such as the Koala or Hamlet operations have made it possible to challenge buyers of these videos, who are tossed by their online payments.
[10] On the basis of “unknown culprits”. Instead of looking for them, the investigation is abandoned.
[11] Vervloesem is accused of various rapes, following complaints in 1998, fraud, possession of pedophile material (the famous CD ROMs he actually had in his possession for handing over to the police) and (Belgium, for insisting that an investigation be carried out) following a complaint by the father of one of the victims of Dutroux, Jean Denis Lejeune, now politically active, a member of the Child Focus … and defended at the time by Me Hissel.
The world is small, especially Belgium. In the end, Vervloesem took four years in prison by the Antwerp Court of Appeal in 2008 and was provisionally released in August 2010 because of his health problems.
[12] He was convicted of kidnapping and raping a 10-year-old child (whom he most probably murdered) in February 1995.
Released in July 1997, he fled two months later .
Tags: justice , pedophilia , child pornography , pedophile networks , Zandvoort
PreviousAn open letter to Theresa May calling for Michael Mansfield QC to chair the Child Abuse Inquiry
NextAmerica Gets PUNK’D by Ashton Kutcher and the McCain Institute for Public Funds — Steemit
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11769
|
__label__wiki
| 0.73788
| 0.73788
|
Category Archives: New Orleans
by Mike C | September 24, 2011 · 5:46 am
The South and the Death Penalty
The recent execution of Troy Davis has caused many to again discuss the merits of the death penalty in the United States. (It also sparked a mass march in New York City that was met with a heavy handed police response). According to the Daily Beast, the South has the highest execution rate in the country, as well as the highest murder rate. On top of that, the incarceration capital of the world is a southern city: New Orleans.
These renewed debates not only bring into question broad topics like the death penalty itself, but they should also let us contextualize them in a regional sense. We should begin asking why is the South the home to so many problems still (to throw yet another one in there: the South is “bearing the brunt” of the US’s raising poverty rate). There are plenty of answers to the question of why the South faces these problems. But one thing should be quite clear, it is something often repeated on this site: the South remains an important part of the country to organize progressive forces.
Amongst the many lessons we learned from the Troy Davis incident (to steal the ANSWER coalition’s article title), we should also add the lesson that the world pays attention to the South, not only to the injustices that happen there but to the folks that organize against those injustices.
Filed under African Americans, ANSWER Coalition, Atlanta, Georgia, inmates, Leftists in the U.S. South, National Oppression, New Orleans, Prisoners, prisons, racism, Southern Identity, Southern Strategy, Southern United States, United States
Tagged as ANSWER Coalition, demonstrations, Georgia, prison, prison industrial complex, race, Southern United States
by Mike C | May 25, 2011 · 8:58 pm
Untold story of U.S. slave rebellion retold centuries later
[This article originally appeared on thestar.com]
By Mitch Potter Washington Bureau
DESTREHAN PLANTATION, LA.—A long-lost chapter in American history is being written anew today, as southerners begin to come to terms with the previously untold story of the continent’s largest slave revolt.
And while historians today debate the details, a consensus is forming around just how close New Orleans came to becoming a free black colony precisely 200 years ago when a makeshift army of some 500 slaves, some just a few years out of Africa, rose up in carefully calculated unison with epic consequences.
Here at the pastoral Destrehan Plantation, the aftermath of the January 1811, insurrection was especially brutal — newly unearthed colonial records show the estate was the epicentre for a judicial reckoning, with the white slaveholders ordering as many as 100 ringleaders shot or hanged.
They black rebel leaders then were decapitated, with their heads mounted on stakes in a horrific necklace of retribution stretching 70 kms down the Mississippi, all the way to the gates of what was then America’s most crucial frontier city.“It is one of the most striking moments of amnesia in our national history. What you had in the end were plantation owners sitting down to sumptuous five-course meals as they looked out the window at their own beheaded slaves,” said historian Daniel Rasmussen, who began his investigation as an undergraduate student at Harvard.
“The planters were outnumbered and terrified. They thought of their slaves as sub-human they saw ritual beheading as a prime way to get their message across.
“And what followed this gruesome display was a concerted attempt to write it out of the history books. The southern newspapers suppressed the story, either refusing to publish or delaying for months. Only a few papers much further north published small paragraphs condemning the savagery of the planters.”
Tulane University, the African American Museum in Treme and Destrehan Plantation all are filling in the blanks with the launch of a yearlong look at the 1811 uprising.
But it is Rasmussen’s riveting new book, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt, that is turning the most heads, in academia and beyond.
Collating clues from dust-encrusted plantation ledgers, colonial court records, obscure snippets of antebellum correspondence and the oral memory of slave descendents, Rasmussen’s study recreates the intense planning and careful timing that underpinned the audacious bid for freedom involving slaves from a dozen plantations along the river.
Two Asante warriors, Kook and Quamana, likely battle-hardened from wars in Africa, conspired with Charles Deslondes, a mulatto slave-driver of mixed parentage, who Rasmussen describes as “the ultimate sleeper cell.”
All had, in one way or another, been “sold down the river” — a cliché that first conceived to describe the especially horrific nature of slavery at southernmost end of the Mississippi, where extreme violence underpinned the extreme wealth of the lucrative French sugar plantations.
Spiked collars were the norm for the uncooperative — the spikes pointing inward to prevent sleep. Deslondes, working on behalf of his plantation owner, was responsible for administering punishment, including the lash for those who would dare refuse the backbreaking labours of harvesting, beating, boiling and refining the sugar cane.
Haiti was also a factor. The slave revolution of 1791 was, in its own way, a shot heard round the slave world, as French colonial refugees and their slaves washed into New Orleans. It remains unclear whether Deslondes came from Haiti.
Louisiana was vital American territory 200 years ago, but just barely — Napoleon had sold France’s claim to the vast Mississippi watershed to the United States a few years earlier for a paltry $15 million, a gift that would ultimately open the drive to the Pacific. But Louisiana’s French colonial class had nothing but contempt for its new American overseers, who were in January 1811, preoccupied in battles with the Spanish to secure a tract of west Florida. New Orleans was nearly defenceless.
“The attack came at just the right moment — the Americans were fighting the Spanish and with the harvest completed, the French planters were focused on the month-long series of lavish carnival balls and all-night parties leading up to Mardi Gras. And several days of steady rains had turned the road to mud, impeding any counterattack. Their guard was down,” Rasmussen said in an interview with the Toronto Star.
“Scarcely a resident in New Orleans had a musket. The city had a weak detachment of 68 troops.”
The rebels rose first at André Plantation after sunset on Jan. 8, 1811. And within hours, they were on the march to New Orleans. A ragtag army, perhaps, but one that marched in uniform, having seized militia clothing and weapons from plantation armories. Their numbers grew as the march advanced and as rumor of the uprising swept down the river road, the ruling class fled for the safety of the city.
“The planters couldn’t understand it — the idea that the slaves were not just savages, but that this was something planned. You had an army marching in military formation, wearing military uniforms, carrying flags and banners and chanting, “Freedom or death,” said Rasmussen.
New Orleans was on the edge of chaos — not least because its own population was 75 per cent black, awakening the fears of a second front rising up within the town itself. The city would order its taverns closed, imposed a curfew on all black males and summoned able-bodied whites to arms. Simultaneously, fleeing French planters regrouped on the West Bank of the Miscopy upstream from the city.
The two forces, American regulars and French planter militia, ultimately were able to confront the freedom fighters from both sides in a series of pitched battles beyond the city gates in the days that followed. Surviving slaves fled to the swamps and manhunts ensued, with dozens rounded up for the rough justice to come.
In the end, 21 slaves were interviewed by their colonial overseers in a bid to piece together the roots of the conspiracy and assign criminal blame. Elements of the story, says Rasmussen, survive in the oral histories of slave descendents, passed down and told “even to the present day at family reunions.” But the main snippets are to be found, refracted through the writings of the white ruling class, which show extent of fears never before told.
“They were sitting on a powder keg and when it exploded and was put down, everything changed. Instead of a mini-Haiti, Louisiana society became militarized. The revolt pushed this old aristocratic society into the hands of the American government,” said Rasmussen.
“What you see is that the foundations of American power in this part of the deep South were built upon the commitment to restore and uphold slavery. Essentially, the French planters decided to cling to the United States as an ark of safety.”
As for Kook, Quamana, and Charles Deslondes, only now are historians weighing how to elevate them alongside the likes of far better known revolutionaries like Nat Turner and John Brown as major figures in the American struggle for emancipation.
“None of this has ever been taught in American schools and the hope now is that these men who were executed for the strongest ideals will take their rightful place in history,” said Rasmussen.
“They were political revolutionaries, they deserve a place in the national memory and there is a sense now that they are getting it. We need to wrestle with this history if we are ever to truly understand it.”
Filed under African Americans, class struggle, Gulf States, Louisiana, New Orleans, Race, racism, slavery, workers
Tagged as class struggle, louisiana, New Orleans, Southern United States
No Demolition! Hands Off Iberville! (New Orleans)
David Gilmore, the federally-imposed-administrator of the Housing Authority of New Orleans, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu, want to make life even more miserable for working class New Orleanians by demolishing the Iberville Public Housing development. To add insult to injury they have given the contract to greedy developer Pres Kabacoff, who drove hundreds of poor families from St. Thomas and still, a decade later, has not built the 100 off site apartment he promised. But, to carry out their crime, HANO, Landrieu, and Kabacoff need a multi-million dollar grant from the Department of Housing Urban Development. Join us Saturday, December 18 as we demand:
· No to a HUD Choice Neighborhood grant to demolish Iberville
· Yes to a massive public works program to rebuild Public Housing, Schools, Hospitals and Infrastructure
Press Conference, Rally and March
12 Noon
Meet on neutral ground, corner of St Louis and Basin St.
Sponsor: Hands Off Iberville. For more information call 504-520-9521
Filed under African Americans, austerity measures, budget cuts, class struggle, Demonstration Announcements, Event Announcement, Gulf States, housing, Human Rights, Louisiana, National Oppression, New Orleans, Public housing, Race, Solidarity, Southern United States, Uncategorized, United States, Upcoming Events, workers
Tagged as capitalism, class struggle, demonstrations, housing, louisiana, New Orleans, public housing, race, Southern United States, U.S. politics
by hastenawait | November 29, 2010 · 9:24 pm
The Incarceration Capital of the US
By Jordan Flaherty
[Originally posted to the Huffington Post November 9, 2010]
A struggle over the size of New Orleans’ jail could define the city’s future
New Orleans’ criminal justice system is at a crossroads. A new mayor and police chief say they want to make major changes, and the police department is facing lawsuits and federal investigations that may profoundly change the department. But a simultaneous, and less publicized, struggle is being waged and the results will likely define the city’s justice system for a generation: the city’s jail, damaged in Katrina, needs to be replaced. City leaders must now decide how big the new institution will be.
At first, it seemed like an expansion of OPP was inevitable. This is a city with one of the highest rates of violent crime in the US, and politicians rarely lose votes by calling for more jail cells. But in a city that has led the nation in incarceration, residents across race and class lines are questioning fundamental assumptions about what works in criminal justice.
With 3,500 beds in a city of about 350,000 residents, Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) is already the largest per capita county jail of any major US city. Sheriff Marlin Gusman, the elected official with oversight over the jail, has submitted plans for an even larger complex. A broad coalition is seeking to take the city in a different direction. They want a smaller facility, and they are demanding that the money that would be spent on a larger jail be diverted to alternatives to incarceration, like drug treatment programs and mental health facilities. With two public hearings on the issue scheduled for this week, the battle is heating up.
Criminal justice experts and community leaders are speaking in support of a smaller jail. This is an issue that has allowed the religious foundation Baptist Community Ministries and prison abolition organizers from Critical Resistance to find common ground. The online activist group ColorOfChange.org also recently joined in the conversation, with an appeal that has generated hundreds of emails to the mayor and city council. “In all the work we’ve been doing on criminal justice reform, this is definitely a pivotal moment,” says Rosana Cruz, the associate director of VOTE, an organization that seeks to build power and civic engagement for formerly incarcerated people. “We’re finally getting local and state government to think about public safety from a perspective of real safety, not an incarceration perspective.”
The OPP Reform Coalition, a pre-Katrina alliance that has recently been revitalized, has led the campaign. In September, when it seemed like the prison expansion was proceeding without public debate, they took out a full-page ad in the city’s daily paper listing other things that the money spent on OPP could be spent on. The ad featured an assortment of New Orleanians – including musicians, local politicians, community leaders, and members of the cast and crew of the HBO show Treme. The diverse assembly of public figures not only signed the ad, but also helped pay for it, donating $22.39 each, the amount that the jail currently charges the city for every prisoner. In the aftermath of the ad, attention turned to a working group formed by the mayor to address the issue. That body is expected to make its recommendations this month.
Incarceration Industry
Orleans Parish Prison is a giant complex in Midcity New Orleans, made up of several buildings spread across a dozen blocks employing nearly a thousand nonunion workers. The city jail is a small empire under the absolute control of the city Sheriff, who can use jail employees for election campaigns, and send out prisoners to work for local businesses. The majority of the metropolitan area’s mental health facilities are also located within the jail, meaning that for many who have mental health issues, the jail is their only option for treatment.
Louisiana’s incarceration rate is by far the highest in the world – more than ten times higher than most European countries, and twenty times higher than Japan. Pre-Katrina, OPP had 7,200 beds. In a city with a population of about 465,000, this came to about one bed for every sixty-five city residents. Neighboring Jefferson Parish has 100,000 more people than Orleans Parish, and has only 900 beds. Caddo Parish – in the northeast of the state – has more violent crime, but still imprisons far less people. If OPP had the same number of beds as the national average of one for every 388 residents, the jail’s capacity would shrink to about 850.
Aside from its size, OPP is unique in other ways. Under the terms of a lawsuit over prison conditions filed in 1969, the jail’s budget is based on a per-diem paid by the city for every inmate in prison. The more people locked in OPP, the higher the funding Sheriff Gusman has at his disposal. “Our current funding structure is creating a perverse incentive to lock more people up,” explains Dana Kaplan, the director of Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, a criminal justice advocacy organization and member of the OPP Reform Coalition.
The institution of OPP is also exceptional in that it is a county jail and a state prison combined into one entity. About 2,700 people in the jail are mostly pre-trial detainees – the majority being held for drug possession, traffic violations, public drunkenness, or other nonviolent offenses – and are legally innocent. An additional eight hundred people are state prisoners who have been convicted in court, who may spend years or even decades at OPP.
Almost 60,000 people passed through OPP in the last twelve months, a staggering figure for a city of this size. The average length of stay was 20 days. The largest portion of pre-trial prisoners in the jail are there for nonviolent, municipal offenses that even under conservative standards should not warrant jail time, including 20,000 arrests this year for traffic violations. “New Orleans is basically the incarceration capital of the world,” says Kaplan. “You’re hard-pressed to find a resident of New Orleans – especially in poor communities – that hasn’t had their lives disrupted in some way by this institution.”
An article by journalist Ethan Brown in one of the city’s weekly papers noted, “thanks to the profound misallocation of law enforcement resources in New Orleans, you’re more likely to end up in Orleans Parish Prison for a traffic offense than for armed robbery or murder.” Ultimately, this struggle over the size of the jail is also about the city’s incarceration priorities. If the city builds a larger jail, it will have to keep filling it with tens of thousands of people. If a smaller facility is built, it will change who is arrested in the city, and how long they spend behind bars.
Because much of the jail was underwater during Katrina, many of the buildings have either been closed or need massive renovation. By one estimate, the new jail that the sheriff seeks would cost 250 million dollars, much of that to come in reimbursements from FEMA. The sheriff has yet to reveal how much of the construction costs would come from federal dollars, although the state affiliate of the ACLU has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the information. Even if most of the construction were paid for by FEMA, as the Sheriff has indicated, the continued upkeep would fall to the city.
Sheriff Gusman did not respond to requests for comment, but he has said, at a meeting of mayor’s task force on the jail, “I’ve always advocated for a smaller facility,” and spoke of being satisfied with 4,200 beds. The plans he has submitted to various planning bodies, however, indicate otherwise.
The Sheriff has issued several conflicting statements and reports about the size of the jail he is seeking, as well as where the funding will come from. A Justice Facilities Master Plan, prepared in collaboration with the Sheriff’s office, called for 8,000 beds, which would give the jail capacity to imprison nearly one of every 40 people currently in the city. A planning document recently prepared by the Sheriff called for 5,800 beds. No plans or public documents issued by his office have called for building a jail smaller than the current facility.
With seven reported deaths this year, OPP is under the spotlight for violent and abusive treatment of prisoners. A September 2009 report from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) found, “conditions at OPP violate the constitutional rights of inmates.” The DOJ went on to document “a pattern and practice of unnecessary and inappropriate use of force by OPP correctional officers,” including “several examples where OPP officers openly engaged in abusive and retaliatory conduct, which resulted in serious injuries to prisoners. In some instances, the investigation found, the officers’ conduct was so flagrant it clearly constituted calculated abuse.”
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of people who had not been convicted of any crime were lost in the city’s prison system. Last month a jury awarded two men from Ohio a $650,000 judgment for their treatment after the storm. The men were on a road trip and stopped in New Orleans for a drink on Bourbon Street. They were arrested for public drunkenness and spent a month disappeared in the system, without being allowed even one phone call to their families.
In a city under fiscal crisis, advocates have focused not only on the decades of evidence that mass incarceration has only made people in the city feel less safe, but also on the financial costs of this massive jail. In addition to calling for reforms that would cause less people to be locked up, the reform coalition demands that, “funds dedicated to building a bigger jail must be reallocated to building the infrastructure of a caring community, including recreational, educational, mental health, and affordable housing facilities.” Andrea Slocum, an organizer with Critical Resistance, says that when she talks to city residents, the idea of redirecting money from the prison has wide support. “Parents are crying out, saying where’s the recreation for our children?”
“It’s an exciting time for the city in a lot of ways,” says Michael Jacobson of the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit organization that has been advising the City, including the Sheriff. Jacobson, who served as correction commissioner for New York City in the mid-90s, managed to reduce the population of New York City’s jail system even in the midst of the mass arrests of the Giuliani administration. He believes similar change is possible in New Orleans. “You can’t create or innovate unless you’re willing to step out and change what you’re doing,” he says. The Vera Institute has received funding from the US Department of Justice for a pre-trial services program that has reduced incarceration in other cities, and they project New Orleans will also be able to see a reduction.
But the drive to build more jail cells is hard to stop, and many barriers remain. Sheriffs in Louisiana have no term limits, and there are few leverages on their influence. Sheriff Gusman was first elected in 2004 and has faced little opposition since then. The previous Criminal Sheriff held the position for 30 years, only leaving when he ran for state Attorney General.
As the debate continues, the Sheriff’s department has already begun construction on a building to hold 400 additional beds. He initially told reporters that he would close other facilities and the new construction would not add up to additional capacity. However, in a letter to the State Bond Commission, he predicted increased revenue from holding additional inmates in the new building.
Advocates believe that the tide is beginning to turn, but the new construction already underway indicates that there is still a lot of work to be done and not much time. “We really need to keep the pressure on and the momentum consistent,” says Rosana Cruz of VOTE. “They’ll shake our hands and make these promises but meanwhile these deals are being made behind closed doors.”
Filed under African Americans, class struggle, Gulf States, Human Rights, Louisiana, National Oppression, New Orleans, Prison Industrial Complex, Prisoners, Southern United States, Uncategorized, United States
Tagged as class struggle, louisiana, New Orleans, prison, prison industrial complex, Southern United States
FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six
[From the author, Jordan Flaherty]
I wanted to let you know that from now through January 1, you can order Floodlines online from Haymarket Books and get 40% off the cover price, and free shipping for orders over $25.
The link to order online is here:http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Floodlines-Community-and-Resistance-from-Katrina-to-the-Jena-Six
Below are some reviews of the book:
As the floodwaters rose in New Orleans, Jordan Flaherty began to write, rescuing precious truths about the reality of racism and solidarity in his city that risked being washed away in the tide of formulaic corporate journalism. I can think of no journalist that writes with deeper knowledge or more love about this highly contested part of the United States. With a new flood threatening life on the Gulf Coast – this time made of oil, not water, but powered, as always, by greed and neglect – these remarkable stories of injustice and resistance must be heard.– Naomi Klein, author “The Shock Doctrine”
This is the most important book I’ve read about Katrina and what came after. In the tradition of Howard Zinn this could be called “The People’s History of the Storm.” Jordan Flaherty was there on the front lines. He compellingly documents the racism, poverty, and neglect at the core of this national failure and the brave, generous, grassroots revolutionaries who saved and continue to save a city and a people. It is my favorite kind of book – great storytelling, accurate accounting, a call for engagement and change.-Eve Ensler, playwright, The Vagina Monologues, activist and founder of V-Day
Jordan Flaherty is one of the best and most courageous writers in America today. Beyond his obvious writing skills, what I admire most about Jordan is his dedication to truth-telling, to bringing the real and whole America to the American people. At a time in our nation when there is so much distortion of current events and history, Jordan Flaherty represents the core of who we truly are. And what we are capable of being as citizens of this ever-changing world.-Kevin Powell, Author of Open Letters to America
Jordan Flaherty is an independent journalist for the Hip-Hop generation. As a white anti-imperialist who is committed to social and racial justice, Jordan brings out the voices of the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina and the levee breach in New Orleans. This book not only speaks truth to power but is a rallying cry for all of us to take action. With this definitive work, the voices of the grassroots, the communities resisting displacement, finally have a voice.– Rosa Clemente, 2008 Green Party VP Candidate, Hip Hop Activist and Journalist
Jordan Flaherty’s Floodlines takes us back into the path of the storm, evoking the almost unfathomable racism and hatred of the poor that the levee breach exposed, and exposing the continuing complicity with white supremacy of both state and nonprofit recovery efforts and of the white Left. His is an unrelenting narrative that manages to chronicle the multiple system failures after the storm yet uplift by passionately detailing the spirit and history of organizing by grassroots New Orleanians in the years since the storm. With millions of gallons of oil pumping into the ecosystem from the Gulf of Mexico, all of our lives could depend on the knowledge Flaherty’s friends and comrades wrestle from their history.- Mab Segrest, Author, “Memoir of a Race Traitor.”
The usual Katrina narrative tracks government incompetence during the emergency phase and and corporate greed — or inertia — in its aftermath. Jordan Flaherty tells a less well known story, centered on the boisterous infrastructure of left-leaning community groups and non-profits that were fired up by disaster and still struggle to shape New Orleans’ recovery. Flaherty is part of that movement. His vantage brings hands-on intimacy to this chronicle and poignancy to his conclusions.-Jed Horne, author, “Breach of Faith, Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City.”
Here’s the missing news from the Crescent City: folks are fighting back. Indeed, as Flaherty reminds us in this remarkable and noble book, the very soul of New Orleans is struggle. As southern Louisiana again faces a man-made catastrophe, his portraits of activism and hope could not be more timely.Mike Davis, Author, “Planet of Slums”
Jordan describes reality from the ground up. You’ve heard of the eagle’s eye view: this is the earthworm’s. Jordan knows who actually turns over the earth, and he follows them, even when most look away. His book brings us the good news of who’s working for change (and how) but also the reality about the price those people pay for our indifference.-Laura Flanders, Host, Grit TV, Author, “Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians”
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist who causes revolution with the printed word. This book is a testament to the power of the pen when its in the hand of a freedom fighter and a global thinker. While others are just writing these stories, Jordan Flaherty is living them.- Jesse Muhammad, Final Call Newspaper
Jordan Flaherty’s first calling is as a dedicated community organizer, but he’s also a top-rate investigative journalist. The oppressed communities of New Orleans and larger Louisiana are fortunate to have this talented and compassionate reporter in their midst. This book is invaluable to the United States’ social justice movement that relies on his expertise, honesty, and truth.-Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Author, “Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War”
Filed under Hurricanes, Louisiana, New Orleans, other announcements, Race, Solidarity, Southern United States, The Left, Uncategorized, United States, workers
Tagged as class struggle, Left, louisiana, New Orleans, race, Southern United States, U.S. politics
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11774
|
__label__cc
| 0.691434
| 0.308566
|
Avainsana-arkisto: debating
elokuu 16, 2018 · 5:00 am
How to Debate Fascists and Destroy Them: Be a Marxist
Written by Marxist YouTuber Xexizy and presented in a video (12.8.2018 ) of the same name. I think this essay has good points on debating fascists, even if you are not a Marxist. So i acquired the transcripts of the video and they are in full below.
A popular question today is what’s the best way to deal with Fascist arguments? How can you properly lay out the logically inconsistencies in Fascist ideology for everyone to see how much of a sham it all is, and once and for all put its ideas to rest. Of course, this question has only been becoming more prevalent recently simply because more people are becoming infatuated with far- right ideology, and with it modern forms of Fascism, calling for the establishment of ethno-states and ‘a return to traditional values’. There’s quite a clear-cut answer to this question, and as you’ve probably guessed, it’s that you have to be a Marxist, and in this video, we’ll be explaining why that is. Although, rather than going over what makes Marxism such an effective analysis of society, as has been already done in many of my other videos which you can watch in the video card section, we’ll be talking about what makes liberalism so ineffective. In fact, we can say what it is right now – when a society starts to deteriorate, produce further alienation, social tension and economic stress, the status quo becomes questioned, and as you can imagine, anyone representing the status quo is left is quite a difficult spot to answer for the ills bought about by their ideology. Today, that status quo is liberalism, and its challengers are the Fascists. Now I don’t want to hear your excuses, that you’re actually an alt-centrist who thinks everyone is wrong, a classical liberal who’s actually the oppressed one under the (fucking feminist system), or an anti-capitalist due to your support for Bernie Sanders – on the scope of the core principles of liberalism that our society is based on, compared with that of Fascists, you are the status quo, regardless of how fringe you might think you are in relation to conventional politics, because the Fascists are an order of magnitude more fringe. At the end of the day, you want some flavor of liberalism, and they. do. not.
Now a pretty firm line can be drawn between two types of liberals and as such two different ways the same phenomena has occurred though, so we’ll be looking at each. This is between the conservative liberals, and the progressive liberals. Now I do understand that it can be frustrating when Marxists take what are considered diametrically opposed groups and lump them together under the term ’liberal’ but please do understand that from the perspective all the way over here at the far left, the fine details between progressive drones and classical drones becomes a little redundant.
The conservative liberals, who we’ll be starting with first because I know they have a shorter attention span, are those types where they’re not only ignorant to how Fascism grows on merit of being liberals, but then also seem like they’re trying to propel Fascist rhetoric into the mainstream, their rallying cry for doing so being ‘to trigger the libs’ (when you troll a liberal, awesome style).
Now, what do I mean when I talk about these liberals being unable to effectively argue against the Fascists of today? Well what better example to draw on than the the infamous Sargon vs Spencer debate. This debate showed such a poor performance from Sargon that for the first time…ever, I think, his fans acknowledged he lost. But to cut Sargon some slack, I honestly think that there’s pretty much no way he could have gained any ground here. His own debating skills aside, he had sealed himself into a position of defeat from the very start by simply believing what he does.
In my video ‘The Classical Liberal’s Decent Into Fascism’, which of course you’ve already seen, I make the point that classical liberals, i.e. the more conservative liberals, usually focus on the same or at least similar societal issues that the alt-right do. Prime examples include being anti-immigration, anti-feminism/anti-progressive, concerned about the preservation of gender roles or culture and usually working in the interest of the white man, as seen in instances such as affirmative action or joining in with the alt-right in claims that progressives hate white men, as seen when they unquestionably picked up the phrase ‘it’s ok to be white’, something that was literally thought up by some alt-righter on 4chan. But as I also said in that video, and as I’m going to have the majorly emphasize here and still have people misunderstand me, none of these things actually make classical liberals similar to the alt-right. Classical liberals are just that, liberals, and the alt-right are a populist, anti-establishment movement that usually questions the main underlying assertions of liberalism, like individual liberty. None the less though, the fact that these two groups still focus on such similar issues and have similar enemies, leads to this interesting paradigm that sets the liberals up to be at a disadvantage whenever actually trying to engage the Fascists of today. Now from here it’s tempting to fall back into making the same points that I have in my video specifically on this topic, that classical liberals set up the case for the Fascists to come along and simply say ‘lets actually do something about this rather than getting outraged on twitter’, or simply adding that it’s the jews who are behind the feminist media monopoly, but I’d just encourage anyone who hasn’t to simply go and watch that video instead. Rather what we’ll focus on here is how this retrains liberals from actually dealing with Fascists when they’re confronted with them, this being because they work on the same groundings that the alt-right do, and to actually challenge the alt-right on this means undermining their own positions. If they start trying to back peddle on ‘the feminist system’ (it’s a god damn feminist system), they end up arguing against themselves, so rather you have to try and pin down Spencer on ‘who counts as white’. You can see this in the debate Sargon had with Richard Spencer, as he spends pretty much the whole thing trying to argue the specific practicalities of a white ethno-state, because that’s all he has available to him. All he can do is try and explain why in practice, the ethno-state is a bad idea, but I would suggest that the question of practicality is wholly irrelevant to the question.
The method in use here is what liberalism is forced to treat all instances of populism, both left and right – that being, straight dismissal. See, to those infatuated with the alt-right already, or those flirting, the ethno-state or any softer variation to them represents change, a break away from the liberal society that they deem has screwed them over, and I mean in a lot of cases it actually has. What we have are these disgruntled, alienated individuals who are looking for change, a solution, and they believe they’ve found one that will deal with their problems. The way liberalism treats the ethno-state is again very similar to how it treats the notion of Communism – constantly reaffirming that the fundamental type of society we live under is as good as we can get, and that all hope is merely a dangerous illusion, attaching the labels of impractical and unrealistic to proposed alternatives. This however is a fundamentally unsustainable way to repress populist movements due to capitalism’s own workings. While taking the position of the down to earth moderate bringing starry eyed radicals back into reality is effective in times of relative prosperity, never in history has it continued to work when reasons for change become increasingly more urgent as Capitalism itself leads to turmoil. It’s a method that, like many things under neoliberalism, rests on dogma, which always eventually becomes challenged.
Now when I say dogma, in the context of liberalism I’m talking about basic things like, individual freedoms, or that racism is bad. These are common things that, even if one side wants to say the other doesn’t hold, that they’re racist or against freedom, the other side always has to deny it as it’s a common dogma that they hold to be correct. I’ll clarify, just because in our society these things are dogmas, doesn’t mean they’re bad or wrong, what it does mean however is when you get groups that do go against these status quo values openly, the defenders of the status quo will have no experience in dealing with it. Take the example of racism. The majority of people don’t have a response to ‘why is racism bad?’ because usually admitting you’re a racist, causes you to lose the argument by default so they’ve never needed to have a fleshed-out response for a debate format, but this isn’t necessarily the case with Fascists, and the same goes for things like individual liberty. Of course, in the real world, a Fascist won’t out right say ‘I am a racist’ if they’re smart, you’ll get something like ‘why is it wrong to protect the interests of white people?’, but the principle remains the same. When liberals are then left with no other recourse than accusing someone of racism, or simply making weak arguments in the case of the classical liberals, the fascists get to play up their narrative that there are no real arguments against racism, and that liberals just ‘cry out fascism and/or racism to censor their ideas because they have no arguments’, thus pushing people to the right. The context in which they’re able to do this, of course, bought about by both types of liberals themselves, by both progressive liberals genuinely resorting to the label racist in place of arguments, and then the conservative liberals making this out to be literally the end of the world.
We can see this in practice when Gary Younge from channel 4 went to interview Richard Spencer on his positions and try and confront him on them. Now, I’m sure you’ve already seen it, but to refresh your memory here are a couple of high lights:
Now this essentially ticks every box of specifically why progressive liberals are at such a disadvantage when dealing with Fascists like Spencer toe-to-toe. They’re simply inexperienced to deal with such claims like ‘slavery was good, actually’. Younge can only stand there in disbelief as Spencer bats out one outlandish claim after the next, call him a racist and then storm out. It’s no fault of Younge, any journalist from Channel 4 would had been in the exact same position, it’s a consequence of his lack of revolutionary ideals, and that we’ll get into more later.
There are though many of these progressive liberals who seem to recognize this, but then only draw the conclusion that it means we simply shouldn’t engage Fascists in this manner at all. There’s an common sentiment amount progressives, along the lines of ‘we shouldn’t debate fascists because progressive ideas are simply more nuanced and require more explaining, while Fascists only work on rhetoric and soundbites, putting us at an inherent disadvantage’. Now, while it’s nice to believe that you’re just too intelligent to debate Fascists, in reality it is because of the positions you actually hold, and their ineffectiveness at fighting Fascism on ideological grounds. As progressives though, they do have one advantage on the conservative liberals, that being they have no reason to go along with alt-right assertions about the present state of society. The best tool the progressives have is simply disproving empirical claims to reduce fearmongering and alarmism that the alt-right try to cultivate, while of course the classical liberals only join them in doing so. This method, however, is not especially suited for live debates – if you take a watch of any one of Shaun’s videos, you’ll see that he has to take his time to establish grounding to his argument, lay out all the facts, and then go step by step through why whatever ridiculous claim the Fascists that week were making is inaccurate. There’s no soundbite version of this, and so there’s simply no time to carry it out in a live debate, which is where the notion that progressive ideas aren’t suited to live debate comes from. Now, simply making these empirical refutations is still very effective, don’t get me wrong, but the fact that it’s progressivism’s main and really only tool against Fascism is very telling, and while it is an effective tool, it’s still a flawed one. This is because that the whole time you take a wholly empirical approach as it were, without any real ideological grounding, you’re essentially saying that the Fascists are only wrong as long as their facts are wrong. It means that, if we wake up tomorrow and suddenly all the claims of the alt-right or, hell, even half of them are true, a progressive would be rationally obligated to become a Fascist. However, not a Marxist. Now I get that the underlying claim here, that Fascists are wrong even if they’re right, might seem weird, but to properly explain why I’d like to use one of Zizek’s points as an example:
So to reiterate, Fascists are scum regardless of how correct they are. If progressiveness can only rest on the fact that the alt-right are making factually false claims, they will still have a fundamentally flawed approach at arguing against them without any ideological points. The source then of both proper ideological resistance and most importantly ideological alternative to Fascism then can never be the status quo that liberalism is, but a radical Communist movement, the main reason being that Communist ideology simply isn’t everything that we’ve been discussing about liberalism here.
Even if again we assume again that the Fascists are right, that the world really is run by a Jewish cabal, the Marxist analysis of society is completely unchanged, as it is a systemic one. Something that Fascism shares in common with liberalism actually is that they both take on individualist approaches to their world views – basing sources of the good and the bad from specific individuals or groups with power, which is why Fascism’s whole ideology boils down to replacing one group they reprieve to be in power with another group. Again though, Marxism is a systemic analysis, the whole point is that the conclusions it draws are independent of who actually holds power, as Capitalism as a social relation works with the same fundamental laws regardless. This puts Marxism in place to cut right at the heart of Fascism as a political alternative by demonstrating its inability to solve societal tensions even in the ethno-state utopia, as such a society still functions on the Capitalist mode of production.
Now this is so important, because as we’ve discussed Fascism arises out of tensions and turmoil bought about by liberal society, i.e. Capitalist society. It comes along with the intent to remedy the problems of modern society, return glory to its nation, go back to the good old days. This is the drive of Fascism, but the Marxist analysis thoroughly shows how such goals are impossible even if all their aims are met, and so rather than dismissing the notion as impractical or immoral, Marxism can counter the underlying reasons for its growth in the first place, and then furthermore offering its own alternative to the crumbling status quo. This alternative being, of course, the actual abolition of the Capitalist mode of production, property relations, the value form, commodity fetishism and alienation. The establishment of a society based on social relations, as opposed to proxy interaction via the commodity. Of course, the pressing question now might be how specifically Capitalism is inherently unstable, and how specifically might we reorganize society around this, but this goes far beyond our scope. I might recommend either watching some of my other stuff I’ve included in the video cards, or perhaps just reading Marx. What’s important here, is that Marxism provides both a throughout refutation of the Fascist project, regardless of to what extent the Jews really are controlling us, or the Muslims really are hoarding our countries, and at the same time offers a true alternative to the ills of liberal and wider Capitalist society. If you remain adamant on maintaining your liberal ideals, you will always be giving Fascism the higher ground on merit of your own
Kategoria(t): Artikkelit
Avainsanat: anrifascism, antirasism, classicalliberalism, debating, dialog, fascism, liberalism, Marxism, philosophy, true
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11775
|
__label__wiki
| 0.736407
| 0.736407
|
1995 Women’s World Cup
courtesy of youtube.com (1)
Written by Anthony Russo
Host: Sweden
Dates: June 5 – June 18
Winner: Norway
Golden Ball (Best Player): Hege Riise
Golden Boot (Highest Goal Scorer): Ann Kristin Aarønes – 6 goals
Norway squaring off with Germany in the 1995 Final (courtesy of FIFA.com) (2)
Not Just a One-Time Fad:
Coming off of the heels of the inaugural and wildly successful 1991 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the 1995 FIFA Women’s World Cup represented a critical junction for women’s football. For the twelve participating countries, the 1995 FIFA Women’s World Cup served a twofold purpose: On one end, it provided a global showcase for women soccer players alike to prove to the world that Women’s World Cup action was not a one-time occurrence; on another, it pitted each country against one another with the hope and ultimate goal of achieving soccer’s highest honor – the four-year crown of the champion of the world.
Olympic Implications:
Logo for the 1996 Summer Olympics (courtesy of wikipedia.org) (3)
On the eve of the the 1996 Summer Olympics, the 1995 FIFA Women’s World Cup served as way for international teams to qualify for the tournament (1). Although football had previously existed as an olympic competition, the 1996 Summer Olympics marked the first time in which the women’s football tournament was held. However, since there was “no time to hold a qualifying tournament, the eight best teams in the Women’s World Cup in 1995 [were to] be automatically selected for the women’s tournament (2). Similar to what the women of the 1991 had to do, the participants in the first-ever 1996 Women’s Olympic Tournament faced the inadvertent pressure of proving to a global audience that women’s football was here to stay.
Where’s the Media?
Despite the 1995 FIFA Women’s World Cup serving as the highest level of women’s soccer, there existed little media coverage surrounding the event. Other than ESPN airing games featuring the US Women’s National Team, nothing else was available on cable television to the Atlantic consumer base. ABC was considering airing the final, but even that wasn’t guaranteed, particularly if it did not include the US Women’s National Team (3).
Although 20 years is certainly a substantial amount of time, there exist few to none media archives of this 1995 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Excluding FIFA-owned coverage on the World Cup, I only found roughly five other sources that even paid the smallest amount of lip service to this tournament. I include this to serve as a disclaimer to the reader. Although it is be understandable that the 1995 World Cup lacked coverage relative to the inaugural World Cup and the 1991 Women’s World Cup, I found it remarkable as to the extent of how little media coverage actually exists.
The Perfect Host:
Initially, Bulgaria had been selected by FIFA to host the 1995 Women’s World Cup (4). However, when Bulgaria was ultimately forced to renounce its hosting rights, FIFA decided to move the tournament to Sweden due to its strong showing as hosts for the 1992 Men’s European Cup (5). The tournament was held in five different stadiums across the country. Although average attendance dipped from the 19,615 per game in 1991 China to 4,315 per game in Sweden, this dip can be largely attributed to the “mid-sized population centers” that were chosen for Sweden (6). The five stadiums: Strömvallen Stadium in Gävle, Olympia Stadion in Helsingborg, Tingvalla IP in Karlstad, Arosvallen in Västerås, and Råsunda in Solna (Stockholm), ranged from capacity of 7,300 (Strömvallen) to 36,800 (Råsunda). Distance between the venues, and lack of standardized transportation made travel an excruciating process. While trains represented the typical form of transportation for many teams, some teams such as Germany were fortunate enough to enjoy a team plane sponsored by the German Soccer Federation (7).
Location of the stadiums (courtesy of wikipedia.org) (4)
Twelve countries participated in the 1995 FIFA Women’s World Cup: United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Germany, England, Denmark, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, and Nigeria. These twelve countries were then divided into groups of 4
Map of the participating countries in the 1995 Women’s World Cup (courtesy of wikipedia.org) (5)
Group Stages:
Group A: Germany, Sweden, Japan, Brazil
16-year-old Brigit Prinz in her debut match in 1994 (courtesy of http://www.uefa.com) (6)
After beating Sweden 3-2 in the UEFA final only a few months prior, the German team entered the tournament as slim group favorites over the hosting Swedes. Led by Silvia Neid and up-and-coming 17-year old Birgit Prinz, the German squad also entered the tournament as one the youngest squads in Sweden. As such, the Germans easily took care of Japan 1-0 in their first match, using a 23rd minute goal by Silvia Neid as the inevitable game-winner. Unfortunately for the near-favored Swedish team, the first game did not come to be the cakewalk that was expected. In the opening game of the tournament, Brazil trumped Sweden 1-0 off of a Roseli goal in the 37th minute.
Pia Sundhage (courtesy of Women’s Football Archive (7)
The 2nd leg of group stage games featured a must-win matchup for the hosting Swedes against the German team. Down 2-0 to the Germans at the end of the 1st half, advancement looked bleak for the Swedish squad. Although the Swedish team was able to capitalize on a 65th minute goal by Malin Andersson, the Swedes still faced a 2-1 deficit with 10 minutes to play. Led by a goal and assist by soccer-great Pia Sundhage in the 80th and 86th minutes, the Swedes were able to pull off the unthinkable and claw back to emerge victorious, 3-2. When all was said and done, it was the German, Swedish, and Japanese teams whom were all able to advance to the knockout leg of the tournament.
Advanced: Germany, Sweden, Japan
Group B: Norway, Nigeria, Canada, England
Norway and their customary yet outlandish post-game celebrations (courtesy of FIFA TV) (8)
Unfortunately for fans, Group B provided little excitement as Norway entered the tournament as overwhelming group favorites. Their results spoke for themselves; in the 3 group matches that Norway played, Norway scored 17 goals and conceded 0, providing a staunch message to the world that repeating another 2nd place overall finish in this year’s World Cup was not good enough. Despite suffering a 2-0 loss to Norway -the smallest margin of defeat compared to fellow group members- England managed 3-2 wins against both Nigeria and Canada and became the 2nd Group B team to advance to the knockout stages.
Advanced: Norway, England
Group C: United States, China, Denmark, Australia
Returning a nucleus of 6 players from the 1991 FIFA Women’s World Cup Championship team, The US entered as tournament favorites with hopes of winning back-to-back World Cups. Although Michelle Akers was sidelined with a knee injury in the group stages, the US still managed to field a team that had been consistently playing together since the late 1980s. After a 3-3 draw with a formidable Chinese team, the US went on to beat Denmark and Australia in an effort to secure a spot in the knockout stages. The Chinese team also followed their draw with wins against Denmark and Australia in their own bid to advance to the knockout stage. Although the Danes and the Brazilians (in Group A) each had one win to their name, the Danes were able to advance to the knockout stages due to a better goal differential with that of their Brazilian counterparts.
Entering the tournament as defending champions, the US was a strong favorite to make a run at the title (courtesy of fifa.com) (9)
Advanced: United States, China, Denmark
(8) All individual game results courtesy of http://www.rsssf.com/tablesw/wwc95f.html
Knockout Stages:
Bracket of the eight teams to qualify for the knockout stage (courtesy of wikipedia.org) (10)
The knockout stages featured the top four teams from the 1991 Women’s World Cup (United States, Norway, Sweden, Germany) as well as four other formidable forces (England, China, Japan, Denmark). After an incredibly dominant group stage performance, Noway entered the knockout stage overtaking the US as tournament favorites. In their first knockout stage match against Scandinavian neighbor, Denmark, Norway was able to take a quick 1-0 lead in the 21st minute thanks to a goal by Gro Espeseth. There was little question as to who was going to win throughout the match and only after Norway was up 3-0 did Denmark tally a late goal (9). The US also cruised into the seminal stages after a beautiful free kick goal by Kristine Lilly in the 8th minute gave the US a lead that would never be relinquished (10). Similar to the US and Norway, Germany punched a ticket into the semifinal with a dominant 3-0 performance against an over-matched Japanese squad.
The Sweden-China quarterfinal matchup provided enough excitement to make up for the other 3 lopsided quarterfinal match-ups. Facing a 1-0 deficit entering 2nd half stoppage time, the Swedes pulled together to get the equalizer in the 93rd minute (10). After a quiet overtime, the game moved to penalty kicks, and with that, the Sweden-China match was the first-ever Women’s World Cup game to be decided on penalty kicks. After two enormous saves by penalty-kick specialist Gao Hong, China overpowered Sweden and went on to the semifinals, finishing revenge on the same team that knocked China out 4 years earlier.
The semifinal matchup between the US and Norway served as a rematch of the 1991 Women’s World Cup Final, a match in which the US emerged victorious on penalty kicks. Described as a rivalry akin to what the “Yankees and Red Sox are to baseball, the Packers and bears are to football, and Ali and Frazier are to boxing,” the US-Norway rivalry kept viewers on the edge of their seats (11). Fortunately for the Norwegian squad, Swedish fans turned their support to their neighboring country as a result of Sweden’s premature exit.
Ann Kristin Aarønes and her 5ft 11.5in frame proved to be a major advantage for the Norwegian squad throughout the tournament. As she noted in an interview during the 1995 World Cup:
“It is obviously an advantage to be as tall as I am, especially on challenges in the air. It also helps when balls are played in on corners.” -Ann Kristen Aarønes, FIFA TV (12).
Fortunately for Norway, Aarønes prowess on corners is exactly what helped Norway extract revenge on the team that triumphed in the 1991 Women’s World Cup. In the 10th minute of the match, Aarønes connected on a corner kick to give the Norwegian’s an early lead. Though Norway dictated play for the majority of the first half, the Americans responded with a strong 2nd half showing in an effort to connect on an equalizer. Despite coming close on various opportunities, the equalizer proved to be unattainable, and the Norwegian squad emerged victorious. The result was heartbreaking for an American squad hopeful to defend their World Cup crown, and Norway’s customary “train” post-game celebration particularly irked the American women. As Norwegian forward Linda Medalen said after the game:
“It’s fun to beat the Americans because they get so upset and make so much noise when they lose. This is a problem. Never be weak.” -Linda Medalen, NY Times (13).
Norway celebrating after emerging victorious over the US, 1-0 (courtesy of FIFA TV) (11)
China’s “exhausting quarterfinal against Sweden certainly affected them” in their semifinal matchup against Germany (14). Though the Chinese were able to stand their ground against an onslaught of German chances, the Germans were finally able to capitalize in the 88th minute after Bettina Wiegmann put a volley home after a failed clearance by a Chinese defender.
German fans celebrating after a 1-0 victory over China in the semifinals (courtesy of FIFA TV) (12)
Germany v. Norway
Unfazed by pouring rain, 17,158 eager spectators packed the Råsunda Stadium in Stockholm, Sweden to witness the second-ever FIFA Women’s World Cup Final (15). In a battle between two powerhouses, Norway, the tournament favorites, matched up against a young but dangerous German squad. After falling to the U.S in penalty kicks in the 1991 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final, the Norwegian team entered the tournament knowing that anything but a championship finish would be considered a failure.
Unfortunately for Norway, they were to play the final without team captain and highest capped player, Heidi Store, who “received two yellow cards in the semifinal round and earned an automatic one-game suspension” (16). Despite this, however, Norway was able to dig deep and muster a dominant first half. Hege Riise finally broke the tie in the 36th minute after a beautiful run was capped off by a well-placed shot from right outside of the 18 (at the 42:00 minute mark of the video).
Norway took full advantage of the momentum swing, and 4 minutes later, 19-year old Marianne Pettersen put back a loose-ball save by German goalkeeper Manuela Goller to double the Norwegian lead to 2-0 (at the 45:20 minute mark of the video).
After a quiet 2nd half, it became official: Norway was to be crowned the Women’s soccer champions of the world. With 23 goals scored and just 1 conceded throughout the tournament, it was evident that Norway was in a “class of their own, physically and tactically” (17).
Gro Espeseth holding the FIFA Women’s World Cup Trophy (courtesy of FIFA.com) (13)
Final Thoughts: What did this mean for soccer?
The 1995 Women’s World Cup served as a catalyst for key story lines that would be expanded on in future World Cups. The ’95 World Cup provided moments of magic, drama, intensity, and above all else, redemption for the Norwegian team. Players did not approach this tournament as an afterthought; German captain Siliva Neid remarked after the tournament:
“It was a great World Cup, particularly from my point of view. I know that I had prepared really well for this. It was clear that it was my last World Cup. I had registered myself as unemployed before so that I really had a lot of time to train, which is what I did” -Silvia Neid, FIFA TV (18).
Although the 1995 FIFA Women’s World Cup is often overlooked in favor of the previous and following World Cup tournaments, the 1995 World Cup proved to be extremely significant as it cemented women’s football with an international fan base.
Return to History of the Women’s World Cup Main Page
[1] FIFA; Women’s World Cup: Sweden 1995.
http://www.fifa.com/tournaments/archive/womensworldcup/sweden1995/
[2] Wikipedia; 1996 Summer Olympics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_1996_Summer_Olympics
[3] Ronnie Guftason; Women’s Soccer. Swedish Press 66.6 (June 30, 1995): 12.
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/docview/217800341?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=10598
[4] Guftason, Women’s Soccer.
[6] FIFA; Women’s World Cup: Sweden 1995
[8] David Shannon: Women’s World Cup 1995 Sweden: Tables and Results
http://www.rsssf.com/tablesw/wwc95f.html
[9] David Shannon
[10] FIFA: Raising Their Game: Enjoying it in 1995 (YouTube Video)
[11] Jere Longman; Norway’s Rivalry with the U.S Is Intense. NY Times (June 13, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/13/sports/women-s-world-cup-norway-s-rivalry-with-us-is-intense.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
[12] FIFA: Raising Their Game
[13] Jere Longman
[15] Doug Cress; Norway Women Win World Cup. Chicago Tribune (June 19, 1995)
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-06-19/sports/9506190042_1_hege-riise-norway-rasunda-stadium
[16] Doug Cress
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ga8KqOBdWw
2. http://www.fifa.com/tournaments/archive/womensworldcup/sweden1995/
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Summer_Olympics#/media/File:1996_Summer_Olympics_logo.svg
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_FIFA_Women%27s_World_Cup#/media/File:FIFA_Womens_World_Cup_1995.png
6. http://www.uefa.com/womenseuro/season=1995/golden-player/index.html
7. https://womensfootballarchive.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/semparev-sweden1989small.jpg)
8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7kRzEKGpJg
9. fifa.com/tournaments/archive/womensworldcup/chinapr1991/index.html
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_FIFA_Women%27s_World_Cup
11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7kRzEKGpJg
13. http://www.fifa.com/tournaments/archive/womensworldcup/sweden1995/preliminaries/index.html
How to cite this page: “1995 Women’s World Cup” Written by Anthony Russo (2015), World Cup 2015 Guide, Soccer Politics Blog, Duke University, http://sites.duke.edu/wcwp/world-cup-guides/world-cup-2015-guide/history-of-the-womens-world-cup/ (accessed on (date)).
2 thoughts on “1995 Women’s World Cup”
Jo June 4, 2019
Twice you state that the 1991 World Cup final went to penalty kicks. That isn’t true. USA won 2-1 off to gold by Michelle Akers Stahl.
Pingback: Mundial Feminino: Suécia 0 x 1 Brasil | Seleção Brasileira Todos os Jogos
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11777
|
__label__cc
| 0.526841
| 0.473159
|
US Steel's Clairton Coke Works.
Reid R. Frazier / StateImpact Pennsylvania
January 9, 2019 | 5:09 PM
Residents near Pittsburgh issued air warning because of pollution from US Steel plant
A fire at the plant damaged pollution control equipment, causing spikes in sulfur dioxide levels
Reid R. Frazier is an energy reporter for The Allegheny Front, a Pittsburgh-based public media outlet covering the environment in Pennsylvania. His work has aired on NPR and Marketplace.
Local regulators are urging residents who live near US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works to limit their exposure to outdoor air because of ongoing pollution problems stemming from a Christmas Eve fire at the plant.
In a news release, the Allegheny County Health Department said residents living near the Clairton plant, “particularly those with existing respiratory and/or cardiovascular conditions, children and the elderly” should limit their outdoor activities “until further notice.”
The agency said a Dec. 24 fire at the plant damaged two gas dispatcher stations, resulting in releases of the pollutant sulfur dioxide (SO2) in excess of federal standards.
Sulfur dioxide is “a colorless gas with a strong odor similar to a just-struck match,” according to the news release. “(S)ulfur dioxide can affect breathing and may aggravate existing respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Sensitive populations include those with asthma, individuals with bronchitis or emphysema, children, and the elderly.”
The agency says it’s talking with the company about how best to address the problems, and has ordered the plant to work on solutions. The company has adjusted its operations to limit air pollution, but the plant has exceeded federal air quality standards six times since the fire, said Jim Kelly, the county health department’s deputy director for environmental health.
Kelly said the plant’s adjustments “appeared to be working” for a time, but the county issued the warning after pollution exceeded federal air standards two more times early Tuesday.
“Now that we’ve had six, we thought it was really important to let the public know that this is a concern,” said Kelly, at an Allegheny County Board of Health hearing. “Those people with impaired respiratory systems — especially asthma –they can be a concern.”
Meghan Cox, a spokeswoman for US Steel, said in an email that the fire broke out at 4:15 a.m. in a control room at the plant. The fire was extinguished and contained, and there were no injuries. According to Cox, the fire damaged equipment used to reduce SO2 emissions, and the company is working to repair those systems.
The Clairton facility is the largest coke plant in North America. Coke is a key component of steelmaking. To make coke, the plant bakes coal at high temperatures for many hours. The process creates coke oven gas, which contains sulfur.
Kelly said the fire damaged equipment used to take sulfur out of the coke oven gas. “Their ability to remove the sulfur has been halted. And so what that means is that there is an increased amount of sulfur in the coke oven gas that is remaining at the facility.”
In a Jan. 7 letter to the county, the company said it was trying to limit emissions by mixing cleaner natural gas into the fuel stream on units it heats with coke oven gas, and flaring “as much coke oven gas as possible.” In addition, it is increasing coking times – the amount of time it bakes coke – which reduces the amount of pollution created in the process. The company said the building where the fire broke out was still being evaluated for structural safety.
The company is appealing a June enforcement order from the county to idle parts of the plant if the company doesn’t clean up its air pollution, as air near the plant continues to fail federal air pollution standards. The county’s order carries a $1 million fine for chronic emissions problems dating to 2014.
The areas affected include the communities of Braddock, Clairton, Dravosburg, Duquesne, East McKeesport, East Pittsburgh, Elizabeth Borough, Elizabeth Township, Forward, Glassport, Jefferson Hills, Liberty, Lincoln, McKeesport, North Braddock, North Versailles, Pleasant Hills, Port Vue, Versailles, Wall, West Elizabeth and West Mifflin.
Clairton Coke Works
Peoples Gas unveils high-tech methane leak detection system
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11781
|
__label__wiki
| 0.936165
| 0.936165
|
A man waves for a tow truck after getting swamped trying to cross a flooded section of the Cobbs Creek Parkway, Wednesday, April 30, 2014, in Philadelphia. Cobbs Creek and Darby Creek merge in the Eastwick section of Philadelphia where flooding is expected to get worse due to rising sea levels.
Poll finds most Pennsylvanians think climate change is major public health risk
As the Harrisburg reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania, Marie Cusick covers energy and environmental issues for public radio stations statewide. She’s also part of NPR’s energy and environment team, which coordinates coverage between the network and select member station reporters around the country. Her work frequently airs on NPR shows including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. Since 2012, Marie has closely followed the political, social, environmental, and economic effects of Pennsylvania’s natural gas boom. Her work has been recognized at the regional and national levels– honors include a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and a national Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association. Previously, Marie was a multimedia reporter for WMHT in Albany, New York and covered technology for the station’s statewide public affairs TV show, New York NOW. In 2018, she became StateImpact’s first FAA-licensed drone pilot.
A majority of Pennsylvanians view the warming climate as a major public health risk, according to a new poll from the Muhlenberg College Public Health Program.
Fifty-one percent of respondents called climate change a “major” public health risk, 26 percent said the warming presents a “minor” risk, and 20 percent told pollsters they believe it poses no risk.
Chris Borick, director of the college’s Institute of Public Opinion, said this was the first year the survey asked people about climate change from a health perspective, but he’s been polling on climate issues for over a decade and notes public acceptance of the issue has been growing — across the state and nationally.
“Pennsylvanians are, like their counterparts across the country, more likely than any time in the last decade to think climate change is happening, that it’s affecting their lives, and that the impacts are broad,” Borick said.
Over the past century, the state has warmed by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Climate-related risks to Pennsylvanians include frequent extreme weather events, injury and death from those events, and threats to health through air pollution, diminished water quality, and heat stress. A special report from the UN last fall said that by 2040, the world faces myriad crises — including food shortages, extreme weather, wildfires and a mass die-off of coral reefs — unless emissions are cut sharply.
A poll conducted by Franklin and Marshall College in March, in partnership with PA Post, found 68 percent of registered Pennsylvania voters “definitely” or “probably” want the state to do more to address climate change. The same question was asked by F&M pollsters in 2018. While the overall share of people agreeing with those statements remained steady, this year saw an increase among people who fall into the “definitely” category.
Gov. Tom Wolf unveiled a climate action plan last month that aims to reduce emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050, and he has called climate change “one of the big issues we have to deal with.”
The new Muhlenberg poll is the result of a telephone (landline and cell) survey of 405 adults in Pennsylvania between March 18 and April 5, 2019. The sample data was weighted by gender, race, age and educational attainment to reflect Pennsylvania population characteristics. The margin of error is +/- 6 percent.
New Jersey sues companies over PFAS contamination
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11782
|
__label__wiki
| 0.550098
| 0.550098
|
See How Success’s Viral Video Led to Head Teacher’s Suspension
March 19, 2019 clement News Comments Off on See How Success’s Viral Video Led to Head Teacher’s Suspension
By Chibuike Nwabuko
Abuja (Sundiata Post) – The viral video of a seven-year-old Miss Success Adegor, who was allegedly sent home for not paying fees, has led to the suspension of the head teacher by the Delta State Government for allegedly imposing illegal fees.
According to Reports, the head Teacher would remain suspended pending the outcome of a formal enquiry into the issue of unauthorised levies and fees she imposed in the school.
Following the public outcry over the dilapidated structures at Okotie Eboh Primary School, Sapele, Delta State and the collection of illegal levies, as exposed in Success’s video, the Delta State Government has suspended the head teacher of the school, pending the outcome of a formal enquiry into the issue of unauthorised levies and fees she imposed in the school.
The state Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Chiedu Ebie, said in a statement issued yesterday that he had been inundated with messages and calls since the video broke and went viral last Friday.
He said the ministry conducted preliminary investigations on the matter at the weekend before his trip to Sapele to officially address the matter.
“For purposes of clarity and to address the initial issues which the video threw up, I state as follows: That by virtue of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act, education at the basic education level is free. However, in Delta State, that provision is also extended to senior secondary level with the resultant effect being that basic and secondary education – primary, junior and secondary- in Delta State is and still remains free.
“It, therefore, means that the head teacher of the school had no right to impose any levy or fees on the pupils of her school. In my brief encounter with the head teacher this morning, there appeared to be numerous inconsistencies in her response on this issue as she was unable to categorically state who authorised her to impose the levies or fees which is in clear breach of the extant rules.
“Consequently I have directed the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to suspend the head teacher, pending the outcome of a formal inquiry into the issue of unauthorised levies and fees imposed by her in the school.”
On the state of the infrastructure, the commissioner said: “It is important to clarify that Okotie Eboh Primary Schools I and II, Sapele exist in two locations in the same neighborhood and within a minute’s walk of each other. Having discovered the dilapidated state of the infrastructure in the schools, steps were immediately taken by the state government, through the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, to carry out a phased renovation and upgrade of the infrastructural facilities beginning with Okotie Eboh Primary School II. It is important to place on record and for the avoidance of doubt that the contract of the first phase was awarded on December 29, 2018 and work has since commenced.”
He stressed that as a responsible and responsive government, “it is our duty to address issues that affect the citizenry of the state and in doing so, we will ensure that renovation works are carried out satisfactorily and within reasonable time to ensure that we continue to provide conducive learning environment for our pupils and students.”
Ebie added that since the inception of the current administration, the state government, through the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education and its parastatals have carried out the construction and renovation of 4,738 classrooms in addition to rehabilitating and repositioning the six technical colleges in the state.
Source: Thisday
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11790
|
__label__wiki
| 0.801021
| 0.801021
|
NASA Spacecraft Sees Cosmic Snow Storm During Comet Encounter
PASADENA, Calif. — The EPOXI mission’s recent encounter with comet Hartley 2 provided the first images clear enough for scientists to link jets of dust and gas with specific surface features. NASA and other scientists have begun to analyze the images.
The EPOXI mission spacecraft revealed a cometary snow storm created by carbon dioxide jets spewing out tons of golf-ball to basketball-sized fluffy ice particles from the peanut-shaped comet’s rocky ends. At the same time, a different process was causing water vapor to escape from the comet’s smooth mid-section. This information sheds new light on the nature of comets and even planets.
This image from the High-Resolution Instrument on NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft shows part of the nucleus of comet Hartley 2. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD
Scientists compared the new data to data from a comet the spacecraft previously visited that was somewhat different from Hartley 2. In 2005, the spacecraft successfully released an impactor into the path of comet Tempel 1, while observing it during a flyby.
“This is the first time we’ve ever seen individual chunks of ice in the cloud around a comet or jets definitively powered by carbon dioxide gas,” said Michael A’Hearn, principal investigator for the spacecraft at the University of Maryland. “We looked for, but didn’t see, such ice particles around comet Tempel 1.”
The new findings show Hartley 2 acts differently than Tempel 1 or the three other comets with nuclei imaged by spacecraft. Carbon dioxide appears to be a key to understanding Hartley 2 and explains why the smooth and rough areas scientists saw respond differently to solar heating, and have different mechanisms by which water escapes from the comet’s interior.
This image shows the nuclei of comets Tempel 1 and Hartley 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD
“When we first saw all the specks surrounding the nucleus, our mouths dropped,” said Pete Schultz, EPOXI mission co-investigator at Brown University. “Stereo images reveal there are snowballs in front and behind the nucleus, making it look like a scene in one of those crystal snow globes.”
Data show the smooth area of comet Hartley 2 looks and behaves like most of the surface of comet Tempel 1, with water evaporating below the surface and percolating out through the dust. However, the rough areas of Hartley 2, with carbon dioxide jets spraying out ice particles, are very different.
“The carbon dioxide jets blast out water ice from specific locations in the rough areas resulting in a cloud of ice and snow,” said Jessica Sunshine, EPOXI deputy principal investigator at the University of Maryland. “Underneath the smooth middle area, water ice turns into water vapor that flows through the porous material, with the result that close to the comet in this area we see a lot of water vapor.”
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have been looking for signs ice particles peppered the spacecraft. So far they found nine times when particles, estimated to weigh slightly less than the mass of a snowflake, might have hit the spacecraft but did not damage it.
“The EPOXI mission spacecraft sailed through Hartley 2’s ice flurries in fine working order and continues to take images as planned of this amazing comet,” said Tim Larson, EPOXI project manager at JPL.
Scientists will need more detailed analysis to determine how long this snow storm has been active, and whether the differences in activity between the middle and ends of the comet are the result of how it formed some 4.5 billion years ago or are because of more recent evolutionary effects.
EPOXI is a combination of the names for the mission’s two components: the Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of comet Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI).
JPL manages the EPOXI mission for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colo.
Filed under Nasa, Space News Tagged with Deep Impact Extended Investigation, DIXI, EPOCh, EPOXI, Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization, Hartley 2, Tempel 1
New Cometary Phenomenon Greets Approaching Spacecraft
Recent observations of comet Hartley 2 have scientists scratching their heads, while they anticipate a flyby of the small, icy world on Nov. 4.
A phenomenon was recorded by imagers aboard NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft from Sept. 9 to 17 during pre-planned scientific observations of the comet. These observations, when coupled with expected images during the closest encounter with Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, will become the most detailed look yet at a comet’s activity during its pass through the inner-solar system.
NASA's Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft flew past Earth on June 27, 2010, to get a boost from Earth’s gravity. It is now on its way to comet Hartley 2, depicted in this artist’s concept, with a planned flyby this fall. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“On Earth, cyanide is known as a deadly gas. In space it’s known as one of the most easily observed ingredients that is always present in a comet,” said Mike A’Hearn of the University of Maryland, College Park. A’Hearn is principal of EPOXI, an extended mission that utilizes the already “in flight” Deep Impact spacecraft. “Our observations indicate that cyanide released by the comet increased by a factor of five over an eight-day period in September without any increase in dust emissions,” A’Hearn said. “We have never seen this kind of activity in a comet before, and it could affect the quality of observations made by astronomers on the ground.”
The new phenomenon is very unlike typical cometary outbursts, which have sudden onsets and are usually accompanied by considerable dust. It also seems unrelated to the cyanide jets that are sometimes seen in comets. The EPOXI science team believes that astronomers and interested observers viewing the comet from Earth should be aware of this type of activity when planning observations and interpreting their data.
“If observers monitoring Hartley 2 do not take into account this new phenomenon, they could easily get the wrong picture of how the comet is changing as it approaches and recedes from the sun,” said A’Hearn.
Cyanide is a carbon-based molecule. It is believed that billions of years ago, a bombardment of comets carried cyanide and other building blocks of life to Earth.
The name EPOXI itself is a combination of the names for the two extended mission components: the extrasolar planet observations, called Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of comet Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI). The spacecraft will continue to be referred to as “Deep Impact.”
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the EPOXI mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of Maryland, College Park, is home to the mission’s principal investigator, Michael A’Hearn. Drake Deming of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., is the science lead for the mission’s extrasolar planet observations. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.
Filed under Nasa, Space News Tagged with carbon-based molecule, Cometary Phenomenon, Cyanide, Deep Impact, Deep Impact spacecraft, EPOCh, EPOXI, Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization, Hartley 2, inner-solar system, Nasa, Spacecraft, University of Maryland
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11802
|
__label__wiki
| 0.511329
| 0.511329
|
APHA $6.615 ( 5%)
CHOO:CNX $0.410 ( 0%)
CTST $2.860 ( 4%)
GLH:CNX $0.050 ( -16.67%)
HUGE:CNX $0.130 ( 0%)
PLUS:CNX $3.550 ( 3.5%)
TGIF:CNX $0.435 ( 6.1%)
Global Jul 3, 2019 • 11:03 AM GMT+0000
Today, Canopy Growth Corporation (“Canopy Growth” or the “Company”) (TSX: WEED) (NYSE: CGC) and Bruce Linton announced that Bruce will step down as co-CEO and Canopy Board member. Mark Zekulin has agreed to become the sole CEO of the company and will work with the Board to begin a search to identify a new leader to guide the company in its next phase of growth, which will include both internal and external candidates. Rade Kovacevic, a long-serving member of the team currently leading all Canadian operations and recreational strategy will assume the role of President. These changes are effective immediately.
“Creating Canopy Growth began with an abandoned chocolate factory and a vision,” said Linton. “The Board decided today, and I agreed, my turn is over. Mark has been my partner since this Company began and has played an integral role in Canopy’s success. While change is never easy, I have full confidence in the team at Canopy – from Mark and Rade’s leadership to the full suite of leadership – as we progress through this transition and into the future.”
“We thank Bruce and Mark for establishing the foundation for a company that is very well-positioned to lead in the emerging global cannabis market,” said Canopy Growth board director, David Klein. “We are also excited to embark upon our next phase of growth as global leader in the cannabis industry.”
Canopy Growth has experienced rapid growth since being founded in 2013, establishing leading positions in Canada’s medical and recreational cannabis markets and building an emerging presence in a number of additional markets around the world. The company recently received a $5 billion (CAD) investment from Constellation Brands, a leading beverage alcohol company, which provides a significant benefit as Canopy continues to establish a first-mover advantage in the quickly evolving global cannabis market.
“While Canopy will never be the same without Bruce, the team and I look forward to continuing to do what we have done for the past 6 years: investing in world class people, infrastructure and brands, and always seeking to lead through credibility and vision,” said Zekulin. “I personally remain committed to a successful transition over the coming year as we begin a process to identify new leadership that will drive our collective vision forward. I know the company will continue to thrive as the Canopy story continues on for years to come.”
The Board has also appointed John Bell as its Board Chair, to be reviewed at the Board’s annual meeting in September when new board members are elected. Bell has served on the board as lead director for 5 years.
About Canopy Growth Corporation
Canopy Growth (TSX:WEED, NYSE:CGC) is a world-leading diversified cannabis, hemp and cannabis device company, offering distinct brands and curated cannabis varieties in dried, oil and Softgel capsule forms, as well as medical devices through Canopy Growth’s subsidiary, Storz & Bickel GMbH & Co. KG. From product and process innovation to market execution, Canopy Growth is driven by a passion for leadership and a commitment to building a world-class cannabis company one product, site and country at a time. Canopy Growth has operations in over a dozen countries across five continents.
Canopy Growth’s medical division, Spectrum Therapeutics is proudly dedicated to educating healthcare practitioners, conducting robust clinical research, and furthering the public’s understanding of cannabis, and has devoted millions of dollars toward cutting edge, commercializable research and IP development. Spectrum Therapeutics sells a range of full-spectrum products using its colour-coded classification Spectrum system as well as single cannabinoid Dronabinol under the brand Bionorica Ethics.
Canopy Growth operates retail stores across Canada under its award-winning Tweed and Tokyo Smoke banners. Tweed is a globally recognized cannabis brand which has built a large and loyal following by focusing on quality products and meaningful customer relationships.
From our historic public listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange to our continued international expansion, pride in advancing shareholder value through leadership is engrained in all we do at Canopy Growth. Canopy Growth has established partnerships with leading sector names including cannabis icons Snoop Dogg and Seth Rogen, breeding legends DNA Genetics and Green House Seeds, and Fortune 500 alcohol leader Constellation Brands, to name but a few. Canopy Growth owns 12 licensed cannabis production sites with millions of square feet of production capacity, including more than one million square feet of GMP certified production space. For more information visit www.canopygrowth.com
Notice Regarding Forward Looking Statements
This news release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements and information can be identified by the use of words such as “plans”, “expects” or “does not expect”, “is expected”, “estimates”, “intends”, “anticipates” or “does not anticipate”, or “believes”, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results “may”, “could”, “would”, “might” or “will” be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements or information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Canopy Growth or its subsidiaries to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release. Examples of such statements include statements with respect to national and international operations and expansion. Risks, uncertainties and other factors involved with forward-looking information could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including the Company’s executive transitions and departures, and such risks contained in the Company’s annual information form dated June 24, 2019 and filed with Canadian securities regulators available on the Company’s issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information or forward-looking statements in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake an obligation to publicly update such forward-looking information or forward-looking information to reflect new information, subsequent events or otherwise unless required by applicable securities laws.
View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/canopy-growth-announces-leadership-transition-300879815.html
Source: PR Newswire (July 3, 2019 – 6:59 AM EDT)
Canopy Growth Corp.GCGweed
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11803
|
__label__wiki
| 0.917401
| 0.917401
|
Relocation of ‘Russian’ Bank Alarms Western Security Officials
April 8, 2019 admin General
BUDAPEST Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban made his name as a young anti-Communist dissident delivering a fiery anti-Russian speech at the 1989 reburial of Imre Nagy, leader of the Hungarian revolt of 1956 against the Soviet Union.
Among the KGB officers dispatched by the Kremlin to help quash the Imre Nagy-led Hungarian uprising was Nikolai Kosov, a young intelligence officer, whose wife had given birth just a few weeks earlier to their first child, a son.
Fast forward more than half-a-century, and the son, also named Nikolai, was one of the first visitors earlier this year to Viktor Orban's new prime ministerial office in a former Carmelite Monastery overlooking the country's parliament. There the two � the onetime dissident and son of a legendary Communist spy � discussed the relocation to Budapest of a Russian bank, itself steeped in Cold War history.
Kosov was handpicked in 2012 to head the bank by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Now known as the International Investment Bank, formerly as Comecon, or the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the Russian-controlled financial institution is obscure and has a small-scale balance sheet of a mere $350 million. But its planned move to Budapest has become the latest flashpoint in an increasingly strained relationship between the Hungarian government and Washington.
In mid-February, during a visit to Budapest, a delegation of four U.S. lawmakers raised the proposed relocation with Hungarian officials. And it featured in talks a few weeks earlier between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Hungarian ministers, too, say U.S. officials.
U.S. and Western European officials have become frustrated with Orban's pivot east and his burgeoning friendship with Putin, seen as an alliance between two emblematic nationalistic strongmen. Both have reshaped their countries' political systems and echo each other in their condemnations of Western liberalism. Orban has criticized Western sanctions on Russia and he welcomed Putin to Budapest after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, bucking the West's diplomatic isolation of the Russian leader.
The IDP's relocation is seen by U.S. and Western European officials as another chapter in the unfolding 'special relationship' between Orban and Putin, a relationship that's turned Hungary into Russia's best friend in Europe, say analysts.
The partnership between the Hungarian leader and Putin has deepened since 2010, when Orban won re-election for the second time. Orban has cited Putin as a role model. And, according to opposition lawmaker Agnes Vadai, vice president of the Democratic Coalition, he has mirrored what Putin has been doing as far as rule of law and democracy is concerned. She adds: He has basically copied Putin when it comes to curtailing civil society, suppressing and threatening NGOs he doesn't control.
In 2014 Orban signed a controversial $12 billion loan deal with the Kremlin to upgrade a Soviet-era nuclear power plant in Paks, a hundred kilometers south of Budapest. The contract was awarded without any counter-bids and the details were classified until a court ordered the government to divulge them.
The historical irony of the antecedents of the soon-to-be-relocated bank's president, Nikolai Kosov, isn't lost on Western security officials.
Kosov's family ties with Russian intelligence � his mother was a handler of American nuclear spies � are jarring and they're adding to the alarm that the bank could easily be used for illicit purposes and cover for espionage operations � not necessarily in Hungary, but elsewhere in Europe.
The Hungarian government is granting the IDP full diplomatic immunity, something neighboring Slovakia refused when Russia broached the possibility previously of moving the bank's headquarters to Bratislava. Under the agreement with the Hungarian government, the immunity will extend not just to top IDP officials but all employees and consultants, as well as any guests the bank invites from Russia or third countries.
Andris Dezso, an investigative reporter at the independent news outlet Index, says that means after having arrived in Hungary IDP staff and their guests will have free movement within Europe's Schengen area. And this at a time that Russian intelligence agencies are thought to be suffering an agent shortage across the continent thanks to the mass expulsion last year of suspected Russian spies, a punishment for the alleged Kremlin-ordered poisoning in England of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
Hungary's counter-intelligence agency won't have the manpower, Dezso says, to monitor the comings and goings. That will likely prompt other European counter-intelligence agents to start focusing on Hungary. Counterintelligence units from abroad will come to Hungary and it will become like Vienna was during the Cold War, he says, in reference to Vienna's legendary status as a European hub for espionage skulduggery.
The bank's financial transactions won't be monitored either. So it can do any kind of business, complains Agnes Vadai, She added: When the law about the headquarters agreement was in the parliament, in front of the parliament, we voted against it. We are very worried about this investment bank.
VOA requests for interviews to discuss the bank with Orban's press spokesman as well as Hungary's foreign minister were declined.
In a press statement, the IDP has denied Nikolai Kosov has any links to Russian intelligence and rejects being described as Russian, insisting it is a multilateral finance organization established by several sovereign states.
The relocation of the Bank's headquarters to the European Union will enable growth in the Bank's capital, will provide for a further increase in the Bank's lending and investment activities, will lead to a decrease in the Bank's cost for funding, will raise brand awareness of the Bank and create opportunities for attracting new shareholders to the Bank, it said.
Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia (all EU and NATO members), in addition to Mongolia, Vietnam and Cuba are also members of the bank. But the bank worried Orban enough in 2000 during his first administration to end Hungary's membership of the IDP, only to rejoin more than a decade later. Orban at that time complained about the bank's lack of transparency.
Julius Horvath, a professor at the Central European University, says the security background of the IDP's president isn't unusual for Putin's Russia, where people coming from security services, or as they call them siloviki, are appointed to government posts and in business.
But he says the bank's welcome in Budapest � the timetable for the relocation hasn't been announced � is yet another sign of the warming ties between Orban and Putin. He doesn't think, though, that the political friendship is based on any real ideological affinity, but more on the Hungarian leader's reassessment of the balance of power in Europe and a perception of Russia's growing clout in the region.
Gergo Nyilas, a journalist at Index who writes on Hungarian-Russian relations agrees. If you ask me whether the Hungarian government wants to transform Hungary into an instrument of Russian influence then I would say, 'no.' That is not Hungary's intention. But if you ask me whether the government is playing a risky game that can lead to such a consequence, I would say, 'yes.'
Peter Kreko, an analyst at Political Capital, is also critical of Hungary's balancing act of being a member of NATO and the EU on the one hand and an ally of Russia on the other. He says Hungary could become a captured state.
African Billionaire Rebuts Idea of Migration Flood in Europe
CASE Construction Equipment unveils methane-powered wheel loader concept – ProjectTETRA
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11805
|
__label__cc
| 0.740293
| 0.259707
|
Hotel Palafitte, Neuchatel, Switzerland
Neuchâtel is a nice baroque town in the west of Switzerland and the capital of the canton with the same name. The city is situated on the Lake Neuchâtel. The word Neuchâtel is a mixture of German and French and means literally Newcastle. The history of the city began in 1011, when King Rudolf III presented a new castle on the North West shore of the lake to his wife. That’s the place, where the town grew.
Today Neuchâtel belongs to the French speaking part of Switzerland. Progressive architects mix some futuristic buildings among the many barque- and renaissance houses of Neuchâtel. The new museum of the writer, dramatist and painter Friedrich Dürrenmatt, who lived in Neuchâtel till his death, is a typical example for that. Another futuristic architecture is the complex of the Hotel Palafitte. The hotel, unique in Europe, is set on piles in the lake. Several pavilions in the lake are only connected by stages.
The 5 stars Hotel Palafitte, opened in 2002, features 40 rooms, each in its own pavilion. All of them offer a breathtaking view across the lake to the Swiss Alps. All rooms have a bright contemporary décor and are equipped with designer furnishings. The bathrooms are spacious and include Jacuzzi bathtubs. The regular equipment of the rooms comprises climate control, air conditioning, telephone, TV, radio, wireless LAN, high speed internet connection, voice mail, DVD player and much more.
All Hotel Palafitte rooms have balconies, mini bars and safes. A restaurant with a terrace and a bar invite their guests to enjoy regional specialities as well as Mediterranean food. The restaurant Le Colvert provides in bright, maritime ambience a traditional Swiss cuisine and Mediterranean fish specialities. Sitting on the terrace makes the visitors feel like being aboard a mini cruiser. Le Bar is elegant and cosy arranged in a contemporary style. That’s the best place for having good conversations, drinks and cocktails.
For conferences and seminars, suitable rooms are offered by the Neuchatel Hotel Palafitte. Facilities for recreation and sport activities are nearby the hotel. Things to do in Neuchâtel are fishing, swimming, golf and tennis.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11808
|
__label__wiki
| 0.814055
| 0.814055
|
Mr. C.
Mr. C. Wall of Fame
Black Hole Wall Of Famer…… Mr. C
Inducted into The Black Hole during our 2010 Kickoff/Induction Party at Ricky’s in San Leandro, Mr. C, known as the GREATEST Howard Cosell impersonator to you and I, is a hit with fans both young and old. Those who hold dear to their hearts some of sports’ glory years truly get taken back in time when Mr. C holds court. From the voice to the hair to the gold jacket and the verbal sparring, Mr. C is outstanding at what he does. The Black Hole has been Blessed to see him in action up close and Mr. C has always treated all Raider fans with respect and gratitude. We welcome him with open arms into our Black Hole family as he has earned the right to be one of “Football’s Most Notorious Fans…”
Ernie Orozco started doing voice impressions at the early age of six. He began calling people on the phone disguising his voice as Humphrey Bogart, Richard Nixon and others. After years of tormenting family members and performing on small stages as a ventriloquist he decided to quit the so-called show biz.
But one day, Orozco heard KNBR RADIO in San Francisco was holding a contest to win a pair of tickets to an Oakland Raider playoff game. Instantly he called the show and was greeted by the call screener asking, “So what are you going to do?” Orozco had no idea but realized it was a sports station so he uttered the now storied name: “Howard Cosell from Heaven.” Unfortunately for Ernie the lone judge was a 19 year old Raiderette who had no idea who HOWARD COSELL was. She chose a guy who sang Magic Carpet Ride as the winner of the contest. But, Bay Area television and Radio personality GARY RADNICH heard the COSELL voice and attitude and said, “Ernie, you were robbed so call me Monday and we will stir it up!”
Since calling Radnich’s show in January of 2002, Orozco has appeared on Gary’s show some 200 times! His Howard Cosell reincarnation has also been heard on over 350 radio stations world wide. He has appeared at the prestigious Wynn Hotel & Casino in LAS VEGAS as well as the Venetian Hotel. He has also performed a memorable one man tribute to Cosell at the Peppermill Casino in Reno, Nevada. Recently, Orozco was the opening act for the Muhammad Ali Center Grand Gala in Louisville, Kentucky, and shared the stage with such greats as Jim Carey, Bob Costas and James Taylor. The ultimate compliment was paid to Orozco when he was invited to perform for Muhammad Ali in a private performance in Los Angeles. He spent a couple of hours telling his stories directly to “THE GREATEST” who laughed out loud for the first time in years.
Currently, Orozco is working on a “Weird World of Sports Show” and a one man tribute to Cosell. He is also available for corporate events and special appearances.
Visit Mr. C’s website
THE BLACK HOLE FANS | October 8, 2011 | 0 comments |
Black Hole Fans, Oakland, One Nation, Raider Nation, Silver and Black, The Black Hole
Jeff Barnes
Jeremy Brigham
Kenny Shedd
John Vella
Rod Martin
JT “The Brick”
Tony the Tiger Lopez
Ricky Ricardo
Johnny Gunn
Raider Nation
Black Hole Fans Oakland One Nation Raider Nation Silver and Black The Black Hole
Buy TBH Training Camp 2016
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11817
|
__label__wiki
| 0.829802
| 0.829802
|
A Brief History of Watchmaking in Switzerland
The Swiss are famous for their timeless timepieces | © foeoc kannilc/Flickr
Sean Mowbray
Nothing runs quite like a Swiss watch. But where did the Swiss penchant for watchmaking come from, and how did a small country perched between lakes and mountains come to dominate a global market?
Watchmaking, the art of creating the mechanical timepieces we know today, only came into existence in the 14th century. The trade didn’t even reach Switzerland until much later, when Huguenot refugees, who were fleeing religious persecution in neighbouring France, set up shop in Geneva. Records show that by 1554 watchmakers were present and working in Geneva.
The Huguenots’ arrival coincided with John Calvin’s dominion over Geneva. Anyone who owns a Swiss watch has a lot to thank Calvin for, because the strict code of conduct he applied to Geneva gave life to the nascent watching industry. The Protestant reformer instituted a series of rules that essentially prohibited the wearing of jewellery. At this time, Geneva was renowned for its fine jewellery industry and quite rightly the city’s jewelers feared for their income.
Luckily, wearing timepieces was considered to be a less ostentatious means of expression. So, watchmakers found themselves with a ready, and growing, market and jewelers saw an opportunity to change their trade. Soon, the world’s first watchmaking guild was established in Geneva. Over time, the small city that sits on the banks of Lac Léman became crowded with watchmakers, many of whom sought to branch out, heading to the Jura Mountains to ply their trade.
Innovations like Rolex’s first waterproof watch helped the Swiss gain a reputation for unsurpassed craftsmanship
amh1988
During the nineteenth century, the Swiss industry truly blossomed. Victoria Gomelsky explains how Swiss peasants used their winter downtime to craft watch parts, which gave Geneva’s industry a leg-up. By 1850, the Swiss were making over two million watches per year, compared to around only 200,000 in England, who were their main competitors. Up until that time, the Swiss had mostly excelled at making cheaper, knock-off versions of other countries’ watches. It was a strategy that worked remarkably well for them.
Yet it wasn’t all smooth-sailing for the Swiss. American watchmakers brought out their own, highly accurate timepieces that cut back Swiss exports to the US by a whopping 75%. As ever though, the Swiss industry innovated and, in 1926, Rolex rolled out the Oyster, the world’s first waterproof watch. This and other innovations gave a nudge to the Swiss industry, tipping it back onto the winning side.
As the twentieth century rolled on, two world wars and the Depression hit the industry once again, but did not destroy it. The Swiss resilience for reliable timepieces seemed enough to pull them through a rapid decline in demand.
Geneva celebrates its watchmaking heritage with a giant floral clock
© Pedro/ Flickr
During the 1970s, the Swiss industry once again faced competition from highly accurate, and not to mention cheaper, Japanese quartz watches. Under this pressure, the Swiss watchmaking industry began to crumble and, between 1970 and 1980, the industry laid off nearly half of its workers. Down, but far from being out, one Swiss designer named Nicolas G. Hayek, hit back with Swatch in 1983. Over time this quartz-made Swiss watch revitalised the country’s watchmaking industry as a whole.
Today, the Swiss watch industry is again facing pressure, this time from tech-giant Apple. The company, better known for its mobile phones, has become a major player in the watch industry and outsold its Swiss competitors during the last quarter of 2017 – that’s despite the Swiss watch industry posting higher sales.
However, if the history of the Swiss watch industry shows us anything, it’s that it has become adept at seeing off challengers to its tick-tocking hegemony. Whether it will do so again remains to be seen.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11818
|
__label__wiki
| 0.809898
| 0.809898
|
The Debate Post
Learn. Explore. Discover. Change. Create. Grow.
The UK Politics of Death
Article by Daniel Clemence
Does politics go with Halloween? For most people outside of politics, there would be sighs of despair. However, there are major considerations about such a claim. The real political analysis of Halloween wouldn’t be the political allegiances of trick-or-treaters (they are too young to vote) but rather a macabre subject: death. Which political party does the grim reaper favour? Is the grim reaper an eternal Tory or perhaps a fiery-red Labourite?
There is a way to analyse the effect of mortality rates on UK elections. The way we do this is by looking at the projected mortality rate given by the ONS in the UK over a 5-year period. This can be done by looking at the death rate at the given year and multiplying it by 5, so it can give the potential effect in a UK general election. Given that around 80% of deaths are above the ages of 60, it is, therefore, looking at these ages. When calculating, from 2017 election statistics, it is possible to predict how these voters would have voted in the 2017 election and therefore calculate the potential voter loss in 2022. In 2016, there were 443,000 people who died over the age of 60. If the mortality rate stayed the same for over 60s for a five-year period, we could project around 2,350,000 million people would die. Voters older than 60 had a turnout of around 80.3% in the 2017 general election, meaning roughly 1,892,000 voters would have died in a 5 year period. Given the breakdown of voters, around 63% of voters aged over 60 voted Conservative, so it is possible to project that over a five-year period, 1,191,000 Conservative voters would have died. In contrast to this, given that only 23% of over 60s voted Labour at the last general election, around 435,000 Labour voters would have died also.
What is the electoral effect of the grim reaper? Assuming that there are no new voters in a 5-year period, the Labour party’s votes would reduce from roughly 12.9 million to around 12.5 million votes. The Tories on the other hand, would lose close to 1.2 million voters and would go from roughly 13.6 million to 12.4 million, meaning Labour would have the larger vote share. It appears that the grim reaper is a strong Labour supporter! We could go further than this in and calculate the number of projected new voters who were too young to vote at the last election but able to in 2022. There were roughly 4 million (3.9 million) people too young to vote in 2017 but would be able to in 2022. Given that 18-25-year-old voters had a turnout of around 58%, we would forecast that there would be around 2.9 million voters. Of them, around 1.4 million would vote Labour, 460,000 would vote Tory. Adding these new figures, we could forecast the Conservatives to have around 12,800,000 votes versus Labour having 13,900,000 votes. Labour would be able to form a government, but not necessarily have a majority.
These projections are highly changeable. For example, if mortality rate increases, the effects on a five-year election could be even more extreme. On the other hand, it is very possible that younger people may not vote Labour in so larger numbers as the last general election. Voters may also change their mind of who they would vote for. What it does show is that over a long period of time, if current projections of voting continue, the Labour Party has a significant demographic advantage over the Tories.
Posted in UncategorizedBy LuluLeave a comment
← Why it’s easier for Labour to force a new referendum rather than a General Election
In any game of parliamentary poker, don’t expect the DUP to blink first. →
To get in touch:
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11821
|
__label__wiki
| 0.83101
| 0.83101
|
Hit Makers
I wish I had read this book in a paper copy rather than on my Kindle. Had I done so, the book would be marked up with highlighted sections, and many of its pages would be folded — but at least I could go back without tap-tap-tapping, page by page, to find the parts I want to see again.
Yes, it’s that interesting. You may have read about some of the great anecdotes in “Hit Makers:” Why seven particular artists are regarded as the finest Impressionists painters, why “Rock Around the Clock” was the pop music phenom of 1955 and many others.
But what is most interesting is the analysis of why certain pieces of music and art and even advances in science succeed while other, possibly better ones, do not.
One concept is “optimal newness,” the idea that people like new things but only if those things include older, familiar elements. In everything from pop music to scientific inquiry, people have a much easier time absorbing incremental change than revolutionary change.
Here’s a quote from physicist Max Planck: “Truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
(This made me think about the Missoula floods, enormous events that carved out much of the Pacific Northwest at the end of the last ice age. When I was in college, these were received as fact, but the high school teacher-turned-geologist who researched and established them early in the last century was a pariah in his field for decades because his conclusions seemed inconceivable to other geologists who never had visited that part of the country.)
Thompson refers also to Raymond Loewy, the 20th century designer who came up with successful new looks for cigarette packages, Sears refrigerators and Air Force One, among many others.
Loewy coined the expression MAYA, “most advanced and yet achievable.” He understood that people could accept only a limited amount of change, and this understanding led to his remarkable success.
There are many ideas in this book, too many to cover here, but I want to mention another concept that interested me.
Viral Schmiral
Author Thompson notes that the few old news funnels — radio and then television networks and major publications — have given way in the digital age to thousands if not millions of information outlets.
He notes further that we speak now of new ideas or songs “going viral,” and he pretty much demolishes the idea. From the book:
“In epidemiology, ‘viral’ has a specific meaning. It refers to a disease that infects more than one person before it dies or the host does. Such a disease has the potential to spread exponentially. One person infects two. Two infect four. Four infect eight. And before long, it’s a pandemic.”
Except “going viral” is not what happens. Among the millions of information outlets are some with extraordinary reach. Many of these outlets have celebrities’ names on them.
Now I will bring up a discussion inspired by “Hit Makers” but not from the book itself.
Several summers ago, we read that the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge “went viral” and raised more than $200 million for disease research. The idea originated with a pro golfer who challenged a cousin to pour ice over her head and donate money to the ALS charity.
But the result had nothing to do with viral spread.
Instead of growing by twos and fours and eights, the Ice Bucket Challenge was spread by celebrity YouTube videos and Twitter challenges that were reported in the news and drew in non-celebrity participants. Some of the big names:
Bill Gates, who now has 34 million Twitter followers
LeBron James, 37 million Twitter followers
Oprah Winfrey, 36 million Twitter followers
Kim Kardashian West, 50 million Twitter followers
Lady Gaga, 67 million Twitter followers
Taylor Swift, 84 million Twitter followers
Justin Bieber, 92 million Twitter followers
By contrast, the golfer who dreamed up the challenge has 236 Twitter followers. His idea was smart, but its huge success relied on prominent people who broadcast it through their great big megaphones.
Derek Thompson, who graduated from college in 2012, has done a remarkable job with this book. He draws from philosophy, psychology, science, history, business, popular culture and media trends to make thoughtful observations about little-discussed but interesting themes. The book has a nice balance of interesting stories and explanations; it is sprawling in scope, but always readable. I look forward to reading more of this guy’s work.
Previous Previous post: Platform Shoes — Then and Now
Next Next post: MovieMonday: Life
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11822
|
__label__wiki
| 0.950895
| 0.950895
|
Here's What Back to the Future Director Says About Possible Reboot
Christopher Lloyd in a scene from 'Back To The Future.'
Universal Pictures—Getty Images
By Devan Coggan / Entertainment Weekly
With the number of classic movies getting reboots (and the box-office success of sequels like Jurassic World), fans may be wondering if a certain 1980s time-travel series could be returning to the big screen. But director Robert Zemeckis says that Back to the Future won’t be remade until well after he and co-writer Bob Gale have died.
“That can’t happen until both Bob and I are dead,” Zemeckis told the Telegraph. “And then I’m sure they’ll do it, unless there’s a way our estates can stop it. I mean, to me, that’s outrageous. Especially since it’s a good movie. It’s like saying, ‘Let’s remake Citizen Kane. Who are we going to get to play Kane?’ What folly, what insanity is that? Why would anyone do that?”
Zemeckis’ next film, The Walk, will be released Oct. 2.
This article originally appeared on EW.com
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11826
|
__label__wiki
| 0.779951
| 0.779951
|
The Battle of Lake George
http://canadian-settlement.suite101.com/article.cfm/the-battle-of-lake-george
Fought on September 8, 1755, the Battle of Lake George took place in upstate New York.
On August, 28, 1755, British Indian Agent William Johnson arrived at the south end of Lac Saint Sacrement, which he renamed Lake George in honour of King George II. Johnson’s orders were to advance to Crown Point and attack the French position at Fort St. Frederic, which was one of the cornerstones of the defence of New France.
Prelude to the Battle
At the same time, Jean Erdman, also known as the Baron Dieskau, had already left Crown Point for an encampment near the unfinished Fort Carillon, which was situated between Lake Champlain and Lake George. On September 4, Dieskau launched a raid on Johnson’s position, at Fort Lyman. Dieskau’s aim was to capture or destroy the boats, supplies and munitions Johnson needed for his campaign against the French. Dieskau left half of his force at Fort Carillon and set off with 222 French Regulars from the Regiment de la Reine and the Regiment Languedoc, in addition to 600 Canadian militia and 700 Abenaki and Mohawk allies. Dieskau arrived in the vicinity of Fort Lyman on September 7, 1755.
Concurrently with this, Johnson was camped 14 miles to the north of Lake George. He was alerted by scouts to the presence of the French to the south and dispatched a messenger to warn the garrison at Fort Lyman. However, both the messenger and a British supply train destined for Johnson’s camp fell into French hands. As a result, Dieskau knew the size and disposition of Johnson’s forces. Dieskau’s First Nations allies held a war council and decided against attacking Fort Lyman, believing it to be defended with cannons. On the following morning, September 8, Dieskau gave orders to march his men around to the far side of the lake.
At the same time that this was happening, Johnson sent Colonel Ephraim Williams along with a force of 1,000 men drawn from the Massachusetts and Connecticut Regiments under the command of Colonel Nathan Whiting, along with 200 Mohawk allies to reinforce Fort Lyman. However, unbeknownst to Williams or Johnston, Dieskau had received prior warning of the British approach from an American deserter.
Ambush at Lake George
Unaware of the French ambush, Williams marched his men straight into Dieskau’s trap. Williams and the Mohawk war chief Hendrick Theyanoguin were killed in the opening minutes of the battle. Most of the New Englanders, who lacked the training and discipline of the British Regulars, immediately fled back towards Johnson’s camp. However, 100 men under the command of Colonel Whiting and Lieutenant Colonel Seth Pomeroy stood their ground, and fought a rearguard action, allowing the others to disengage and withdraw. The American rearguard was successful in inflicting significant losses on the French. Pomeroy later wrote that his men “killed great numbers of them; they seemed to drop like pigeons.” Among the casualties of the battle was Jaqcues Lagardeu de Saint-Pierre. He was highly regarded by the First Nations and the Canadian militia and his death caused great dismay.
Meanwhile, Colonel Joseph Blanchard, the commander of Fort Lyman saw the smoke from the battle and sent troops from the New Hampshire Provincial Regiment and the New York Provincials under the command of Nathaniel Folson and Captain McGennis to investigate. By the time they arrived at the scene of the battle, the French had withdrawn. The Americans found 20 severely injured Frenchmen, including Dieskau, who had been struck in the abdomen with a musket ball.
Aftermath of the Battle
The Battle of Lake George was tactically inconclusive for both the British and the French and Johnson was unable to capture Fort St. Frederic. However, the battle did represent a significant strategic victory for the British in the French and Indian War. Johnson was able to consolidate his gains by completing the construction of Fort William Henry in November, 1755, at the southern end of Lake George.
Some modern historians have speculated that if the French had been successful in routing the British, not only would Dieskau have eliminated the British threat to Fort St. Frederic, but he may have been in a position to undermine the defences for all of New England.
Anderson, Fred, Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766, Faber and Faber Limited, London, 2000
Parkman, Francis, Montcalm and Wolfe (The French and English in North America, Part Seventh), Vol. I, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1942
You’re currently reading “The Battle of Lake George,” an entry on Wordsmith
Mike Skelly 5.28.10 / 7pm
Do you have any photographs of the reenactments at Bloody Pond? I took part but have no photgraphs of the event.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11828
|
__label__wiki
| 0.525797
| 0.525797
|
We need to know – the critical role of monitoring in Australia’s fight against extinctions
Kangaroo Island Dunnart*Source: Jody Gates
Without monitoring, threatened species could slide toward extinction without it being noticed. Good monitoring helps us understand how species are faring, where and when to act and if management investments are working.
*Monitoring is helping conservation managers identify the last remaining areas with Kangaroo Island Dunnarts, which will enable them to better direct conservation investments. Photo: Jody Gates
Given the vital importance of monitoring in the fight against extinctions, the Threatened Species Recovery Hub of the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program has released a national assessment of Australia’s monitoring – by state and territory governments, not-for-profits, consultants, indigenous groups, the Commonwealth and the community.
Project leader Dr Sarah Legge said the results were poor for most groups, but monitoring for threatened birds was relatively better, thanks to a large and enthusiastic volunteer base, co-ordinated by organisations like Birdlife. In contrast, she said half of all threatened fish receive no monitoring and monitoring of threatened reptiles was little better.
“Overall, over a third of Australia’s threatened animals received no monitoring at all, and where monitoring does exist, it is often inadequate,” said Dr Legge from the Australian National University.
“This puts these species at risk. By the time we realise we have a problem it may be too late to act.”
“Many people do not appreciate how vital monitoring is for all aspects of managing threatened biodiversity.”
The monitoring activities for threatened species were assessed against a framework of nine key principles which was developed by Professor John Woinarski and colleagues.
“To be effective monitoring needs to sample across the whole area where a species occurs, and to happen often enough and for long enough to pick up changes,” said Prof Woinarski from Charles Darwin University.
“We have developed this framework to give monitoring the profile it merits and to improve the standard of monitoring for Australia’s threatened biodiversity.
“Without monitoring we have no idea if populations are going up or down, or what’s driving any changes. We also won’t know if the conservation actions we are investing in are working or need to be adapted.”
Threatened Species Recovery HubSource: Supplied
The framework and national assessment have been published in a new book, Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities (CSIRO Publishing). The book also gathers insights and case studies from 70 of the most experienced managers and scientists involved with threatened species monitoring in Australia.
In response to the national assessments Professor Brendan Wintle, the Director of the Threatened Species Recovery Hub has called for a national effort to improve the state of Australia’s threatened species monitoring.
“Good information is crucial in the fight against extinctions. Without good monitoring we are flying blind and could waste precious scarce resources,’ said Prof Wintle from the University of Melbourne.
“Many species occur across multiple states and territories, and the monitoring data that exists are currently scattered across many different agencies and research groups.
“Australia needs investment and co-ordination to manage, store, analyse and report on monitoring data.
“Monitoring should involve the public and the results should be available to the public. Much of conservation spending is taxpayer funded. People need to know what they are getting for that.”
The Threatened Species Recovery Hub is a partnership of ten Australian Universities and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy to undertake research to recover threatened species. It receives funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program.
Jaana Dielenberg, TSR Hub Science Communication Manager, 0413 585 709 j.dielenberg@uq.edu.au
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11829
|
__label__cc
| 0.734742
| 0.265258
|
What Is Bitcoin Private?
The number of existing and upcoming Bitcoin hard forks continues to grow at an alarming rate. In fact, it seems the next fork is always just around the corner. Bitcoin Private, for example, is one of those upcoming forks, but these tokens will not be issued to BTC holders. That in itself is a rather remarkable decision. Whether or not anyone will care about this fork remains to be determined, though.
Bitcoin Private Uses ZClassic Technology
It is evident that Bitcoin lacks privacy and anonymity traits. Although some government officials like to label Bitcoin as anonymous, it is anything but. Instead, users achieve some degree of pseudonymity when using the world’s leading cryptocurrency, but that is far from the same as anonymity. Adding more privacy-centric elements to Bitcoin is certainly possible, although it will not be easy whatsoever. Various developers are contemplating borrowing elements from Monero to achieve that goal in the future, though.
Until that happens, we will most likely see more hard forks which offer some privacy upgrades. Bitcoin Private is a perfect example of how things will most likely evolve in this regard. It is a brand new Bitcoin hard fork which uses the same privacy technology as is found in ZClassic these days. More specifically, the fork will use zk-snarks to achieve privacy, even though it still comes nowhere close to actually being a privacy-oriented currency. Optional privacy is good, but some people will look for something more than that.
Additionally, Bitcoin Private will serve as a peer-to-peer form of digital money in which no intermediaries are involved. Transactions will be broadcast and verified by nodes before they are passed along to miners for final approval. There will be a slightly bigger block size compared to Bitcoin, which will be of some interest to users all over the world. After all, Bitcoin has major scaling issues, and they won’t be resolved overnight without some major shakeups.
What is rather remarkable about the Bitcoin Private fork is how the new BTCP tokens will not be issued to Bitcoin users themselves. Instead, this airdrop will occur on a 1:1 basis with Bitcoin Cash and ZClassic holders. It is a rather interesting approach, although it remains to be seen if this will give the project more legitimacy in the long run. So far, there is no official whitepaper providing further specifics, which means there’s plenty of room for speculation.
As is usually the case when a new fork is announced, no exchange has officially confirmed support for it as of yet. That is not unusual, mind you, as there are still a lot of aspects of this new fork which have yet to be clarified. Whether or not any major exchanges will support this airdrop moving forward remains to be seen. Other forks have been called off due to a lack of exchange support in recent weeks.
Although its website claims there is a team of 50-ish contributors on the project, there are still some issues to be resolved on GitHub. For example, it is unclear if there will be hardware wallet support, a proper wallet, proper mining difficulty adjustments, and so forth. All of these issues can be resolved over time, as there is no official launch date set for this fork just yet. It is unclear if this fork uses Bitcoin Cash’s new CashAddr address format or sticks with the traditional Bitcoin address model.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11830
|
__label__wiki
| 0.986765
| 0.986765
|
Read Next: CBS Strikes Deal With Nina Tassler and Denise Di Novi's PatMa Productions
March 15, 2015 11:51AM PT
‘Community’ Movie? Dan Harmon Responds to Rumors at SXSW Yahoo Panel
By Elizabeth Wagmeister
Elizabeth Wagmeister
Senior Correspondent @EWagmeister FOLLOW
Elizabeth's Most Recent Stories
Here’s Why ‘Big Little Lies’ and ‘Stranger Things’ Weren’t Nominated for 2019 Emmys
‘The Hills’: MTV Exec on New Drama, Mischa Barton & Continuing Without the Entire Cast
Raven-Symoné Recalls Industry Pushback in Her Teen Years: ‘She Looks Too Much Like a Lesbian’
CREDIT: Alli Harvey/Getty
The morning after “Community” held a “Greendale School Dance” party at SXSW, Dan Harmon moderated a panel on Sunday with the Season 6 cast, cheered on by a room full of fans who have long been tweeting #sixseasonsandamovie.
With production on the show’s sixth season well under way — there are only two episodes left to shoot ahead of the launch on Yahoo on March 17 — fans peppered the showrunner with questions about the possibility of a movie.
“Yahoo seems down for just about anything,” Harmon said, quipping, “I don’t know why they’d turn their nose up to a movie about a low-rated show. They seem to be very naive.”
The panel kicked off with stars Joel McHale, Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs, who riffed about their memories of the show. “This is why I fight for the show,” said McHale. “I know it’s the best show on television.”
They were then joined by stars Jim Rash, Ken Jeong, Paget Brewster, Keith David and exec producer Chris McKenna, who talked about the show’s resurrection by Yahoo, which picked it up after it had been canceled by NBC.
“They finally figured out how to defeat us. They just let us have a show,” McKenna joked. “Last year was hard because we were losing characters and there was just a lot to do…It was a lot of bills to pay and we’re still paying them.”
Asked how the show is different now that it’s on Yahoo, Brie said, “It’s been a difficult question to answer from our perspective because there’s not a huge crazy difference,” joking that they’re not suddenly going to be naked all the time, just because they’re now on a digital platform.
“Dan’s weirdness, it’s just able to exist more,” she added. “That’s more of the difference. In the smaller moments, when someone’s having a rant, that rant can live a little bit longer.”
Turning to Harmon, she said, “The things we’re saying can be as weird as you’ve always wanted them to be.”
Another hot topic on the panel was the extended length of each episode. At NBC, episodes ran for about 22 minutes. But at Yahoo, each runs up to 26.
“Now you guys are getting a lot more ‘Community’ because we love our stuff, and we’re not cutting it out,” McKenna said, to which McHale added, “The episodes were so short [and] we would go, ‘All of this is gold’…I think it’s just awesome that we can just do as much as we can now.”
Harmon touched upon the mutual excitement the show and the streaming network have for each other, pointing out that Yahoo even has an exclamation mark in its logo.
He asked the cast if there is now a different feeling on set.
“I think part of that vibe is yes, being at Yahoo, and feeling incredibly supported,” Brie said. “Everyone from Yahoo who visits is like, ‘We get it. Just do your thing.’ It’s so refreshing. The vibe has been so fun.”
Brie also gave a nod to the cast’s two new members, Brewster and David. “I do think it’s nice to have a couple new people in the sixth season of a show,” she said.
“You never know what it’s going to feel like walking into a situation that’s been established for so long,” David said. “I can’t remember ever being so welcomed…It’s like Vietnam, baby!”
Brewster agreed, adding that the new cast already has their own shared inside jokes. “It’s very scary joining a cast that’s been together for so long,” she said. “It’s true, at first, sometimes we didn’t know what you were talking about.”
McHale was quick to display that newfound camaraderie. “She spent the past 25 years on ‘Criminal Minds,’ which was hilarious,” he joked of Brewster. “The thing about her is she’s ugly so she makes up for it in talent.”
The one-hour panel was packed with sarcastic jokes, Harmon’s one-liners (“Can you say f–k? It’s it called South By South F–k?”), nervous super-fans stammering as they got the chance to ask a question — along with season six teasers, like big guest stars and confirmation of another paintball episode.
Harmon even broke out into a beat-boxing rap, improvising, “‘Community’ on Tuesdays at 8:00,” causing the cast to break out in laughter when McHale corrected him, “8:00 on the Internet!”
Leave a Reply6
Mario Lopez Joins 'Access Hollywood,' Sets Development Deal With Universal TV
Mario Lopez has signed on to be a co-host of NBCUniversal’s “Access Hollywood” and “Access Daily” starting in the fall. Lopez will join Kit Hoover and Scott Evans as the frontmen of the syndicated entertainment newsmagazine as of Sept. 9. “Access Hollywood” has undergone a shakeup in recent months with the departure of co-host Natalie [...]
“Carpool Karaoke” hasn’t driven off into the sunset quite yet. The CBS Television Studios-produced Apple series has been renewed for a third season, which has already started production and will feature an episode with the cast of “Stranger Things.” Based on a popular segment from Corden’s CBS talk series “The Late Late Show,” “Carpool Karaoke: [...]
'Gossip Girl' Spinoff Series in the Works at HBO Max
Hey Upper East Siders, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite is back. WarnerMedia announced a straight-to-series order for a “Gossip Girl” spinoff series on its newly named streaming service, HBO Max. Rumors of a “Gossip Girl” reunion have been circulating for a while, but this new series won’t focus [...]
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11840
|
__label__wiki
| 0.703531
| 0.703531
|
43 Winter 2015–2016 Proceedings www.uscg.mil/proceedings though the Coast Guard must look at the reasons for the test with great scrutiny and ensure the test was accurate and defendable. Currently, the S&R NCOE receives reports of non-DOT posi- tive drug tests at a rate of two cases a week. As these are not mandatory reports, we must presume that the rate is higher to account for those positive reports handled by marine employers on their own. It's unfortunate more marine employers haven't shared non-DOT positive drug tests with the S&R NCOE. In some cases, the employer releases the mariner, who then seeks employment elsewhere. When the employer doesn't report the case to the Coast Guard, we can't establish a record, and the mariner receives a fresh start with a new employer who is left unaware of any prior or recent drug history. Dealing with Dual Systems Many cases of prescription drug use come to light via testing in tandem with Coast Guard-required testing. Since mari- time companies recognize that the scope of the required test is limited, employers may also conduct their own "expanded panel" test at the same time. When done in this manner, companies must ensure that the DOT-required test is done frst, before any other company test. There should be two different samples collected, with the frst being the DOT sample, completed start to fnish, before any other company-required test is initiated. Using a sample in a manner outside the scope of the regulations invalidates the results of the DOT test, and so the Coast Guard cannot use the test for S&R purposes. The Coast Guard requires that marine employers test any crewmember directly involved in a serious marine incident, "serious" meaning involving any injury incurred requiring treatment beyond frst aid. Some marine employers choose to conduct their expanded testing in those situations, as well. This makes good sense. Questioning the involvement of drug use is fundamental when determining whether an injury was caused by an employee's own actions, and the required fve-panel screen may not provide all the necessary information. Hospitals are a common source of non-DOT tests. When mariners are injured and crewmembers are sent to the hos- pital for care, the treating physician will often conduct fur- ther urine or blood testing. Positive results are sometimes reported back to the marine employers, then passed to the Coast Guard for potential action. Contractors for large marine employers also may require an expanded panel drug test before the mariner is allowed to work. These closely resemble a pre-employment screen and are common in the Gulf of Mexico outer continental shelf, where companies contract offshore supply vessels and crew. While the Coast Guard doesn't require testing in these situ- ations, some marine employers mandate the tests on their own to minimize risk. How the S&R NCOE Can Help These examples provide evidence of industry-wide knowl- edge and concern for the abuse of drugs beyond those iden- tifed in the Coast Guard regulations — namely prescription drugs. When unprescribed controlled substances are found through expanded non-DOT testing, the Coast Guard can and will take action on the positive result if the test was conducted in a scientifcally valid and reliable manner. The Coast Guard has jurisdictional authority under the drug use statute to take action against a merchant mariner cre- dential when it receives a positive drug test and can show that the mariner has been a user of — or is addicted to — a dangerous drug. The Commandant has also provided guid- ance that specifcally recognized that the Coast Guard may place in evidence facts (results of non-DOT drug tests) that tend to show drug use to prove the charge. 6 However, we must carefully review the tests to be sure reg- ulations have not been circumvented. At times, the S&R NCOE has rejected an investigating offcer's request to take action on a non-DOT positive test, as the test was either not collected in accordance with the marine employer's own policy, or the test was taken in an effort to circumvent the regulations. About the authors: LT Sarah E. Brennan is a 2003 graduate of Texas A&M University at Galveston with a degree in ocean and coastal resources. She also holds a master's degree in environmental policy and management. She has served more than 11 years in the Coast Guard, most recently as an investigator at the Suspension & Revocation NCOE. CDR Christopher F. Coutu is the chief of the Suspension and Revocation NCOE. He is a 1993 graduate of the University of Rhode Island and a 2001 graduate of Suffolk University Law School. He has served for 13 years in the Coast Guard in legal and prevention positions. Endnotes: 1. See 46 USC §7704(c). 2. See 46 USC §7704 notes. 3. 46 CFR Part 16 Chemical Test regulations, 49 CFR Part 40. 4. See 46 CFR §16.113(b). 5. Marine employers are only required to report results from testing pursuant to Part 16. 6. See Franks (CDOA 2704).
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11843
|
__label__cc
| 0.689825
| 0.310175
|
@aaexplorers
Archives For @aaexplorers
Report Finds Students Cannot Google and Reason at the Same Time: What to Do?
If you Google the explorer John Cabot, you could get a web page from the website All About Explorers that states:
“In 1484, the explorerJohn Cabot moved back to England with his wife and eleven sons. He developed his own website and became quite famous for his charts and maps depicting a new route to the Far East. At this time he also introduced his half-brother Richard (whom the family always called “Ringo”) to his best friends, John, Paul, and George.”
While some facts in this information that might set off bells and whistles to educators- or fans of The Beatles- there is recent research to suggest that many students in our middle school, high school, or college would not question the intrusion of technology into the life of this 15th Century explorer. After all, this website looks like a great source!
Stamford History Education Group (SHEG) report
A report released November 2016 tracked the research skills of students in middle, high school or college using a series of prompts. The study was conducted by the Stamford History Education Group (SHEG) that “prototyped, field tested, and validated a bank of assessments that tap civic online reasoning.” The report, titled Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning, details the methods SHEG used in order to test civic reasoning as well as:
“…the [students’] ability to judge the credibility of information that floods young people’s smartphones, tablets, and computers.”
The results of SHEG’s study indicated that many students are not prepared to distinguish accurate from inaccurate accounts or decide when a statement is relevant or irrelevant to a given point. SHEG noted:
“Our ‘digital natives’ may be able to fit between Facebook and Twitter while simultaneously uploading a selfie to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels, they are easily duped.”
The report concluded that students at all grade levels were unable to distinguish well-evidenced accounts from those unsupported by reasons and evidence or to tell good reasons from bad. In short, SHEG pronounced pronounced our nation’s students’ ability to research as “bleak”:
“For every challenge facing this nation, there are scores of websites pretending to be something they are not. Ordinary people once relied on publishers, editors, and subject matter experts to vet the information they consumed. But on the unregulated Internet, all bets are off.”
Educators should be concerned about this growth of fake information and how to keep this misinformation from spreading into student research. Even if the Internet gets better at shutting down fake news or inaccurate information, there will always be some bogus websites that will escape being shutdown.
But that AllAboutExplorers website is one bogus website that should not be shut down.
AllAboutExplorers website for Research Practice:
Yes, there is plenty of misinformation on site. For example, on the Christopher Columbus page:
“Columbus knew he had to make this idea of sailing, using a western route, more popular. So, he produced and appeared on infomercials which aired four times daily. Finally, the King and Queen of Spain called his toll-free number and agreed to help Columbus.
Turns out that the misinformation on AllAboutExplorers is INTENTIONAL and all the misinformation on the site was created to serve an important educational purpose. The Aboutpage on the site states:
“AllAboutExplorers was developed by a group of teachers as a means of teaching students about the Internet. Although the Internet can be a tremendous resource for gathering information about a topic, we found that students often did not have the skills to discern useful information from worthless data.”
The educator authors Gerald Aungst,( Supervisor of Gifted and Elementary Mathematics in the Cheltenham School District in Elkins Park, PA) and Lauren Zucker,(Library Media Specialist in Centennial School District) created the site in 2006. Their collaboration has proven to be a prescient effort given the SHEG findings this month.
They created AllAboutExplorers, “to develop a series of lessons for elementary age students in which we would demonstrate that just because it is out there for the searching does not mean it is worthwhile.”
These educators wanted to make a point about finding useless information on a site that was designed to look believable. They note that “all of the Explorer biographies here are fictional” and that they purposefully mixied facts with “inaccuracies, lies, and even downright absurdities.”
Some of the absurdities that have been mixed with facts on famous explorers include pages for:
Lewis & Clark Their dream didn’t become reality right away, however. It wasn’t until 1803, when Thomas Jefferson saw an intriguingly brief posting by Napoleon Bonaparte on Craig’s List for a large tract of land;
Sir Francis Drake: here he discovered an uncharted island called Java. The local drink, kofie (which we know as “coffee”) was rich and strong, and Drake soon fell in love with it. The locals also baked a cinnamon cake that was often paired with the drink;
Ferdinand Magellan: In 1519, at the age of only 27, he was supported by several wealthy businessmen, including Marco Polo, Bill Gates, and Sam Walton, to finance an expedition to the Spice Islands.
The authors have provided cautions not to use this site as a source of reference for research. There is even an “update” on the site that satirically mentions a lawsuit settlement on a claim that the information unfairly caused failing grades for students who used the information via the website. The authors can be followed on Twitter: @aaexplorers. Their website confirms SHEG report’s that states there “are scores of websites pretending to be something they are not.” There are also lesson plans designed to introduce students to the skills and concepts of good Internet researching:
Just Because It’s Out There Doesn’t Mean It’s Good
So How Do You Find the Good Stuff?
Google, What?
Where Exactly Am I?
How Could They Be So Wrong?
The SHEG report should set off alarms for all educators who ask students to “look something up” in any discipline. The AllAboutExplorers website provides educators, particularly social studies educators, an opportunity to helping students to learn how to negotiate the Internet in research. Teaching students to explore the web appropriately and accurately can be improved by introducing students to the AllAboutExplorers website.
In 10th Grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, 7th Grade, 8th Grade, 9th Grade, Education, Research @aaexplorers, AllAboutExplorers, Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning, explorer research, Gerald Aungst, Lauren Zucker, SHEG, Stamford History Education Group (SHEG), student research
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11844
|
__label__wiki
| 0.602466
| 0.602466
|
Statement of U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk Welcoming Mexico’s New Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal
U.S. and Nigeria Conclude Meeting under Trade and Investment Framework Agreement
United States Requests WTO Panel in Case Against Argentina’s Widespread Use of Import Restrictions
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk Hails Senate Vote to Extend Permanent Normal Trade Relations to Russia and Moldova
United States and Morocco Reach Agreement on Trade Facilitation, Joint Investment Principles and Joint Information and Communica
USTR Press Office Week Ahead: December 10-14
United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk and United States Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Call on Russia to Suspend its Ne
USTR and Department of Commerce Kick Off 23rd Session of U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade
TPP Chief Negotiators Pleased to Report Continued Progress
Statement of Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Michael Punke on Ukraine's Article XXVIII Notification at the World Trade Organiza
USTR Announces Results of Special 301 Review of Notorious Markets
Statement from U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on the Signing of the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magni
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk Comments on Important Changes to Preference Programs for Developing Nations
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk Welcomes Presidential Action Extending Permanent Normal Trade Relations to Russia and Moldova
U.S. and China Conclude 23rd Session of the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade
United States and Russian Federation Agree on Action Plan to Improve Intellectual Property Rights Protection
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk Hails Application of the WTO Agreement between U.S. & Russia and U.S. & Moldova
Home » About Us » Policy Offices » Press Office » The USTR Archives » 2007-2017 Press Releases » 2012 » December
Statement from U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on the Signing of the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk today hailed the signing by President Obama of H.R. 6156, the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act of 2012, which authorizes the establishment of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with Russia and Moldova. This step will allow the United States to apply the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement to Russia, offering new, job-supporting trade opportunities for U.S. businesses and workers and allowing the United States to address trade disputes with Russia in the WTO system, if necessary.
“The United States strongly supported Russia’s accession to the WTO, because it is in the interest of our exporters and the Americans they employ to bring Russia more fully into the global trading system,” said Ambassador Kirk. “With the signing of this legislation, American businesses and workers are closer to enjoying the full economic benefits of Russia’s WTO commitments.”
Ambassador Kirk, Acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank, members of Congress, and others joined the President at a signing ceremony at the White House today.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11845
|
__label__cc
| 0.638951
| 0.361049
|
An important component of Christian Schad’s work and a huge contribution to the New Objectivity movement was that Christian Schad captured different types of people.1 Instead of depicting the ideal person he captured the lives of people that other artists would never consider painting. This work, Agosta the Winged-Man & Rasha the Black Dove, depicts two people in a social category that were not commonly depicted in works of art and are more than just figures in a painting.
Agosta the Winged-Man & Rasha the Black Dove was painted in 1929. The work was created in Germany; Christian Schad was living and working there during this time. The work has two figures, one male and one female. The female, Rasha, is of African descent and wears a red tribal print dress. Her hair is cut short and curly. Behind her is a shirtless German male, Agosta and he is depicted sitting in a high-backed chair. His shirt and jacked are strewn behind him. He has a mutation of his skeleton which causes his ribs to protrude from his abdomen. Only the upper half of each figure is visible.
Because these people were not the typical models, where did Christian Schad find them? Northern Berlin was home to a fair called the Onkel Pelle. It was so highly visited by citizens from all across Europe that raids would frequently break out and people would be thrown into jail if they did not have the correct identification. 2
Agosta and Rasha were parts of a sideshow act at the fair. Each person had their own claim to fame. Rasha had two interesting aspects to her that the crowd enjoyed, she was from Madagascar and she danced with a large snake. Rasha was married to a German man and they, along with their son, lived in a caravan. Her husband was a performer as well, he lifted weights by using a hook inserted through his tongue. Christian Schad reported that one day Rasha came in for a painting session and was very upset because she caught her son attempting to pierce a hole through his tongue with a nail to be like his father.3 The snake she performed with also lived in the caravan with them.4
Agosta’s claim to fame was that he had a severely deformed upper body. 5 He was a spectacle for the visitors to look at because of the rarity of his deformity. He was also used as a teaching method at the Berlin teaching hospital because of his skeletal deformity. 6 Even side shows have their groupies, Agosta claimed to Christian Schad during a painting session that he was always having to ward of women and turn them down because he loved his wife.7
An important aspect of this work is that it is static. Christian Schad was known for painting a lot of his works as static and lacking motion. 8 The two figures in the work are being observed, which is not farfetched from their daily lives. Instead of being scrutinized for being different they are the subjects of a work of art; a thing of beauty. They are not being observed because they are different but it is their differences that make them beautiful.
The palette that Christian Schad uses is dark with deep shades of several different colors. This sets a somber mood for the work. The red dress that Rasha wears is contrasted with the dark hue of her skin which is then contrasted by the light coloring of her shell necklace. The work is kept in balance because Agosta’s skin is light but it is contrasted by the chair he sits in. There are definite borders of the figures and forms in this work and there is no question to what the figures are. However, to a person who is unfamiliar with Agosta’s skeletal deformity the viewer might at first be taken aback and confused with Agosta’s torso by assuming that it is an artistic liberty that Christian Schad took.
Christian Schad captured the two figures with high levels of detail. Christian Schad was able to capture the contrast between the different shades of Agosta and Rasha’s skin as well as the folds of their skin. 9 Their eyes lack any emotion what so ever and are completely passive. Their eyes lack judgment even though the eyes that look at them are often judging. They stare out from the portrait but not directly at the viewer. Christian Schad was also able to capture the natural skeletal deformity realistically. 10
It is important to note the symbolism of the title of this work. Rasha is referred to as a “black dove” and Agosta is referred to as the” winged man”. As domestic creatures birds are normally locked in a cage and viewed, they are not popular for contact as other domestic pets are. Rasha and Agosta are similar to birds in that they are constantly being viewed. The dove is known as a symbol for hope, peace, and love. Several aspects of Rasha’s life support her being referred to as a dove because she came from Madagascar for a better life, she has a family and she is at peace with herself even though the world is not. To go along with the theme of the title, Agosta is the winged man. This is because of his deformity which causes his ribs to look similar to wings. By incorporating both of the figures with bird names it is a symbol of their daily lives and that they are similar to birds because to the public, they are nothing more than something to gawk at.
To study the work of Christian Schad it would be impossible to do so without looking at this work. At first glance it seems like a simple work, but it is characteristic of Christian Schad’s other work. It is also full of symbolism. This work captures the lives of two people and captures their hopes and dreams, all in a single painting. They are more than a sideshow, they are people.
1) Christian Schad. Christian Schad. (Basel: Editions Panderma Carl Laszlo. 1972), 234.
2) Ibid.
4) Vienne, Autriche. Christian Schad. (Wien : Leopold Museum ; Köln : Wienand, cop.
2008), 128.
10.) Ibid.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11846
|
__label__cc
| 0.62159
| 0.37841
|
Notice : You are now accessing LOOP SIT SERVER. This is not meant for public access. For the actual LOOP Website please visit www.LOOP.sg instead
PRODUCE COURSES
SkillsFuture Eligible
LOOP.sg is the brainchild of a group of technopreneurs with more than accumulated 50 years in the ICT industry. LOOP (Learners Online, Online Producers) is the team’s foray into an emerging new market shaped by the Singapore government’s vision for a Smart Nation – a nation digitally intertwined and integrated with daily pursuits.
But what exactly is LOOP, and how did it come about?
The concept of e-learning has been around since the early days of the internet. In fact, one of the core foundation concepts of the modern internet was and remains information exchange and management. For a long time, the internet has been used globally to teach, and to learn.
However, for many years, e-learning has been hampered by a lack of centralized E-cosystem. While learners and content producers could connect to each other, much of it relied upon proactive action from either side.
The LOOP team saw the opportunity in this lack of a centralized E-cosystem, and thus LOOP was born!
The core concept of LOOP is a simple, yet effective and vital one, especially in Singapore’s push to become a Smart Nation: Connect the world’s learners with the world’s teachers under a single roof. To that end, LOOP was developed as a one-stop marketplace and learning hub for every kind of e-learning imaginable.
Having just been launched in March 2016, LOOP is already making waves in the e-learning scene, with a target of 1,000 unique users expected within the first six months. In the meantime, the LOOP team is also preparing for a second-phase expansion, targeted for launch in April 2016. Phase 2 will see LOOP being launched on mobile platforms, and will also see an incentive scheme being put in place, so that learning and producing becomes even more rewarding!
So what exactly is LOOP again? We are LOOP, and we’re bringing the world’s e-learning to everyone!
Copyright © 2019 LOOP All Rights Reserved.
About Us2ssd
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11847
|
__label__cc
| 0.591926
| 0.408074
|
English Professor Wins Prestigious Prize
Erica Edwards
Erica Edwards, associate professor of English, has won the prestigious William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) for an outstanding study of African-American literature or culture. The William Sanders Scarborough Prize is the top award in African-American studies and one of the most distinguished in literary and cultural study.
Edwards was recognized for her book, “Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership.” In awarding the 12th annual Scarborough Prize the selection committee described Edwards’s book as a deft critique of “the long-standing notion that a single charismatic male is requisite for leadership in African American politics.”
The award will be presented during the association’s annual convention in Chicago in January.
Chemistry Graduate Student Recognized for Research Presentation
Consuelo Beecher
Consuelo Beecher, a graduate student in analytical chemistry at UCR, was recognized with a 2013 SACNAS Student Presentation Award at the society’s annual meeting that took place in October in San Antonia, Texas.
Beecher’s research work on heparin a substance used to prevent blood clots from forming, was among a few that stood out for the judges at the three-day conference.
Beecher’s presentation at the 2013 Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans National Conference was titled “Profiling Enoxaparin SEC fractions by probing for 3-O-sulfo oligosaccharide using [H-1, N-15] HSQC NMR.” On the project, she worked with Cynthia Larive, a professor of chemistry and a divisional dean in the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.
Entomologist Recognized for Exceptional Service to California’s Vegetable Industry
John Trumble
John Trumble, distinguished professor of entomology, has been named the recipient of the 2013 Oscar Lorenz Award, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments in research and/or extension education benefiting the California vegetable industry.
Trumble, whose research focuses on both basic and applied problems in agricultural and natural ecosystems, will receive the award at a meeting on the UC Davis campus, in early December, of the UC Vegetable Crops Workgroup. The award is accompanied by a check for $500.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11848
|
__label__cc
| 0.673576
| 0.326424
|
People: Orpea SA (ORP.PA)
ORP.PA on Paris Stock Exchange
Coirbay, Xavier
Mr. Xavier Coirbay has held the position of Independent Director of Orpea SA since June 22, 2017. Since September 26, 2017 he has been Member of the Nomination and Remuneration Committee of the Company. He is currently a member of SOFINA’s Executive Committee and has responsibility for the SOFINA group’s investments in hedge funds and growth co-investments. He is also leading SOFINA’s expansion into the United States and Asia, which includes supervising the Singapore office. Prior to joining SOFINA in 1992, he had begun his career as a financial analyst in the asset management department of Générale de Banque, which has since joined the BNP group. He graduated from the Solvay business school in Brussels (1988), where he also gained a master’s degree in the management of tax affairs (1990).
Total Annual Compensation, EUR 20,507
Restricted Stock Award, EUR --
Long-Term Incentive Plans, EUR --
All Other, EUR --
Fiscal Year Total, EUR 20,507
Philippe Charrier
Yves Le Masne
Jean-Claude Brdenk
Sophie Kalaidjian
Brigitte Lantz
Laure Baume
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11849
|
__label__wiki
| 0.974809
| 0.974809
|
20 Years Ago: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Take a Stroll on ‘Walking into Clarksdale’
Michael Christopher
The excitement and success surrounding Jimmy Page and Robert Plant reconvening on the UnLedded project in 1994 not surprisingly carried over to calls for an official studio album from the former Led Zeppelin bandmates. Walking into Clarksdale, the first full-length collaboration on new songs from the duo in nearly two decades, was the result, coming out April 21, 1998.
Hopes were high for new material almost from the beginning, as the MTV-encouraged reunion saw the pair mingling in four new tracks, "City Don't Cry," "Yallah," "Wonderful One" and "Wah Wah" – a less-than unexpected return to their familiar Middle Eastern influences – into the unplugged set. An entire LP though, in a world that had witnessed grunge on its last legs, a failed Britpop invasion and the rise of tween pop, was uncertain at best.
Watching the clock tick by was hardly an option, as both Page and Plant had gone all in on UnLedded, shelving their respective solo careers. Neither had been particularly fruitful as of late with Plant having the critically acclaimed Fate of Nations in 1993 tanking on the charts and Page’s ill-fated alliance with David Coverdale that same year doing well out of the gate but quickly falling victim to the shifting musical landscape, getting the cold shoulder from mainstream audiences.
Revitalized by UnLedded, the unit only became tighter on tour to support it, as Page in particular needed to get familiar with a fresh cadre of musicians which Plant had brought along from his current solo endeavors in bassist Charlie Jones and drummer Michael Lee. The inflated lineup on the trek also featured a full orchestra to assist in best replicating the breadth of the Unplugged elements, but when it came time to decamp to the studio, things were drastically scaled down.
"After the last tour, working with the Egyptian orchestra, we wanted to go back and see how it felt to be a four-piece band and wail a bit," Plant told the Chicago Tribune at the time.
There were unsubstantiated reports John Paul Jones was asked to join in this time around, but that the estranged bass player infamously snubbed for UnLedded declined. Then, in an eyebrow-raising move, Page and Plant chose Steve Albini to produce the record, no doubt impressed by his recent run at the boards for the likes of Nirvana, Helmet and Bush, which at the very least screamed a pursuit of relevance.
"I could flatter myself and think they wanted to record with a hip producer, but I don't think of myself as particularly hip," Albini said. "Their recording method is very matter of fact, very old school, and there are very few people who make records that way anymore. And the fact that that is my preferred way of working I think appealed to them. They weren't trying to make a contemporary record at all.”
"It's kind of a daunting job because what are you going to do with Jimmy and Robert?" Plant mused on Albini’s thoughts. "Because they've already got a plot and maybe they don't care anymore. Maybe they're just doing it to pass the time.”
Fans expecting a retread of Led Zep’s greatest riffs would be out of luck. Whereas every single studio album in Zeppelin’s catalog kicked off with unrelenting bombast, Walking into Clarksdale is the exact opposite, as the languorous “Shining in the Light” – with its “The Weight”-like opening chord progression – eases the listener in, perhaps a nod to the aging rockers who had dug the more laid-back and palatable UnLedded. Still, there is no tidy container in which to fit the LP, and it ended up sonically in sort of a gray area, a mixture of the light and shade Page had endlessly pursued during Zeppelin’s reign, yet one which often came off as forced and uneven.
At times, the reunified team seemed to be working on entirely different fields of play; “Upon a Golden Horse,” with its orchestral inflections and attempts at '70s guitar crunch by Page were starkly contrasted by Plant’s tempered vocals. The jagged “Sons of Freedom” feels like the latter was being pushed down a road he didn’t want to tread, rather intent to continue down the path carved during his solo career while his musical partner attempted to lure him back with vestiges of the past.
“I’d rather be measured by what happened two years ago or two hours ago than what happened 25 years ago,” Plant said, confirming as much, in an EPK sent out prior to the record’s release. “There were times where we could’ve actually, I think, improved on certain parts by concentrating more and more but I think it would’ve taken away from the general feel of it. Hearkening back to Physical Graffiti, there are moments on that where things speed up, slow down and I’m singing out of tune – whatever it is – doesn’t matter because you capture the moment.”
To his point, much of Walking into Clarksdale was written on the fly, during the recording sessions, making for what Page would say was, “a very honest album, as far as the playing aspect of it goes.” Despite the somewhat scrambled assembly of the album, it took just 35 days to lay down, which might explain its unsteady nature.
Flashes of brilliance do exist; “When the World Was Young” slowly builds to a triumphant apex in its chorus which repeats throughout the song. “Blue Train,” both somber and explosive, is a showcase for Page’s fluid dexterity. “Please Read the Letter” is reminiscent of the prolific time spent by the two at Bron-Yr-Aur in 1970, resonating so much with Plant that he reconfigured the song as a hit single on his Album of the Year winning album with Alison Krauss, 2007’s Raising Sand. “Most High” was picked as a single, likely for being the track that came the closest to echoing Zeppelin. And while possibly against his better judgement, Plant lets the Golden God resurface here and there, like on “Burning Up” and “House of Love,” both propelled by Page’s thick and energized guitar work.
There are also instances of mellowness that wouldn’t be out of place on the soundtrack to a David Lynch film, like the moody and atmospheric “Heart in Your Hand” and wistful “When I Was a Child.” Fittingly, Plant made a crack in an interview with Dave Grohl for Ray Gun magazine that Walking into Clarksdale was, “all written for Harry Dean Stanton to act to.”
Walking into Clarksdale, its title an homage to the Mississippi Delta region where Led Zeppelin drew so much inspiration, never quite reached the heights of Page’s baby, even though his ambition was evident.
“I think the UnLedded shows how we got back together, and the new album shows why we got back together,” he said. Plant had a different take in retrospect, saying in 2003, "The truth is that Jimmy and I did cut a collection of songs that weren't immediately commercial and didn't emulate Led Zep. We did what we'd always done, we moved along."
Following the tour for Walking into Clarksdale, a lengthy jaunt that went from February through August, Plant gave up on the idea of going forward with Page. “I just didn’t want to do it anymore,” he said. “I’d just had enough.”
"I wanted to keep working, but Robert wouldn't hear of it," Page told Q Magazine. "Also, I wanted to eventually bring in John Paul Jones, but it was hard enough getting two of us together, never mind three."
Resigned to the reality that there was no changing his singer’s mind, Page went on to tour with the Black Crowes, performing music from both of their catalogs, while Plant absconded to his quiet farm in the Wales countryside dug even deeper into his past by hooking up with his old Band of Joy guitarist Kevyn Gammond. The two would tour as Priory of Brion, covering songs that influenced them as musicians.
"Here and there on [Walking into Clarksdale] were fantastic moments, but I had had enough of that whole idea, the great expectation," Plant said. "So I came back to the Welsh border and formed Priory of Brion, which was basically a supper act."
Next: Led Zeppelin Albums Ranked
Filed Under: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant
Categories: Anniversaries
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11850
|
__label__cc
| 0.546645
| 0.453355
|
The Great Hannibal Lecter Deep Dive
Posted on January 29, 2018 January 29, 2018 by TJDietsch
Do you ever get really excited about a deep dive, go full-boat into it and then wash out? Well, that’s kind of what happened last year when I found myself minorly obsessed with Hannibal Lecter and his exploits throughout television, film and, of course, the written word. I started watching the series, which made me read the books, while still watching the show (a very unique and interesting experience) and then the movies, but I petered out after seeing my third take on the Red Dragon story. But, I still wanted to get these thoughts out there, so here’s most of the original post I started sometime last spring.
For years, I’d been hearing great things about NBC’s three season-long series Hannibal based on Thomas Harris’ character made most famous in The Silence Of The Lambs. It ran from 2013-2015 with Mads Mikkleson starring as the title character and Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, a pure empath who FBI Behavioral Sciences head Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) brought back in from his teaching gig in an effort to help catch a serial killer. I decided to dive right into the series thanks to its presence on Amazon Prime Video and now have a new favorite show!
As the series begins, Graham and Lecter — who is a psychologist at this time, working in Baltimore — become friendly, but the more Graham works on these cases, the deeper he falls into what seems like his own psychosis. I got really into this show, you guys. First off, it’s got fascinating stories punctuated with such gruesome murders and deaths that I kept track for a time thinking they could make for a great list, but then remembered the show had been out of commission for a few years. You’ve got people grown into trees, honey comb victims and all manner of other creative poses and embarrassments heaped upon the corpses. Every single member of the cast brings their best and does an amazing job, especially the two leads who balance one another in all the best ways, especially when in the presence of these horrors.
But the show is also beautiful. Creator Bryan Fuller has said that he took inspiration from not only the novels, but also very visual directors like Kubrick and Hitchcock to fill the frame with fantastic treats for the eyes (if you want to hear him talk about this show as well as the rest of his career, check out the episode of Shock Waves he was on). This carries over into the gorgeous suits Hannibal wears and also the food he prepares (which almost makes you think about going cannibal if it meant you could eat with this guy…and not get eaten BY this guy).
I was so taken with Hannibal, that I decided to do something I’ve never done before: start reading the source material while enjoying the show. While at the library, I was happy to discover that Thomas Harris’ 1981 novel Red Dragon was just sitting there on the shelf. This book focuses on Crawford pulling Graham out of retirement to help him find the Tooth Fairy killer which leads to Graham meeting with Lecter, the man who cut up his stomach and lead to his retirement three years earlier.
I enjoyed the book and it’s procedural nature, but the real treat came in the form of recognizing bits and pieces from the book in the show. Of course, lines of dialog translated directly from one to the other, but Fuller and company also turned descriptions into conversations and dropped in other bits and pieces that made me smile every time I caught them. While some of the plot points in this book were peppered throughout the first season, it really came into play in the second half of the third, which finally tackled the Tooth Fairy killer.
To my surprise, I then tore through Silence Of The Lambs, a book I actually read once before when I was a kid. I was probably way too young for it and the follow-up Hannibal, but there you have it. Rights issues kept characters made solely for Silence from the show, which explains the lack of Clarice Starling, but her ghost hovers all over the place in the form of other characters including Will, Dr. Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas), Lecter’s shrink Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) and a former trainee of Crawford’s named Miriam Lass (Anna Chlumsky). In the end, it actually feels to me like the relationship between Hannibal and Will is more well-defined and earned than the one that develops between the madman and Clarice in the books. Of course, much of that comes from the longer form of the former and the increased amount of time I’ve spent with one version compared to the other.
I actually slowed down on watching the first half of season three because I was right in the middle of Hannibal (the book) and realized that there was going to be a lot of overlap between Lecter’s adventures in Italy and the confrontation with the Vergers. After finishing the novel, I got back into the series, but felt a little disconnected because I felt like I’d seen so many of the same beats in the book as in the show.
Next time I watch the series — I’m thinking of picking it up on Blu-ray because it’s SO PRETTY — I will not go the book route, but I’m glad I did it this time around because it added a lot more context, especially to the first two seasons which didn’t take as many plot points from the books.
Anyway, having finished the show, I’m still fascinated by the relationship between Hannibal and Will. In the Shock Waves interview I mentioned above, Fuller said that one of the most basic things he wanted to explore was a non-sexual male friendship between these two. I’m not so sure I’d want Hannibal for a friend given the wildly strange treatment he gave Will throughout these three seasons, but I hope something can be worked out so that we can see more of them in the future!
But, of course, you can’t really do a Hannibal Lecter deep dive without getting into the films themselves: Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), Jonathan Demme’s The Silence Of The Lambs (1994), Ridley Scott’s Hannibal (2001), Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon (2002) and Peter Webber’s Hannibal Rising (2007). After finishing the show and the books (minus Rising, which I just couldn’t bring myself to read), I dove into this in order of output.
I’d never actually seen Manhunter, but do remember knowing about it because it sat on the shelves at my beloved Family Video. It had come to mind again not long ago after I watched his episode of The Director’s Chair with Robert Rodriguez which was also fantastic. I added this film, Heat and Thief, but bumped the last one up to the top for reasons I can’t quite remember.
I’ve got to admit, this one felt like a disappointment in relation to what I’d already read and seen. It’s not that the plot changes bothered me — I appreciate those, especially with a story like this where I’d already read the book and seen the TV version — but it just felt like all style and zero substance. It was creepy and violent and intense, but there wasn’t much emotion to it. I’m sure it’d be a fun viewing experience as its own thing away from this deep dive, but I wasn’t satisfied this time around.
I then moved on to Silence Of The Lambs which I’ve seen and written about. I liked the film more this time than I did when I read it that time, but I still found myself liking the relationship between Will and Hannibal more than this one, though the performances are stellar. With that, I moved on to Hannibal, a film I still quite enjoy, even with the Julianne Moore casting switch. The last scene of that film SHOCKED me when I saw it the first time and I thought it was still effective this time around. I feel like this movie gets a bad wrap, but I had a good time with it.
Unfortunately, the deep dive faltered and ended with Red Dragon. I didn’t even have anything bad to say about that adaptation, but after experiencing the same story five times in such a small period of time, I was spent. I probably could have moved on to Rising, but by then I just didn’t have it in me anymore. It also didn’t help that the film producers basically blackmailed Harris into writing the book otherwise they’d just do whatever they wanted with the next film. That’s just not cool, dudes.
So, in the end, I walked away from this experience pleasantly surprised. Hannibal‘s easily one of my all-time favorite shows, I still think about it quite a bit even now and feel a re-watch coming on, possibly this year. I also can’t say enough about how interesting of an experience it was trading off between the books and the show, picking up all kinds of references my memory would not have allowed for otherwise. However, for me at least, it’s not a great idea to watch the films so close to the show because there’s just too many versions bouncing off of one another in that case. At the end of the day, though, whether he lives in your head as a book character or appears in the visages presented by Mikkleson, Hopkins or Cox, Hannibal Lecter remains one of the most interesting and complex villains in modern fiction.
Posted in Action, Best Of The Best, Book Review, Books, Classic, Drama, E-Book, Food, Horror, Movie Review, Movies, Mystery, Psychological ThrillerTagged Anthony Hopkins, Brett Ratner, Brian Cox, Bryan Fuller, Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal Rising, Hugh Dancy, Jodie Foster, Jonathan Demme, Laurence Fishburne, Mads Mikkelsen, Michael Mann, NBC, Red Dragon, Ridley Scott, The Silence Of The Lambs, Thomas HarrisLeave a comment
← Halloween Scene: Tremors (1990)
The Best Of Last Week: Gethard, Dragonball, Cap & More! →
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11851
|
__label__wiki
| 0.871395
| 0.871395
|
Claremont McKenna College News Pitzer College Pomona College
December 7, 2018 2:17 am January 30, 2019 10:43 am
News Bites — Week of Dec. 2
By Becky Hoving, Jaimie Ding and Samuel Breslow 9207 Views Claremont McKenna College, David Oxtoby, Jeff Huang, News Bites, Pitzer College, Pomona College, Sagehens
Claremont McKenna College’s Jeff Huang to become St. Paul’s School president
Jeff Huang, vice president for admission and financial aid at Claremont McKenna College, will be leaving later this year to become president of St. Paul’s School, a private independent school in Brooklandville, Maryland, according to an email President Hiram E. Chodosh sent to the CMC student body Dec. 6.
Huang has been a part of the CMC community since 1995, serving in various roles such as the associate dean of students and dean of campus life, as well as the dean of students and vice president for student affairs before assuming his current role.
In addition to his numerous administrative roles, Huang has been teaching the course “Philosophical Questions” for 35 semesters since 1997.
“Jeff has been a source of inspiration and support to the entire community for nearly three decades,” Chodosh wrote in the email.
A celebration will be held in the spring before Huang’s departure.
— Becky Hoving
Pitzer College Academic Planning Committee publishes green paper
The Pitzer College Academic Planning Committee released a paper assessing Pitzer’s financial situation and academic opportunities for students in an email sent to the Pitzer student body Dec. 3 by Student Senate representative Isaiah Kramer PZ ’20.
The paper discusses some of the challenges Pitzer has been facing, including retention rates, advising, students getting into classes for their major, and faculty overload.
According to the paper, Pitzer has an endowment of $135 million, which translates to only $124,000 per student, the lowest of the 5Cs. Pitzer also has the highest student to faculty ratio of 11:1 at the 5Cs and an enrollment deficit — students need to enroll in more classes than are offered — of 1,877, which is covered by students taking classes at other schools in the consortium.
The paper also discusses issues such as “mismatch between student interests and faculty interests, the mismatch between the number of major advisors and majors, the class size imbalance across fields, and imbalances in focus and governance.”
The paper is a “tentative report for debate and discussion,” and the APC “remains uncommitted to these ideas, but we have been discussing them.”
— Jaimie Ding
Trump administration removes environmental protections for Sagehens
A sage grouse inflates its bular sacs during a mating display. (Courtesy of Bob Wick/Bureau of Land Management)
Pomona-Pitzer’s mascot, Cecil the Sagehen, is technically a sage grouse, a near-threatened bird species that lives in sagebrush steppes throughout the west.
The Trump administration announced Dec. 6 that it plans to remove protections for the sage grouse, opening nine million acres of land to mining and drilling, The New York Times reports.
“Sagehens are strong, loyal and smart birds,” wrote Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr in a statement to TSL. “Our beloved mascot is an important part of the West. Let’s speak up for the Sage Grouse and the decades of work to protect its habitat!”
— Samuel Breslow
Former Pomona College President Oxtoby named director of American Academy of Arts and Sciences
David Oxtoby, who served as Pomona College’s president from 2003-2017, has been appointed the next director of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced Dec. 3.
The academy is one of the oldest honorary societies in the United States. It sponsors lectures and gatherings, provides nonpartisan policy advice to decision-makers, and produces several academic publications, according to its website.
Beckett Hall sewage leak forces 25 students to relocate
OPINION: Don’t take Orientation Adventure out for first-years
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11855
|
__label__cc
| 0.616515
| 0.383485
|
Tunbridge Tales
Stories of a spa town and its people
Disgusted Ladies
Research and Writing Services
About Tunbridge Tales
Category Archives: War
1916 The Ordinary Soldier
Posted on July 13, 2016 by annecarwardine
‘Price of the Big Push. Casualties of the Great Advance.’ This was a headline in the Courier newspaper on 11th August 1916, above a gallery of photographs of soldiers killed, injured or missing in action in the Great War. Their subjects are representative of the ordinary men who were caught up in the conflict, and of the gaps they would have left in the town’s life, as well as that of their families. They include gardeners, shop assistants, domestic servants, a book dealer, a print worker, a blacksmith and milkman George Quinnell.
George was born in Tunbridge Wells in 1885, the son of a grocer’s warehouseman. In 1901, aged sixteen, he was working as a grocer’s porter (possibly in the same business as his father). Ten years later (at the next census) he was a milkman, working in Tom Carter’s dairy at the foot of St James’ Road. George was an active member of the local branch of The Ancient Order of Forresters, a Friendly Society.
When war broke out in August 1914, large numbers of men enlisted (including 1,300 from the Tunbridge Wells area in the first six months). However, as time went on, voluntary enlistment was not happening on the scale required. Under the Derby Scheme, which was in operation from October to December 1915, all men between 18 and 40 were given the opportunity to volunteer immediately, or to ‘attest’ their willingness to serve when called on. In Tunbridge Wells the scheme was operated by the Council. Canvassers went from door to door with registration forms and around 1,600 local men attended the Drill Hall (in the Corn Exchange on the Pantiles) and signed up. George was one of them. Having attested, he probably went straight back to his work as a milkman, wearing a grey armband with a red crown, to signify that he had volunteered.
In March 1916, 31-year-old George was called up to the 7th Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment. The Battalion had been raised in September 1914, done their training in Colchester and on Salisbury Plan and travelled to France in July 1915. However, George had only three months’ training before he joined them overseas. Just a couple of weeks after that he was fighting in the Battle of Albert, the first of the Somme battles. The 7th Battalion were deployed to capture Trones Wood. An account published in the Sydney Morning Herald described what they faced there:
‘Meanwhile the West Kents were fighting in a blazing furnace. Their trenches were pounded to dust by high explosives, flame jets and gas were turned on at intervals and constant bomb attacks were made.’
The conditions George experienced – cramped trenches, acres of mud, barbed wire, machine gun fire, constant shelling and injured, dying and dead men all around him – were very different from the life he had left behind in Tunbridge Wells. They are inconceivable to us today.
George’s name on the Tunbridge Wells War Memorial
Meanwhile at home, George’s father and sisters Ellen and Edith waited for news. As reported in the Courier, they were informed in August 1916 that he was missing in action. One of his sisters appealed for information in the columns of the Kent Messenger around that time. But it was not until March 1917 that they learnt George had died on 13th July 1916, the final day of the Battle of Albert. George was an ordinary man, whose life left little trace. But it seems that he was a good man – the Courier’s report of this death said that he was respected and loved by all who knew him.
In a Friendly Society, such as the Ancient Order of Forresters, members contribute to a fund to be used for the welfare of the members or for their assistance when in need or distress.
George is buried in Serre cemetery, which was created in Spring 1917 when the Somme battlefield was cleared. The names of more than two thirds of the soldiers buried there are unknown.
On Saturday 9th July 2016, the Friends of Tunbridge Wells Cemetery, http://foftwc.wix.com/foftwc held a moving ceremony to commemorate the Tunbridge Wells men who gave their lives at the Somme.
Details of the impact of the First World War on Tunbridge Wells can be found in the Civic Society’s publication ‘The Shock of War.’
Wreaths laid at the Somme commemoration service
Posted in 20th Century, War | Leave a reply
1785. The Talkative Playwright
Cricket in Tunbridge Wells
The Bluestocking Visitor
The Friendly Fishmonger
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11856
|
__label__wiki
| 0.65368
| 0.65368
|
Another TV season ends with the wacky antics of Modern Family sending us sailing toward summer
Emily Todd VanDerWerff
Don’t Trust The B---- In Apartment 23
What's On Tonight
Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Wednesday, May 22. All times are Eastern.
Modern Family (ABC, 9 p.m.): Season finales are just the time for everybody in the cast to take a trip, but perhaps the Pritchett-Dunphy-Tuckers would rather they not be traveling to Florida for such sad reasons. See, Phil’s mom has just died, and for some reason, the entire family, instead of just the Dunphy clan, decides to head down to America’s wang to pay their respects. Along the way, wacky things will happen, Emmys will be won, and Donna Bowman will bid adieu to this show—and the TV season—until the fall rolls ‘round again.
REGULAR COVERAGE
Don’t Trust The B—— In Apartment 23 (Hulu, 5 p.m.): After this show’s untimely cancellation, Emily Guendelsberger feared she would never see it again. Instead, the series has popped up online for a week or two, and Emily’s going to review the remaining episodes on Wednesdays, two at a time.
The Middle (ABC, 8 p.m.): Axl’s graduating, and we’re as surprised as the rest of the Heck family to see that he might actually make it out of school and head off to college. Then again, knowing this show, he’ll probably still live at home. Will Harris longs for the day Axl will move out of his basement already.
Nashville (ABC, 10 p.m.): If there’s one thing this show has been missing, it’s a performance by Brad Paisley, singing a duet with Connie Britton. Well, you’re going to get one tonight in tonight’s season finale, as Todd VanDerWerff breathes a sigh of relief at these hooligans leaving his TV for a while.
Psych (USA, 10 p.m.): The guys suspect a plastic surgeon of murder, but, sadly, this isn’t an hour-long homage to the Carver season of Nip/Tuck. If it were, maybe the ultimate villain could be revealed to be Ryan Murphy himself, clad in a strange porcelain mask. Kevin McFarland would watch that endlessly.
TV CLUB CLASSIC
TV Roundtable (12 p.m.): David Sims just joined the TV Roundtable team, and he’s already making his first pick, like he’s all grown up! Now, he picked an episode of Friends, so we had to have a bit of a talking to with him about that, but we were happy it used the word “boobies” right there in the title.
Slings & Arrows (1 p.m.): Is it already time for the series finale? Well, we’re sad to hear about that, but we’re also pleased to have spent the last 18 weeks with you, checking out this wonderful show. At least, Todd VanDerWerff hopes you were checking it out. He’ll have those of you who weren’t removed.
WHAT ELSE IS ON
MasterChef (Fox, 8 p.m.): We’re undecided as to whether we’ll pick up this summer perennial for another year at TV Club. Phil Dyess-Nugent would like you to watch tonight, because if you don’t, maybe we’ll drop it and he’ll be reduced to quietly begging for scraps as his lower lip quivers in deep sadness.
900 Pound Man: The Race Against Time/The Town That Caught Tourette’s (TLC, 9 p.m.): It would appear that TLC is pulling out all the stops for the final night of the TV season. Is it just us, or does The Town That Caught Tourette’s sound like the title of a particularly terrible Outer Limits episode?
Devoured: Man-eating Super Snake Returns (Animal Planet, 9 p.m.): This might be just us, but if we knew of a “man-eating super snake,” we almost assuredly would not let it “return.” That just seems like a recipe for somebody to, well, get devoured by a man-eating super snake. Again, it would seem.
Chicago Fire (NBC, 10 p.m.): This trauma drama steadily grew into the kind of performer NBC needed, and now, it’s going to get one of the network’s prized post-Voice slots for its second season. In the meantime, Carrie Raisler checks in on the first season finale of the show to see how it all wraps up.
Marmaduke (Fox Movie Channel, 8 p.m.): Something about the existence of this movie always made us quiver in terror, then think about how much we always enjoyed Joe Mathlete’s blog, Marmaduke Explained. Young Mr. Mathlete perfected a kind of comics strip snark few have succeeded at.
Tron (BBC America, 8 p.m.): FX has been showing the late-to-appear sequel fairly often in the last few weeks, and we sort of thought the Disney corporation had had the original dragged out back and shot. But nope. Here it is, in all its cheesy glory. Witness the film’s oddly convoluted, yet enjoyable plot!
NBA Playoff: Game 1: Pacers at Heat (TNT, 8:30 p.m.): Well, everybody who doesn’t live in southern Florida. It would seem you’re all about to become fans of the Indiana Pacers, because you’re not sure who else you can cheer for. We regret to inform you that in two weeks, you’re going to be disappointed.
The Shield (Tuesday): We’ll be announcing a new Summer TV Club Classic schedule come Monday, but you’d better believe that we’re going to keep going with Brandon Nowalk’s excellent Shield reviews through the rest of the summer. Though it certainly would help if you guys would, uh, read them.
Recent from Emily Todd VanDerWerff
John Mulaney surprises us with his top 5 multi-camera sitcoms
Daniel Radcliffe tells us why he loves The Office
Frank’s Place celebrated the best of human life—and of New Orleans
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11857
|
__label__wiki
| 0.809104
| 0.809104
|
This Is No Time for Liberals to Give Up on Israel
Because of Netanyahu's bellicosity—and Republican support for it—it's now possible in Washington to argue about Israel. With so much at stake, liberals must.
Tonight most American Jews will sit down with family and friends for the Passover Seder. Whether they tell the story of redemption from slavery according to the Hebrew traditional text, a radical rewriting, or not at all, they'll eventually get to a sumptuous holiday meal and to conversation, often including politics.
Judging from the reaction of some of my close friends and respected colleagues to the Israeli election, one subject that liberal Jews—that is, most American Jews—won't want on the menu is Israel. The re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu has spoiled the taste beyond redemption. The manner of his victory—a lurch rightward, an unholy alliance with the GOP, a last-minute scare video about "droves" of Arab voters "advancing" on the polling places—has made talk of Israel even more bitter to the tongue. The tension in American Jewry between being liberal and being Zionist has been growing for years. But the election on March 17, 2015, may have been a breaking point.
Believe me, I understand. I live in Israel, I live politics, and I couldn't bear reading domestic news for a week after waking up to the results. For anyone on the left in Israel, the days since the election have been a mix of mourning, doubts, anger, unsuccessful denial, and—in the best case—shaking all that off to get ready to fight again.
And in that last mood, I ask American Jewish liberals to consider that this is the wrong moment to exile Israel from your minds and sympathies. Netanyahu's actions have finally created the opening in American politics to divorce support for Israel's basic security from support for Israeli policies. The opportunity has to be seized now, literally today, and Jewish liberals in the United States have a historic responsibility to grab it.
First, let me take another look at the Israeli election, seen with greater calm than on the morning after. The disaster of Netanyahu returning to the prime minister's office is real. But it has distracted attention from important nuances. For instance, the ultra-Orthodox bloc lost more than a quarter of its parliamentary strength, defying conventional wisdom of its ineluctable rise. The right-wing party known as Israel Is Our Home won just six seats—down from the 15 it won the last time it ran on its own. Moldovan-born Avigdor Lieberman built that party on a base of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, most of whom arrived in the 1990s. The immigrants and their children have integrated into wider society, and are no longer Lieberman's captive right-wing constituency.
Ironically, the immigrant experience that does matter dates to Israel's early years, when the then-ruling socialist, secular, European-born establishment looked upon Jews arriving from the Muslim world as backward and treated them with contempt. Ever since, the left has struggled to get votes from them, their children, and their grandchildren. The left's charisma-challenged candidate in this election, Isaac Herzog, totally missed his Sister Souljah opening. At a mass rally of anti-Netanyahu forces, one speaker included in his list of the evil groups "who rule over us" a derisive reference to Jews from Muslim countries as "amulet-kissers." The speech was national news; Herzog's bland press release dissociating himself ended up at the bottom of news stories.
Another oft-overlooked facet of Netanyahu's victory: The combined strength of the right and ultra-Orthodox parties actually slid from a bare majority of 61 seats in the 120-member parliament to a plurality of 57. Netanyahu's expected coalition will be entirely dependent for its continued existence on the new centrist Kulanu ("All of Us") party, moderately hawkish on foreign policy, populist on economics. The coalition could last out a four-year term—but could easily collapse over writing a budget or coping with a diplomatic crisis.
More blatantly, Netanyahu burned his bridges with the White House and many congressional Democrats with his speech to Congress, his disavowal of a two-state solution, and his racist Election Day appeal. The Obama administration's reassessment of casting automatic vetoes to shield Israel from Security Council resolutions is much too late in coming, but we can thank Netanyahu for bringing it. Nancy Pelosi's statement, issued after Netanyahu's address to Congress, blasting it as an "insult to the intelligence of the United States," was unimaginable beforehand, even though such insults started long before March 2015. Likewise for Dianne Feinstein's on-air criticism of Netanyahu's "arrogance" in claiming to speak for all Jews.
When I first read Pelosi's statement, I dismissed her prefatory paragraph about America's "unshakeable commitment to Israel's security" as unavoidable lip service before she let go at Netanyahu. In retrospect, I was too cynical. Pelosi was speaking straight. Allow me to rephrase her words: Please take the idea that the GOP now stands for Israel and put it in the trash can. The Republicans stand for support of Netanyahu. Democrats support Israel, but they can and should oppose Israeli policies that are bad for America and bad for Israel. It's now possible in Washington to argue about Israel.
For Democrats to embrace that stance, though, they need political cover. They need to hear from voters, and especially Jewish voters, that they will maintain and gain support. When an organization such as the American Jewish Congress gathers signatures on a letter congratulating Netanyahu for his victory, Democratic politicians need to hear that it's not speaking for their voters.
They need to hear that repeating the fib of "undivided Jerusalem," as Hillary Clinton did last time she ran, is not a vote magnet. Quite bluntly, they need to know that if they criticize Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) stops sending donors in their direction, those checks will be replaced by other donors who support a two-state solution and a truly democratic Israel.
There is no time to waste. The Iran negotiations produced an interim agreement yesterday—which means that the political battle in Congress over supporting or blocking a full accord begins now. If, as reported, France plans to submits a new resolution to the Security Council by mid-April, setting out a binding framework for a two-state solution, the White House has a very tight schedule for reassessing its veto policy.
Until the current crisis, American acquiescence has enabled the Israeli right to continue pursuing self-destructive policies. The attitude that no one in Washington should criticize Israel is something that has developed over time. It's hard to remember now, but the Johnson administration co-wrote Security Council Resolution 242, which set withdrawal from occupied territory as a requirement for peace. The Ford administration's ambassador to the United Nations, William Scranton, said in a speech to the Security Council that Israeli settlements were illegal.
The fear of public disagreement with an Israeli government isn't just the product of lobbying by groups that claim to represent American Jews. The theocrats' takeover of the Republican Party is at least as significant. But the lobbying has played an important role, and Jewish liberals bear responsibility for letting those organizations speak to politicians in their name.
I understand: There are so many other issues that matter to liberals, and that are so much less painful to talk about. But avoiding the Israel issue has done damage. It has allowed Netanyahu to act as if there is no price for intransigence. Right now, there's a chance to change that, and to help create the Israel you'd like to see. It's no time to sigh and change the subject.
The Border Crisis Is Fracturing the Democratic Party
David Dayen
The Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia emphasized immigration cruelties, as the party leadership struggles to respond, opting for backbiting instead of action.
Donald Trump's Race-Based Re-Election Campaign
The president's 2020 campaign will be much like his 2016 campaign, only more so.
Netanyahu's Desperation Is the One Certainty Left in Israel
The surprise new election shows just how unpredictable a legally cornered leader can be.
Gershom Gorenberg is a senior correspondent for The Prospect. He is the author of The Unmaking of Israel, of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 and of The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. He blogs at South Jerusalem. Follow @GershomG.
Articles By Gershom Gorenberg
RSS feed of articles by Gershom Gorenberg
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11859
|
__label__cc
| 0.715435
| 0.284565
|
Let’s assume that it is a logarithmic, base 10 scale, and that it takes 10 properly linked new pages to move a site’s important page up 1 toolbar point. It will take 100 new pages to move it up another point, 1000 new pages to move it up one more, 10,000 to the next, and so on. That’s why moving up at the lower end is much easier that at the higher end.
Organic SERP listings are the natural listings generated by search engines based on a series of metrics that determines their relevance to the searched term. Webpages that score well on a search engine's algorithmic test show in this list. These algorithms are generally based upon factors such as the content of a webpage, the trustworthiness of the website, and external factors such as backlinks, social media, news, advertising, etc.[3][4]
85. Use of Google Analytics and Google Search Console: Some think that having these two programs installed on your site can improve your page’s indexing. They may also directly influence rankings by giving Google more data to work with (ie. more accurate bounce rate, whether or not you get referral traffic from your backlinks etc.). That said, Google has denied this as a myth.
The Google toolbar range is from 1 to 10. (They sometimes show 0, but that figure isn’t believed to be a PageRank calculation result). What Google does is divide the full range of actual PageRanks on the web into 10 parts – each part is represented by a value as shown in the toolbar. So the toolbar values only show what part of the overall range a page’s PageRank is in, and not the actual PageRank itself. The numbers in the toolbar are just labels.
Trust is another important bucket that you need to be aware of when you are trying to get your site to rank in Google. Google doesn’t want to show just any website to it’s searchers, it wants to show the best website to its searchers, and so it wants to show sites that are trustworthy. One thing Google has indicated it likes to do is penalize sites or stores or companies that consistently have poor reviews, so if you have many poor reviews, in time Google is going to figure out not to show your site in their rankings because Google doesn’t want to show those sites to their searchers. So prove to Google’s algorithm that you are trustworthy. Get other highly authoritative websites to link to you. Get newspaper articles, get industry links, get other trusted sites to link to you: partners, vendors, happy customers - get them to link to your website to show that you are highly credible and trustworthy.
One thing to bear in mind is that the results we get from the calculations are proportions. The figures must then be set against a scale (known only to Google) to arrive at each page’s actual PageRank. Even so, we can use the calculations to channel the PageRank within a site around its pages so that certain pages receive a higher proportion of it than others.
In an effort to make the user search experience easier and more direct, Google created SERP features, on-page content that gives users answers to their queries without requiring them to click into an organic result. Although on-page SERP features are optimal for the user, they can make it harder for marketers to get noticed in organic search results, even when they're ranking #1.
Affiliate marketing - Affiliate marketing is perceived to not be considered a safe, reliable and easy means of marketing through online platform. This is due to a lack of reliability in terms of affiliates that can produce the demanded number of new customers. As a result of this risk and bad affiliates it leaves the brand prone to exploitation in terms of claiming commission that isn’t honestly acquired. Legal means may offer some protection against this, yet there are limitations in recovering any losses or investment. Despite this, affiliate marketing allows the brand to market towards smaller publishers, and websites with smaller traffic. Brands that choose to use this marketing often should beware of such risks involved and look to associate with affiliates in which rules are laid down between the parties involved to assure and minimize the risk involved.[47]
Now imagine you had that brochure on your website instead. You can measure exactly how many people viewed the page where it's hosted, and you can collect the contact details of those who download it by using forms. Not only can you measure how many people are engaging with your content, but you're also generating qualified leads when people download it.
A navigational page is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines will also visit this page, getting good crawl coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.
This is, in fact, the most common question that people ask a webmaster. I have put together a comprehensive article which explains how does a page ranking algorithm works in Google. You can read the article here. This article helps a new user as well as experienced user to pump up the page ranking via amplifying page ranks. Google page rank understanding? SEO 2019 | ShutterholicTV SEO Guide
I find that companies without a digital strategy (and many that do) don't have a clear strategic goal for what they want to achieve online in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones. And if you don't have goals with SMART digital marketing objectives you likely don't put enough resources to reach the goals and you don't evaluate through analytics whether you're achieving those goals.
For example, to implement PPC using Google AdWords, you'll bid against other companies in your industry to appear at the top of Google's search results for keywords associated with your business. Depending on the competitiveness of the keyword, this can be reasonably affordable, or extremely expensive, which is why it's a good idea to focus building your organic reach, too.
Hi, Norman! PageRank is an indicator of authority and trust, and inbound links are a large factor in PageRank score. That said, it makes sense that you may not be seeing any significant increases in your PageRank after only four months; A four-month old website is still a wee lad! PageRank is a score you will see slowly increase over time as your website begins to make its mark on the industry and external websites begin to reference (or otherwise link to) your Web pages.
With offline marketing, it's very difficult to tell how people are interacting with your brand before they have an interaction with a salesperson or make a purchase. With digital marketing, you can identify trends and patterns in people's behavior before they've reached the final stage in their buyer's journey, meaning you can make more informed decisions about how to attract them to your website right at the top of the marketing funnel.
The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. The Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ, two major directories which closed in 2014 and 2017 respectively, both required manual submission and human editorial review.[39] Google offers Google Search Console, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that are not discoverable by automatically following links[40] in addition to their URL submission console.[41] Yahoo! formerly operated a paid submission service that guaranteed crawling for a cost per click;[42] however, this practice was discontinued in 2009.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11861
|
__label__cc
| 0.541078
| 0.458922
|
Category Archives: Virtual Tour of St. John Lateran
The Amazing Archbasilica of St. John Lateran is a UNESCO Site in Rome Italy
English: Basilica of St. John Lateran – apse Italiano: Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano – l’abside Polski: Bazylika św. Jana na Lateranie – apsyda (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Papal Archbasilica of St. John Lateran (San Giovanni in Laterano) is Rome’s cathedral. It serves as the the official ecclesiastical seat of the Pope as the Bishop of Rome. Pope Benedict celebrated the Mass for the feast of Corpus Christi here and then lead a Corpus Christi procession along Rome’s Via Merulana, which links the basilicas of St. John Lateran and St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore).
English: Doctors of the Church. Attic of the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Rome). Français : Docteurs de l’Église. Attique de la basilique Saint-Jean-de-Latran (Rome). Italiano: Dottori della Chiesa. Attico della Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (Roma). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
On the roofline, note the statues of the Doctors of the Church: Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, and Pope Gregory I who were the original Doctors of the Church in 1298. Doctors of the church are individuals who are recognized as having special importance, usually regarding their contributions to theology or church doctrine.
Doctors of the Church. Attic of the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Rome). Français : Docteurs de l’Église. Attique de la basilique Saint-Jean-de-Latran (Rome). Italiano: Dottori della Chiesa. Attico della Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (Roma). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Basilica of St. John Lateran, cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, Italy. Español: Basílica de San Juan de Letrán, catedral del Obispo de Roma, Italia. Italiano: Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, Roma Polski: Bazylika św. Jana na Lateranie (znana jako Bazylika Laterańska), katedra biskupa Rzymu, Włochy. Português: Basílica de São João de Latrão, catedral do Bispo de Roma, Itália. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
St. Matthew by Camillo Rusconi. Nave of the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Rome). Français : Saint Matthieu, par Camillo Rusconi. Nef de la basilique Saint-Jean-de-Latran (Rome). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Pope’s chair, Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, Roma, Italy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here’s a virtual tour of St. John Lateran http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_giovanni/vr_tour/index-en.html
Lateran papal altar
English: Basilica of St. John Lateran – detail Italiano: Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano – un particolare Polski: Bazylika św. Jana na Lateranie – herb (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The archbasilica contains the papal throne (Cathedra Romana) that is located in the Aspe behind the papal altar http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_giovanni/vr_tour/Media/VR/Lateran_Nave1/index.html. The altar contains the skulls of St. Peter and St. Paul.
Lateran ceiling
There are interesting sites in the complex. I love the ornate ceiling and the beautiful statues.
St. Andrew by Camillo Rusconi. Nave of the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Rome). Français : Saint André, par Camillo Rusconi. Nef de la basilique Saint-Jean-de-Latran (Rome). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The decorated ceiling of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, Italy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Take time to visit the charming cloister
San Giovanni in Laterano (cloister) (Photo credit: MarcelGermain)
Here’s a virtual tour ot the cloister http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_giovanni/vr_tour/Media/VR/Lateran_Cloister/index.html.
Basilica of St. John Lateran – statue of St. John Italiano: Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano – la statua di san Giovanni Polski: Bazylika św. Jana na Lateranie – figura św. Jana Apostoła (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The ancient baptistery was also built by Constantine and was converted from a Roman temple. The Lateran Baptistery is one of the oldest in Christendom. The present name is a result of the importance of the baptistry of the church, and of the presence of a Benedictine monastery dedicated to Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. Here’s a Virtual tour of the Baptistery: http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_giovanni/vr_tour/Media/VR/Lateran_Baptistery/index.html
English: St. James the Great by Camillo Rusconi. Nave of the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Rome). Français : Saint Jacques le Majeur, par Camillo Rusconi. Nef de la basilique Saint-Jean-de-Latran (Rome). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Lateran baptistery building
San Giovanni in Laterano was the first cathedral of Rome. This was the first Constantinian Basilica and is the oldest basilica in the world, founded in 311 and consecrated in 324. Emperor Constantine gave Pope Melchiades a parcel of imperial property for a church and a papal residence. It was known as “Lateran” because the property previously belonged to the family of Plautius Lateranus of the former Roman Empire. The Laterani lost their properties to Emperor Constantine who in turn gave it to the Christian Church in 311. The basilica suffered extensive damage during the earthquake of 896 and was restored by Sergius III who dedicated it to St. John the Baptist. Later, Saint John the Evangelist was added as a patron of this church by another pope.
English: Main façade of the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Rome) by Alessandro Galilei, 1735. Italiano: Facciata principale della Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (Roma), progettata da Alessandro Galilei (1735). Français : Façade principale de la basilique Saint-Jean-de-Latran (Rome) par Alessandro Galilei, 1735. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The popes lived in the Lateran Palace adjacent to the church until Clement V (1305-14) transferred the papal seat to Avignon in France. The popes lived at Palazzo Laterano from the time of Constantine until 1304 when the Papacy moved to Avignon. When the popes returned to Rome in 1377, the papacy moved to the Vatican. Excavations beneath the basilica have uncovered pagan buildings and foundations of the 4th century Constantinian basilica.
San Giovanni in Laterano (Photo credit: sgatto)
Lateran Palace on the left of the obelisk
The central bronze doors came from the Curia of the Roman Senate in the Forum. The Holy Door is on the far right. The main travertine facade is on Piazza di Porta Giovanni with five entrances that lead to the portico with five more doorways.
Lateran door
On the top front entrance of the basilica, Jesus Christ is carrying a cross. He is surrounded by St. John the Evangelist, St. John the Baptist and the Doctors of the Church.
Lateran roofline with Jesus and saints
In 1646, the basilica was in danger of collapsing so Pope Innocent X gave the task of restoring it to Francesco Borromini. Pope Innocent X had the interior completely remodeled by Borromini in preparation for the Jubilee (Holy Year) of 1650. It was during Borromini’s restoration that the church was given its Baroque appearance. The eastern façade was created in 1736 by Alessandro Galilei with statues of saints welcoming visitors.
In front of the north facade ( adjacent to the Lateran Palace) you can find the Lateranense obelisk. It is the tallest obelisk in Rome that dates back to 1500 B.C. and weighs over 230 tons. The red granite obelisk in the square in front of the Lateran Palace was originally commissioned by Pharaoh Thuthmose III and completed by his grandson Thutmose IV and stood in the temple of Amun in Karnak. It was placed in the Circus Maximus until Pope Sixtus V had Fontana re-erect it in this square in 1588 in place of the equstrian statue of Marcus Aurelius that was moved to the Capitoline Hill.
Lateran obelisk inscription
Lateran obelisk
Lateran rear entrance
The Renaissance coffered ceiling is attributed to Pirro Ligorio and was started in 1562 during the pontificate of Pius IV.
The apsidal mosaic was restored by friars who were commissioned by Nicholas IV (1288-1292). The apse mosaic depicts the miraculous appearance of Christ in the basilica’s apse at the time of its consecration by Pope Sylvester.
There are beautiful statues in the nave in grey marble aedicules. The statues are flanked by verde antico columns.
Lateran coffered ceiling and apse mosaic
Lateran Saint Peter
The monumental tomb of Leo XIII by Giulio Tadolini is over a door leading to the Sacristy.
The archbasilica has a lavishly decorated interior. The Lancelloti Chapel was designed by Francesco da Volterra and rebuilt by Giovanni Antonio de Rossi. The “Saint Francis of Assisi recieves the stigmata” painting was done by Giovanni Battista Puccetti in the altarpiece.
Lateran fresco
Lateran fresco Mary Immaculate by Placido Costanzi
There are additional parts of the Lateran complex worth visiting in close proximity to the church. Walk over to the Scala Sancta to see the Sancta Sanctorum and the Triclinium of Pope Leo III These Holy Stairs are particularly attractive for Christian pilgrims who wish to honor the Passion of Jesus. These are the marble stairs that were brought to Rome from Jerusalem in 326 AD by Saint Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine. These are the stairs that Jesus climbed on his way to his trial with Pontius Pilate; the staircase leading once to the praetorium of Pontius Pilate at Jerusalem .
The Scala Sancta (Holy Stairs) consists of twenty-eight wooden steps that encase white marble steps and are sanctified by the footsteps of Jesus Christ during his Passion. The marble stairs are visible through openings in the wooden risers. The stairs are located in a building which incorporates part of the old Lateran Palace, located opposite the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. They are located next to a church which was built on ground brought from Mount Calvary. The stairs lead to the Sancta Sanctorum ( Holy of Holies) which is the personal chapel of the early Popes in the Lateran palace, known as the chapel of St. Lawrence.
Dr. EveAnn Lovero writes Italy Travel Guides. To learn more about Rome visit www.vino-con-vista.com
The Basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo al Cielo in Rome
Our Daily Burnt Bread: How Rome Celebrates The First of May
San Marco is the Church of the Venetian Community in Rome (vinoconvistablog.me)
Insights into the Vatican in Italy: UNESCO’s Holy City (vinoconvistablog.me)
Visit Magnificent Churches on Rome’s Esquiline Hill (vinoconvistablog.me)
The Beautiful Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome Italy (vinoconvistablog.me)
Filed under Ancient Rome, Attractions in Rome near the Capitoline Museums, Churches in Rome, Corpus Christi, ebooks, Emperor Constantine, Holy Week in Rome, IPad, Italian Architecture, Italian art, Italy, Italy Travel Guides, Papal ceremony in Rome for the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Alexander VII, Pope Julius II, Renaissance Art, Renaissance Artists, Roman Architecture, Roman Emperors, Rome, Rome History, Rome Italy, Sacred Art in Rome, Saint Peter, Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome Italy, St. Peter in Glory, St. Peter's Basilica, Travel and Tourism, Uncategorized, UNESCO, vino con vista, Virtual Tour of St. John Lateran
Tagged as Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, Basilica of St. John Lateran, Bishop of Rome, Catholic Church, Church of Rome, Corpus Christi, Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, IPod, Italy, Lateran, Lateran Baptistery, Pontius Pilate, Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, Rome, Scala Sancta, St. John Lateran Basilica, St. Peter's Basilica, The Passion, Vatican CIty
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11862
|
__label__wiki
| 0.967023
| 0.967023
|
GSO records piece written by Batavia teenager
Batavia music teacher Jane Haggett recalls the time years ago when her student, Ross Chua, came barrelling into a performance, still dressed in his Tae Kwon Do uniform.
He grabbed his trumpet and, still in uniform, belted out a number for a “Music in Our Schools” program.
“That’s part of the reason why Ross is the way he is,” she said. “He has strong support from his family, taking him to different activities, and he has a passion for whatever he does.”
Ross is 17 now, far removed from that performance about seven years ago.
He is a senior at Batavia High School and still maintains that passion for music.
Last week, he sat in a chair in the band room at school, a room full of musicians from the Genesee Symphony Orchestra.
This time, though, Ross was not performing. He was watching and listening and smiling.
Ross became the first student in Haggett’s 26 years as a teacher to compose an original symphony piece, tentatively titled “Spectacle in Flight.”
“He took my music theory class and I knew something was there,” Haggett said. “He understood theory and how music is written. It interested him.”
Ross wants to major in music composition in college and has to submit original compositions as part of the application process.
The GSO agreed to perform and record the piece, which was done last week and is one of three Ross has written in the past year.
The other two were shorter compositions. “Spectacle in Flight” chimes in at about seven minutes, with six movements.
Why the title?
“When it’s in my head, I feel it’s something to marvel at,” Ross says. “It’s like when I look at something marvelous. I wanted that spectacle. Then there’s the flying part. There’s been a lot of bird symbolism in my life.”
His aunt died last year. Her favorite song was “Free Bird.”
His mother, Allison Chua, chose songs for her children when they were born. Ross’s song?
“Close to You” by the Carpenters, with it’s catchy verse “Why do birds suddenly appear?”
The last two plays Ross will be a part of at school are
“Peter and Wendy” and “Mary Poppins.”
“Spectacle in Flight” hopes to capture that spirit of soaring majestically through the air.
It wasn’t an easy process.
Ross began writing his composition last summer. He finished two movements, set it aside, and went about his life, a busy one at that.
Then, during winter break, he got inspired, with help from another aunt and music teacher Sean Williams.
“I’ve been working with Ross for four years with Batavia Trumpet Ensemble,” Williams said. This year we’ve been honing his composing talents by taking part and reassembling musical motifs in his composition and coming up with new ways to look at musical ideas.”
The result was four more movements and a finished composition.
“In my 30 years in music, Ross is by far the quickest and most prolific young composer I’ve worked with,” Wiliams said. “I’m very proud with the work he’s done and look forward to bigger and better things in the future.”
Needless to say, his family is proud, too.
“Even as an infant, Ross created music in his crib, humming all the time,” Allison Chua says. “I believe whole-heartedly that Ross’ talents were God-given.”
Ross lives with his parents on Trumbull Parkway. His dad is Dave Chua, a financial advisor.
Both were in attendance for the recording session, which featured the full GSO with guest conductor Nicholas DelBello of Buffalo.
For Ross, watching his piece come to life was exhilarating.
“I love to perform but to watch them to do it was incredible,” he said. “My idea of a music career is not to play but to write. The GSO had my composition for about a week but they are so professional and they picked it up quickly. It was a brilliant sound. My job was just to follow the score and explain and answer questions.”
Ross is hoping to attend Ithaca State College but also has applied to Fredonia and Syracuse.
While music composition is limited as far as jobs, Ross does see a number of areas where he can use such a degree, including scoring films and Broadway productions or creating original pieces for orchestras.
There’s not much doubt among his family, friends and teachers that Ross could do anything he puts his mind to.
He’s a top 10 student, assistant director of the Drama Club, band president, he works at Habitat for Humanity and is a member of the choir at Northgate Methodist Church and an active participant in the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership program. He also plays tennis and was a top member of the champion Scholastic Bowl Team that was the first Batavia team to go to nationals ion Washington.
Despite his many accomplishments, Ross, as Haggett explained, is “humble.”
“That’s one of the best things about Ross is that he’s humble,” she said. “That will work for him down the road. He’s definitely going to have success.”
Humble and thankful. The last thing Ross added during an interview was to thank everyone who has helped him, from his many music teachers and, especially, his family.
“They were all so supportive,” he said. “My family was the first to hear my piece. They gave me advice and encouraged me.”
by Scott Desmit, The Daily News (2/6/2016)
For online article, click here!
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11863
|
__label__cc
| 0.676603
| 0.323397
|
Have we replaced journalism articles with mindless gossip columnists? Essay
Length: 915 words (2.6 double-spaced pages)
Rating: Better Essays
Celebrity gossip is becoming something everyone is staying to know about from such celebrities as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Ben Cousins, Miley Cyrus etc. These celebrities are being to take over news articles, internet articles and now also in magazine articles. This has pushed journalism articles to the back of the magazines and newspaper articles and has made them less important and has made these articles much smaller which is showing less importance. This can be seen in (____).Have we become so caught up in finding out gossip that we have left the real news article behind? Our society is becoming more and more obsessed with celebrities either for music, movies or just for their name in Hollywood. If you were to simply read a blog, watch commercial news or read Australia's largest selling magazines, we would be pushing ourselves to be able to find any or very little, if any, information on world issues unless it is a disaster or something that everyone will need to know. The sad reality is that it requires a tragic natural disaster before our media realizes that there are other world issues of more importance than that of Hollywood or the sporting arenas. Our society has lost touch with the political, humanitarian and economic plights of nations if within Australia or outside Australia. Our focus is becoming more caught up in celebrity marriages, affairs, births, deaths and adoptions or the latest sports hero, drug abuser, tribunal or 'out-of hours' brawl. Instead of focusing on what is happening with Australian finance or with local issues or with outside issue in other countries.
Currently, Australia's number one selling magazine is Australia's Women's Weekly (gossip magazine) whilst the more education Time Magazine is r...
...on focus. Entertainment has become more profitable than intellectual pursuits and consequently given rise to the increased volume. In our current life’s we have to put up with the gossip columns and get used to the 'fluffy' journalism until someone is able to stand up for journalism articles and to say something that will hopefully give journalism more importance over gossip.
Magazine Publishers of Australia, 2008, Top 100 Readership Profile, viewed 25ft May 2008
Davies, K. 2008, Bulletin Closure 'no surprise'. Viewed May 31s11008,
Jackson, K. 2006, Media Ownership Regulation in Australia, viewed 30th May 2008, http://www.aph.gov.au/librarv/INTGUIDE/SP/mediaregulations.htm>
Media Spy, 2007, Ratings, viewed 31st May 2008,
Collier, K., 2008. Party-Boy Corey most downloaded, viewed 31st May 2008, www.news.comJau/heraldsun.
Celebrity Gossip Is Not Bad Essay
- Olimpio, Elena SOC 150 Professor Dr. McDonald September 19, 2014 Assignment #1 In today’s society, human beings feel the need to read about other people’s lives in order to be entertained. Rather than taking interest in other activities like reading or the arts, people take interest in celebrity gossip. Society takes an interest in celebrity gossip because it is entertainment for them or it makes them feel better about themselves. Either way, people are reading more on celebrity gossip rather than picking up a good book and reading that instead.... [tags: Celebrity, People, Gossip columnist, Emotion]
Better Essays
Essay about The Nature of Shakespearean Gossip in Much Ado About Nothing
- Even from its title, Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing epitomizes the modern day phrase “to make a mountain out of a molehill.” Comparable to today’s celebrity gossip magazines, the play sheds light on the nature of gossip during Shakespeare’s time and the receptiveness of the Shakespearean community towards rumor and humiliation. In this particular play, despite not having any speaking parts, the implied effect that society has in the overall picture of the play is tremendous. Intensifying the effect of the main conflict and conveying the tendencies of human nature to trust in deception, society and its thirst for the latest gossip recruits characters and readers alike as spectator... [tags: gossip magazine, heroes, borachio]
Mindless Monster : A Destructive Monster Essay
- The main purpose of this chapter is: to explain how each one of us has a Mindless Monster and some more than one. The role of our Mindless Monster is to keep us in a negative thought process, what prevents us from "being in the moment" and enjoying life to its fullest. Mindless Monsters transpire from negativity and stress; when we find ourselves struggling, these monsters prosper. While every individual’s Mindless Monster reflects different connotations, they tend to reflect two mindsets – perfectionism or self-neglect.... [tags: Communication, Mind, Thought]
Essay on Gossip in the Workplace
- Gossip accounts for sixty-five percent of speaking time in our everyday conversations (Grosser et al., 2010). Not surprisingly, gossip is a common form of communication that is highly prevalent in our social lives, especially within the workplace. While gossip tends to hold negative connotations, research suggests that gossip may serve as a healthy social activity, creating unity and bringing people together. Gossip may have the power to strengthen group bonds, create stronger group identification, and foster greater interpersonal ties (Mills, 2010).... [tags: Business Management ]
The Debate On Privacy On The United States Essay
- In the most recent years there has been a debate on privacy. Society typically puts out the notion that everyone deserves privacy because it is their natural right. However, society also tends to go back on this notion when the debate involves celebrities and their right to privacy. Before the rapid use of technology no one truly had an insight on the lives of any celebrity. In a sense the United States could possibly be broken into two different sections, one being famous people, and the other one being ordinary people.... [tags: Celebrity, People, Gossip columnist, Privacy]
Essay on Mindless Machines
- Mindless Machines The official foundations for "artificial intelligence" were set forth by A. M. Turing, in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" wherein he also coined the term and made predictions about the field. He claimed that by 1960, a computer would be able to formulate and prove complex mathematical theorems, write music and poetry, become world chess champion, and pass his test of artificial intelligences. In his test, a computer is required to carry on a compelling conversation with humans, fooling them into believing they are speaking with another human.... [tags: Essays Papers]
Mindless Humans Essay
- Humans have been socially networked with each other since the time they have been created. Civilization was fashioned by humans interacting with one another. With this interaction with others and communal peers, “social man is a somnambulist” (Asch 61). In other terms, when humans become social, they are really “sleep walking”, or following the crowd, even though belief in the western world has it that people are “free” to choose for themselves. This sleepwalking factor then turns individuals into mindless ants.... [tags: essays research papers fc]
Celebrities and Gossip Essay
- Celebrities and Gossip Have you seen the pictures of Madonna and her baby yet. Have you ever surfed the web and stumbled onto a site about celebrities. Probably so. There are thousands of sites on the web about celebrities; their official web sites, pictorials and biographical information. You can’t even go into a supermarket without being bombarded by tabloids.You can’t listen to the radio in the car. TV shows and whole networks rely on entertainment and celebrities in the news. VH1, MTV and E.... [tags: Media Tabloids Journalism Essays]
Gossip Essay
- Gossip Gossip, as defined by the Webster's New World Dictionary, is "one who chatters idly about others". I feel that gossiping is ethically wrong. Gossiping is usually done by talking about people behind their backs, which is very painful to that person being talked about. No one wants to be talked about, whether the information is true or not. The people doing the gossiping often feel they are doing it to better themselves and get caught up in the trap of trying to make themselves feel better by putting others down.... [tags: Papers]
gossip girl Essay
- From this review: "Nothing I say in this review can bring justice to master storyteller Cecily Von Ziegesar, whose research comes from her own life as an upper eastside, New York City teen. She has a reality-based knack for bringing cigarette-and-pot smoking rich kids into three-dimensional color. As naughty as these characters seem on every page, they are revealed to be real kids wanting to fit into accepted, meaningful lives as much as sleek clothes..” Rich girl Blair Waldorf is about to discover what it’s like to not get her way.... [tags: essays research papers]
Question Answer Relationship Strategy
Sherman's Great Compromise
The Dark Side of Clean Energy: Uranium and Its Forgotten History
IMPACT OF POOR GOVERNANCE AND INCOME INEQUALITY ON POVERTY IN PAKISTAN
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11865
|
__label__wiki
| 0.743104
| 0.743104
|
Posts tagged ‘Republican Party’
America’s Youngest Black Legislator Is a Pro-Life, Pro-God Breath of Fresh Air
Reported By Bryan Chai | January 13, 2019 at 12:24pm
URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/americas-youngest-black-legislator-pro-life-pro-god-breath-fresh-air/
I despise identity politics. To reduce one’s worth or meaning to an arbitrary feature or characteristic like skin color is the antithesis of progress. It’s no secret that leftists and Democrats love their identity politics. They’re always identifying things like racism or sexism under the cynical idea that it’ll help unite voters under their banner.
The truth of the matter is that identity politics, by definition, don’t unite. They divide.
Frankly, the content of one’s character and beliefs should always be more important than the color of one’s skin or ethnic background. Those are just some of the reasons why seeing a legislator like Caleb Hanna rise in prominence is so exciting.
Now, if I were a Democrat or a leftist, I might focus on the fact that he’s a young black man who’s won a seat on the West Virginia state legislature at the insanely young age of just 19. It’s one thing to describe Hanna by mentioning his skin color, there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is when leftists begin defining people by their skin color.
That’s exactly why I instead want to focus on what makes Hanna such an exciting young lawmaker. And it has nothing to do with skin color.
According to a candidate profile provided to The Register Herald in May, the young Republican is made of the right stuff and stands for the right stuff.
“I’m proudly a Christian conservative and was raised on the belief that success is built with hard work, commitment and dedication – West Virginia values that continue to guide me today,” Hanna said.
According to the West Virginia MetroNews, Hanna won his seat in the state House District 44 by a nearly 2-to-1 margin in November’s general election. That win made him unique among American lawmakers, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
“At that moment, Hanna became the youngest African-American in America to be elected to a state legislature, according to the National Council of State Legislatures. The results were 1,306 to 874 in the fragmented 44th District, which includes all of Webster County, half of Nicholas County and a couple of precincts in Randolph and Upshur counties.”
Hanna’s stances echo some of the hallmarks of modern conservatism.
“I support the WV Pro-Life movement and have been endorsed in the Republican Primary by West Virginians for Life. I also fully support the 2nd Amendment and our right to bear arms,” Hanna said in May. “I will be a passionate, effective, and conservative fighter for limited government, economic growth, and the Constitution.”
Another aspect of conservatism that Hanna is shaped by is his family upbringing.
“When I was only 10 years old, I heard my father say, ‘The American Dream is getting harder to find. Opportunities are becoming tougher to come by, and the simple idea, of by doing the right thing and working hard you can provide for your family, just really isn’t so simple anymore.’ From that moment, I knew I wanted to somehow help and serve the people of the great Mountain State.
“My goal is very simple, and that’s to bring A New Era of Leadership to West Virginia government. By implementing my youth and skills into government, I can provide a fresh new perspective to policy making that is not usual but is certainly effective,” Hanna said. “I have vision for opportunity that others typically miss, and West Virginia needs that now more than ever. I have a lot of pride for this state I’ve always called home.”
Compare Hanna’s rhetoric to some of the drivel pushed by young leftists like congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’ve never been one to summarily dismiss someone because of their youth. I don’t care that Hanna and Ocasio-Cortez are so young for their respective positions. I care about what they have to say. Ocasio-Cortez says foolish things that threaten to disrupt the American democracy with her socialist and leftist ideals.
Hanna seems like a smart young man who wants to genuinely improve his country. That’s worth lauding and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Bryan Chai
Social Media Editor
More Info Recent Posts
If I could have two television shows and two movies on a desert island, they’d be “The Office,” (the American version) “Breaking Bad,” “The Dark Knight,” and “Die Hard.” I love sports, video games, comics, movies and television. And I guess my job, too.
black conservatives
Candace Owens Introduces ‘Blexit’ Movement, Black Dems Fleeing Party To Join Republicans
Reported By Kara Pendleton | October 28, 2018 at 1:35pm
URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/candace-owens-introduces-blexit-movement-black-dems-fleeing-party-join-republicans/
In a word play on Britain’s “Brexit” movement to leave the European Union and the growing #Walkaway movement encouraging Democrats to leave their party, conservative activist Candace Owens has launched a “Blexit” movement. It is all about encouraging blacks to exit the “Democrat plantation” and join the Republican party.
Owens long been a voice for black conservatives, but now she has taken it a step further. Breitbart reported on her big announcement of the movement.
“The Blexit movement will spend 2019 holding rallies in every major city in America the Democrats have destroyed. We are at long last ready to snatch a piece of this America dream,” Owens told the Young Black Leadership Summit in Washington on Saturday, according to Breitbart.
“We can fully recognize that this is, in fact, our country, that while Hillary Clinton viewed us as ‘super predators,’ CNN views us as ‘token negros who don’t read,’ Donald Trump views us as Americans.”
Just listen to this snippet of a speech Owens gave — with a bullhorn to carry her words on Saturday.
In conjunction with the announcement and the weekend’s speeches in Washington, Owens has launched a Blexit.com website, as well. Visitors to the website can learn more about the movement, listen to stories of those who have left the Democratic party for the Republican party, shop for merchandise, donate and learn about “Inconvenient Truths.” These “Truths” are explained as “Knowledge is the root of freedom. Learn more about America’s forgotten history.”
Leading up to the launch, Owens has been busy calling out black leaders and the talking heads at CNN, as well as preparing for Saturday’s Black State of the Union presentation. All of this has been shared by Owens are Twitter:
She has also explained the “Blexit” movement in her own words. Her column was published as an exclusive by Breitbart.
She began with her “coming out as a conservative” story. “When I uploaded my first video onto YouTube one year ago, I entitled it ‘Mom, Dad, I’m a Conservative.’ It was a two-minute satirical stab at the social exiling that many Americans face when they announce their conservatism to friends and family.
“Soon thereafter, I would discover that for black Americans, the punishment that awaits is far worse than any social exile: it is a full-court social lynching.”
That first video can be viewed below, for context:
From there in the article, Owens shared the horrible names she and other black conservatives have been called by black, liberals and the “liberal media.” They include things such as “porch monkey,” “Uncle Tom,” and, yes, it’s true and was captured on video, “white supremacist.”
Then Owens created a mic-dropping moment with her observation of what is happening in America.
“In fact, what many have misdiagnosed as political tension between two ideologically disparate groups is actually something far greater, far more deep-rooted, and much more likely to alter the trajectory of this country as we know it,” she wrote.
“Across America, black people are beginning to question political orthodoxy. We have been quietly building an ecosystem of free thinkers and at long last, the intellectual dam is breaking.
“This unique moment will come to be known as BLEXIT: the black exit from the Democrat party. For decades, the black community has been in an emotionally abusive relationship with the Democrat Party. Our fidelity to leftist politicians coupled with our false belief that a larger government might facilitate solutions, has led to the overall collapse of our families, neighborhoods, and incidentally, our futures.”
“BLEXIT is a national movement of minorities that have awakened to the truth. It is for those who have taken an objective look at our decades-long allegiance to the left and asked ourselves ‘what do we have to show for it?’”
An increasing number of blacks can be found on social media declaring their conservative views and sharing their stories about having left the Democratic party. This turn of events is damaging to Democrats, who bank on groups voting in blocks.
In November 2014, a Washington Post (behind a paywall) wheadline declared “Republicans are winning the support of black Americans,” based on election results. Then in September 2017, the paper ran another headline stating that, “Mostly black neighborhoods voted more Republican in 2016 than in 2012.”
Remember, in 2016 it was the election year of former first lady Hillary Clinton versus business tycoon Donald Trump. Trump won. And the black unemployment picture has been getting better ever since.
As Owens noted in her piece on Breitbart,”the tides are shifting.”
As more and more Americans feel alienated by the violence and vitriol of the left, as more and more black Americans discover how establishment media and the left truly view them, things will continue to change, and in Republicans’ favor.
Breaking: Arizona Governor Announces Replacement for John McCain
Reported By Randy DeSoto | September 4, 2018 at
URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-arizona-governor-announces-replacement-john-mccain/
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey named former Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl as the late Sen. John McCain’s replacement on Tuesday. Kyl served with McCain in the Senate from 1995 to Jan. 2013 before his retirement. Sen. Jeff Flake succeeded him. Kyl, 76, was the GOP minority whip before leaving office, which is the second-highest position in the Republican conference, the Arizona Republic reported.
Ducey made the announcement at a press conference from the Arizona capitol in Phoenix.
“There is no one in Arizona with the stature of Sen. Jon Kyl,” the governor said.
“There is no one in Arizona more prepared to represent our state in the U.S. Senate than Jon Kyl,” Ducey added. “He understands how the Senate functions and will make an immediate and positive impact benefiting all Arizonans.”
Ducey also tweeted, “I am deeply grateful to Sen. Kyl for agreeing to succeed his friend and colleague of so many years. Every single day that Jon Kyl represents #Arizona in the U.S. Senate is a day our state is well-served.”
Kyl has agreed to serve out the remainder of the current session of Congress, which will conclude in December.
Ducey expressed the hope that Kyl will stay on through the special election to fill McCain’s seat, which will take place in 2020. That election will be to fulfill the last two years of McCain’s term, which ends in 2022.
McCain’s wife, Cindy, offered support for Ducey’s choice tweeting, “Jon Kyl is a dear friend of mine and John’s. It’s a great tribute to John that he is prepared to go back into public service to help the state of Arizona.”
Kyl spoke at a ceremony at the Arizona capitol honoring McCain last week.
Most recently, Kyl has been serving in the role of “sherpa,” guiding Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh through the confirmation process in the Senate.
Kyl will fly back to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday and could take up his seat in the Senate as early as Tuesday night.
Among the first high-profile votes he will be called upon to make is for the confirmation of Kavanaugh, which is expected later this month and likely to be close, given the current 51-49 Republican majority.
Over 100 Conservatives Come Together, Call on Jim Jordan To Replace Paul Ryan as Speaker
Reported By Robert Donachie | May 22, 2018 at 8:09am
URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/over-100-conservatives-come-together-call-on-jim-jordan-to-replace-paul-ryan-as-speaker/
A coalition of more than 100 conservatives sent a letter to House Freedom Caucus co-founder Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio on Monday urging him to throw his name in to replace outgoing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
“There must be a real race for Speaker of the House. Now. No backroom deals. A real race, starting this spring, to make every incumbent and candidate commit on the record, as a campaign issue, whether they’ll vote to save the Swamp or drain it,” the letter reads. “America needs you to declare yourself as a candidate for Speaker at once. We write to you on behalf of millions of Americans who want Congress to Drain the Swamp.”
Ryan rattled Capitol Hill in April when he announced he will retire from the House after nearly 20 years in Congress, telling reporters he wanted to spend more time with his family and pursue other opportunities.
Two of the top House Republicans — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana — are angling for the position, but neither are thought to have a guaranteed lock on the speakership.
McCarthy failed to garner the 218 required votes to become speaker in 2015, but his particularly close relationship with the president has some expecting that, along with Ryan’s full-fledged endorsement, it will give him an upper hand over Scalise in the coming months.
Scalise wouldn’t rule out a potential bid for Ryan’s job but is also adamant he would not run against McCarthy, who he considers a “good friend,” he said in March.
Yet, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, who is best friends with Jordan, might have the closest relationship with the president over any other member of Congress. During a speech Thursday in which Jordan appeared to preview a bid for the speakership, Jordan joked that Meadows was in the back, taking a phone call from the president, which Meadows is known to do on a regular basis.
The letter Jordan received Monday from conservatives echoes a great deal of what the congressman has said himself since Ryan announced his retirement. Namely, Jordan is adamant that Republicans need to get back to accomplishing what they promised voters during the 2016 election cycle, like dealing with immigration and border security, repealing and replacing Obamacare, and stopping out-of-control spending.
Jordan’s response to questions about the speaker’s race have been the same since the day TheDCNF first reported the growing wave of support for his candidacy: There is no speaker’s race, and conservatives need to focus on the issues.
Conservatives are pushing back against Jordan’s assertion that there isn’t an ongoing race to replace Ryan.
“To those who say there is no Speaker’s race at the moment, we say that it’s already underway — in back rooms, behind closed doors, and aimed at preserving the Swamp and making it bigger. The Speaker’s race must be public. There will be no Republican Speaker in 2019 unless the GOP can appeal to those Americans in its own ranks, among independents and even many Democrats who voted for Donald Trump to drain the Swamp and for the current Republican-led House to help him do that,” the letter reads.
“The present House Republican leadership has failed. It is part of the problem. You are the solution. This is your moment. We pray you will seize it, knowing that if you do, we will do everything we can to help you succeed.”
The HFC is no stranger to putting leadership on notice. Jordan, Meadows and HFC members shot down a farm bill in order to secure a vote on an immigration proposal they were promised months ago. Ryan and McCarthy huddled with Meadows and Jordan in the back of the House chamber before the final gavel Friday, but their 11th-hour attempts were unable to sway the conservative members. The bill failed with members voting 198-213, dealing a decisive blow to leadership.
Friday’s vote is evidence the HFC has the leverage to sway major policy issues, given the power of the caucus’ 36 members’ votes. If the caucus votes as a coalition, they can kill a bill or get concessions from leadership.
Many believe Jordan’s bid would be to get concessions from either McCarthy or Scalise, but Ryan still has the rest of the year as speaker, assuming he isn’t pressured to step down earlier.
McCarthy’s folks are reportedly nervous about the potential heat he will take in a drawn-out speaker’s race if Ryan decides to stay through the November midterm elections, which he has promised he intends to do.
A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience.
How Americans View Republican Policies Has Changed Drastically in Last 4 Months
Reported By Robert Donachie | April 17, 2018 at 8:56am
URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/how-americans-view-republican-policies-has-changed-drastically-in-last-4-months/
More American voters want the Republican party to remain in charge of the economy and tax policy, according to an NBC News/WSJ poll released Monday evening. The two media outlets found that 35 percent of Americans believe the Republican Party is better suited to handle the economy, compared with 28 percent who think Democrats have the better economic policies.
Roughly four months ago, Democrats had the upper hand. Thirty-five percent of American voters thought Democrats were the better choice in December — the same month Republicans passed the 2017 tax reform bill. The party now holds a slim 2 percent advantage over Democrats on the question of who has the better tax policy. Democrats had a 4 percentage point advantage in December.
Americans remain divided on whether or not the 2017 tax reform bill was a net-positive. Only 27 percent of Americans think the bill was a good idea, while 34 percent say they don’t know enough about the bill and 36 percent say it wasn’t a good idea.
A slim majority of Americans — 53 percent — think it is likely a negative because of expectations that it will greatly increase the federal deficit. Americans also believe the bill was a giveaway to the wealthy and major corporations.
Recent findings from government oversight officials work to back up Americans’ growing federal deficit concerns. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office expects the Republican tax reform bill and 2018 congressional budget agreement will grow the economy over the coming years, but also add nearly $2 trillion to federal deficit over the next decade.
The CBO released analysis earlier in April detailing how the federal budget deficit will be $804 billion in 2018 and exceed $1 trillion in 2020. Publicly held U.S. debt will total $28.671 trillion by the end of 2028, amounting to over 96 percent of U.S. gross domestic product that year.
Republican tax cuts are expected, as leadership has repeatedly claimed, to grow the economy over the next two years. Real GDP will expand 3.3 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2019. Starting in 2020, those gains are expected to taper off. The CBO expects real GDP to grow 1.8 percent in 2020, continuing at an average annual rate of 1.7 percent from 2020-2026.
While the deficit remains a concern, the tax bill has shown and is expected to show some other net-benefits for the American people. Hundreds of corporations and small businesses announced bonuses and wage increases following the bill’s signing last December, although many have decried the moves as simply a public relations stunt.
Americans filed their first tax returns under the new Republican tax plan Tuesday, a first litmus test for voters and politicians as to how effective the tax cuts will end up being. Tax cuts are also expected to bring nearly $2 trillion in capital held overseas back to the United States, according to a United Nations Conference on Trade and Developments report.
The U.N. expects the Republican tax law could lead to the repatriation of roughly $2 trillion in funds that American multinationals are holding overseas. U.N. analysts attribute their predictions to the dramatic cut to the U.S. corporate tax rate that took effect on Jan. 1, 2018.
A version of this article previously appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.
CBS Attempted Hit Job Against Tax Bill, But All 3 Families Discovered Something
Reported By Cillian Zeal | December 26, 2017 at 10:20pm
URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/cbs-hit-job-tax-bill/
Before the Republican tax bill was passed, the media narrative focused on how it would only benefit the wealthy. Once it was passed (after a bit of procedural drama for good measure), that narrative went into overdrive. No matter what statistics or examples the GOP may have pointed the media toward, that was the story, and they were sticking to it. However, as our second president pointed out, facts are stubborn things — even more stubborn than media outlets are.
CBS found out the timeless sagacity of Mr. Adams’ advice the hard way.
After the tax bill passed, the network decided to run a segment that looked at how three separate American families from three different parts of the country would fare under the Republicans’ new tax plan. The original idea, one would assume, was to highlight the inequality therein.
Instead of the hit job one assumes some were looking for, however, CBS found that all three families ended up saving money.
The first profile was of Marcie George, a single mother who rents a home in Cary, North Carolina.
“It didn’t seem as they were going along like it would really affect someone like me,” George said.
An administrative assistant, George makes under $40,000 a year. “Financially, I struggle,” George said. “I live paycheck to paycheck. I make things work, I readjust and rearrange, but we do get by.”
Remember that we were told incessantly by the left that Ms. George and her child were going to be the kind of people who would get the shaft under the GOP tax plan. So, how did things end up for her? Pretty well, we’d say: over $1,300 saved, in part thanks to the child tax credit doubling.
Amber and Jason Edwards, a couple from Providence, Rhode Island, are slightly higher up the tax bracket than Ms. George is. Homeowners who are married without children, the educators took in a combined $150,000. While the Edwardses would pay taxes on $12,000 more of their income, according to CBS’ accountant, they would end up saving money based on the lower tax numbers, saving the family $650. They would also switch to the standard deduction, meaning a simpler return.
“Honestly, I’m a little surprised,” Amber Edwards said, turning to her husband. “What you had said, initially, you thought we were going to have a higher tax bill.”
And he was wrong.
Meanwhile, Melissa and Layne Lev of Fresno, California have three children and own their home and a small business. They too thought their taxes were going to be higher, although Melissa had trouble explaining why she thought this was. They make roughly $300,000. Even though they’re from a high-tax state — one where most individuals likely think that they’re going to get hit hard by the reduced state tax deductions — they ended up saving money too.
They’ll be receiving $13,000 in tax cuts, thanks to receiving child tax credits and not paying the alternative minimum tax.
Can you imagine the tears in the CBS newsroom as the results poured in? It’s like a mini-election night all over again!
So, yes, as much as this is apparently just a tax cut for the rich, everyone — the Georges, the Edwardses and the Levs — will be seeing money back thanks to tax reform. And these are hardly modern-day Vanderbilts, either, meaning this is money that’s going to be going directly back into the economy.
Talk about a Christmas present for everybody. Unless you’re part of the Democrat caucus, of course.
H/T PJ Media
Mitch McConnell Gets Bad News… Asked To Step Down
Reported By Jason Hopkins | on October 11, 2017 at 1:39pm
URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournalism.com/conservatives-demand-mcconnel-step-down-as-senate-leader/?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has been hit with a heavy vote of no confidence from conservative groups around the country. On Wednesday, leaders from several conservative organizations called on McConnell to abdicate his position, citing a list of broken promises he made to Republican voters.
They are calling on not only McConnell, but also members of his leadership team, to step down.
“You and the rest of your leadership team were given the majority because you pledged to stop the steady flow of illegal immigration,” states their letter to McConnell, according to Fox News. “You have done nothing. You pledged to reduce the size of this oppressive federal government. You have done nothing. You pledged to reduce, and ultimately eliminate the out-of-control deficit spending that is bankrupting America. You have done nothing. You promised to repeal Obamacare, ‘root and branch.’ You have done nothing. You promised tax reform. You have done nothing.”
Disgruntled conservatives held a news conference in Washington, D.C. to address their concerns and desire to see the leadership team dissolved.
“We call on all five members of the GOP Senate leadership to step down, or for their caucus to remove them as soon as possible,” Ken Cuccinelli, the president of the Senate Conservatives Fund, said at the conference.
The Senate Conservatives Fund, founded in 2008 by former Senator Jim DeMint, has worked for years to elect more conservative GOP candidates to the upper chamber in Congress. The group has regularly clashed with the more moderate wing of GOP leadership. The SCF wasn’t the only group calling for McConnell to vacate his position.
Members from FreedomWorks, For America and the Tea Party Patriots also joined the chorus in demanding GOP Senate leaders step aside after failing to enact conservative legislation, despite voters giving the Republican Party full control of Washington, D.C. on Election Day.
This is not the first time conservatives have called on McConnell to step down as majority leader, but the ferocity of Wednesday’s press conference certainly puts an added weight on Republican lawmakers to get things done this legislative session.
The letter and press conference come as congressional Republicans are currently working to enact tax reform. GOP leaders so far have not succeeded in repealing Obamacare, failing several times to push through their own GOP health care bills. Republicans are hoping tax reform will be an issue the entire party can rally behind.
“If this was a football team, and you’d lost this many times, you’d start seriously considering firing the coaches,” said For America President David Bozell.
Despite all agreeing that they’d wish to see McConnell go, many conservative leaders are not certain who they would like to see as a replacement.
“If I had to pick someone, I’d love to draft like Pat Toomey maybe,” FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon said, referring to the GOP Pennsylvania senator. “There’s a lot of different people out there who I think could unite this caucus and actually lead on some issues.”
Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots group, said she could see herself supporting Georgia GOP Senator David Perdue. “I’m from Georgia, so I’m not opposed to him,” Martin explained, touting the junior senator’s extensive business background as a former CEO.
Conservative candidates are taking notice as well. As the 2018 election cycle begins to heat up, many pro-Trump candidates are hoping to gain traction by displaying stronger support for the president.
“With rare exception, GOP senators blocking Trump’s agenda are impediments we can not afford. Double that for Senate leaders,” Ron Wallace, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia, said in a statement to Western Journalism.
Wallace is an insurgent candidate hoping to win the GOP primary and take on incumbent Democrat Senator Tim Kaine. Wallace is running on a pro-Trump platform and believes it’s imperative the GOP majority pass what they promised to do.
“The American People voted for Tax Cuts, Border Walls, Rapid Growth, Excellent Law Enforcement, and Better Education. I expect strong proactive policies to make those outcomes possible and deliver cost-effective solutions, by whatever means may be necessary,” he said.
republican establishment
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11870
|
__label__wiki
| 0.554982
| 0.554982
|
March for our Lives and White Supremacy
Rina Cakrani, Columnist
Filed under OPINION
The March for our Lives was hypocritical, despite the good intentions and message behind it. The conditions from which it emerged and the positive media coverage that it received due to the demographics that were involved make it hypocritical and oblivious to the radical problems that should have been addressed. The controversy of this march emerges from the fact that it was originated by and allowed to happen because of the white kids that were protesting. Their protest was considered by the media as the start of a new revolution and an inspiring movement that would commence change in the society. Nevermind the fact that brown and black kids have for many years been not only the most affected by gun violence, but also the ones that have started protests which unfortunately the media has portrayed as “thuggish.”
Although the kids affected by the Parkland shooting have the right to protest and show public outrage, the fact that they are being treated as young leaders with a vision just shows the privilege that certain groups have and others do not. The protest movement has been gentrified. If one looks at the protest pictures, one can see some images in which certain people are raising their fists in the air just like they did during the Black Power movement. Too bad that Black activists get criminalized for gestures that the so-called white activists get praise for.
Illustration by Abby Takahashi
The ultimate blow came when a recent Time Magazine cover featured the kids that were representing the March for our Lives Protest and what is considered to be their “powerful” message. The most outstanding thing to notice is that all five of them are white. As I said, I do not want to undermine these kids’ bravery, but the fact that throughout the country millions of white people showed up for a protest held for the violence shown in Parkland only highlighted the fact that they did not show up when Ferguson or Baltimore happened. It just gives another indication about which lives matter more in the United States.
The other hypocrisy is related to the inclusion of the police in the protest, oblivious to the fact that the police system is part of the problem. There can be no gun reform without including the major issue of police brutality, and especially the reform of a system that disproportionally affects the brown and black communities who have lost their trust in it. Within the gun control movement, privileged non-black influencers are ignoring the wisdom of black influencers while also asking them to be part of it just to gain recognition in the media. Brittany Packnett, activist and leader on the Intersection of Culture and Justice Movement said in a Mic op-ed that to some black students and activists, school shootings, other mass shootings and police violence are connected and deserve comparable amounts of attention.
“The key to this issue is solidarity. We have to show up for one another and one another’s issues. Don’t only show up when it affects you. Recognize that gun violence affected Alton Sterling and Stephon Clark, just like it did the young people in Parkland and Sandy Hook,” Packnett wrote for The Washington Post. Black voices are commoditized when non-black people want numbers and when they want to give the appearance of diversity without the diversity of opinions and experiences. The political climate in United States has proven that issues which affect predominantly black people are not a priority, even in social movements like March for our Lives. This is because the solutions to the issues that primarily impact the lives and experiences of black people are inherently offensive to the comfort of white people; these are the issues that require white people to address the violence of a system of white supremacy.
Tags: Black Lives Matter, gun control, hypocrisy, Issues, march for our lives, solidarity, white supremacy
Miracle: Local White Person Hates White Supremacy and Now It Doesn’t Exist!
Kanye’s Trump-ian Love Affair
March For Their Lives
Better Understanding Gun Control
Who is the Symposium for? P&P Grapples with Theme of Resistance and Question of Purpose
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11871
|
__label__cc
| 0.529345
| 0.470655
|
16 Quotes from the Dalai Lama to Inspire You
The spirituality and wisdom of The Dalai Lama is evident when you read about the life he has led and the words he speaks. He is a beacon of kindness and love. Here are 16 of his most famous quotes to inspire you today.
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was born on 6th July 1935 to a farming family in North-eastern Tibet. The Dalai Lama was originally named Lhamo Dhondup but was recognised as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama Thubten Gyatso. Dalai lamas are believed to be the manifestation of Chenrezig, Bodhisattva of Compassion and the patron saint of Tibet. The Dalai Lama began his monastic education at the age of six, he graduated at the age of 23 and was awarded the Geshe Lharampe degree, the highest degree which is equivalent to a doctorate of Buddhist Philosophy. After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1949/50, the Dalai Lama was given full political power, he went to Beijing for peace talks. When the brutal Chinese suppression of the Tibetan National uprising took place in Lhasa in 1959, The Dalai Lama had to escape into exile, since then he has lived in Dharamsala, Northern India.
The Dalai Lama presented a democratic constitution for Tibet which was reformed quite a few times. The new democratic constitution is called the “Charter of Tibetans in Exile” and it enshrines freedom of speech, belief, assembly and movement, it also provides guidelines on Tibetan administration keeping in mind those living in exile. After May 1990, Kashag, the Tibetan cabinet which was appointed by the Dalai Lama was dissolved along with the Tibetan People’s Deputies (Parliament in exile) and on a one-man one-vote basis the Eleventh Tibetan Assembly was elected by the people of Tibet, including those in exile in other countries. Since then, the Dalai Lama described himself as semi-retired.
[Bio continues below…]
Here are the most notable quotes from the Dalai Lama.
"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness."
"In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher."
"Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it."
"When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know; But when you listen, you may learn something new."
"Whether one believes in a religion or not and whether one believes in rebirth or not there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion."
"Sleep is the best meditation."
[Bio continued from above…]
On March 14th, 2011, the Dalai Lama requested the Assembly of Tibetan’s People deputies to devolve him of political power, this would bring a historic end to the Dalai Lama having both spiritual and political authority, and like the first four Dalai Lama, the 14th Dalai Lama would only be a Spiritual leader of Tibet. This meant the democratically elected cabinet would have formal political control and the Ganden Phodrang, the institution of the Dalai Lama would continue and remain intact. On 29th May, the Dalai Lama signed the formal transfer and this brought an end to 368 year old tradition of the Dalai Lama being the spiritual and Political leader.
The Dalai Lama has always been a man of peace. In September 1987, in his address to the members of United States congress he proposed a Five- point Peace Plan for Tibet for a peaceful solution to Tibet’s worsening situation. In the year 1988, in an address to the European Parliament he once again suggested peaceful talks between the Chinese and Tibetans leading to a self- governing democratic political entity for all three Tibetan provinces. For his non- violent struggle for the liberation of Tibet, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1989. He is the first Noble Laureate recognised to be concerned for global environmental problems. The Dalai Lama has received over 150 awards, honorary doctorates, prizes and such for his message of peace, non- violence, inter- religious understanding, universal understanding and compassion.
"The first step toward living a happy life is to treat every other human with kindness. There are several steps after that, but I can't remember right now."
"If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever."
"When you think everything is someone else's fault, you suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy."
"Change only takes place through action, not through meditation and prayer alone."
"Today is the right day to love, believe, do, and mostly, live."
"Do not let the behaviour of others destroy your inner peace."
"If you don't love yourself, you cannot love others."
"I think that true religion is the kind heart."
"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions."
"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive."
The Dalai Lama's 18 Rules for Living will Change you Forever
Stories, Articles and Quotes from Dalai Lama
inspirationalkindnesstolerancesuccessknowledgereligioncouragelifesleepworryingchangelove
This is a Wisdom To Inspire Original Article.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11877
|
__label__cc
| 0.671439
| 0.328561
|
Magnus Lofstrom
Public Policy Institute of California, USA, and IZA, Germany
The new and innovative IZA World of Labor project is a promising venture, allowing researchers an opportunity to provide policymakers thoughtful, reliable, and concise policy-relevant information
Author, Topic spokesperson
Senior Fellow, January 2008–present, Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), San Francisco, CA, USA
Immigration, entrepreneurship, education, and economics of crime
http://bit.ly/Lofstrom_IZApage
Positions/functions as a policy advisor
California State Controller’s Board of Economic Advisors, USA
Assistant Professor of Economics, August 2002–2007, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, USA
PhD Economics, University of California, San Diego, 1999
“Did the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act reduce the state’s unauthorized immigrant population?” Review of Economics and Statistics 96:2 (2014): 258–269 (with S. Bohn and S. Raphael).
“Why are some people more likely to become small-businesses owners than others: Entrepreneurship entry and industry-specific barriers.” Journal of Business Venturing 29:2 (2014): 232–251 (with T. Bates and S. Parker).
“Does self-employment increase the economic well-being of low-skilled workers?” Small Business Economics 40:4 (2013): 933–952.
“Immigrant assimilation and welfare participation: Do immigrants assimilate into or out-of welfare?” Journal of Human Resources 38:1 (2003): 74–98 (with J. Hansen).
“Labor market assimilation and the self-employment decision of immigrant entrepreneurs.” Journal of Population Economics 15:1 (2002): 83–114.
Immigrants and entrepreneurship Updated
Business ownership is higher among immigrants, but promoting self-employment is unlikely to improve outcomes for the less skilled
Magnus LofstromChunbei Wang, June 2019
Immigrants are widely perceived to be highly entrepreneurial, contributing to economic growth and innovation, and self-employment is often viewed as a means of enhancing labor market integration and success among immigrants. Accordingly, many countries have established special visas and entry requirements to attract immigrant entrepreneurs. Research supports some of these stances, but expectations may be too high. There is no strong evidence that self-employment is an effective tool of upward economic mobility among low-skilled immigrants. More broadly prioritizing high-skilled immigrants may prove to be more successful than focusing on entrepreneurship.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11879
|
__label__wiki
| 0.923331
| 0.923331
|
‘We want drivers to think about the people in their cars’: three passengers among eight weekend road deaths
4:04pm Oct 15, 2018
Passengers are being encouraged to speak up after eight people lost their lives on NSW roads over the weekend.
Three of the weekend crashes resulted in passengers losing their lives.
“We want drivers to think about the people in their cars, as well as other road users, before they make a decision to speed, pick up a phone, drive under the influence, or drive tired,” said Traffic and Highway Patrol Command Acting Assistant Commissioner, Julie Middlemiss.
“We want passengers to be prepared speak up and highlight the driver’s behaviour,” said Acting Assistant Commissioner Middlemiss.
There were eight road related deaths over the weekend in NSW, including this crash in Blacktown that killed a 17-year-old girl. (9news)
There were two fatalities on Friday; a 97-year-old passenger who was in a car and truck crash at Windsor, and a 62-year-old man whose Harley Davidson collided with a car near Grafton.
On Saturday, a 35-year-old died when his car hit trees near Balranald in the state’s south-west.
On Sunday, a 17-year-old girl died after the car she was a passenger in, hit a power pole at Blacktown in the early hours of the morning.
Westconnex Tunnel: Sydney drivers facing toll spike to skip traffic as major project set to open
New body to tackle soaring Victorian road toll
Child victim of double road fatality farewelled
The girl was in the rear of the car when it collided, the 18-year-old male driver is under police guard in hospital.
The 18-year-old driver of the car is under police guard in hospital. (9news)
A 22-year-old man died after his trail bike hit a fence at Narromine, and a 49-year-old lost her life when her car hit a pole at Sanctuary Point.
A pedestrian, an 81-year-old woman died yesterday in the car park of a business at Macquarie Park, after she fell, and was hit by a car.
A woman involved in a crash in Newcastle three weeks ago also died at the weekend.
The crash on September 21 at a service station in Charlestown, Newcastle was caught on CCTV. (9news)
The pregnant 32-year-old was a passenger in a stolen car that crashed at a Charlestown service station on September 21.
“If they [passengers] see their driver speeding, using their phone, drinking or taking drugs before driving – they need to be prepared to speak up,” said Acting Assistant Commissioner Middlemiss.
“We are appealing to passengers, friends and family members to step in, call them out and prevent serious crashes caused by drivers and riders who should not be on our roads,” she said.
road toll
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11881
|
__label__cc
| 0.69557
| 0.30443
|
AACC Lays Out Path to Better Healthcare Through Collaboration
Winning Star Trek Tricorder to Be Presented to Experts at the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting
AACC Press Releases
AACC.org // Media // AACC Press Releases // Winning Star Trek Tricorder to Be Presented to Experts at the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting
Date: MAY.11.2017
Analytical Techniques and Applications,
WASHINGTON – On July 31, the winner of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition will present DxtER—a real-life tricorder—at the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in San Diego. This special session will be the first time that the device is presented to researchers at a U.S. scientific conference.
Developed by the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE team Final Frontier Medical Devices, DxtER weighs no more than five pounds and is designed to enable consumers to monitor five real-time health vital signs and diagnose 34 diseases—and all without the help of a clinician. The diseases DxtER tests for range from routine illnesses like urinary tract infections to chronic diseases like diabetes, and also include acute conditions that require critical care such as pneumonia. By empowering consumers to perform a broad array of tests at home, the hope is that this real-life tricorder could make healthcare more accessible and affordable around the world. DxtER could boost healthcare quality in low-income countries, many of which struggle with huge shortages of medical workers. Even in the U.S., 21 days is the average wait to get a doctor’s appointment, which often leads to delays in care or costly emergency room visits that DxtER could significantly reduce.
Final Frontier Medical Devices team member Philip Charron will give a talk on this revolutionary technology at the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting, the premier international forum for presenting vital science and groundbreaking advances in laboratory medicine. Charron will discuss the technological innovations behind DxtER, such as the device’s non-invasive monitor that is designed to measure blood sugar and white blood cell counts without drawing a blood sample. He will also delve into the potential future of tricorder-like diagnostic devices. After the presentation, Charron will answer questions from meeting attendees, who are experts in the field with the knowledge and experience needed to assess the science of DxtER as well as its impact on patient care.
On August 1, a Meet the Expert session will also give a limited number of attendees the opportunity to engage with Charron in an informal, in-depth conversation. During both sessions, Charron will be joined by Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE finalist Chung-Kang Peng, PhD, and semi-finalist Eugene Chan, MD, and DxtER will be on display for attendees to see in person.
“DxtER is the first consumer-friendly mobile health device to combine vital sign monitoring with an extensive diagnostic testing menu, and it could lead to a huge leap forward in patient care,” said AACC CEO Janet B. Kreizman. “We are thrilled that Final Frontier Medical Devices is presenting this technology at the AACC Annual Scientific Meeting, where leaders in laboratory medicine can evaluate it and contribute their insights to the rapidly advancing world of at-home testing.”
TM, ® & © 2017 CBS Studios Inc. STAR TREK, TRICORDER and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used under license.
AACC Annual Scientific Meeting registration is free for members of the media. Reporters can register online here: https://www.xpressreg.net/register/aacc0717/media/start.asp
Special Session: A Conversation with Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Innovators
4:30–6 p.m.
Meet the Expert: A Conversation with Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Innovators
10:30–11:30 a.m.
Both sessions will take place at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.
About the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo
The AACC Annual Scientific Meeting offers 5 days packed with opportunities to learn about exciting science from July 30–August 3. Plenary sessions feature the latest research on CRISPR and the future of genome engineering, the public health crisis of antibiotic resistance, treating substance abuse and addiction, preserving fertility in cancer patients, and new frontiers in genomic sequencing.
At the AACC Clinical Lab Expo, more than 750 exhibitors will fill the show floor of the San Diego Convention Center with displays of the latest diagnostic technology, including but not limited to mobile health, molecular diagnostics, mass spectrometry, point-of-care, and automation.
Dedicated to achieving better health through laboratory medicine, AACC brings together more than 50,000 clinical laboratory professionals, physicians, research scientists, and business leaders from around the world focused on clinical chemistry, molecular diagnostics, mass spectrometry, translational medicine, lab management, and other areas of progressing laboratory science. Since 1948, AACC has worked to advance the common interests of the field, providing programs that advance scientific collaboration, knowledge, expertise, and innovation. For more information, visit www.aacc.org.
Christine DeLong
Senior Manager, Communications & PR
cdelong@aacc.org
Molly Polen
Senior Director, Communications & PR
(c) 703.598.0472
mpolen@aacc.org
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11883
|
__label__cc
| 0.542822
| 0.457178
|
After cancer has been diagnosed elsewhere in the body, doctors may recommend a bone scan to determine whether the disease has spread to the bone. Also called bone scintigraphy, this scan is a type of x–ray performed after a small amount of radioactive substance is injected into a vein. The radioactive substance concentrates in bone abnormalities such as cancer, infections or even fractures. Although the scan itself takes about an hour, the radioactive material must be injected several hours in advance. Other than the slight discomfort of the injection, bone scans are painless. The only danger is a very slight risk of an allergic reaction to the radioactive material which is eliminated from the body within a day. Bone scans are usually done as an out–patient procedure in a radiology or nuclear medicine department of a hospital.
A tracer, or bone–seeking nuclide, is injected into a vein.
The tracer emits gamma radiation, which is detected by the scanner.
When the tracer has collected in the bones (about 2 to 4 hours) after the injection, the scan is performed.
The distribution of gamma rays is recorded by the scanner, and the information is recorded in a computer.
The image then appears on the computer screen.
Normal or even distribution areas appear gray.
“Hot spots” are areas where there is an increased absorption of the tracer; these appear dark. “Cold spots” are areas where there is less absorption of the tracer.
These appear light. The scanning part of the test will last about 1 hour and may require changing to various positions.
You must remove dentures, jewelry or other metal objects.
You will have to wear a hospital gown.
There is a bit of pain when the needle is inserted.
Later the injection site may be tender to the touch.
You must remain still during the scan, and you will be instructed when to change positions.
Indications of Bone Scan
Detecting areas of abnormal bone metabolism.
Lesions.
Degenerative disorders.
Infection.
Risks with Bone Scan
If the patient is pregnant or nursing a baby, the test may be postponed to decrease the chance of affecting the baby.
A person with a hypersensitive reaction may develop a rash, swelling, or other allergic side effects.
What are X-Rays?
FAQs on Radiology
Indian Radiology Associations
Diagnostic Centers & Charges
Conventional Radiology (X-rays)
Vascular Radiology
Color Doppler Imaging
Digital Subtraction Angiography (DSA)
Needle Biopsy
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11884
|
__label__wiki
| 0.999038
| 0.999038
|
SA election: Labor to form minority government with support of independent Geoff Brock
Updated March 24, 2014 08:55:30
Video: Labor to form minority government in SA (ABC News)
Photo: Geoff Brock and Jay Weatherill held a joint press conference to announce the agreement. (ABC News: Angelique Johnson)
Related Story: SA independent taking extended sick leave: reports
Related Story: Key SA independent indicates leaning toward Labor for government
Map: SA
Independent MP Geoff Brock has announced he will support a Labor minority government in South Australia.
Mr Brock, the MP for Frome, will take up the roles of Minister for Regional Development and the Minister for State and Government Local Relations in the new Labor government.
He says his decision, which will see Labor hold a two-seat majority, was brought on after news that fellow kingmaker Bob Such would need surgery and up to two months' leave from parliament.
"The circumstances arising from [Saturday] morning gave me the opportunity to look at it. I want stability out there," Mr Brock said.
"I could have quite easily let it go for another week and that's what we thought we would do, but Dr Such has asked for two months' sick leave from the parliament.
"I will accept an offer made to me by the Premier to be the Minister for Regional Development and the Minister for State and Government Local Relations."
He says the portfolios will allow him to "provide a voice for regional South Australia".
The Labor Party had won 23 seats in the election, while the Liberal Party had won 22.
Twenty-four seats were needed to form a minority government, meaning the Liberal Party needed the support of both Mr Brock and Dr Such.
"Given the result of the state election last week, pressure has been brought to bear on the independents to make a decision who should form the government," Premier Jay Weatherill said.
"Mr Brock has chosen the Labor minority government here in South Australia."
The Premier visited South Australian Governor Kevin Scarce on Sunday afternoon.
"We've appraised him of the agreement we've reached and we've provided the relevant documentary evidence of that agreement. It's now a matter for the Governor to consider those matters and he'll call on use in due course," Mr Weatherill said.
Seven views on the election outcome after the seven-day wait for a result
Brock says he will remain independent despite ministry position
Mr Brock's support will see a fourth successive Labor government in South Australia.
He says the agreement specifies his independence and freedom to vote however he chooses on certain issues.
"In the agreement I have with the minority Labor government I have expressed... [that] I have my independence as much as I can. That's very clear in there," he said.
"I will remain an independent, I will be able to vote as I see it on certain issues.
"But certainly I won't be voting against supply or to bring the government down."
Mr Brock says he tried to contact Liberal leader Steve Marshall on the phone but it went to voicemail so he left a message.
He says he had hoped to speak to Mr Marshall personally.
"If I had have gone [with] Steven it would still be 23-23. I don't see the stability in that," he said.
Mr Marshall says the people of Frome will be disappointed with their MP's decision.
"It was clear, I think, from the messages that were going to Geoff Brock that the people of Frome didn't want a Labor government," he said.
"Labor has no mandate whatsoever. They dropped their vote. They dropped three seats, lost three ministers at this election, and I don't think they have a mandate whatsoever.
"We received more than 92,000 additional votes over Labor at the first preference level, so clearly I don't think they have got a mandate. I think it will be a very interesting time."
Mr Marshall says he will not go into any potential deals that he had offered Mr Brock and Dr Such.
Mr Weatherill says in coming days his government would be revealing new policy agendas concerning regional South Australia and small business.
He has also flagged looking at how the South Australian electoral process was conducted.
The final allocation of preferences in the election was expected to be completed by Sunday afternoon.
ABC/AAP
Topics: state-parliament, parliament, government-and-politics, sa
First posted March 23, 2014 11:24:08
More stories from South Australia
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11885
|
__label__cc
| 0.515351
| 0.484649
|
Showing Secularism
Eternity is a learning curve
Why are we here? How should we conceive of God? What is eternity? Big questions—too big for neat answers. But the nice thing about big questions is that they allow us to tackle them again and again, from different perspectives—and in so doing, we can find answers to some of the smaller questions about community, ethics and how we should treat each other.!
Selling God's House
Financial pressures are escalating for traditional Christian churches, as secularism rises and child abuse compensation payouts loom. Find out how the mission of the church is changing by the enforced sale of many of their buildings and properties to pay debts.
This [series episode segment] has image,
Darkness and Enlightenment: Faith, Reason and Judaism
Jews often say that Judaism is about "deed, not creed", and that the ethical question of how to live is far more urgent that the theological one of what to believe. Why then does Judaism have such a rich history of thought and philosophy? And what is the origin of the stereotype of the "Jewish intellectual"?
Radicals and Moderates: Faith, Reason and Islam
In recent years, Muslims in the West have come under increasing pressure to practice "moderate" Islam - i.e. an Islam that embraces the various legacies of the European Enlightenment, which include secularism and a certain kind of rationality. But is a moderate or "reasonable" religion one that sells itself short?
Foolishness to the Greeks: Faith, Reason and Christianity
First in a three-part series on faith and reason. Religion comes under fire from atheists because it's supposedly irrational, requiring the believer to sign up to propositions that amount to nonsense. How do—or how should—faith and reason interact?
All The World’s A Stage: an Encounter with Pope John Paul II
He was seen in person by more people than anyone else in human history. Pope John Paul II brought the Catholic Church to the world as the second-longest serving pontiff, and was beloved for it. On the eve of his canonisation by the Vatican, we ask - what forces shaped this man? And what sort of legacy did he leave the world?
The Last Prisoner of the Vatican – an Encounter with Pope John XXIII
First in a two-part series on the two-part Papal canonisation that's about to take place in Rome. This week: Pope John XXIII, the man who fifty years ago began driving the locomotive of Catholic Church reform by inaugurating the Second Vatican Council. But who was he? And how is his influence being felt in the Church and in secular society today?
Faith in Drag
The second of the Ten Commandments says that “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”. And yet the making and selling of Christian devotional objects has become a thriving business today.
Hindus are more relaxed about the role of objects in religious practice – but even so, the secular appropriation of Hindu icons can cause offence. This week Allison Chan explores the world of religious material culture.
This [series episode segment] has
Foolishness to the Greeks
As new political orders begin to emerge in the "Arab Spring" nations, questions around women's rights in the Islamic world are again being asked. But what these questions should be, and who gets to ask them, is a matter fraught with tension - "gender issues" in the Middle East have a long history, and it's partly a history of Western domination. This week we look at feminism, both religious and secular, across the boundaries of culture.
Pages 1 2 3 4 5 Next>
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11886
|
__label__wiki
| 0.781658
| 0.781658
|
Home » The Airshow » Visiting the Show » Latest News » News: Historic pair set to grace skies above Fairford
Historic pair set to grace skies above Fairford
Two historic World War Two fighter aircraft will share the skies above RAF Fairford this summer for a stirring flypast to mark the 70th anniversary of the US Air Force.
The North American P-51 Mustang and the Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk flew with US Army Air Corps during WW2 and their combat capabilities earned them a reputation that today ranks alongside that shared by the legendary Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane.
'Tall In The Saddle' is a P-51D-20-NA model, that joined the US Army Air Corps in December 1944. Originally earmarked for service with the Eighth Air Force in England, this was quickly changed to the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations.
Assigned to the 332nd fighter group, 99th Fighter Squadron, the 332nd became very famous as the first all Afro American manned Group known as "The Tuskegee Airmen" although references to them at the time refer to them as "The Red Tails."
She entered combat with the 15th Air force in early 1945 based at Ramatelli Airfield in Italy, serving on escort and ground attack sweeps over Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. She still carries the battle scars to this day, with bullet repairs in several places on the fuselage.
Produced in large numbers, the Kittyhawk (or Warhawk as she was also known) was a ruggedly effective and potent fighter.
Supplied to air forces in America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Russia, the P-40 fought with distinction in every theatre of operation. In Europe and the Western Desert against the Germans and the Italians as operated by aces such as Billy Drake and Neville Duke of RAF 112 squadron.
Kittyhawk serial number 43-5802 (UK civil registration G-KITT) is indeed a rare sight anywhere in the world but especially in the UK. Only a handful of these wonderful planes are still in airworthy condition and she has become a real crowd favourite at airshows.
Both aircraft are operated by Peter Teichman's Hangar 11 Collection at North Weald in Essex.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11889
|
__label__wiki
| 0.862095
| 0.862095
|
Investigation Shows Torture Conducted by UAE in ‘Black Sites’ in Yemen
Published June 23rd, 2017 - 06:00 GMT
A spokesperson for the UAE government denied the allegations. (AFP)
The United States is interrogating hundreds of men who were tortured by UAE prison guards, an AP investigation has revealed.
Senior US military personnel confirmed their involvement, but denied any knowledge of human rights abuses.
Interrogating the victims of torture is illegal under international humanitarian law, as it is seen as complicity.
"We always adhere to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct," said Defence Department spokesperson, Dana White.
"We would not turn a blind eye, because we are obligated to report any violations of human rights."
At least eighteen separate secret prisons were found to be in operation across south Yemen, all either run or supported by the UAE.
A spokesperson for the UAE government denied the allegations.
"There are no secret detention centers and no torture of prisoners is done during interrogations."
In a separate report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday that the UAE was responsible for running two of 11 secret prisons in south Yemen.
HRW quoted interviews from former detainees, families of detainees, lawyers and Yemeni government officials.
As a result of these interviews, it had isolated the cases of 49 people, including children, who had been tortured.
One former detainee reported that inmates were kept blindfolded in cramped conditions in shipping containers for weeks at a time.
"The entire place is gripped by fear. Almost everyone is sick, the rest are near death. Anyone who complains heads directly to the torture chamber."
The UAE is part of a Saudi-led coalition to defeat the Houthi-backed Yemeni rebels, but has also helped in a US-led mission to fight al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP).
The US has ramped up its drone strikes against AQAP positions since Donald Trump took the presidency. There have been more than 80 strikes in Yemen since January, compared with 21 in 2016.
US "black sites"
The United States military was accused of supporting torture cells widely in the aftermath of its "War on terror".
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reports on a US programme of "kidnapping, torture, and secret imprisonment of terrorism suspects", aided by more than 50 different countries.
"These governments allowed the CIA to abduct people from their soil, use their airports and airspace to extrajudicially transfer prisoners under brutal conditions, or establish secret prisons where prisoners were tortured," the ACLU said in a report.
The previous US president, Barack Obama, disbanded these so-called "black sites" in 2009 and issued new legislation, forbidding the US' involvement in torture.
Current US president Donald Trump claimed to be a supporter of torture during his electoral campaign, claiming he would do "a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding", should he win the election.
In an interview with ABC News, Trump said he believed torture works and that "we have to fight fire with fire."
Tags:Current USdefence departmentHuman Rights Watchal-QaedaAmerican Civil Liberties UnionCentral Intelligence AgencyUnited States militaryUAE governmentYemeni governmentDana WhiteBarack ObamaDonald Trump
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11891
|
__label__wiki
| 0.908926
| 0.908926
|
Bangladesh cricketers narrowly dodge New Zealand mosque attack
The team was en route to pray at the Masjid Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch before a scheduled match against New Zealand.
15 Mar 2019 18:14 GMT
Four suspects have been arrested in connection with Friday's attacks [Tessa Burrows/AFP]
Bangladesh's national cricket team has narrowly dodged New Zealand's mosque attacks, which have killed at least 49 people.
During Friday prayers, attackers entered two mosques in the city of Christchurch and opened fire on worshippers in what has been called the worst attack in New Zealand's history.
Members of the Bangladeshi team were en route to pray at the Masjid Al Noor Mosque before a scheduled test match against host team New Zealand, according to Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star.
However, when the players were about to enter the mosque, a woman warned them that there was shooting inside and the team took cover on the floor of their bus.
"We were very lucky because we were not inside that place," team manager Khaled Mashud told reporters after the attack.
"We saw it from outside, like watching a video, like in the movies. We saw many people coming out bloodied," he said.
"We were in the bus for about eight to 10 minutes. We had our heads down in the bus, just in case there was firing," added Mashud.
Batsman Tamim Iqbal Khan also wrote on Twitter: Entire team got saved from active shooters!!! Frightening experience and please keep us in your prayers."
Entire team got saved from active shooters!!! Frightening experience and please keep us in your prayers #christchurchMosqueAttack
— Tamim Iqbal Khan (@TamimOfficial28) March 15, 2019
"Allah save[d] us today while shooting in Christchurch in the mosque ... we r (are) extremely lucky ... never want to see this things happen again", captain Mushfiqur Rahim wrote on Twitter.
The team had been due to play a third test match against New Zealand on Saturday at the Hagley Oval Cricket Ground, which is close to the Masjid Al Noor Mosque.
The match was cancelled following the attacks.
Indian cricketer Virat Kohli tweeted a message of support to the Bangladeshi team, urging them to "stay safe".
Bangladesh and New Zealand previously met in a Feb 16 match in Christchurch [File: Mark Baker/AP Photo]
'Darkest days'
Four suspects have been arrested in connection with the attacks, according to New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush.
An Australian national and a woman are among those arrested. One gunman shared a live stream of the attack on Facebook and posted content about it on Instagram.
Police have urged people in central Christchurch to stay indoors, and have warned worshippers not to visit mosques "anywhere in New Zealand".
The Australian-born suspect published a manifesto, decrying the "decaying" culture of the white, European, Western world and rallying against immigration and multiculturalism.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the attacks on Friday would make it go down as one of the country's "darkest days", adding that the assault on the mosques appeared to be a well-planned "terrorist attack".
"Many of those who would have been affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand. They may even be refugees here," Arden said.
"They have chosen to make New Zealand their home and it is their home ... they are us. The persons who perpetrated this violence against us ... have no place in New Zealand".
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11892
|
__label__wiki
| 0.707197
| 0.707197
|
Saving the Iberian Lynx & New Zealand's Wildlife
Thriving forests in Nepal, a comeback for the Iberian lynx, turning back time in New Zealand and the case for 'ecocide'.
earthrise 07 Jul 2013 14:02 GMT Environment, Nepal, UN, Spain, New Zealand
From this Episode
Saving the Iberian Lynx
Nepal's Forest Future
Mainland Island
Big Thinker: Polly Higgins
The Iberian Lynx has been pulled back from the brink of extinction thanks to a captive-breeding centre in Donana National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in south-western Spain.
It started with four lynxes - three females and a male, weaklings that would have perished in the wild. Today, 30 lynxes roam a spacious, fenced scrubland area identical to their natural habitat - except for the dangers.
Early this year, the first two lynxes were released into the wild. It is hoped that in the future a larger number of young animals will be released each year.
Amanda Burrell visits the breeding centre to learn how lynxes are bred in captivity, and travels to the heart of Donana Park in search of the notoriously elusive lynx.
Nepal’s forest future
As you drive from Biratnagar towards Dharan along Nepal's East-West highway, the forest is scattered with human settlements, and illegal logging is big business.
Between two and four percent of the total forest area is being lost every year. The logs are bound for India to meet its ever growing demand for wood. In the last two decades, a quarter of Nepal's forest area has been plundered.
But while government owned forests are being felled at record speed, community-managed forests are thriving.
In the early 1980s some 25 percent of Nepal's forests were handed over to the communities, and today more than 1.6 million hectares of forest is run by 16, 000 forest user groups. These forests have not only retained their vegetation but have drastically changed the lives of local people.
Subina Shrestha visits Nepal's Terathum district to meet the people who are finding numerous ways to use the forest more sustainably, from producing hand-made paper to cultivating medicinal plants.
In a forested valley just minutes from downtown Wellington, a community-led organisation is spearheading an extraordinary vision: to restore a corner of mainland New Zealand to the way it was 'the day before humans arrived'.
Many of New Zealand's rarest native animals and plants are thriving and living free in a unique haven, safe from introduced predators - a so-called "Mainland Island".
Belinda Henley joins the sanctuary's staff for a momentous occasion - the release of several hand-reared Takahe, one of the rarest birds in the world, who are due to join the dozens of other safeguarded species.
Crimes against the planet : Polly Higgins
In April 2010, Polly Higgins, a Scottish lawyer, proposed to the United Nations that 'ecocide', the mass damage or destruction of ecosystems, be classed as a crime under international law, alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression and war crimes.
Polly has gained worldwide acclaim for her work, and her latest project has been to set up a keenly anticipated mock trial to examine how an Ecocide Act would play out in practice.
Al Jazeera's Russell Beard joined Polly at London's Supreme Court, where two senior barristers and their teams were preparing for an event that could pave the way for dramatic changes to the way 'eco crimes' are prosecuted.
Saving Namibia's Cheetahs & Pangolin Conservation
Saving Namibia's cheetahs; Pangolin rangers in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains; and harnessing the power of wind.
Environment, Cambodia, Namibia, Africa
Restoring Wetlands With Beavers & Repair Cafes
Beaver farmers in the UK; reducing waste with Holland's Repair Cafes; and Manila's pollution-cleansing murals.
Environment, Europe, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Philippines
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11893
|
__label__wiki
| 0.537362
| 0.537362
|
You are here: Home » Adult Webmaster News » Utah Gov. Signs Bill Allowing 'Harm' Suits...
Utah Gov. Signs Bill Allowing 'Harm' Suits Against Porn Companies
SALT LAKE CITY, UT—According to a story on the Brigham Young University news site, The Daily Universe, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has signed into law the bill first proposed by Sen. Todd Weiler, which would allow families in the state to sue adult companies who released products that allegedly caused "emotional or psychological harm" to their child—but there's a good chance that either no suit will be brought under the Act, or if brought, would be unsuccessful, though fighting it could easily put an adult producer out of business due to legal costs. According to The Daily Universe, "The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, said the legislation is a follow-up to a resolution that was passed last year declaring pornography a public health crisis in Utah." Weiler also said that "to include adults [in the bill] as well would overstep legal boundaries." The text of the law, which can be found here, defines "pornographic material" essentially as obscenity, under the definition of same that was adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Miller v. California decision: "material that: (a) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, finds that, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest in sex; (b) is patently offensive in the description or depiction of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, sadomasochistic abuse, or excretion; and (c) taken as a whole does not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." However, as AVN pointed out when it originally analyzed the bill, if such a suit were brought, it could easily turn into a de facto obscenity trial, although under the legal concept of "obscene as to minors," that Miller definition might not necessarily apply in the same way it would if the government were bringing a simple "obscenity" charge against the material. In any case, the bill provides that a producer or distributor is liable if the viewer of the material is a minor, and "the pornographic material is the proximate cause for the person being harmed physically or psychologically, or by emotional or medical illnesses as a result of that pornographic material." (How a person, even a minor, could be "harmed physically" by viewing explicit material, or contract a "medical illness," is not explained in the bill.) Safe from liability under the bill, however, are ISPs or any "interactive computer service" (NetFlix? Roku? The bill doesn't make that clear); "a telecommunications service, information service, or mobile service, including a commercial mobile service"; cable TV companies, phone companies, "a distributor of Internet-based video services" and "hosting companies," defined as "a person that provides services or facilities for storing or distributing content over the Internet without editorial or creative alteration of the content." Also exempted from liability under the bill are person-to-person communications; anyone or entity that provides "a connection between one person and another person" (dating sites? Tinder? Grindr? Again, the bill doesn't say) or provides "data storage space" or caching to another person; or any entity that "does not intentionally aid or abet in the distribution of the pornographic material" or receives a fee for doing so. Additionally, adult producers/distributors should be able to avoid prosecution if "the person who distributes or otherwise provides pornographic material: (a) provides a warning that: (i) is conspicuous; (ii) appears before the pornographic material can be accessed; and (iii) consists of a good faith effort to warn persons accessing the pornographic material that the pornographic material may be harmful to minors; and (b) makes a good faith effort to verify the age of a person accessing the pornographic material." In other words, if the producer/distributor takes the steps that many attorneys serving the industry have recommended: that the material not appear on the front page of the website or the menu screen of a DVD (or any screen that shows up before the menu), that such front page/menu include a workable method for screening out minors who attempt to access the material, and that those opening screens make it clear that the material "may be harmful to minors." However, if a suit is brought, and the producer/distributor is found liable, the court may assess both actual damages, such as bills from treating physicians or psychologists, as well as punitive damages, for which no limit is set in the bill itself. The bill also allows for class action suits to be brought that, if successful, could easily bankrupt the producer/distributor—which may be one of the bill's objectives. Pictured: Utah Sen. Todd Weiler.
You are here: Home » Adult Webmaster News » Utah Gov. Signs Bill Allowing 'Harm' Suits...
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11895
|
__label__wiki
| 0.856614
| 0.856614
|
Spikes in Auto Recalls: Is the Auto Industry Growing More Cautious?
Automakers have recalled nearly 20 million vehicles in the past year, including some recalls involving marginal safety risks. The spike in recalls prompts industry observers to wonder if manufacturers have become more concerned with safety and auto design, whether they're under pressure from an energized federal watchdog or whether they're simply doing all they can to avoid the damaging publicity Toyota endured during its massive recalls late in 2009 and early this year.
In the first half of 2010, carmakers recalled 10.2 million vehicles, according to the Detroit News. That's about twice as many as were recalled in the first six months of last year. In the second half of 2009, recalls, led by Toyota and Ford, soared to 8.8 million cars, trucks and SUVs.
Toyota, especially, has felt the bite of the federal watchdog, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Since November of 2009, the Japanese auto giant has recalled 8.5 million vehicles over unintended acceleration and braking problems. The world's largest automaker was later fined a record $16.4 million for not recalling vehicles promptly enough.
Recent recalls show the auto industry still struggling with safety issues:
General Motors has recalled 2.9 million vehicles this year, including 1.3 million for defective windshield wipers.
Honda has recalled 1.1 million vehicles, including 383,000 to fix potential problems with ignition systems in Accords and Civics from the 2003 model year and Elements from the years 2003 and 2004. The locks can become so worn that they can lead to potentially dangerous vehicle roll-aways.
Chrysler has recalled 22,300 vehicles because an improperly formed part could allow brake fluid to leak.
Nissan has recalled 780,000 vehicles, including a small number of Armadas because of concerns with a rear seat that might lock and increase risks of injury in the event of a crash.
Ford had recalled 34,000 vehicles through the end of June after last year's massive recall of 4.5 million vehicles.
Kia Motors recalled about 35,000 Sorento and Soul vehicles to fix interior lighting wiring that could cause fires.
Mazda recalled 215,000 Mazda 3 and Mazda 5 cars because of steering problems that might lead to greater risks of crashes.
Making Safety a Higher Priority
A recent article in the Journal of Public Health Policy argues that the United States has fallen behind other countries in auto safety innovation because the federal government has not been aggressive enough in its pursuit of consumer safety. Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and Italy are all imposing stricter safety standards to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities.
Some members of Congress, apparently motivated by the intense public outcry in the wake of Toyota's massive recalls, have suggested giving the NHTSA more authority to move quicker on recalls, even when automakers are reluctant to cooperate. Congress may also give NHTSA power to impose significantly higher fines on vehicle manufacturers.
If you or a member of your family has been injured in a motor vehicle crash, collision or accident due to a defective part or design, contact a Texas personal injury lawyer to evaluate the facts of the case. A personal injury attorney can help injury victims and families in wrongful death cases pursue full compensation for their losses.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11900
|
__label__cc
| 0.606942
| 0.393058
|
Seat & Steering Wheel Covers
Back and Red
Black and Dark Grey
Blue Black
Xcessories
X-cessories
Sparaco
Swiss+Tech
Car Seat Backrest
Car Backrest
Racing Backrest
Seat Protector Cover
Steering cover
[1145645, 318909, 676566, 865180, 865179, 865178, 865177, 865173, 865172, 865169, 865168, 865166, 865165, 865164, 886822, 865194, 632015, 865181, 888712, 888714, 888716, 888718, 888723, 888724, 888727, 888729, 865195, 956505, 1317862, 1317863, 888711, 240366, 867276, 325039, 865190, 865163, 865197, 865196, 625076, 888713, 888717, 888719, 888720, 888721, 888722, 888725, 888726, 888730, 888731, 955022, 955023, 888715]
Swiss+Tech Seat Protector Cover (Black)
Padded Steering Wheel Cover
Racing Grip Steering Wheel Cover wt Wood Trim
Sparco Mesh Car Seat Set Covers - Blue
Sparco® Front Car Seat Cover Set PU Grey
Sparco® Front Car Seat Cover Set PU Red
Sparco® Front Car Seat Cover Set PU Blue
Sparco Car Seat Cover Set
Sparco Car Seat Cover (Linea Blue)
Sparco® Car Seat Backrest Blue
Sparco® Racing Car Backrest 3D Red Black
Sparco® Car Seat Backrest (Red)
Sparco® Car Seat Backrest - Blue
Sparco 3D Car Seat Backrest - Black
Xcessories PU Leather Steering Wheel Cover
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover (Dark Grey)
Xcessories Steering Wheel Cover (3.3x39.3x39.3cm)
Sparco Seat Cover Set (Mesh Grey)
Sparco Universal Seat Cover (Black and Blue)
Sparco Universal Seat Cover (Black and Grey)
Sparco Universal Seat Cover (Black and Dark Grey)
Sparco Universal Seat Cover (Blue and Black)
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover (Grey)
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover (Beige)
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover (Black and Blue)
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover (Red and Black)
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover Sport Line (Black)
Xcessories Line Synthetic Steering Cover
X-cessories Racing Grip Steering Wheel Cover (Velvet, Dark Gray)
X-cessories Racing Grip Steering Wheel Cover (Leather, Light Brown)
Sparco 3D Racing Backrest (65cm)
Custom_Accessories
Knobby Steering Wheel Cover - Black
Carpoint 0310178 Seat Cover Set
Brookstone Protective Car Seat Cover
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover Silver Carbon Body + Blue
Sparco® Car Seat Backrest Black
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover Sport Line (Blue)
Ribbed Grip Steering Wheel Cover (Black)
Sparco Universal Seat Cover (Black and Red)
Sparco Universal Seat Cover (Red and Black)
Sparco Universal Seat Cover (Black)
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover (Grey and Black)
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover (Black)
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover (Black and Red)
Sparco Steering Wheel Cover (Blue and Black)
Sparco Corsa Racing Backrest (8x55x65cm, Black)
Sparco Sport Steering Wheel Cover (Grey)
[1145645, 318909, 676566, 865180, 865179, 865178, 865177, 865173, 865172, 865169, 865168, 865166, 865165, 865164, 886822, 865194, 632015, 865181, 888712, 888714, 888716, 888718, 888723, 888724, 888727, 888729, 865195, 956505, 1317862, 1317863, 888711, 240366, 867276, 325039, 865190, 865163, 865197, 865196, 625076, 888713, 888717, 888719, 888720, 888721, 888722, 888725, 888726, 888730, 888731, 955022, 955023, 888715, 1145645, 318909, 676566, 865180, 865179, 865178, 865177, 865173, 865172, 865169, 865168, 865166, 865165, 865164, 886822, 865194, 632015, 865181, 888712, 888714, 888716, 888718, 888723, 888724, 888727, 888729, 865195, 956505, 1317862, 1317863, 888711, 240366, 867276, 325039, 865190, 865163, 865197, 865196, 625076, 888713, 888717, 888719, 888720, 888721, 888722, 888725, 888726, 888730, 888731, 955022, 955023, 888715]
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11902
|
__label__wiki
| 0.720252
| 0.720252
|
PINKPOP 2017, by Dewi Mik
PINKPOP 2018: All Things Loud Predicts the Line-Up
Tomorrow, the holy grail of Dutch festivals – Pinkpop – will unveil its entire line-up at its annual press conference, set to take place at the legendary Paradiso. Although Pinkpop is no longer an indicator of today’s vibrant musical climate (on the contrary: it’s a reflection of society’s mainstream tastes), it still remains a vital part of the Dutch festival calendar and one which has stood the test of time for nearly forty years. For this year’s edition, set to take place from 15-17 June, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam and Bruno Mars have been snapped up for high-key headline sets, alongside competition winners Walden and established favourites Editors and Nothing But Thieves. The rest of the line-up, though, is anyone’s guess; which is exactly why we’ve decided to predict exactly who we think will appear at Pinkpop 2018. Below you’ll find our detailed predictions, split into each individual festival day.
FRIDAY, 15 JUNE
We already know that grunge icons Pearl Jam are set to top the main stage bill on Pinkpop 2018’s opening day, and that local band Walden will kick off proceedings, but who else is in with a chance of strutting their stuff? If touring schedules are anything to go by, then we’re pretty sure that Rise Against and Snow Patrol will make for two of the day’s biggest names. Rise Against last appeared at the festival in 2015, setting the 3fm Stage alight with their ferocious missives, whereas Snow Patrol have been out of the loop for nearly ten years. Both are on the road this summer, and you’d assume that they’ll both form an important part of the opening day’s line-up. We’re also expecting an appearance by Irish folk rockers Flogging Molly, whose last appearance at the Landgraaf bash was in 2014.
Don’t be all too surprised to see a selection of fine pop names loiter on the poster too, though. RnB sensation Khalid is fresh from a sold-out show at the AFAS Live in Amsterdam, with Belgian electro poppers Oscar & the Wolf also doing extremely well on Dutch soil. German vocalist Alice Merton, who had a very successful performance at Eurosonic last month, is expected to bring some rootsy vibes to Landgraaf this year in a way only she knows best. We won’t be surprised if fellow Eurosonic alumni YUNGBLUD, EUT and TRAUDES join her either. In fact, we’re certain it’s going to happen.
As is standard with Pinkpop line-ups, you’ll find that there are usually a handful of bigger names accompanied by a whole host of smaller, “filler” acts. If the festival sticks to its usual formula this year, then we’re expecting a total of sixteen names on the opening day. Dutch pop rock quartet The Overslept, hard rockers Marmozets, curious multi-instrumentalist Cosmo Sheldrake, vocalist bülow and indie rockers The Hunna are all perfect names for Stage 4, the festival’s smallest stage.
Our prediction (16 names): Pearl Jam, Snow Patrol, Rise Against, Khalid, Flogging Molly, Oscar & the Wolf, Alice Merton, YUNGBLUD, EUT, TRAUDES, The Overslept, Marmozets, Cosmo Sheldrake, Bülow, The Hunna and Walden.
SATURDAY, 16 JUNE
The second day of Pinkpop 2018 is going to be spearheaded by Foo Fighters, who are making their long-awaited return to Landgraaf following 2015’s unfortunate cancellation due to Dave Grohl’s leg break. They’ll top the main stage billing, with popular quintet Nothing But Thieves also set to appear elsewhere on the day. There’s plenty of possibilities as to who else could make out part of the second day’s line-up, however none of it should be too surprising. The Script have a tendency to return to Landgraaf every couple of years, so an appearance by the Irish trio is long overdue. Elbow last appeared in 2015, with Maynard James Keenan’s A Perfect Circle almost a given. Popstar Lorde is in the area before and after Pinkpop, and she has a Landgraaf-sized hole gaping in her agenda.
Artists like Lorde are perfect for Pinkpop’s ever-changing demographic, one which last year attempted to include more rap and hip hop into the already existing mix of rock and pop. As far as that’s concerned, Dutch favourites De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig are hot favourites on the back of new album Luek, however you’ll probably find them everywhere and anywhere this year. Vocalist Maan is also a good shout, as is her buddy Lil’ Kleine. Further making a case for local music is singer-songwriter Douwe Bob, with some sources claiming that he’s already in Landgraaf awaiting showtime. Metal outfit DOOL are potentially a good shout as representatives of the national heavy music scene, one which tends to find representation in one or two acts at Pinkpop each year, if at all. Singer-songwriter WULF and Belgian outfit blackwave complete the list of potential local additions.
You may have noticed a significant lack of heavier music on this list, and that hasn’t gone unnoticed. Pinkpop have slowly but surely been making a shift from heavy music into a world of pop, RnB, rap and hip hop. That isn’t to say that there won’t be any guitar bands in Landgraaf this year, though. We’re pretty sure that American hard rockers Greta van Fleet, British quartet The Struts, indie rockers Bad Sounds and Walking on Cars and soul collective Hannah Williams & the Affirmations will also make appearances this year. Completing our list for the second festival day is Catalan outfit La Pegatina, whose ability to start a wild party has enabled them to return to Holland’s biggest festivals time and time again.
Our prediction (20 names): Foo Fighters, The Script, Elbow, Nothing But Thieves, A Perfect Circle, Lorde, James Bay, Triggerfinger, Greta Van Fleet, Walking On Cars, La Pegatina, Douwe Bob, The Struts, Maan, Lil’ Kleine, blackwave, Bad Sounds, DOOL, Hannah Williams & the Affirmations and WULF.
SUNDAY, 17 JUNE
The final day of Pinkpop is often seen as the big one. The day with some of the biggest names, craziest surprises and most exciting performances. It’s also a day where popstar Bruno Mars will present Landgraaf with cuts from his hugely successful back catalogue. Mars is the kind of artist whose live show will draw you in regardless of your musical preference. Similair words can be said for Editors, a band whose popularity on Dutch soil knows no bounds. Hell, they’re at least ten times bigger in Holland as they are back home in the United Kingdom. A whole line-up can’t rely on two names, though, regardless of their popularity. That’s why we think grunge stars Alice in Chains will also make the trek down to Landgraaf, alongside hard rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires. The trio consists of Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and Johnny Depp, and together they form an incendiary live trio whose reputation is as strong as ever. Throw Bullet For My Valentine, Hollywood Undead and Arcane Roots and you’ll have yourself a pretty solid selection of heavier names.
With Bruno Mars atop the bill, it’s only logical that a large portion of the line-up consists of poppier names. That’s why we reckon Cardi B will make an appearance in Landgraaf this year, having already been announced to share the stage with Mars in various other cities across Europe. Pop superstar P!NK is also a hot prospect, with festival organizer Jan Smeets potentially alluding to her booking under the guise of an artist big enough to pull upwards of 100,000 people. We’re not entirely sure if he meant P!NK, but it can’t really be anyone else. As far as the rest of the day’s poppier output goes, then we’re expecting Sigrid, Off Bloom, Clairo, London Grammar, rapper Boef and singer-songwriters Isaac Gracie and Tamino to make appearances. Pretty decent for a festival where the emphasis is clearly on the big names.
Oasis legend-cum-solo rocker Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds are in the area during the Pinkpop weekend, with local indie rockers Di-Rect and British favourites Kasabian also well overdue an appearance in Landgraaf. Indie outfit The Kooks last appeared in 2014, sharing the stage with Arctic Monkeys and Editors. Pair them up with up-and-comers Tom Grennan and Dead! and you have an extremely appealing day ahead of you.
Our prediction (22 names): Bruno Mars, Editors, Alice in Chains, Hollywood Vampires, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Bullet For My Valentine, Hollywood Undead, Kasabian, Cardi B, Di-Rect, P!NK, Sigrid, Isaac Gracie, Boef, off bloom, London Grammar, The Kooks, Tamino, Tom Grennan, Arcane Roots, Dead! and Clairo.
The above is very obviously a mere prediction, however we wouldn’t be surprised if a large part of it does turn out to be true. Come tomorrow afternoon, we’ll know for sure exactly who we think is going to appear at Pinkpop Festvial 2018. Below you can find our predictions compiled into one entire line-up.
Pinkpop 2018 takes place from 15-17 June in Landgraaf. Click here for more information, and keep an eye out on our socials tomorrow for all the latest from the annual press conference. Here’s a full lowdown of what went down at Pinkpop 2017.
A Perfect CircleAlice in Chainsbruno marseditorselbowflogging mollyfoo fightersKhalidlordenothing but thievesP!NKPearl JamPINKPOP 2018rise againstSnow Patrolthe script
Previous ArticleFESTIVAL NEWS: Dua Lipa, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and More for Sziget Festival
Next ArticleWATCH: Group of Kids Interviews Liam Gallagher
New Music Roundup, 5 August – Featuring Mac Demarco, The Maccabees & Nothing But Thieves
Elbow Frontman Guy Garvey Announces Solo Album, Releases Lead Single
Win tickets for Sziget Festival!
ALL THINGS LOUD May 1, 2019
LIVE: Nothing But Thieves @ AFAS Live, Amsterdam
Flogging Molly Announce European Tour
Coachella Announces Line-Up
Jack Parker January 3, 2017
Muse Offer Visual Masterclass in Amsterdam
Live Review: Rock am Ring 2015, Day 3 – 7.6.15
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11904
|
__label__wiki
| 0.901213
| 0.901213
|
Jessie Buckley delivers an unforgettable, star-making performance as Rose-Lynn Harlan, a rebellious country singer who dreams of trading the working-class streets of Glasgow for the Grand Ole Opry of Nashville. Fresh out of prison, Rose-Lynn juggles her menial job, two children, and committed mother, expertly portrayed by Oscar-nominee Julie Walters, as she pursues her bold ambition of a one-way ticket to musical stardom. With the support of her boss (Sophie Okonedo), Rose-Lynn embarks on a life-changing journey that challenges her sense of self and helps her discover her true voice. Complete with an electrifying soundtrack performed by Buckley, WILD ROSE is a joyous human story steeped in music, courage, family, and achieving your dreams - no matter how far away they may appear. After all, all you need are three chords and the truth.
Please allow approximately 20 extra minutes for pre-show and trailers before the show starts.1 hr 41 minR
93%Rotten Tomatoes
More Trailers and Videos for Wild Rose
Find the Latest Blogs About This Film
The Best New Movies in June 2019
Check out more blogs
on the AMC Scene
Go to item undefined
93%Tomatometer
63%Audience Score
JULIE WALTERSActor
For decades, British actress and comedienne Dame Julie Walters has served as a sturdy representation of the working class with her passionate, earthy portrayals on England's stage, screen and television. A bona fide talent, her infectious spirit and self-deprecating sense of humor eventually captured the hearts of international audiences. The small and slender actress with the prominent cheekbones has yet to give an uninteresting performance. She was born Julia Mary Walters on February 22, 1950 in Edgbaston, England, the youngest of three children and only daughter of Mary Bridget (O'Brien), an Irish-born postal clerk from County Mayo, and Thomas Walters, an English-born builder, from Birmingham. Convent schooled in Birmingham, she expressed an early desire to act. However, her iron-willed mother had other ideas and geared her towards a nursing career. Dutifully applying at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, Julie eventually gave up nursing when the pull to be an actress proved too strong. Studying English and Drama at Manchester Polytechnic, she subsequently joined a theatre company in Liverpool and apprenticed as a stand-up comic. A one-time company member of the Vanload improv troupe, she made her London stage debut in the aptly-titled comedy "Funny Peculiar" in 1975, and went on to develop a successfully bawdy act on the cabaret circuit. While at Manchester, Julie befriended aspiring writer/comedienne Victoria Wood and the twosome appeared together in sketch comedy. A couple of their works, "Talent" and "Nearly a Happy Ending", transferred to television and were accompanied by rave reviews. Eventually, they were handed their own television series, Wood and Walters (1981). In 1980, Julie scored a huge solo success under the theatre lights when she made her London debut in Willy Russell's "Educating Rita". For her superlative performance, she won both the Variety Critic's and London Critic's Circle Awards as the young hairdresser who vows to up her station in life by enrolling in a university. She conquered film as well when Educating Rita (1983) transferred to the big screen opposite Michael Caine as her Henry Higgins-like college professor, collecting a Golden Globe Award and Oscar nomination. Reuniting with Victoria Wood in 1984, the pair continue to appear together frequently on television, most recently with the award-winning series Dinnerladies (1998). On stage, Julie has impressed in a variety of roles ranging from the contemporary ("Fool for Love", "Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune") to the classics ("Macbeth", "The Rose Tattoo" and "All My Sons"), winning the Laurence Olivier Award for the last-mentioned play. Following her success as Rita, she immediately rolled out a sterling succession of film femmes including her seedy waitress-turned successful brothel-owner in Personal Services (1987); the unsophisticated, small-town wife of Phil Collins in Buster (1988); a boozy, man-chasing mum in Killing Dad or How to Love Your Mother (1990); and Liza Minnelli's abrasive tap student in Stepping Out (1991). Playing a wide variety of ages, she also mustered up a very convincing role as the mother of Joe Orton in the critically-acclaimed Prick Up Your Ears (1987). She capped her career in films as the abrasively stern but encouraging dance teacher in Billy Elliot (2000) which earned her a second Oscar nomination and a healthy helping of quirky character roles, including her charming, charity-driven widow who poses à la natural in Calendar Girls (2003), and the maternal witch-wife Molly Weasley in the J.K. Rowling "Harry Potter" series. For her work on film and television, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has honored Julie five times, including four awards in a row (2001-2004). Married to Grant Roffey since 1997 after a 12-year relationship, the couple tend to a 70-acre organic farm they bought in Sussex. They have one daughter, Maisie Mae Roffey (born 1988). In 1999, Julie was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) at the Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama. In 2008, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) at the Queen's New Years Honours for her services to drama. In 2017, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama.
SOPHIE OKONEDOActor
JESSIE BUCKLEYActor
JAMES HARKNESSActor
ASHLEY SHELTONActor
Jamie SivesActor
Cast & Crew photos provided by TMDb.
Movies at AMC
Please allow approximately 20 extra minutes for pre-show and trailers before the show starts.1 hr 40 minGReleased June 21st, 2019
Please allow approximately 20 extra minutes for pre-show and trailers before the show starts.2 hr 9 minPGReleased May 24th, 2019
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11906
|
__label__wiki
| 0.737363
| 0.737363
|
Home » Gun Rights News
Success FOR NOW in York County, VA for Lafayette Shooting Club
Ammoland Inc. Posted on July 12, 2013 by Ammoland
Virginia Citizens Defense League
Covington VA –-(Ammoland.com)- We had an excellent turnout at the York County Planning Commission meeting Wednesday night.
As predicted, many of the neighbors of the Lafayette Shooting Club (LSC) showed up and brought a host of totally unrelated complaints against Lafayette.
Some of the claims were false, some already fixed, and some only supposition (lead pollution in a nearby lake?).
VCDL members and members of Lafayette fought back, continually pointing out that this was only about a new building, picnic area, and gravel road, not a general complaint-fest.
In the end the vote to recommend the changes that Lafayette wants to the Board of Supervisors was 4 to 0 (a fifth Supervisor abstained from participating as he is on the Board of Directors of Lafayette).
We are not done yet, as the final decision will be made by the Board of Supervisors at a later date. You can bet the neighbors will be there with their list of unrelated grievances. We need to make sure that the neighbors don't prevail in what is really a case of extortion (“give in to our demands on ‘safety' and we won't fight your request to add a new classroom, picnic area, and gravel road”).
Lafayette is standing tall and we need to continue to stand with them. I will advise when the Board of Supervisors will be hearing the case.
Here is coverage of the meeting:
From wydaily.com: http://tinyurl.com/m7oxn6u
http://wydaily.com/2013/07/11/york-planners-forward-proposal-for-new-construction-at-lafayette-gun-club/
York Planners Forward Proposal for New Construction at Lafayette Gun Club
July 11, 2013 By Gregory Connolly
More than 40 people spoke at a public hearing concerning the construction of new buildings and a new pathway at Lafayette Gun Club at a York County Planning Commission meeting Wednesday. The commission voted 4-0 to recommend the Board of Supervisors approve the proposal.
About 22 people spoke in favor of the addition to the club, almost all of whom are members of the club. About 15 people, most of whom are residents the Brandywine subdivision that abuts the gun club, spoke against the addition.
The meeting attracted so many people that televisions broadcasting the meeting had to be set up on the first floor of York Hall. Some of the people who attended the meeting wore handguns on their sides.
The application calls for a 6,000-square-foot multi-purpose building and a 3,280-square-foot picnic pavilion. The multi-purpose building would be used for club meetings and classroom training space to help alleviate a lack of space in the current building. It also originally asked for a gravel path that leads to a 22-acre man-made lake adjacent to the gun club and to Brandywine, though it now only asks for a path that extends farther into the gun club’s property rather than to the lake.
The proposal would not increase the size or capacity of firing ranges at the gun club, nor would it add more.
Commissioner Todd Mathes abstained from the discussion and the vote. The commission normally has seven members but currently only has five due to commissioners Christopher Abel and Alexander Hamilton finishing their terms in June. The four commissioners who participated in the vote all brought up what they perceived to be a lack of communication between the gun club and Brandywine residents.
“Perhaps if you all communicated more often and better we wouldn’t have this full room,” said commissioner Timothy McCulloch. “We’d all be at home sleeping.”
Vice Chairwoman Melissa Magowan referred to the situation as a “perfect storm” between the growth of the gun club and of Brandywine. She said approving the proposal would likely cause more people to visit the gun club, which would intensify the problem. She ended up voting in favor.
The supporters of the addition primarily cited the commission’s role in considering the application, which they said should be to focus on whether an addition is legally allowed on that land rather than the safety and environmental concerns brought up by many people who opposed the proposal. Supporters also discussed the use of the facility by Boy Scouts and law enforcement organizations who train there, saying the expansion would better serve those groups and their members who rely on the club for important safety training in an area that lacks formal shooting clubs.
York County Sheriff J.D. “Danny” Diggs spoke in support of the proposal, saying the gun club is a valuable asset to the community and the region. He said it’s important to view the proposal as a property issue and that membership in the club has been rising due to the current political climate.
Opponents of the addition primarily cited safety issues, environmental issues and the expansion of the gun club’s membership and use of its 25.6-acre property in recent years. They also brought up the usage of the lake by gun club members.
One Brandywine resident said she was kayaking on the lake June 29 when pellets from a shotgun blast landed in the lake water nearby. The gun club owns about 4.4 acres of the lake while the Brandywine Lakeowners Association owns about 17.8 acres. Another Brandywine resident said her shed had been hit twice with gunfire. She also said she had seen people urinating in plain view at the club near the indoor shooting range.
Many of the Brandywine residents said they were frustrated with the growth of the club, which has climbed to about 3,600 members, according to the club’s president, Don Streeter. Club members cited the usage records at the club, which show 3,376 visits to the gun club since January, which breaks down to about 140 per week.
Read More: http://tiny.cc/t4c4zw
Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. (VCDL). VCDL is an all-volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right. Visit: www.vcdl.org
Leave a Comment 124985No Commentshttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ammoland.com%2F2013%2F07%2Fsuccess-for-now-in-york-county-va-for-lafayette-shooting-club%2FSuccess+FOR+NOW+in+York+County%2C+VA+for+Lafayette+Shooting+Club2013-07-12+17%3A23%3A41Ammolandhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ammoland.com%2F%3Fp%3D124985 Cancel reply
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11907
|
__label__wiki
| 0.565645
| 0.565645
|
Search > Birth, Marriage & Death
Suffolk, England, Extracted Church of England Parish Records, 1538-1850
Source Information
Ancestry.com. Suffolk, England, Extracted Church of England Parish Records, 1538-1850 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2017.
Original data: Electronic databases created from various publications of parish and probate records.
About Suffolk, England, Extracted Church of England Parish Records, 1538-1850
This database is a collection of historical parish registers from the county of Suffolk in the country of England. The records in this collection can range in date from the early 1500s to the mid- to late-1800s. Some non-parish records may be included from as early as the twelfth century. Parish records--primarily baptisms, marriages, and burials--provide the best source of vital record information in the centuries before civil registration. The records include baptisms/christenings, burials, marriages, tombstone inscriptions, obituaries, tax lists, wills, and other miscellaneous types of records. Also included are some records from non-conformist churches. All of the data was converted as it was originally presented in various published registers and books. For this reason, you will find interesting phonetic spellings and large descriptive tables of contents.
What should I know about this collection to access the data?
Some of the records may be in Latin or even a Welsh or Scottish dialect depending on location. The spelling is archaic, and is transcribed as it was written. There are many spelling inconsistencies and non-standard grammar. Phonetic spelling is often used. Try using variant spellings if a search yields no results.
The individual files in this database may not include all dates and records for each parish/church. Use caution in assuming that any database is a complete set of records--even for the parishes and time period listed. Due to the legibility of the original sources, there may be gaps in the records, including partial sentences, cut-off words, and other omissions.
Due to the nature of the records and because the records were originally compiled by a third party, it is difficult to absolutely verify the completeness and validity of the data. The information in this collection is as correct as it was when Ancestry.com received it, and has merely been reproduced in an electronic format.
What historical background should I know to use this data?
A large number of parish records date from the sixteenth century, when a series of mandates required clergy to compile records of baptisms, marriages, and burials within the parish, and to send an annual copy to the Bishop. Essentially, there are two sets of records: the parish copy and the copy the clergyman sent to the Bishop each year, known as Bishops Transcripts. Many records were destroyed, lost, or simply not kept during the Civil War (1642-60). Of the surviving records, many have since been transcribed and collected by genealogical societies. The records are a valuable resource for finding vital information of people of the time. The content of the records may vary between the two sets.
How do I find copies of the originals?
These records are a finding aid that help researchers locate an ancestor in a particular time and place in history. With a location and an approximate date, the microfilm number of pertinent corroborating records can often be found on the LDS Church's FamilySearch site (www.familysearch.org) in the Family History Library Catalog. The Family History Library in Salt Lake City has the largest collection.
For unfilmed original parish records go to The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers, under the county of interest. This will then direct you the County Record Office where the registers are housed. You can also contact local genealogy societies or local parishes for information on viewing original records. See Crockford's Clerical Directory, a directory of Church of England clergy, if you wish to write to a parish. It is published annually.
There are other church records, and a search on Familysearch.org on the FHLC can provide you with listings of original parish records by doing a locality search for your county/parish, then look under "Church Record" type.
Related data collections
This database is also searchable as part of a larger collection of related databases. Search the larger collection.
Wills of the Archdeaconry of Suffolk, 1620-1624
This database is a register of over 780 wills proved in the court of the Archdeacon of Suffolk in the Old Style calendar years 1620-24.
All Birth, Marriage & Death in the Card Catalog
Understanding records
What can I do with this?
Handwriting help
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11909
|
__label__cc
| 0.503621
| 0.496379
|
OGIC: It’s oh-gic with a guh
Sorry, Terry! But that’s not how I say it (see the post directly below). I’m not sure why, but I’ve always been oh-gic (with a hard “G”) to me. I’m just not fond of that chewy “odge” sound, and I definitely prefer the long “O,” like the letter. I think this makes my pronunication sound more like the acronym it is, which I like. I’ve never been known by an acronym before, and I’m finding it rather enchanting. Makes me feel kind of official. So I’m afraid I’m going to have to go over your head here and declare mine the official pronunciation.
Funny, isn’t it, that we never discovered we were saying this differently?
And yes, I did make a Liza Minnelli reference up there. Weird, huh?
TT: Gray and grayer
Eric Felten has a very interesting piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about advertisers who pitch to the 18-to-34 cohort, and why they’re foolish to do so. This paragraph is particularly relevant:
A few years ago the Chicago Symphony commissioned a survey that found the average age of its concert-goers to be 55. But the orchestra’s president, Henry Fogel, didn’t fall for the actuarial fallacy. Instead he checked similar research done 30 years earlier and found that the average age at that time was also 55. “There is simply a time in one’s life when subscribing to a symphony orchestra becomes both desirable and possible,” says Mr. Fogel, now president of the American Symphony Orchestra League. Acting on this insight, the Chicago Symphony is wooing boomers who, though they may still enjoy their old Beatles records, long for a new musical experience. The orchestra has targeted new subscribers by advertising on, of all places, a local “classic rock” station.
Read the whole thing here. I think Felton is dead right, but as one who has blogged aggressively about the need for arts organizations to target and capture a younger audience, I should point out that in the context of symphony orchestras and opera companies, “younger” means “younger than 70,” not “18 to 34.” And when it comes to creating a younger audience, don’t forget that arts education in the public schools is in decline. The question everybody is asking, or ought to be asking, is this: how hard is it to persuade people of a certain age (i.e., mine) to make a serious commitment to an art form about which they know little or nothing going in?
I just wrote a piece for Commentary (I’ll link to it when it’s available on line) about how I became interested in the visual arts. I am an adult convert–I didn’t start looking at painting and sculpture until I was 40 years old. So it can happen. But I was an aesthete going in: I was already habituated to the notion of seeking pleasure through high art. If the Chicago Symphony is counting on there being enough people like me in Chicagoland to pay its bills in the coming decade, I have a feeling that they’re whistling Schoenberg.
TT: Where his mouth is
I’m reading the revised edition of City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village, a book by David Sucher, who blogs, logically enough, at City Comforts. Sucher has popped up on this site before, usually in connection with modern architecture. He can be quite thought-provokingly testy, in the very best tradition of bloggers. Take a look at his blog–and definitely buy his book. It’s a manual of dos and don’ts about urban planning on a human scale, and it is immensely readable (not to mention beautifully designed).
You may not think this topic interests you, but if you live in or near a city, it does whether you know it or not, and Sucher has an uncanny knack for simplifying complicated issues by reducing them to practical essentials. I’ve never read anything so illuminating about what he calls “the sociable city.”
To order the book, go here. I strongly recommend it.
TT: Far removed
Cinetrix writes about obsessive filmgoers:
You’ve seen them, too. Perhaps even dodged them. Unlike film students, they don’t go to the movies because they’re supposed to, they go to the movies because they have to. The darkness is asylum and escape from a world that’s never just like it is on the silver screen.
No doubt I have these tendencies, too, though I never noticed them until the afternoon a few years ago when I attended a matinee devoted exclusively to Warner Bros. cartoons. Granted, this was in New York, but as I stood in the lobby and looked around me at the visibly peculiar souls drawn by the prospect of spending an hour and a half with Bugs, Daffy, and Wile E. Coyote, I thought to myself, What must I look like to them?
I had this thoroughly unsettling experience in mind when I wrote the first paragraph of “What Randolph Scott Knew,” an essay about the Westerns of Budd Boetticher included in A Terry Teachout Reader (preorder your copy today!).
If you long to meet odd people, it’s hard to top Manhattanites who go to movies on weekdays. To be sure, I am among their number, but at least I have an excuse: I write about movies. The viewers I have in mind are the pure-hearted obsessives, overwhelmingly male and uniformly unattractive, who flock to revival houses on sunny spring afternoons to take in the latest week-long tribute to Alexander Dovzhenko, Ida Lupino, or maybe Edgar G. Ulmer–it scarcely matters, since the same folks show up every time, no matter what’s showing….
It isn’t just filmheads, of course. Danceheads and operaheads are the same way, and since I partake of all of the above obsessions, plus a few others, what does that make me? But at least in New York you know you’re not alone. I can’t think of another city where it’s possible to satisfy so many different obsessions so thoroughly, or to be a member of so many different social groups whose membership doesn’t overlap at all. I first noticed this at my fortiety birthday party (one of the very few parties, incidentally, that I’ve ever thrown, or had thrown for me). I didn’t know a room could have so many different corners, much less that each could be inhabited with its very own gaggle of recognizably similar people.
Perhaps all my obsessions cancel one another out and leave in their wake the residue of an approximately normal human being. But I wouldn’t count on it.
TT: On paper
Erin O’Connor, who blogs at Critical Mass, writes this morning about The Human Stain–the novel, not the movie–from the point of view of “the human cost of the culture of campus speech codes.” In light of my unenthusiastic earlier posting on the film, it’s hugely interesting to read what she has to say, and even more interesting to read this striking quote from the book:
There is something fascinating about what moral suffering can do to someone who is in no obvious way a weak or feeble person. It’s more insidious even than what physical illness can do, because there is no morphine drip or spinal block or radical surgery to alleviate it. Once you’re in its grip, it’s as though it will have to kill you for you to be free of it. Its raw realism is like nothing else.
Read O’Connor’s own trenchant posting here. And if you haven’t bookmarked Critical Mass, do so. It’s indispensable.
“I know of nothing more beautiful than the Appassionata, I could hear it every day. It is marvellous, unearthly music. Every time I hear these notes, I think with pride and perhaps childlike naivete, that it is wonderful what man can accomplish. But I cannot listen to music often, it affects my nerves. I want to say amiable stupidities and stroke the heads of the people who can create such beauty in a filthy hell. But today is not the time to stroke people’s heads; today hands descend to split skulls open, split them open ruthlessly, although opposition to all violence is our ultimate ideal–it is a hellishly hard task.”
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, quoted in Maxim Gorky, Days with Lenin
TT: Funny and otherwise
I reviewed the openings of two off-Broadway shows, Neil Simon’s Rose’s Dilemma
and Bill Irwin’s The Regard Evening, in this morning’s Wall Street Journal.
About the first I was tepid:
“Rose’s Dilemma” is worth seeing, albeit for a sad reason: Mr. Simon is 76 and in fragile health, and my guess is that he intended it as his farewell to the theater. The self-pitying tone of the play, which tells the story of Rose Steiner (Patricia Hodges), an aging, hopelessly blocked playwright who is haunted by the imagined ghost of Walsh McLaren, her old lover (John Cullum), leaves little doubt of that. “You sound like a caricature of yourself that fell off the wall at Sardi’s,” Rose tells Walsh at one point. I winced, suspecting that Mr. Simon’s satirical gun was aimed at his own forehead.
Unlike Rose, Mr. Simon is still in there pitching, but he’s lost his curveball. “With Neil Simon,” the playwright David Ives once told me, “you can sort of walk out of the theater and hum the jokes, like humming the tunes from a musical.” Alas, the jokes in the first act of “Rose’s Dilemma” are tuneless, though their metronomic rhythm–setup, payoff, setup, payoff–keeps clacking away relentlessly. That’s the problem: The first act feels like a comedy, only it isn’t funny….
About the second I wasn’t:
[T]his revival of “The Regard of Flight,” Mr. Irwin’s 1982 spoof of postmodern theater and its malcontents, runs through Jan. 25. That gives you plenty of time to see it at least once, and preferably twice. Not only is it a hoot and a half, but Mr. Irwin has tacked on a brief afterpiece in which the three characters of “The Regard of Flight” grapple ineptly with life in the age of e-mail and cell phones. It’s superfluous–the original show is perfect–but it does give you 20 extra minutes in the company of Mr. Irwin and his droll colleagues, and that’s good enough for me…
No link, so to read the whole thing, buy this morning’s Journal, turn to the “Weekend Journal” section, and regale yourself with a wide variety of arts and culture coverage, all for a dollar. It’s the best deal in town.
TT: In case you were wondering
A blogger out there refers to me as “Terry ‘Unpronounceable’ Teachout.” In fact, my last name is pronounced exactly like the two words of which it is constructed: TEACH-out.
OGIC, by the way, is pronounced like “logic” without the “l.”
Aren’t you glad we cleared that up?
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11912
|
__label__cc
| 0.667989
| 0.332011
|
APD Communications joins EENA
June 26, 2018 / Jane Cross
APD Communications are proud to announce that it has become a member of the European Emergency Number Association, EENA.
EENA is a non-governmental organisation based in Brussels, Belgium with the mission to contribute to improving the safety and security of people. This also aligns with APD Communications core values which is to help organisations protect and preserve society with secure, intelligent and connected control room technologies.
112 is the European emergency number across all 28 EU states, as well as other countries within Europe and further a field. People in distress can call 112, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to reach the fire brigade, seek medical assistance or contact the police. It’s a free number which can be reached by landline phones as well as mobiles.
“Being a member of EENA gives us a great opportunity to share ideas, contribute to new technology advances and discuss international legislation with emergency services organisations in more than 80 countries.” said Mike Isherwood, Managing Director of APD Communications.
“We serve customers across Europe and the Middle East and our international business is growing quickly. EENA holds a wealth of knowledge and insight from organisations across the world which will help us continue to deliver the worlds most advanced mission critical technology to existing and future control room customers.”
The EENA membership includes more than 1300 emergency services representatives from over 80 countries world-wide, 90 solution providers, 11 international associations, more than 200 members of the European Parliament and more than 90 researchers.
June 26, 2018 / Jane Cross/
APD MD takes industry role with ...
Hosted technology shortlisted for ...
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11915
|
__label__cc
| 0.612076
| 0.387924
|
10 things you can only do in Auckland
1. Kayak to a volcanic island
Hire a kayak and paddle out to Rangitoto Island, a dormant volcano not far from downtown Auckland (you can also get there by ferry). Walk up the old lava flows to the summit for spectacular views across the harbour and back to the city.
/visit/discover/activities/land-activities/walking-hiking/sea-kayak-day-tour-ra…
2. Walk across the country in 5 hours
The Coast to Coast Walkway crosses New Zealand's narrowest neck of land. Start in Viaduct Harbour on Auckland’s east coast and travel west through urban landscapes, beautiful parklands and over dormant volcanoes to finish 16km later at Manukau Harbour.
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/parksfacilities/walkingtracks/Pages/coast…
3. Swim in the east, then surf in the west
With our two coastlines so close, you can take a dip at one of Auckland’s east coast beaches in the morning, then grab a surfboard and head to the west coast’s rugged black-sand surf beaches for the afternoon. Or the other way around!
/visit/discover/beaches
4. Day trip to an isle of wine
Just a 35-minute ferry ride and you’re in Waiheke Island, Auckland’s island of wine. This slice of paradise is a haven of beautiful island beaches and some 30 wineries. Join a wine tasting tour and linger over a vineyard lunch, with gorgeous views to match.
/visit/destinations/hauraki-gulf-and-islands/waiheke-island
5. Visit the world’s largest penguin colony exhibit
Catch these cuties at Kelly Tarlton’s SEALIFE Aquarium, as well as the world’s only display of Spiny Sea Dragons, the biggest species of stingray on the globe, and an underwater aquarium of colourful fish. Watch the sharks at feeding time – or book your own shark dive.
https://www.kellytarltons.co.nz/
6. See the world’s largest collection of Māori taonga
Discover more than 1000 taonga (treasures) at the Auckland Museum – the largest collection in New Zealand (and the world). From small precious artefacts to an original full-size marae (meeting house) and waka (canoe), this is a fascinating glimpse into early Māori culture.
http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/visit/our-galleries/maori-galleries
7. Rediscover a lost island
Once a private rehabilitation centre, Rotoroa Island was re-opened to the public in 2005 after nearly 100 years. Wander through the new exhibition centre and museum, visit the historic chapel and jail house, and walk along beautiful white-sand beaches and bush trails.
http://rotoroa.org.nz/
8. Visit the world’s only island Dark Sky Sanctuary
Not only is Great Barrier Island a place of incredible beauty, it’s also the first island in the world to be designated as an International Dark Sky Sanctuary – joining only two other locations. The island is off the grid and with minimal outdoor lighting, it’s a dream destination for star-gazers to take in the stunning night skies.
/visit/destinations/hauraki-gulf-and-islands/great-barrier-island
9. Experience Pasifika Festival
We’ve got the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world. Explore the authentic villages representing different Pacific Island nations at the annual Pasifika Festival, browse the food and art stalls and catch live music and dance.
10. Ferry to The Riverhead, New Zealand’s oldest riverside tavern
Retrace the route of the early Māori settlers and New Zealand’s first pioneers by taking a ferry to The Riverhead, New Zealand’s oldest historic riverside tavern. Enjoy a delightful meal overlooking the water, under the oak trees in summer or cosy and warm by the fire during winter.
Top 10 things to do at night
Top 10 things to do for adventure lovers
Top 10 things to do for kids
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11919
|
__label__wiki
| 0.991153
| 0.991153
|
Old charm lures a new crowd Revival: Bright lights and a small-town feel prove to be a holiday draw in Fells Point.
Jacques KellyTHE BALTIMORE SUN
Come dusk, as December's skies turn indigo and the electric lights flash on, strollers linger on the bricks and cobblestones along Fells Point's Thames Street.
They stand before the old-fashioned shop windows piled with toy boats and stuffed animals. They circulate along the narrow, red-ribboned streets. They glance over at the tugboats docked bobbing at the foot of Broadway.
Here, in a neighborhood of strong personalities and small merchants, urban confidence is running high this month, with the Broadway square decorated like never before and 200-year-old streets dressed up like a Christmas card.
"The streets have really come to life here," said Robert Helsley, a graphics designer, as he admired a 1950s-era bubble-light tree in a Fleet Street shop window. "It's really very Londonish with the old buildings and the port. There's something here that's missing in the malls."
What's changed to draw people to one of Baltimore's oldest parts?
Some credit the near-doubling of Christmas lights festooning the old square at the water's edge. (There are 30,000 lights this December; 15,500 last year). Others say it's the shop windows and seasonal decorations spread throughout this neighborhood's medley of bars, stores, antique shops and restaurants. Or could it be the subtraction of a marble slab in the center of the Fells Point Square that had been a magnet for trash and skateboarders?
"I can't tell you the difference it's made to the square since the city removed that thing," said Mike Beckner, owner of Brick Oven Pizza at 800 S. Broadway, referring to a marble pedestal base the city placed in the middle of the square in the 1970s. "We always called it the tomb of the unknown wino."
"There's no question that people are coming here to walk the streets. It's really encouraging," Beckner said.
A city crew removed the marble base last week.
"It's made a big difference. People aren't afraid to walk through the square," Beckner said.
The decorated shop windows encourage people to stroll and window shop. Their presence adds to a sense of public safety.
"We hit rock bottom a few years ago," when U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski was mugged outside her home in October 1995, said Jack Trautwein, owner of P.J.'s Place, a 15-foot-wide Lancaster Street shop that sells Nativity sets and other Christmas wares. "Strollers stayed away in droves."
"All of a sudden, it's happened. People are decorating their places and acting like it's Christmas," said Trautwein, whose store is crammed with German glass ornaments. "I have visitors from Germany who tell me that Fells Point and my shelves remind them of their childhoods."
"There is definitely a feeling that the streets are safer here this year," said John Raccuglia, an Eastern Avenue antique-shop owner. His plate glass windows filled with elves, pigs, reindeer BTC and 1950s aluminum trees were arranged by Maryland Institute graduate Julie Fahey. "There's more people on Charles Street, too."
The perceived upswing in pedestrian traffic in Southeast Baltimore this Christmas season has spread beyond the foot of Broad- way.
"I see a spillover of visitors from Canton," said Robert Eney, a window display artist who retired from the old Hutzler Brothers department store. "People are coming to Fells Point to see our windows. We're a destination. There's nothing like a good, well-designed window to draw people."
"This place was improved since the last time I was here," said Sharon Wigfield, a visitor from Hagerstown. "It's so cozy you feel like you're in a small town."
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11923
|
__label__cc
| 0.568731
| 0.431269
|
Do benefits plan members want more personalized health info?
Two-thirds (65 per cent) of plan members said they’d be willing to receive health-related information from the insurer managing their workplace benefits plan based on how they personally use their benefits, according to the 2019 Sanofi Canada health-care survey.
“People value personalization to help them move forward and understand what’s available to them that fits their needs,” said Paula Allen, vice-president of research and analytics at Morneau Shepell Ltd. and a survey advisory board member.
Read: Creating a thriving workplace with data, personalized employee benefits
“There will always be a small group of people who do not accept that even the most stringent confidentiality provisions are real. That cannot be a barrier to moving forward. A time may soon come when people will say, ‘Well, if you’re not going to use my data to my benefit, I don’t want you to have it at all.’” Plan sponsors are eager to see the same thing, with 74 per cent saying they’d like to see members receive that information. Regionally, Quebec (82 per cent) had the most interested plan sponsors, followed by Western Canada (65 per cent). And 90 per cent of all large employers with more than 500 employees were interested, which dropped off significantly (56 per cent) among smaller employers with fewer than 50 employees.
Read: Hybrid of core coverage, personalized benefits touted as future of health plans
“It’s definitely encouraging that plan members are more comfortable than not with personalized communications,” said Ryan Weiss, vice-president of group customer market development at Great-West Life Assurance Co. “But we know why many sponsors say that they can’t afford even one person raising concerns about the use of their data, and that shuts things down. Certainly, we understand why people might be concerned, but it’s unfortunate because there is good opportunity there.” Two-thirds (65 per cent) of plan members said they feel confident their insurance company would protect their privacy when analyzing personal claims data, while 13 per cent said they’re very confident. Overall, confidence was down compared to 2017, when 76 per cent said they felt their privacy would be respected and 21 per cent said they’re very confident it would be. Confidence was especially low among plan members who said their work environment didn’t have a wellness culture (49 per cent) and among those who aren’t satisfied with their job (53 per cent).
“Plan sponsors are looking to insurers to push forward with targeted communications on an opt-in, opt-out basis,” said Susan Belmore-Vermes, director of group benefits solutions at Health Association Nova Scotia and a survey advisory board member. “More of us are seeing this as important for chronic disease management and prevention because it will help people understand how lifestyle and other changes they can make will improve their overall health.”
Read:What are the top chronic diseases in the workplace?
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11927
|
__label__cc
| 0.554698
| 0.445302
|
Home Bulgarian properties by region Varna properties
Properties for sale in Varna
Varna is a working city as well as a resort and for long-stay residents has something to offer that the beach resorts lack. There is a range of properties available, including older blocks of flats on the edge of town, newer luxurious apartments in the center and houses with lovely sea view. Prices in Varna have doubled in recent years and it is probably one of the most popular places on the Black Sea coast.
Around Varna you can find a number of attractive, popular villages that are worth exploring and can offer a variety of new and renovated houses for people looking for more peaceful atmosphere.
Take a look at our listing for properties in Varna area and do not hesitate to contact us for more details on any of our offers.
Read information about Varna
DISCOUNTED -49% Description
House for sale near Varna (ID: 1446)
District: Varna
This is an offer for a plot of regulated land in a clean area suitable for building a holiday home. The name of the village is Shtipsko. Electricity and water are available at the property . The property provides nice views to surrounding... more
Regulated plot of land for sale near the sea (ID: 10082)
We offer you the opportunity to buy a fully regulated plot of land, located in a well developed village near the city of Varna and the sea. The village is set in north-eastern Bulgaria, 5 km from the highway Varna - Burgas. It is part from the... more
House for sale near Valchi Dol (ID: 10662)
Our next offer is for a rural house, situated in a village part of Valchi Dol municipality and 50 km from Varna. The size of the yard is 930 sq m and the total living area is 108 sq m. The house is located in the highest part of the village... more
700 sq m plot in regulation (ID: 3284)
Don’t hesitate to purchase this attractive plot situated in a beautiful village only 55 km far from the city of Varna and some 20 km away from the sea. The village is well organized and lies in perfect fishing and hunting area close to a reserve.... more
Rural house for sale near Varna (ID: 12231)
We are offering a property for sale, consisting of a yard, a small house and additional farm buildings. It is situated in a peaceful village about 60 km from Varna. The house is on one floor. It comprises with three rooms, non-transitional. It... more
Regulated plot of land for sale near Varna (ID: 10388)
This yet another offer for a land for sale, located near Varna and the sea. The property is situated in a picturesque village south –west from the city. The settlement lies 25 km from the city of Varna, 30 km away from the sea-coast and 10 km... more
Big building plot for sale near Varna (ID: 4355)
We offer you a plot of 5 000 sq m near the village of Konstantinovo, Varna district. The plot is adjacent to another plot planned to be built up for a golf village. There is a forest just next to the plot and also it opens up panoramic view to... more
The property is located in a village in north-east Bulgaria which is included in Municipality Provadia. It is a traditional Bulgarian farming village situated in the foothills of the Stara Planina Mountain range, 65 km away from the seaside city... more
This is another rural house for sale located near Varna - the third biggest city in Bulgaria. The village is situated north-west from the city and is included in the municipality of Vulchi Dol. Varna district. It is 63 km away from Varna, 55 km... more
If you would like to build a property according to your own design and requirements then this land will perfectly suite your needs. It is a spacious, fully regulated plot of land with total area of 901 sq m. The land is supplied with water,... more
House for sale near Varna (ID: 10526)
This is a solid, two-storey, rural house for sale, in a village in Varna region. The house is built of stone and bricks. It faces 2 streets, one of which is asphalted. The village is set to the north-west from Varna and south from Dobrich. The... more
Our next suggestion is for a house for sale, located in a well-developed village near the city of Varna. The village is included in the municipality of Vetrino, Varna district. It lies right next to the highway that connects Sofia and Varna... more
The house is located in a village part of Vulchi Dol municipality, Varna district. It is very small and quiet away from the city noise and among beautiful nature with amazing views. The village is at the distance of 64 km from Varna. The house... more
Rural property for sale near Varna (ID: 10887)
We would like to bring to your attention this splendid countryside house with beautiful panoramic views, located in a village near Varna. The village is set in north-eastern Bulgaria, 50 km north-west from the city of Varna and the sea. The... more
Take a look at our next suggestion. This is a plastered and painted rural house for sale, located not far from the city of Varna and the sea. The house also benefits with PVC windows. It needs an internal refreshment. In the yard there are few... more
DISCOUNTED -4% Description
Regulated plot of land for sale near Varna (ID: 5393)
This is a plot of regulated land for sale, located in a calm and quiet village near the town of Varna and the sea. The investment property is situated in a charming village, only 25 min away from Varna city and from the Black Sea coast. It is a... more
This is a two-storey, fully renovated house for sale located close to the sea and the city of Varna. The property is situated in a quiet village, 55 km west from Varna. The area is ecologically clean with lovely views. The village has all of... more
Regulated plot of land for sale near Byala (ID: 6193)
This is an offer for a well-sized plot of land for sale located in a picturesque village in between the two large sea towns Bourgas and Varna. The parcel comprises total area of 1045 sq m. It is divided on two almost identical plots - 530 and... more
We would like to offer you a house for sale, located in a picturesque village not far from the sea and city of Varna. The village is set only at 7 km from the municipal center of Valchi Dol, and 45 km from the city of Varna and the... more
Our next suggestion is this rural property for sale located to the south-west from Varna city. The house is situated in a small village which belongs to the municipality of Dalgopol, Varna district. It is around 80 km away from Varna and 70 km... more
This is a rural type house for sale located in a lovely village 50 km from Varna, in a half-mountainous region. The village is surrounded by pine forests. There is a river running through it and there is a large lake 3 km away. The village has... more
Bulgarian Property News
Indian Owners Suspend 70m Euro Project Near Sozopol 10/03/2008
Three Indian entrepreneurs, who have announced earlier their intention to invest more than 70 million euro in building a 30 000-residents town near the Sozopol’s village of Rossen, have had to suspend their plans, Standart daily reported on February 19 2008. The large-scale undertaking has... more
Unique Exhibition Of Bulgarian Historic State Symbols Opened In Veliko Tarnovo 24/11/2008
A new exhibition, which was opened today in the old capital Veliko Tarnovo, gathered a unique collection of historic state symbols of Bulgarian rulers dating back from the country's founding. Among the included relics are the throne and the sceptre of Tsar Ferdinand I, a copper coin of Ivan Asen... more
Properties for sale in Varna, buy apartments, houses, villas, land for sale in Varna
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11929
|
__label__wiki
| 0.830627
| 0.830627
|
Published December 28th
The family of a pregnant woman who suddenly died in a Mississippi detention center while awaiting trial is demanding information surrounding the circumstances of her death.
Lanekia Michelle Brown, 37, was jailed and awaiting a trial for a charge of trafficking of a controlled substance. She was placed in the Madison County Detention Center, where she was later found dead by a nurse. According to her family, Brown complained of stomach pain before her death, WJTV 12 reports.
“They did CPR on her over and over… still didn’t get no response.… So he just said she was gone,” Brown’s mother, Margaret Johnson, told the local news station.
Brown, who was only about three weeks pregnant, was in healthy condition, said her family.
Brown’s family learned of her death when a Mississippi Highway Patrol Officer delivered the news two days before Christmas. Although the trooper told Johnson a nurse found Brown unresponsive, the family was not told how she died.
Additionally, whenever Brown’s family asked for more information, they were given the silent treatment. They were not even allowed to identify the body and now they are suspecting foul play.
“I need to know what happened to her… where she at. They won’t tell me or give me no information. That’s my child,” Johnson said. “I love my child.… I want to know where my child is.”
The local sheriff’s office confirmed Brown’s death to news outlets and added that the investigation would be taken over by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations.
Written by Rachel Herron
(Photo: WJTV)
Get the latest from BET in your inbox!
Sign up now for the latest in celebrity, sports, news and style from BET.
OR JOIN US ON
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11933
|
__label__wiki
| 0.911368
| 0.911368
|
Coming next: an affordable electric Bugatti you can drive every day?
by Hannah Elliott | March 14, 2019
Bugatti is known for building dazzling supercars which are also super-expensive, but now the marque has its eye on a car that's well, less super and more of an everyday driver.
It was a curious and even jarring juxtaposition against Bugatti's unveiling of the world’s most expensive new car at last week's Geneva Motor Show: the €16.7 million La Voiture Noire (French for "the black car", below), a one-off coupe made as a modern interpretation of the iconic Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic and speculated to have been created on commission for Ferdinand Piech, chairman of Volkswagen Group from 1993 to 2002.
Yet according to Bugatti President Stephan Winkelmann, the brand is looking to introduce a second, more affordable model of car to its current multimillion-dollar lineup.
Winkelmann characterized it not as a mere halo car but as a best-in-segment daily driver with a top-line price to match – and it would be at least partially electric.
“I would see us doing a battery electric vehicle,” he said of the proposed new car. “There, the balance between performance and comfort is much more important, and it’s about daily usability. This is what I see.”
Face-melting speed “will be far less important” in the second car, he said, although it stands to reason that even a far “lesser” creation could cost a half-million dollars and pack quite a punch.
Winkelmann declined to give additional specifics about the cost, chassis, and performance of the potential car but said the company has already begun analyzing the prospect. “Let’s see what we can do,” he said. “I’m hoping for the best.”
There is room to expand, even with the generous business that million-dollar cars such as the Bugatti Chiron and Divo already provide.
Matt DeLorenzo, senior managing editor for Kelley Blue Book, characterizes the move to bring in a second model lineup as smart, matching the VW Group’s overall push toward electrification. “They do need to remain relevant within the group,” he says.
“At the end of the day, the difference of the price in a car is the brand,” Winkelmann said of how the new model may be positioned. “And this, I think, will stay the same – fortunately for us. I’m convinced about this.”
Tim Urquhart, the principal automotive analyst at IHS Markit, casts doubt as to whether the new model will be hugely profitable, despite strategy shifts from new VW Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess.
Instead, “relevancy is the more important question,” he says, especially when the brand story matters as much as the product—and when hybrid and purely electric vehicles have utterly dominated automotive news for the past few years.
Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, and Porsche have all announced electric cars, to be produced now or in the near future. Tesla’s electric vehicles continue to move from strength to strength, against all odds.
Cities such as London and Paris are becoming increasingly hostile to combustion-driven engines. And the technology needed to get a two-ton Chiron to sustained performance and extended range under battery power alone isn’t feasible, due to weight and cost constraints.
In short, an electric Chiron would be a compromised Chiron, Winkelmann says. That’s why, in order to introduce electric technology into Bugatti, it must come in the form of a new car altogether. “I would see [electric power] there because I don’t need a top speed, which is over 250 mph,” he said.
Bugatti would hardly be the first classic brand to attempt to evolve and achieve relevance via electric and/or half-practical vehicles.
Ferrari and Lamborghini long eschewed deigning to make less-expensive sports cars and (gasp) SUVs in volumes that would bolster their tiny global outputs (formerly sub-5,000 units).
More recently, Lamborghini incorporated the Urus SUV into its lineup, and Ferrari executives said last week in Geneva that they are working on a hybrid supercar of their own. (Ferrari introduced the hybrid LaFerrari six years ago.) These moves had no discernible negative impact, in terms of “damaging” a storied brand.
The true challenge will be to develop an electric vehicle with either significantly improved range or more exotic technology than the much-hyped Porsche Taycan, another sibling in the VW Group family and one that will be on the road before the end of 2019.
Any new vehicle from Bugatti would likely borrow extensively from VW Group hardware such as the Premium Platform Electric architecture to be used by Porsche, Bentley, and Audi. But with a badge like Bugatti’s, it had better provide an amplified experience.
“Whatever the technology of the day is, Bugatti would be expected to take it up a notch,” Kelley Blue Book’s Delorenzo said.
lifestyle motoring
Hannah Elliott
Hannah Elliott is the resident motoring writer at Bloomberg.
Comment on "Coming next: an affordable electric Bugatti you can drive every day?"
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11934
|
__label__wiki
| 0.836422
| 0.836422
|
Home News The World’s 12 Most Wanted Criminal – Who Make People Fear
The World’s 12 Most Wanted Criminal – Who Make People Fear
The World’s 12 Most Wanted Criminal Fugitive is a list published by the FBI & American publishing and media company Forbes. The list contains Twelve fugitives that Forbes, with the help of international law enforcement agencies, deems as the world’s 12 most wanted Criminal.
1.Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, Mexican drug lord, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel
2. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Egyptian, new leader of al-Qaeda, after Osama bin Laden’s death
3. Dawood Ibrahim, Indian leader of D-Company
4. Semion Mogilevich, Ukrainian-Hungarian-Russian-Israeli (by citizenship), influential Russian mobster, based in Moscow
5. Nasir al-Wuhayshi, Yemeni al-Qaeda leader
6. Matteo Messina Denaro, Italian Cosa Nostra kingpin
7. Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, Uzbekistani organized crime figure
8. Félicien Kabuga, Rwandan implicated in organizing and funding the 1994 Rwandan genocide
9. Joseph Kony, Ugandan leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army
10. Dokka Umarov, Chechen Islamist terrorist militant in Russia.
11.Pedro Antonio Marin (Colombia).
12. Al Capone (America).
These Are World’s 12 Most Wanted Criminal – Who Make People Fear.
1. Joaquín Archivaldo (mexio):-
2. Ayman al-Zawahiri:-
3. Dawood Ibrahim:-
4. Semion Mogilevich:-
5. Nasir al-Wuhayshi:-
6. Matteo Mes Denarosina:-
7. Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov:-
8. Félicien Kabuga:-
9. Joseph Kony:-
10. Dokka Umarov:-
11.Pedro Antonio Marin (Colombia):-
12. Al Capone (America):-
Forbes magazine has consistently ranked World’s 12 Most Wanted Criminal Guzmán as one of the most powerful people in the world and in 2011 estimated his net worth at US $1 billion, while Time magazine has pronounced him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Forbes has also called him the biggest drug lord of all time, a description that appears to be supported by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which considers him “the godfather of the drug world” and believes he has passed former Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, “King of Cocaine,” in terms of power.
Ayman al Zawahiri received his master’s degree in surgery from Cairo University before joining the radical Islamic Jihad to resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. This is where he met Osama bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda. After being detained for recruiting jihadists in Chechnya, and charged with the death of 62 tourists in Egypt, al Zawahiri made the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.
World’s 12 Most Wanted Criminal Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, as one of the most powerful people in the world Son Of A Police Officer, Is India’s Most Wanted Man. He Is Boss Of Mumbai-Based Organized Crime Syndicate D-Company, Reputedly International Drug Trafficking, Counterfeiting, Weapons Smuggling. He Is Declared A Global Terrorist By The U.S.
Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich (… born June 30, 1946) is a Jewish Ukrainian-born organized crime boss, believed by European and United States federal law enforcement agencies to be the“boss of bosses” of most Russian Mafia syndicates in the world.Mogilevich was born in Kiev‘s Podol neighborhood to a Jewish family. He is believed to direct a vast criminal empire and is described by the FBI as “the most dangerous mobster in the world”
Both Saudi Arabia and Yemen considered al-Wuhayshi to be among their most wanted fugitives.In October 2014, the US State Department increased the reward for any information leading to the capture or killing of al-Wuhayshi to US$10 million.
Better known as “Boss of all bosses,” this cinematically credited “Playboy Don” is fond of expensive Porsche sports car, Rolex watches, Rayban sunglasses, fancy clothes from Giorgio Armani, Versace and young girls. Born in a Mafia family, this leader of Cosa Nostra (Mafia) learned to use the gun at the early age of 14. He, himself, admits – “I filled a cemetery all by myself.
A fabulous footballer at a time, he proceeded Moscow to become a big gun of gambling world where money matters. Nominal head of Russian organized crime, arms dealing, smuggling and other notorious activities, he once introduced himself as “I’m a successful businessman, a patron of the arts, a community worker. That’s what I call myself today.
A prominent businessman and multimillionaire of Rwanda, Kabuga is said to be the prime accused of Rwandan genocide of 1994, which claimed estimated lives of 800,000 people. Apart from this hellish act, he is also involved in bankrolling and other crimes.
In his lifetime as the head of the LRA he committed many crimes and got himself a high rank in the most wanted list of the U.S.A. Some say he is the ninth most wanted person others say he is the most wanted criminal in the world.
There are 33 charges on Joseph Kony for the following:
12 points are a crime to humanity. They consist of enslavery, premeditated murder enforcement to prostitution, rape, inhuman actions, mutilations and severe mentally and physically torturing.
Doku Umarov has been on the wanted list of Russia, the US and UN Security Council for organizing multiple terror acts, kidnapping, contract murder and other grievous crimes in the Russian Federation.Russia’s secret service confirmed that notorious terrorist Doku Umarov has been eliminated in the first quarter of 2014. Dozens of terrorists met their deaths in the North Caucasus, hundreds of militants and their supporters were detained.
He is the beginner of FARC, a terrorist organization based on Marxist doctrine. This organization is involved with drug trafficking, murder, extortion, kidnapping and various criminal activities. With it’s own military and thousands of supporters, FARC’s main targets are politics, economics and military of Colombia.
World’s 12 Most Wanted Criminal as one of the most powerful people in the world Al Capone. A boy joined a street gang and later became an epitome of devastation in the United States. He initiated his crime archive with rackets of gambling, extortion, protection and prostitution. His explosive temper made him the boss of American criminal enterprise.
Nowadays sexual offence crimes have become a way to ruin person’s career and fight off a competitor. If you are ready to protect your reputation and rights, check out MikeGLaw.com.
Previous articleApply Online NABARD Vacancy 2015 for 85 Development Assistant Posts
Next articleHealthy And Unhealthy Nuts For You – List Of Nutrition Level
Top Google Adsense Earning Websites in the world
Pradhuman Kaushik - December 10, 2015
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11938
|
__label__wiki
| 0.996736
| 0.996736
|
Hillsborough match commander David Duckenfield denies manslaughter
Image copyright Peter Byrne/PA Wire
Image caption Former chief superintendent David Duckenfield appeared via videolink at Preston Crown Court
Hillsborough match commander David Duckenfield has pleaded not guilty to the gross negligence manslaughter of 95 Liverpool supporters.
The former chief superintendent, 74, appeared via videolink at Preston Crown Court for a trial preparation hearing.
The names of the 95 men, women and children he is charged with unlawfully killing were read out in court as the charge was put to him.
About 15 family members of victims were in the public gallery.
Mr Duckenfield, wearing a suit with a blue shirt and purple tie, spoke to confirm his name and enter his plea.
Second defendant
He was the police officer in charge at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on 15 April 1989.
Former Sheffield Wednesday club secretary Graham Mackrell, 68, also pleaded not guilty to contravening a term or condition of the stadium's safety certificate and one health and safety offence.
Mr Duckenfield, of Ferndown, Dorset, is charged in relation to 95 people who died following the crush in the terrace pens of Sheffield Wednesday's ground.
Under the law at the time, there can be no prosecution for the death of the 96th victim, Tony Bland, as he died more than a year and a day after his injuries were caused.
In June, Judge Sir Peter Openshaw lifted a historical stay put in place on Mr Duckenfield in 2000 which had halted further legal proceedings against him.
A provisional trial date for both men has been set for 14 January.
HM Court Service
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11939
|
__label__cc
| 0.702665
| 0.297335
|
« Don't be misled into thinking that Gov. Palin has championed the same sort of "windfall profits taxes" on oil companies that Obama has | Main | An indirect graphical indication of public interest in Sarah Palin »
The Palin family's energy bona fides versus the Democrats' big talk
When Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi religiously intone, yet again, with serene and bleak confidence that "We can't drill our way out of this," I can't help wondering if either of them could tell the difference at a glance between a drillbit, a pumpjack, a derrick, and a blowout preventer.
By contrast, for most of the last 20 years or so, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's husband Todd has worked on or around Alaska's North Slope with job titles like "production operator." Now, that's a very blue collar job that can involve getting one's hands very dirty, but it's a job in which requires serious training. Slow-witted folks are quickly separated from finger-tips or worse, and the equipment one uses can cost tens of millions to replace, if you can get a replacement at any price any time soon, which right now you probably can't.
Which is to say, I don't think the notion of drilling for oil and gas is nearly so hypothetical to the Palin family as it is to either Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi. I'd place a large wager on the likelihood that the Palin family washer and drier combo has dealt with its share of grease and drilling mud over the years, whereas the Obama and Pelosi households have fewer challenging stains and, indeed, rely a lot on dry cleaning.
So when Barack Obama waves his hands in the air in front of his teleprompter and says that he's going to create five million "green-collar jobs" out of nowhere when he becomes president, I wouldn't blame the younger Palin children if they began to look around for the magic pony. I mean, if you have a magic pony who can ride over the rainbows, or maybe a unicorn, you can probably do that. If you actually want to keep gasoline in the retail pump stations, though — and no, that's not the same thing as a pumpjack — somebody needs to still be doing that blue-collar work.
And if you want to deal with the various regulatory agencies and energy companies and environmental groups and tax policy think-tanks and all the rest of that stuff — well, now you're talking the kind of job that falls within Gov. Palin's bailiwick. Indeed, she's had a striking series of legislative successes in her first two years as governor, accomplishing far more on energy policy than the U.S. Congress has in the last 10 years. Not empty promises — but actual results. Results that translate into tax revenues; results that translate into transparent and open free-market negotiations, with energy companies competing against one another for the chance to serve the public interest; results that will turn into actual drillbits and pumpjacks and derricks and blowout preventers and pipelines and compressor stations and oil tankers and offshore platforms and the whole nine yards.
A regular reader, a fellow west Texan, emailed me this link to a story in a newspaper from San Angelo, Texas, which notes that the extended Palin family has ties to Texas too: Sarah Palin's maternal uncle Michael Sheeran and his wife Billie moved there "from Washington state nine years ago. Billie Sheeran is a hospital inspector and Michael Sheeran is retired from the nuclear industry, where he was involved in fuel design and nuclear reactors." This doesn't surprise me.
And the San Angelo area is smack-dab in the booming Texas wind-energy corridor, as I discussed last summer after driving from Houston to my home-town past dozens of giant windmills, working and under construction. My guess is that Todd and Michael could probably take one of those apart and put it back together, too, and ditto for the broken pumpjack over in the next pasture.
I like practical people with real-world solutions, both on energy and other important stuff. We don't need pie in the sky, we need drill pipe in the ground (including the ANWR mud flats and the "ground" offshore) — plus some reactors on the ground and some windmills in the sky. I like people who've actually done stuff, because they usually have the best ideas about how to do more. I like people who understand that the government damn near never makes or discovers anything — that at best, it can facilitate private industry doing that, and then its most important role is usually to get the hell out of the way.
The Palin family strikes me as these kind of people. Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi do not.
Posted by Beldar at 10:16 PM in 2008 Election, Energy, McCain, Obama, Palin, Politics (2008) | Permalink
Other weblog posts, if any, whose authors have linked to The Palin family's energy bona fides versus the Democrats' big talk and sent a trackback ping are listed here:
(1) MartyH made the following comment | Aug 30, 2008 12:43:08 AM | Permalink
Palin can be McCain's point on offshore drilling when Congress returns. She can call out the Democrats on that, on ANWR-and do it eloquently with a depth and breadth of knowledge. She kills the Dems on energy.
(2) Mike made the following comment | Aug 30, 2008 3:05:06 AM | Permalink
Add me to the 57K, via Hugh Hewitt.
You must feel like one of those people who saw U2 back in 1978 in pub with three men and a dog.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11941
|
__label__wiki
| 0.709857
| 0.709857
|
Learn from Guest CEO, Entrepreneurial Founders and Leaders from Netflix, Kayak.com, LinkedIn, oDesk, Ford, SONOS, CNN and More
At BigSpeak, we believe in going BIG. We love big ideas, big passion and big opportunities to help businesses succeed. As luck would have it, we happen to be in good company with these top CEO speakers, entrepreneurial founders and high-profile business leaders.
Each of these featured leaders have contributed in big ways to the business world—from launching innovative technology concepts to blazing a trail for women in media—these experts have pushed the envelope and changed the way we think about business. Read on to find out how you can learn from these stellar corporate speakers and leadership experts at your next business conference or event.
1. Marc Randolph
Some people have an eye for the next “big thing” and the know-how to make it successful. Marc is one of those people. He was co-founder and CEO of Netflix and has been a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur for more than four decades. As the co-founder of Looker Data Sciences, he currently serves as an advisor to various start-ups and assists with leadership and innovation strategies. He is an acclaimed business speaker at industry events and brings his leadership expertise as a trustee to the National Outdoor Leadership School.
2. Terry Jones
Terry has proven time and again that innovation is key when it comes to business success. As the Founder of Travelocity.com and Co-Founder of Kayak.com, he has years of hands-on experience applying innovative strategies to generate business results. Terry is a top innovation speaker and thought leader who helps start-ups and large organizations to keep up with the rapidly changing business world. His thought-provoking leadership, innovation and marketing strategies have helped businesses and executives around the world reach their full potential.
3. Ben Casnocha
Ben is not only a successful entrepreneur, he’s also an avid researcher and expert on talent development, human capital and human resources. As an executive who began his career at age 14 when he developed a top e-government software company, Comcate, Ben has proved that e has an extraordinary understanding of business efficiency. He has co-authored several books, including #1 New York Times bestseller The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career (with Reid Hoffman). He also recently served as Chief of Staff to the Chairman at LinkedIn. With decades of experience, Ben brings his customized programs, strategies and inspirational keynote presentations to help businesses everywhere improve on all fronts.
4. Alan Mulally
While Alan has led a long, successful career, he is best known for his recent successes in the auto industry. Faced with one of the biggest business challenges of our times, Alan led Ford Motor Company as President and CEO to reach profitable levels during the recession. Under his leadership, Ford was also the only major American car manufacturer to avoid bailout funding from the federal government. He also acted as Executive Vice President of Boeing and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He has been included on the Time 100 list and was named CEO of the Year by Chief Executive Magazine. Most recently, he joined Google’s Board of Directors and continues to inspire businesses with his expert leadership strategies and insights.
5. Gary Swart
Looking ahead at the future of work is what Gary does best. As the former CEO of oDesk, he successfully managed the company through a merger with Elance and contributed his visionary expertise to the emerging freelance work industry. Gary currently acts as a Venture Partner focusing on technology companies with Polaris Partners. He also offers his leadership and innovation strategies to help other businesses better manage teams and achieve efficiency. He has been featured on major media outlets and has spoken at the Inc. Leadership Conference and TechCrunch 50, among others. Gary stands out as a leader among CEOs for his innovative ideas, leadership strategies and inspirational keynote presentations about the future of business.
6. Gail Evans
Often times, the best leaders are those you are unafraid to stand out from the crowd to chase their passion. True to that definition, Gail is considered one of the foremost experts on leadership and has been a trailblazer for women in the business world. Her leadership expertise comes from years of working in television media, eventually serving as Executive Vice President of CNN. Her worldwide bestseller Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman, candidly chronicled her experience working in a male-dominated industry and has been credited as changing the way women approach business. Gail is an adjunct professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Management where she teaches courses on Gender, Race and Ethnicity in Organizational Behavior. As a key figure in television broadcasting, Gail is widely known as a top woman business for her inspiring professional journey, key business insights and fearless leadership.
The content writers at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau are Experts on the Experts. They hold doctoral, masters, and bachelors’ degrees in business, writing, literature, and education. Their business thought pieces are published regularly in leading business publications. Working in close association with the top business, entrepreneur, and motivational speakers, BigSpeak content writers are at the forefront of industry trends and research.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11944
|
__label__cc
| 0.615565
| 0.384435
|
John Farnham & Olivia Newton-John Friends For Christmas Deluxe Edition
John Farnham and Olivia Newton-John have teamed up to release the bonus edition of their chart topping Christmas album, ‘Friends for Christmas’ This album contains recorded covers of everyone’s favorite Christmas songs including ‘Silent night’, ‘Let It Snow’, ‘Have Yourself A Merry Christmas’ and includes three bonus tracks ‘The First Noel’, ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ and One Little Christmas Tree’.
The album embodies a traditional Christmas sound whilst showcasing the ever impressive vocals of John and Olivia. John and Olivia’s last two collaborative albums ‘Two Strong Hearts’ and ‘Friends For Christmas’ reached #1 on the Aria chart.
It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
Have Yourself A Merry Christmas
The Christmas Song
The First Noel (Deluxe Edition Track)
Here Comes Santa Claus (Deluxe Edition Track)
One Little Christmas Tree (Deluxe Edition Track)
Number Of Discs:
John Farnham and Olivia Newton - John
Number Of Tracks:
Sony Music Entertainment Australia
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11945
|
__label__cc
| 0.674891
| 0.325109
|
UAE state ministers for advanced sciences, food security visit ICBA to mull cooperation
Her Excellency Mariam Bint Mohammed Almheiri, Minister of State for Future Food Security, and Her Excellency Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Sciences, paid a special visit recently to the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) to learn about the center’s advances in and contributions to agricultural science and technology.
ICBA saves UAE’s rare plant from likely extinction
A team of scientists from the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) has saved Halfa grass, a rare plant species in the UAE, from possible extinction. Scientifically known as Desmostachya bipinnata, the plant is a rhizomatous perennial grass which is important for stabilizing soils. It can be used as fodder and for medicinal purposes.
ICBA launches new project to boost quinoa production in Morocco
As part of its global quinoa program, the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) has recently launched a new project to mainstream the crop among poor rural farming communities in Morocco.
Boosting food security in sub-Saharan Africa through solar-powered irrigation systems
To ensure food security in sub-Saharan Africa is no easy task. It is even more difficult to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal on ending hunger. The region suffers from poor agricultural conditions. Partly as a result, malnutrition and poverty are common.
Rural Egyptian women take to quinoa
More and more women in rural areas of Egypt are warming to alternative salt-tolerant crops like quinoa thanks to efforts by the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) and its partners.
International forum urges tapping marginal water for agriculture in Central Asia
More than 75 delegates at an international workshop, including decision-makers, scientists, experts and professionals, from over 16 countries agreed today to work more closely to promote marginal water use for agriculture in Central Asia.
Tapping potential of reject brine from desalination
There is no denying that almost everything on this planet depends on water and we are blessed to have almost 70 percent of earth’s surface covered with this extraordinary chemical compound. Water has kept the life going on the planet for over three billion years.
ICBA showcases date palm research results at international festival in Egypt
The International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) recently presented the results of its long-term date palm research program at the 3rd Date Palm Festival in the Siwa Oasis, Egypt.
UAE Minister of State for Food Security visits ICBA to discuss collaboration
The International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) welcomed Her Excellency Mariam bint Hareb Al Mehairi, Minister of State, on a special visit to introduce the center’s functions and contributions to the advancement of biosaline agriculture, notably in the field of food security, in line with UAE Government’s strategy.
ICBA, AOAD partner to boost food security in Arab region
The International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) and the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD) agreed today to step up collaboration on agricultural climate resilience and food security in the Arab region.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11946
|
__label__cc
| 0.527826
| 0.472174
|
BriefingsDirect Analysts Discuss Ramifications of Google-China Dust-Up over Corporate Cyber Attacks
Edited transcript of a BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition podcast, Volume 50, on what the fallout is likely to be after Google's threat to leave China in the wake of security breaches.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Charter Sponsor: Active Endpoints.
Special offer: Download a free, supported 30-day trial of Active Endpoint's ActiveVOS at www.activevos.com/insight.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the latest BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition, Volume 50. I'm your host and moderator Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
This periodic discussion and dissection of IT infrastructure related news and events with a panel of industry analysts and guests, comes to you with the help of our charter sponsor Active Endpoints, maker of the ActiveVOS business process management system.
Our topic this week on BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition focuses on the fallout from the Google’s threat to pull out of China, due to a series of sophisticated hacks and attacks on Google, as well as a dozen more IT companies. Due to the attacks late last year, Google on January 12th vowed to stop censoring Internet content for China’s web users and possibly to leave the country altogether.
This ongoing tiff between Google and the Internet control authorities in China’s Communist Party-dominated government have uncorked a Pandora’s Box of security, free speech and corporate espionage issues. There are human rights issues and free speech issues, questions on China’s actual role, trade and fairness issues, and the point about Google’s policy of initially enabling Internet censorship and now apparently backtracking.
But, there are also larger issues around security and Internet governance in general. Those are the issues we’ll be focusing on today. So, even as the US State Department and others in the US federal government seek answers on China’s purported role or complicity in the attacks, the repercussions on cloud computing and enterprise security are profound and may be long-term.
We’re going to look at some of the answers to what this donnybrook means for how enterprises should best protect their intellectual property from such sophisticated hackers as government, military or, quasi-government corporate entities and whether cloud services providers like Google are better than your average enterprise or even medium-sized business at thwarting such risks.
We'll look at how users of cloud computing should trust or not trust providers of such mission-critical cloud services as email, calendar, word processing, document storage, databases, and applications hosting. And, we’ll look at how enterprise architecture, governance, security best practices, standards, and skills need to adapt still to meet these new requirements from insidious world-class threats.
So, join me now in welcoming our panel for today’s discussion. Welcome to Jim Kobielus, senior analyst at Forrester Research. Hello, Jim.
Jim Kobielus: Hi Dana. How are you, buddy?
Gardner: Jason Bloomberg, managing partner at ZapThink.
Jason Bloomberg: Hi. Glad to be here.
Gardner: Jim Hietala, Vice President for Security at The Open Group.
Jim Hietala: Hello, Dana. [Disclosure: The Open Group is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]
Gardner: Elinor Mills, senior writer at CNET. Hello, Elinor.
Elinor Mills: Hi.
Gardner: And Michael Dortch, Director of Research at Focus.
Michael Dortch: Hi, Dana, and greetings, everyone.
Gardner: Thanks. Great having you with us Michael.
Elinor, let me start with you. You’ve been covering Internet security, and even Google specifically, for several years now. When we think of security, we often think of teenage hackers or lowbrow malware and pesky pop-ups, but do you think that this Google-China finger-pointing business has, in a sense, changed the way security is viewed.
Mills: Oh, absolutely. We’ve got a huge first public example of a company coming out and saying, not only that they've been attacked -- companies don’t want to admit that ever and it’s all under the radar -- but also they’re pointing the fingers. Even though they're not specifically saying, "We think it’s the Chinese state," but they think enough of it that they're willing to threaten to pull out of the country.
It’s huge and it’s going to have every company reevaluating what their response is going to be -- not just how they’re going to do business in other countries, but what is their response going to be to a major attack.
Gardner: Does this mean that the companies, enterprises specifically, need to rethink both security for what you'd call criminal activity, but now think at a higher level -- higher level being government versus government?
Mills: Yes, if they’re big companies -- mid-size companies maybe not so much. Bigger companies have been targeted with espionage for a while, especially if they have any kind of technology that China or any other country might want. I think there's going to be more emphasis on it. They’re going to have to think about it. For smaller companies, it’s not going to be as much of a problem.
Gardner: Jim Kobielus, do you view this as a big issue or is this more of the same? Have the folks that you deal with, who are protecting their data and information, been aware of these threats? Is this more of a public relations problem than a real one?
Kobielus: I won’t say it’s just a public relations problem. It is a real one. If you’re going to be a multinational firm -- I've heard the term "supernational" used as well -- you’re not above the laws and governmental structures of the nations within which you operate. It's always been this way. This is a sovereign nation, and you're subject to their laws.
If you’ve been a multinational firm before, or if you wish to be one, you’ve got to play by whatever rules are imposed upon you to operate in these spheres. One of the key issues for Google is whether they want to continue to be a business that’s growing in this particular market, subject to whatever rules are laid down, whether they want to be a crusader for civil rights, human rights, whatever, in the Western context, or if they’re trying to be both. It means they’re going to have to contend with the government of the People’s Republic of China on their own turf -- and good luck there.
Gardner: Don’t you think, Jim, that these issues transcend national boundaries or even laws that govern as a particular sovereign nation? If your servers are in one country, why should it be bound by the laws in another?
Kobielus: Well, your servers are physically hosted somewhere. Your access is from people, end users, in many nations that are trying to access whatever services you provide from those physically hosted servers.
So, your users and your servers are subject to the laws and the firewalls and security constraints and so forth in the various nations within which you will physically operate, as well as where your supply chain and your customer base will physically operate. None of these segments, these nodes, in this broader value chain are free floating in space like they're elevated platforms in the Jetsons.
Wakeup call?
Gardner: I think Google is going to perhaps challenge the way you’re looking at this. It should be interesting to see how it pans out. Jason Bloomberg, does this provide some sort of a wakeup call for enterprises and service providers as well about how they architect? Do they need to start architecting for a larger class of threats?
Bloomberg: It’s not as big of a wakeup call as it should be. You can ask yourself, "Is this an attack by some small cadre of renegade hackers or is this attack by the government of the People’s Republic of China? That’s an open question at this point.
Who is the victim? Is it Google, a corporation, or the United States? Is it the western world that is the victim here? Is this a harbinger of the way that international wars are going to be fought down the road?
We’ve all been worried about cyber warfare coming, but we maybe don’t recognize it when we see it as a new battlefield. It's the same as terrorism. It’s not necessarily clear who the participants are. We have this 18th Century view of warfare, where two armies meet on the battlefield and slug it out with the weapons of the day. But, terrorism has introduced new types of weapons and new types of battlefields.
Now we have cyber warfare, where it’s not even necessarily clear who the perpetrator is, who the victim is, or who the offended party is. This is a whole new context for conflict in the world.
When you place the enterprise into this context, well, it’s not necessarily just that you have a business within the context of a government subject to particular laws of particular government, you have the supernational, as Jim was taking about where large corporations have to play in multiple jurisdictions. That’s already a governance challenge for these large enterprises.
We already have this awareness that every single system on our network has to look out for itself and, even then, has levels of vulnerability.
Now, we have the introduction of cyber warfare, where we have concerted professional attacks from unknown parties attacking unknown targets and where it’s not clear who the players are. Anybody, whether it’s a private company, a public company, or a government organization is potentially involved.
They may not even fully know how involved they are or whether or not they are being targeted. That basically raises the bar for security throughout the entire organization. We’ve seen this already, where perimeter-based security has fallen by the wayside as being insufficient.
Sure, we need firewalls, but even though we have systems inside our firewalls, it doesn’t mean they are secure. A single virus can slip through the firewall with no problem at all. We already have this awareness that every single system on our network has to look out for itself and, even then, has levels of vulnerability. This just takes it to the national level.
Kobielus: But, there has always been corporate espionage and there’s always been vandalism perpetrated by companies against each other through subterfuge, and also by companies or fronts operating as the agent of unseen foreign power. This is what was the Germans did in this country before World War II to infiltrate, or what the Soviet Union did after World War II.
This is international real-politic as usual, but in a different technological realm. Don’t just focus on China. Let’s say that Google had a data center in Venezuela. They could just as easily have that expropriated by Hugo Chavez and his government. In China, that’s a possibility too.
Nothing radically new
What I’m saying is that I don’t see anything radically or fundamentally new going on here. This is just a big, powerful, and growing world power, China, and a big and growing world power on a tech front Google, colliding.
Mills: They have so much data. They’re becoming a service provider for the world. It’s not just their data that’s being targeted. You’ve got the City of Los Angeles, you’ve got DC, other government entities, moving onto Google Apps. So, the end target in the cloud is different than just the employees of one company.
Dortch: That challenge puts Google in the very interesting position of having to decide. Is it a politically neutral corporation or is it a protector of the data that its clients around the world, not just here, and not just from governments but corporations? Is it a protector and an advocate of protection for the data that those clients have been trusted to it? Or, is it going to use the fact that it is a broker of all that data to sort of throw its muscle around and take on governments like China’s in debates like this.
The implications here are bigger than even what we’ve been discussing so far, because they get at the very nature of what a corporation is in this brave new network world of ours.
And, this is taking place against the backdrop where the Supreme Court just decided that corporations in the United States have the same free speech rights and political campaigns as individuals. We're not clear at all on what this is going to mean for how the entity called a corporation is perceived, especially in the cloud.
Gardner: Thank you, Michael. Jim Hietala, help me understand, from your perspective, is this a game-changing event or is this more business as usual when it comes to corporate security.
Hietala: In terms of the visibility it’s gotten and the kinds of companies that were attacked, it’s a little bit game-changing. From the information security community perspective, these sorts of attacks have been going on for quite a while, aimed at defense contractors, and are now aimed at commercial enterprises and providers of cloud services.
I don’t think that the attacks per se are game-changing. There’s not a lot new here. It’s an attack against a browser that was couple of revs old and had vulnerability. The way in which the company was attacked isn’t necessarily game-changing, but the political ramifications around it and the other things we’ve just been talking about are what make it a little game-changing.
Gardner: I’d like to understand more about Michael Dortch’s point about the cloud providers and Elinor's as well. Should people think about a cloud provider as the best defense against these things, because they are current and they’ve got the power of scale they need to make this secure or their business itself is undermined?
Or, is this something that’s best done at the individual level, company by company, firewall by firewall? Does anyone have some thoughts about that?
Dortch: I’m reminded of what Ronald Reagan famously said, “Trust, but verify.” It’s one of those things where the cloud becomes a part of a good defense, but you can’t place all of your eggs in any one basket.
Combining resources
Companies that are doing business internationally and that worry about this sort of thing -- and they all should -- are going to have to combine cloud-based resources from reputable companies with documented protections in place with other protections, in case the first line of defense fails or is challenged in some major way.
Kobielus: In some ways, we all perceive what a cloud provider like Google needs to be regarded as in international law. It’s almost like a cyber Switzerland. Basically, it’s almost like, in another metaphor, an off-shore bank for your data and your other assets, in the same neutral role that Switzerland has played through the years, including during World War II for Nazi secreted assets.
In other words, it’s somehow a sovereign state, in its own right, with the full rights and privileges accruing thereto. I don’t think anybody is willing to take it that far in international law, but I think there is this perception that for cloud providers like Google to really realize their intended mission, there needs to be some change in international governance of sort of assets that transcend nation states.
Bloomberg: You could actually think of that as a reductio argument, because there isn’t going to be such a change. Cloud environments do not have that sort of power or capability and, if anything, cloud environments reduce the level of security.
They don’t increase it for the very reason that we don’t have a way of making them sovereign in their own right. They’re always not only subject to the laws of the local jurisdiction, but they’re subject to any number of different attacks that could be coming from any different location, where now the customers aren’t aware of this sort of vulnerability.
So, “Trust, but verify,” is a good point, but how can you verify, if you’re relying on a third party to protect your data for you? It becomes much more difficult to do the verification. I'd say that organizations are going to be backing away from cloud, once they realize just how risky cloud environments are.
All enterprises still are going to have to be at the top of their game, in terms of protecting their assets. . .
Mills: Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith this week gave a keynote at the Brookings Institute Forum, and he talked about modernizing and updating the laws to adapt specifically to the cloud. That included privacy rights under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act being more clearly defined, updating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and setting up a framework so that differences in the regulations and practices in various countries can be worked out and reconciled.
Gardner: What happens if you are a small to medium-sized business and you might not have the resources to put into place all the security you need to deal with something like a China or Venezuela, or perhaps some large company that’s in another country that wants to take your intellectual property? Are you better going to a cloud provider and, in a sense, outsourcing security? Jim Hietala, does that make sense for a small to medium-sized business?
Hietala: I don’t think you can make that case yet today. I don’t think there is a silver-bullet cloud provider out there that has superior security to have that position. All enterprises still are going to have to be at the top of their game, in terms of protecting their assets, and that extends to small or medium businesses.
At some point, you could see a cloud provider stake out that part of the market to say, "We’re going to put in a superior set of controls and manage security to a higher degree than a typical small-to-medium business could," but I don’t see that out there today.
Waiting for disaster
Dortch: All of us who’ve doing this for a while, I think, will agree that where security is concerned, especially where cyber security is concerned, at least in North America, where I’m most familiar, companies tend not to talk about it or do anything, until there is some major catastrophe.
Nobody buys insurance, until the house next doors theirs burns down. So, from that perspective, this event could be useful. In terms of protecting their data, one of the issues that incidents like this raises is exactly how much corporate data is already in the cloud.
Many small businesses outsource payroll processing, customer relationship management (CRM), and a whole bunch of things. A lot of that stuff is outsourced to cloud service providers, and companies haven’t asked enough questions yet about exactly how cloud providers are protecting data and exactly how they can reassure that nothing bad is going to happen to it.
For example, if their servers come under attack, can they demonstrate credibly how data is going to be protected. These are the types of questions that incidents like this can and should raise in the minds of decision-makers at small and mid-sized businesses, just as they're starting to raise these issues, and have been raising them for a while, among decision-makers at larger enterprise.
Kobielus: I think what will happen is that some cloud providers will increasingly be seen as safe havens for your data and for your applications, because (A) they have the strong security, and (B) they are hosted within, and governed by, the laws of nation states that rigorously and faithfully try to protect this information, and assure that the information can then be removed -- transferred out of that country fluidly by the owners, without loss.
How about governments in general, maybe it's the United Nations who steps in? Who is the ultimate governor of what happens in cyber space?
In other words, it's like the Cayman Islands of the cloud -- that offshore banking safe haven you can turn to for all this. Clearly, it's not going to be China.
Gardner: We’ve seen in the history of the United States -- and, of course, the business world at large -- that whenever threats elevate to a certain level, the government steps in. We have seen with piracy, border controls, taxation, trade mandates, freedom pacts, and so forth. Whenever a threat arises, businesses get up and say, "Hey, we pay taxes. Uncle Sam, please come in and save us," whether it's through the navy or some technology.
Should we expect that, if we come to understand that this was an attack against American business interests from a foreign government of some kind, that it's up to the government to solve the problem? How about governments in general, maybe it's the United Nations who steps in? Who is the ultimate governor of what happens in cyber space?
Dortch: Dana, in 2007, the National Academies of Science issued a cyber security report, and it included ten provisions that, at that time at least, were looked at as potentially the foundation for a cyber security bill of rights. Maybe it's time to reawaken discussions like that. Maybe what's needed is the cyberspace equivalent of the United Nations.
This is a lot of heavy lifting that we're talking about, and businesses have problems to solve and threats to address today. So your question begs another one: how do we get to the stage we need to be, where there can be trusted offshore equivalence databanks and all of that? And, what do we do in the meantime? I'm not smart enough to have answers to those questions, but they're really interesting.
We know the game
Kobielus: At a governmental level, obviously there will always be approaches and tools available to any sovereign nation -- treaties, negotiations, war, and so forth. We all know that. Clearly, we all know the game there.
In terms of who has responsibility and how will governance best practices be spread uniformly across the world in such areas of IT protection, it's going to be some combination of multilateral, bilateral, and unilateral action. For multilateral, the UN points to that, but there are also regional organizations. In Southeast Asia there is ASEAN, and in the Atlantic there is NATO, and so forth.
So, there is going to be a combination of all that. For this administration and subsequent administrations in the U.S., it’s just a matter of their putting together a clear agenda for trying to influence the policies, practices, and enforcement within China and other nations that may prove unreliable in terms of protecting the interest of our businesses.
Dortch: And, Secretary of State Clinton’s director of innovation -- I believe that's his title -- has already said publicly that it's a linchpin of our negotiating strategy with China and other countries.
Just as we, as a country, are an advocate for human rights, we're increasingly and more overtly advocating that other country’s citizens have free access to the Internet and basically have the cyber equivalent of human rights. That's going to play out in some very interesting ways as it becomes a larger part of our global diplomatic effort.
At a governmental level, obviously there will always be approaches and tools available to any sovereign nation -- treaties, negotiations, war, and so forth.
Kobielus: Keep in mind that the UN had a human rights declaration in 1946. China signed up, the Soviet Union signed up, and it didn’t make a whole lot of difference in terms of how they treated their own people over time. Keep in mind that such declarations are fine and dandy, but often don’t have much impact on the ground.
Gardner: So, enforcement is important. What we’ve seen so far is the enforcement of the marketplace, and I think that's what Google is up to in many respects. They’re saying, "Listen, we are a big enough company. We have such sophisticated technology and our price points for our services are so low that you would be at a disadvantage as a competitive nation not to have us working inside of your market, China."
Then, China says back to Google, "We are potentially, if not already, the biggest Internet market in the world, so don’t you think you have to adhere to our dictates in order to play ball in our court?" So, there is sort of a tussle within market powers. Is that's going to be the best way for these issues to be resolved?
Kobielus: It’s going to have to be resolved in the China context. They are the middle kingdom. They’ve seen themselves as the center of the universe, and it's not just me saying that. It's all manner of China scholars. This not fundamentally any different from the way in which Chinese centralized bureaucracy and governance for over 2,000 years.
Gardner: Jason Bloomberg, do you think that the traditional free market -- the powerful interests and the money -- are enough to balance the risks associated with security in this newest age?
Who decides "enough?"
Bloomberg: When you say "enough," the question is who decides what is enough. We have these opposing forces. One is that information should be free, and the Internet should be available to everybody. That basically pushes for removing barriers to information flow.
Then you have the security concerns that are driving putting up barriers to information flow, and there is always going to be conflict between those two forces. As increasingly sophisticated attacks develop, that pushes the public consensus toward increasing security.
That will impact our ability to have freedom, and that's going to be, continue to be a battle that I don’t see anybody winning. It's’ really just going to be an ongoing battle as technology improves and as the bad guys attacks improve. It's going to be an ongoing battle between security and freedom and between the good guys and the bad guys, as it were, and that's never going to change.
Gardner: Now, taking up on your point, Jason Bloomberg, about this being a spy-versus-spy kind of world, that's been that way so far. We thought about how governments might come in. Large corporations can play their role. Cloud providers might have to step in and offer some sort of an SLA-based protection or outsourced security opportunity of some kind.
What about going in the other direction? What if we go down to the individual who says, "If I'm going to play in the cloud or in this world-class cyber warfare environment, I want to have high encryption. I want to be able to authenticate myself in the best way possible. Therefore, I’ll give up some convenience. I might even pay a price, but I want to have the best security around my identity and I want to be able to play with the big boys, when it comes to encryption and authentication?"
If you're talking about specific individuals, it’s almost hopeless, because your average individual consumer doesn’t have the level of knowledge to go out and find the right solutions to protect themselves today.
We don’t really have an opportunity for those people to say, "I want to exercise security at an individual level." Jim Hietala, is there anything like that out there to get them to move towards the individual level of self-help, when it comes to high levels of security?
Hietala: Large enterprises are going to have to be responsible for the security of their information. I think there are a lot of takeaways for enterprises from this attack. If you're talking about specific individuals, it’s almost hopeless, because your average individual consumer doesn’t have the level of knowledge to go out and find the right solutions to protect themselves today.
So, I'll focus on the large enterprises. They have to do a good job of asset inventory, know where, within their identity infrastructure, they're vulnerable to this specific attack, and then be pretty agile about implementing countermeasures to prevent it. They have to have patch management that's adequate to the task of getting patches out quickly.
They need to do things like looking at the traffic leaving their network to see if people are already in their infrastructure. These Trojans leave traces of themselves, when they ship information out of an organization. When people really understand what happened in this attack, they can take something away, go back, look at what they are doing from a security standpoint, and tighten things up.
If you're talking about individuals putting things in the cloud, that’s a different discussion that doesn’t seem real feasible to me to get them to the point where they can secure their information today.
Centralized directory
Gardner: Jim, I was getting back to what I used to hear almost 20 years ago in the messaging space, when we first started talking about directories, that the directory is only as good as the authentication and the information and verification.
Don’t we need a centralized directory that we can bounce off these credentials and make sure that they are valid and authenticated? But, there was no central place to do that. Is it time for the government or some other agency or organization to come in and create that über directory for that large-scale global authentication capability?
Kobielus: You're talking about identity systems, with a web of trust, PKI and so forth. We've been talking about that for years. About five years ago, I was with a company that was trying to build federated cross-industry identity management for aerospace and defense, one North Atlantic industry, and even that was frightfully complicated. It probably still hasn’t gotten off the ground.
Imagine creating a similar federated directory with all the stronger authentication and encryption and so forth for all industries within the US. Especially consider worldwide. It’s not going to happen. It’s just a huge engineering nightmare, putting together the trust relationships and working out all the interchange and interoperability issues. It’s just overkill. It’s just much more trouble than it’s worth.
Gardner: Too much federation. But what if there are only a handful of major cloud providers? Maybe it’s Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft -- and I've just thrown those out. It could be a number of others. They might have the market heft or the technological wherewithal to enforce and deliver such an authentication and federated directory into existence.
I don’t see the people running cloud-computing companies being radically different from the people that run phone companies . . .
Is anybody thinking like I am, that maybe cloud computing is different, that we can start to actually use the scale of these cloud providers to accomplish these large security requirements?
Dortch: You know, Dana, people change a lot more slowly than technology does. Just a few short months ago, a lot of us were outraged, when it turned out that a handful of major telephone service providers had apparently been giving information to the government without the knowledge or consent of the subscribers whose information was manipulated. At least, that's what the published report seemed to indicate.
I don’t see the people running cloud-computing companies being radically different from the people that run phone companies, and I don’t see them being, a priori, any less subject to influence by their own governments, bribes, threats, or anything else than the people who run the phone companies. I think that’s a good idea but I think it’s fraught with the same level of peril.
Kobielus: In fact, look at the last nine years since 9/11 and you can see in all the articles and stories how telcos have just bent over backwards to allow the Feds to come in and survey their users and subscribers and to abscond with call detail records to monitor terrorist and other people's calling patterns, quite often not even using a search warrant. In other words, it's exactly what he said. How can you trust the carrier to safeguard our privacy, when they so easily succumb to such government pressure?
Gardner: So, these are very big issues that will impact us all as individuals and citizens within our national interests, as well as our companies. Yet, no one seems to have a good sense -- and, there are some very bright people on the line today, of how to even go about defining the problem, never mind solving it.
Identity registrars
Kobielus: Dana, there is another point you raised about, why we don't just let the providers become sort of the über identity management registrars and then set a rate among themselves.
Remember about 10 years ago -- I'm getting old, I can remember back 10 or more years -- Microsoft with its MSN Passport fiasco? Microsoft was saying, "We want to be everybody's identity management hub." Then, the huge thing that was raised about it was, "Microsoft wants to control our identities." Then, things like Liberty Alliance and all the others sprung up to say, "No, no, it must be a centralized and better way, so no one company can control all of our online identities."
That whole passport idea was kind of cool in some ways, but was just shot down completely and definitively, because the culture just said, "No, we cannot allow one group to have that much power."
Gardner: They typically didn't trust Microsoft at that point, when it was at perhaps the apex of its power, right?
Kobielus: Exactly. Now, Google is at the apex of their power. Would we trust Google in the same capacity? Look at China. They will become probably the largest economy in the world, in the next 25 years. Can we trust them? No, of course not.
When you have too much power concentrated in one place, people naturally sort of revolt.
When you have too much power concentrated in one place, people naturally sort of revolt. "No, wait, wait. I don't want to give them any more powers than they already have. Let's rethink this whole 'give them control of my identity' thing."
Dortch: It was the desire to get away from too much centralized control that led to the invention of the PC in the first place. It's it's important to keep that in mind in this context.
Gardner: So, if you truly want to be safe, you should just turn off your PC and start sending out mail at 44 cents a pop.
Kobielus: And, then you're not safe from Anthrax, you know.
Gardner: Let's go around our panel. We’re almost out of time. I’d be interested now in hearing some predictions about what you think is going to happen next. We've done a great job at defining the scope, depth, and complexity of this problem set, a very complex undertaking. But, it seems like it's not something that's going to go away. What do you think is going to happen next, Jim Kobielus?
Kobielus: I don't think Google is going to leave China. I even saw a headline today. I think it said that they were going to stay in China and somehow try to work it out with the PRC. I don't know where that's going, but fundamentally Google is a business and has a "don't do evil" philosophy. They're going to continue to qualify evil down to those things that don't actually align with their business interest.
In other words, they're going to stay. There's going to be a lot of wariness now to entrust Google's China operation with a whole lot of your IT -- "you" as a corporation -- and your data. There will be that wariness.
Preferred platforms
Other cloud providers will be setting up shop or hosting in other nations that are more respectful of IP, other nations that may not be launching corporate or governmental espionage at US headquartered properties in China. Those nations will become the preferred supernational cloud hosting platforms for the world.
I can't really say who those nations might be, but you know what, Switzerland always sort of stands out. They're still neutral after all these years. You've got to hand that to them. I trust them.
Gardner: Jason Bloomberg, what do you think is going to happening next?
Bloomberg: In the short-term, the noise is going to die down or going to go back to business as usual. The security is going to need to improve, but so are hacks from the bad guys. It's going to continue, until there is the next big attack. And the question is, "What's it going to be and how big is it going to be?"
We're still waiting for that game changer. I don't think this is a game changer. It's just a way to skirmish. But, if a hacker is able to bring down the internet, for example, targeting the DNS infrastructure to the point that the entire thing collapses, that’s something that could wake people up to say, "We really have to get a handle on this and come up with a better approach."
Gardner: That's mass vandalism. That doesn't really suit the purposes of some of the types of folks we are talking about. They don't want to bring the Internet down. They simply want to get an advantage over their competitors.
From our perspective, we're starting to see more awareness at higher levels in governments that the threats and issues here are real.
Bloomberg: Well, it really depends. We don't know who the bad guys are and what they’re trying to do. There's no single perspective. There's no single bad guy out there with a single agenda. We just don't know. We don't know what the agendas are.
Gardner: We don't know whether we've a level playing field or not?
Bloomberg: We can count on it not being leveled.
Gardner: Right. Jim Hietala, what do you see as some of the short- or medium-term next steps?
Hietala: From our perspective, we're starting to see more awareness at higher levels in governments that the threats and issues here are real. They’re here today. They seem to be state sponsored, and they're something that needs to be paid attention to.
Secretary of State Clinton gave a speech just today, where she talked specifically about this attack, but also talked about the need for nations to band together to address the problem. I don't know what that looks like at this point, but I think that the fact that people at that level are talking about the problem is good for the industry and good for the outlook for solutions that are important in the future.
Gardner: So, perhaps a free world versus an unfree world, at least in cyber terms, and perhaps the free world would have an advantage, or maybe the unfree world would have an advantage. It's hard to say.
Hietala: I'd agree it's hard to say, but the fact that those discussions going on is positive.
Gardner: Elinor Mills, any sense of where things are going?
Mills: I'm horrible at predictions, but I'll just throw this out. I think Google is going to get out of China and try and lead some kind of US corporate effort or be a role model to try to do business in a more ethical way, without having to compromise and censor.
There will be a divergence that you'll see. China and other countries may be pushed more towards limiting and creating their own sort of channel that's government filtered. I think the battle is just going to get bigger. We're going to have more fights on this front, but I think that Google may lead the way.
Gardner: Very good. Michael Dortch, where do you see it going?
Dortch: Elinor is at least partly right. Especially, if Google leaves China, Baidu's going to rise up as being the government approved version of Google for China and its localities. The very next thing Google will do is forge a strong working relationship as it possibly can with Baidu. You might see that model replicated across multiple countries in the world.
In the meantime though, something that -- if I remember correctly -- Astrodienst said almost 30 years ago is important to remember. Privacy is fungible. It's like currency. You're going to see individuals, small businesses, and individual corporate entities forging negotiations, deals, relationships, and accommodation that treat privacy and security as currency.
If it costs me a little bit more to do business here, I'm going to think seriously about it. Every once in a while, I'm going to swallow hard and pay the piper.
Google made itself into a figurehead of representing what a free enterprise approach could do. It's not state sponsored or nationalistic. It's corporate sponsored.
Gardner: Great. I'm going to throw my two cents as well. This boils down to almost two giant systems or schools of thought that are now colliding at a new point. They've collided at different points in the past on physical sovereignty, military sovereignty, and economic sovereignty. The competition is between what we might call free enterprise based systems and state sponsorship through centralized control systems.
Free enterprise won, when it came to the cold war, but it's hard to say what's going to happen in the economic environment where China is a little different beast. It's state sponsored and it's also taking advantage of free enterprise, but it's very choosy about what it allows for either one of those systems to do or to dominate.
When you look at the Google, Google made itself into a figurehead of representing what a free enterprise approach could do. It's not state sponsored or nationalistic. It's corporate sponsored. So, it would be interesting to see who has the better technology, who has the better financial resources, and ultimately who has the organizational wherewithal to manifest their goals online that wins out in the marketplace.
If an organized effort is better at doing this than a corporate one, well then they might dominate. But so far, we've seen a very complex system that the marketplace -- with choice, and shedding light and transparency on activities -- ultimately allows for free enterprise predominance. They can do it better, faster, cheaper and that it will ultimately win.
I think, we're really on the cusp here of a new level of competition, but not between countries or even alliances, but really between systems. The free enterprise system versus the state-sponsored or the centralized or the controlled system. It should be very interesting.
I want to thank our guests for today’s discussion. Jim Kobielus, senior analyst at Forrester Research. Thanks, Jim.
Kobielus: Sure.
Gardner: Jason Bloomberg, managing partner at ZapThink. Great to have you.
Bloomberg: My pleasure.
Gardner: Jim Hietala, Vice President for Security at The Open Group. Thank you, Jim.
Hietala: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: And thank you for joining us, Elinor Mills, senior writer at CNET.
Mills: My pleasure.
Gardner: Lastly, I appreciate your debut here today, Michael Dortch, Director of Research at Focus.
Dortch: It was great fun, and I hope I passed the audition.
Gardner: You did.
Gardner: I also want to thank our charter sponsor for supporting today’s BriefingsDirect, Analyst Insights Edition, that's Active Endpoints. This is Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Thanks for listening, and come back next time.
Edited transcript of a BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition podcast, Volume 50, on what the fallout is likely to be after Google's threat to leave China in the wake of security breaches. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2010. All rights reserved.
BriefingsDirect analysts analysts debate the 'imminent death' of enterprise IT as cloud models ascend
BriefingsDirect Analysts discuss solutions for bringing human interactions into business process workflows
The Open Group's CEO Allen Brown on advancing the value of enterprise IT through architecture
Labels: BriefingsDirect, China, cyber warfare, Dana Gardner, Elinor Mills, Google, Interarbor Solutions, Jason Bloomberg, Jim Hietala, Jim Kobielus, Michael Dortch, security
View my profile on LinkedIn >>
Follow @Dana_Gardner
Folo My Flipboard Magazines
Dana Gardner
Subscribe to Podcast Via iTunes
BriefingsDirect Network
BriefingsDirect Blog
BriefingsDirect Podcasts
Cloud of Insights
Interarbor Solutions
MyTechlogy
Seeking Alpha Instablog
Ulitzer
Mutual Embrace of SOA and Cloud Computing Builds I...
Smart Grid for Data Centers Better Manages Electri...
Converged Infrastructure Approach Paves Way for Im...
BriefingsDirect Analyst Panelists Peer into Crysta...
ISM3 Brings Greater Standardization to Security Me...
ArchiMate Gives Business Leaders and Architects a ...
'Business Architecture' Helps Business and IT Lead...
New Definition of Enterprise Architecture Emphasiz...
Part 4 of 4: Real-Time Web Data Services in Action...
CERN’s Evolution to Cloud Computing Portends Revol...
BriefingsDirect Analysts Discuss Ramifications of ...
The Open Group's Cloud Work Group Advances Underst...
Security, Simplicity and Control Ease Make Desktop...
Technology, Process and People Must Combine Smooth...
Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2019. All rights reserved.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11947
|
__label__wiki
| 0.57455
| 0.57455
|
Ántonia Shimerda
THIS ARTICLE IS A STUB. You can learn more about this topic in the related articles below.
Ántonia Shimerda, fictional character, the protagonist of Willa Cather’s novel My Ántonia (1918).
This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper, Senior Editor.
My Ántonia
…novel recounts the history of Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants who settled on the Nebraska frontier. The book contains a number of poetic passages about the disappearing frontier and the spirit and courage of frontier people. Many critics consider My Ántonia to be Cather’s finest achievement.…
Willa Cather, American novelist noted for her portrayals of the settlers and frontier life on the American plains. At age 9 Cather moved with her family…
My Ántonia, novel by Willa Cather, her best-known work, published in 1918. It honours the immigrant settlers of the American plains. Narrated by the protagonist’s lifelong friend, Jim Burden, the novel recounts the history of Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants who settled on the…
American literature, the body of written works produced in the English language in the United States. Like other national literatures, American literature was shaped by the history of the country that produced it. For almost a century and a half, America was merely a group of colonies scattered…
Jay Gatsby
Holden Caulfield
Hardy Boys
Ichabod Crane
Lord Byron, British Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination…
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0013.json.gz/line11948
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.