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Hurricanes 101 (hurricane basics and resources)
The National Weather Service launches it’s annual Hurricane Preparedness Week during the last week of May so we felt this was a good time to share some information about hurricanes in general.
As mentioned in our May 2013 enews, experts are predicting an active 2013 Atlantic season with 18 named storms, 9 hurricanes, and 4 major hurricanes. A typical Atlantic hurricane season averages 12 named storms, 6.5 hurricanes, and two major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher). Some experts are even predicting a few storms may strike the northeast (like Sandy did last fall) since conditions are similar to the 1950s.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), over a typical 2-year period, the U.S. coastline is struck by an average of 3 hurricanes, 1 of which is classified as a major hurricane. And, while hurricanes pose the greatest threat to life and property, tropical storms and depressions also can be devastating.
The Pacific Hurricane Season runs from May 15th through November 30th (with peak season being July to September), and the Atlantic Hurricane Season starts June 1st ending November 30th (with peak season being mid-August to late October).
However, there have been instances where tropical storms and hurricanes have formed in May and December, plus typhoons and cyclones happen during other months in different parts of the world so our planet’s oceans stay active most of the year.
Hurricanes are tropical cyclones with torrential rains and winds of 74 – 155 miles per hour (120 – 250 km/h) or faster. These winds blow in a counter-clockwise direction (or clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere) around a center “eye”. The “eye” is usually 20 to 30 miles (32 to 48 km) wide, and the storm may be spread out as far as 400 miles (640 km)!
As the hurricane approaches the coast, a huge dome of water (called a storm surge) will crash into the coastline.
Hurricanes can also cause tornadoes, heavy rains and flooding along the impacted coastlines as well as far into the mainland states.
…the deadliest hurricane (cyclone) on record struck East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), flooding the low lying areas?! At least 500,000 deaths are blamed on the November 13, 1970 storm, with some estimates rising as high as 1 million.
…the deadliest U.S. hurricane was the Great Galveston category 4 hurricane on September 8, 1900 that caused at least 8,000 deaths on the Texas coast?!
…the costliest U.S. hurricane was Katrina (category 3) in 2005 that impacted Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee causing over $105 billion according to NOAA?! Hurricane / Superstorm Sandy is second costliest at about $50 billion.
…the 2005 U.S. season broke records with 27 named storms (previous record was 21 in 1933) and 15 hurricanes (previous record was 12 in 1969). The National Hurricane Center states this cycle could last 10-20 more years similar to the above-average activity from the 1940s through the 1960s.
…9 out of 10 hurricane deaths are due to storm surge (a rise in the sea level caused by strong winds). Storm surges can get up to 20 feet (6 m) high and 50 to 100 miles (80 to 160 km) wide!
…the northeast part (or right front quadrant) of a hurricane typically has the strongest winds and highest storm surge?! If it’s high tide when the storm slams ashore you could have serious problems.
Hurricane basics
The ingredients for a hurricane include a pre-existing weather disturbance, warm tropical oceans, moisture, and relatively light winds aloft. If the right conditions persist long enough, they can combine to produce the violent winds, incredible waves, torrential rains, and floods we associate with this phenomenon.
Each year, an average of 11 tropical storms develop over the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. Many of these remain over the ocean and never impact the U.S. coastline. About six of these storms become hurricanes each year.
In an average 3-year period, roughly five hurricanes strike the US coastline, killing approximately 50 to 100 people anywhere from Texas to Maine. Of these, two are typically “major” or “intense” hurricanes (a category 3 or higher storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale).
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
Hurricanes are classed into five categories based on wind speeds, central pressure, and damage potential. The chart below is the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale with sustained wind speeds and examples of damage (in italics) provided by NOAA:
Category 1 (74-95 mph / 119-153 km/h) Dangerous winds will produce some damage (Untied mobile homes, vegetation & signs)
Category 2 (96-110 mph / 154-177 km/h ) Extremely dangerous winds / extensive damage (All mobile homes, roofs, small crafts, floods)
Category 3 (111-129 mph / 178-208 km/h) Devastating damage will occur (Small buildings, low-lying roads cut off)
Category 4 (130-156 mph / 209-251 km/h) Catastrophic damage will occur (Roofs and mobile homes destroyed, trees down, beach homes flooded)
Category 5 (> 156 mph / >251 km/h) Catastrophic damage will occur (Most buildings and vegetation destroyed, major roads cut off, homes flooded)
Naming a hurricane
Since 1953, Atlantic tropical storms have been named from lists originated by the National Hurricane Center and now maintained and updated by an International committee of the World Meteorological Organization. The lists featured only women’s names until 1979, when men’s and women’s names were alternated. Six lists are used in rotation. Thus, the 2001 list will be used again in 2007. The only time there is a change in the list is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate and the name is retired by the WMO. Retiring a name means it cannot be reused for at least 10 years. Source:WRAL.com
NatGeo vid “Hurricanes 101”
This short video further explains hurricanes, and scroll down to find more resources.
National Hurricane Preparedness Week 2013
As mentioned above, National Hurricane Preparedness Week 2013 runs from May 26 to June 1. The National Hurricane Center has posted 7 Public Service Announcements (both Youtube videos and audio files in English and Spanish) with a specific topic designated for each day of the week.
PSA topics include: Hurricane Basics, Storm Surge, Winds, Inland Flooding, Forecast Process, Get A Plan! and After the Storm. Learn more and find other resources and tools from NHC at www.hurricanes.gov to help educate your family and community.
Tips about Flooding, Tornadoes and more (from our IT’S A DISASTER! book)
NOAA Tropical Cyclones Preparedness Guide (12 pg PDF)
Florida’s Foundation “Make Mitigation Happen” (21-pg PDF for FL but could help most everyone)
Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (Hurricane page)
Bounce Energy Hurricane preparedness guide and resources page
How Stuff Works: How Hurricanes Work
Hurricane.com
USA Today Resources: Hurricanes
4 Comments | hurricanes, preparedness, wind | Tagged: Atlantic, flooding, hurricane, its a disaster, Pacific, preparedness, resources, Saffir-Simpson scale, storm surge | Permalink
Hurricane Preparedness tips (Before the storm hits)
By now you’ve probably heard Tropical Storm Isaac is churning in the Caribbean and may strengthen into a hurricane that could impact Florida and other Gulf coast states in the coming days.
Although 2012 has been a fairly quiet hurricane season so far, the Atlantic basin has seen 9 named storms, including 3 hurricanes, and the Pacific basin has seen 5 storms, 4 of which became hurricanes.
Keep in mind the storm season officially starts June 1 and runs through November 30, but August and September historically have been the peak activity months. For example, in 2010 and 2011, 12 named storms occurred in August and September both years. And it doesn’t take a hurricane to create havoc since tropical storms and depressions can bring torrential rains, tornadoes and flooding to coastlines and hundreds of miles inland.
…according to IBHS, more than half of the nation’s population now lives within 50 miles of the coast and the majority of properties there are exposed to the threat of hurricanes?!
…the 2005 U.S. season broke records with 27 named storms (previous record was 21 in 1933) and 15 hurricanes (previous record was 12 in 1969)?! The National Hurricane Center states this cycle could last 10-20 more years similar to the above-average activity from the 1940s through the 1960s.
…Hurricane Irene was the lone hurricane to hit the United States in 2011, and the first one to do so since Ike struck southeast Texas in 2008?!
…9 out of 10 hurricane deaths are due to storm surge (a rise in the sea level caused by strong winds). Storm surges can get up to 20 feet high and 50 to 100 miles wide!
Some things to think about and do to prepare for the storms…
Have a plan, map out several evacuation routes, and make disaster supplies kits for your home and vehicles. (And consider making kits for your office too.) And get some Weather radios with battery backup and tone-alert feature.
Make arrangements for pets since shelters may not allow them. If you have horses or livestock, make a plan for an alternate site in case they must be evacuated.
Videotape or take pictures of home and personal belongings and store chips/cards/drives with important papers in a secure, safe place offsite.
Consider getting flood insurance (and keep in mind it may take 30+ days to take effect). Learn more at www.floodsmart.gov
Strengthen weak spots on home — Roof: Install truss bracing or gable end bracing; anchors, clips and straps, etc. Windows & Doors: Get storm shutters or keep plywood on hand; install reinforced bolt kitsor doors, etc. Garage doors: Some retrofit kits install horizontal bracing onto each panel.
Secure / anchor mobile homes with tie-down systems.
Secure or tie down loose stuff like patio furniture, barbeque grills, water heaters, garbage cans, bookcases and shelving, etc. Loose items can become like missiles during high winds or tornadoes.
Keep materials on hand like sandbags, plywood, plastic sheeting, plastic garbage bags, lumber, shovels, work boots and gloves. Call your local emergency management agency to learn how to construct proper protective measures around your home.
Know where and how to shut off electricity, gas and water at main switches and valves — ask local utilities for instructions.
Listen to local authorities for warnings, evacuation tips and instructions, etc.
Download some FREE topics from our IT’S A DISASTER! book about Evacuations, Flooding, Hurricanes and more … and please share the information with others.
Ready.gov Hurricanes page
Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety Hurricane page
FEMA’s mobile Web or free app
1 Comment | hurricanes, preparedness, wind | Tagged: hurricane, preparedness, tips | Permalink
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Data show a county's education was top predictor of vote for Trump; also, race, rurality and jobs
A statistical analysis of the presidential election by The Washington Post finds that "education was an especially strong predictor of the vote, with race and economic distress — particularly declines in manufacturing — playing important, yet somewhat less influential, roles," writes Loren Collingwood of the University of California-Riverside, who did the analysis by matching Donald Trump's vote with demographic factors from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey in a regression analysis, a statistical device for measuring the relationship between variables.
Collingwood's graph, adapted for clarity by The Rural Blog, shows the relationship between several variables and Trump’s county-level support. The steeper the line, the stronger the correlation between the measure and Trump’s vote share.
"The share of a county’s residents with a college education is the strongest predictor," Collingwood writes. "Counties with more college-educated residents gave Trump substantially fewer votes. This is in line with the exit polls, which revealed a fairly sharp cleavage on education."
Race mattered. "Size of the Latino population was an even stronger predictor in 2016 than in 2012. In 2016, the effect of moving from a prototypically low Hispanic county to a prototypically high Hispanic county was 14 points larger in the Democrats’ favor than in 2012," Collingwood reports. "I also found evidence consistent with the “racial threat” hypothesis. As shown by the orange dotted line in the graph, Trump’s vote was higher in counties where the number of Latinos has increased significantly since 2000. This suggests that some voters may have supported Trump as a way of expressing white identity in an increasingly diverse nation."
Collingwood told The Rural Blog that he didn't do a statistical analysis of rural and urban voting, because his exercise was based on county populations, but he said rurality was "significant, and large in favor of Trump," much like education and race. "Trump clearly tapped into sentiments felt and expressed by many rural voters."
Reflecting his emphasis on jobs and trade deals, "Trump also did better in counties experiencing a loss in manufacturing since 2000. (The downward slope of the red line means that Trump did better in counties with manufacturing losses, on the left, and worse in areas with manufacturing gains, on the right.) Indeed, economic struggles may well have been the factor that flipped some Midwestern counties in such places as Michigan and Wisconsin: The effect of the manufacturing variable is stronger in that part of the country than elsewhere," Collingwood writes. "In the end, these county-level results suggest that numerous factors contributed to Trump’s win. But the education gap was especially influential, with race and economic decline — particularly in parts of the Midwest — playing a supporting role."
Written by Al Cross Posted at 11/19/2016 09:26:00 PM No comments:
Labels: education, elections, jobs, president, race, voting
Pastor-columnist says Trump's a disaster for rural folk, but it came down to cookies, guns and jobs
Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party lost this month because they have long alienated, mocked and ignored the problems of "white working-class and even middle-class Americans [who] should be part of the Democratic base," pastor and faith-and-values columnist Paul Prather writes for the Lexington Herald-Leader, where he was once the religion writer.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/living/religion/paul-prather/article115616263.html#emlnl=Afternoon_Newsletter#storylink=cpy
"What we got was not just a win for The Donald, but a clean sweep, and carte blanche, for Republicans in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, Kentucky state government and, soon, the U.S. Supreme Court," Prather writes. "Of course, this is fantastic news for billionaires and big corporations. It’s a society-shifting disaster for the rural, working-class and middle-class white Americans who handed Trump and Co. the keys to the kingdom."
Prather says the result "was not driven primarily by white racism, or sexism, or opposition to abortion, or opposition to gay marriage, and least of all by any intrinsic loyalty to the Republican Party. No doubt, all those sentiments played their supporting roles. But mainly this election was about cookie baking, deer hunting and horrible jobs."
Paul Prather
Prather traces the roots of Clinton's defeat to her 1992 remark defending her work as a lawyer: "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was pursue my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."
Prather writes, "What she, and by extension her party, failed to understand was that millions of women — nearly all employed outside the home, some already earning more than their husbands — wistfully remembered their mothers baking cookies and longed to do the same for their kids. They worked at outside jobs because they couldn’t afford to stay home. They were stung by what they took as Hillary’s condescension."
As for guns, "When Democrats rail against guns generally and, as President Obama once did, sniff at rural people’s affinity for firearms, those good people hear their culture, their histories and their families being directly attacked," Prather writes. "It’s not a political thing; it’s not even rational, necessarily. It’s personal and visceral.
And jobs: "Many Americans without college degrees, including millions of rural white people, now find it almost impossible to earn a living. If they’re working at all, it’s in non-union factories or big-box stores in their county seats, making $11 an hour, with sorry benefits, sorrier working conditions and no job security. They can’t pay their car loans, can’t buy a home, can barely keep the electricity on, and have third-rate health care, if any. Their nephews and nieces are ravaged by heroin. They can’t imagine sending their kids to college.
"They hear Democrats promoting affirmative action, transgender rights, abortion rights, illegal immigrants’ rights — but nobody’s lobbying for them. And they need help. Terribly. I would argue that the Republican Party is the worst place for such Americans to be. Yet they voted for Republicans by the droves because the Republican Party has at least made the effort to recognize their values, speak their language and court them, even if it typically takes advantage of them.
"Trump, a New York City billionaire, of all things, spoke directly to them. He said, in effect, I understand how beat up you are. I care about you. I will fight for you. Democrats haven’t done anything approaching that. They’ve been too busy feeling sanctimonious. They’ve needlessly alienated people they could have won over." (Read more)
Labels: elections, firearms, guns, jobs, journalism, president, religion, rural journalism, rural-urban disparities, Second Amendment, women
90% of rural counties increased Republican support in 2016; rural white females supported Trump
Rural voters have increased
support for Republicans
since 2004 (Post graphic)
The presidential election showed an increasing difference among rural Republican and urban Democratic counties, Lazaro Gamio reports for The Washington Post. Of the 1,508 small counties—those with 25,000 or fewer people—1,362 voted more Republican in 2016 than in 2004.
"In counties with fewer than 100,000 people—which make up 80 percent of counties in the country but contain only about 20 percent of the population—9 out of 10 voted more Republican than they did in 2004," Gamio writes.
Of the 137 urban counties with 500,000 or more residents, 112 counties voted more Democratic in 2016 than in 2004, Gamio writes. In medium-sized counties (25,000 to 100,000 people) 878 of the 1,012 counties leaned more Republican, and in large counties (100,000 to 500,000) 260 of the 453 voted more Republican. (Post graphic below: urban, large and medium-sized counties)
Exit polls also showed that Donald Trump's disparaging remarks about women did little to deter rural white female voters from casting ballots for him, Rich Morin reports for the Pew Research Center. An NBC News poll showed that 54 percent of all women voted for Hillary Clinton, but Trump won among white women, 53 to 43, and held a significant advantage among rural white women, 62 to 34. Among white men, Trump beat Clinton 63 to 31, and among rural white men, 72 to 24.
Written by Tim Mandell Posted at 11/18/2016 11:34:00 AM No comments:
Labels: elections, politics, rural-urban disparities, voting, women
Rural Hispanics in poor counties, mostly near border, swung to Trump despite his insults
Donald Trump, who has made negative remarks about Mexican immigrants and wants to build a wall along the border, received big support from rural Hispanics, predominantly Mexicans living in impoverished counties in states along the border, Geraldo L. Cadava reports for The Washington Post. (Post graphic: Donald Trump in 2016 did much better than Mitt Romney in 2012 among rural Hispanics in many counties in the Southwest)
"States like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas remained blue or became less red," Cadava writes. "But if you look closely at many largely Hispanic rural areas in these states, you find that Trump did better—and Hillary Clinton did worse—than did Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. Voting in these counties was much like that in similar counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin," states where large rural support helped Trump win. (Post graphic: Clinton did much worse in 2016 than President Obama did in 2012 among rural Hispanics in many Southwest counties)
In some counties where Hispanics make up half or most of the population, Clinton got 10 percent fewer votes than Obama did, Gadava writes. "In many more heavily Latino counties, her votes lagged behind Obama’s by 3 to 8 points." While Clinton received fewer Hispanic votes than Obama, Trump "received a greater share of the vote than Romney had in more than a dozen counties with large Hispanic populations."
A similar trend showed that the Hispanic communities that supported Trump "were some of the poorest in their states," Gadava writes. "They’ve suffered the same tough economic circumstances as did some of the Midwestern counties that handed Trump the election. They’re more similar to than different from other forgotten counties across the United States, where voters upended the predictions of pollsters and shouted against the status quo."
Labels: elections, Hispanics, politics, poverty, rural-urban disparities, voting
Trump's stance on NAFTA worries agribusiness
President-elect Donald Trump's plans for the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he has called the worst trade deal ever signed by the U.S., has many in the agricultural sector on edge, reports Agri-Pulse.
Pulling the U.S. out NAFTA and reinstating tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods could lead to high costs for U.S. exports, said Washington D.C.-based lawyer Edward Farrell. Farrell, who said Trump could reinstate the tariffs that were eliminated under NAFTA via proclamation, told Agri-Pulse, “He could raise the duties on day one. He doesn’t need to withdraw from NAFTA in order to raise the duties. Under U.S. law, he’s got the proclamation authority to do so.”
Canada has expressed a willingness to discuss renegotiating NAFTA, but Mexico has been less receptive to the idea, reports Agri-Pulse. "NAFTA, which was ratified by Congress in 1993 and fully implemented by 2008, has resulted in massive increases in trade between the countries, sharply boosting U.S. exports of corn, beef, pork, rice, high fructose corn syrup, dairy and other commodities. Most trade tariffs and other barriers were either lifted immediately or phased out over time."
"In 1994, at the start of NAFTA, the U.S. exported $4.6 billion worth of farm commodities just to Mexico, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data," reports Agri-Pulse. "That total had nearly quadrupled to $18 billion in 2015. The U.S. shipped roughly $341 million worth of corn to Mexico in 1994, but the figure had jumped to about $2.3 billion in 2015."
Farrell said, "as deep as the concern is over renegotiating the agreement, a complete withdrawal would be even more disruptive, possibly leading to a dangerous escalation," reports Agri-Pulse. He told Agri-Pulse, “Whenever you start a trade war, it’s not that the other guy doesn’t have guns too. Clearly the U.S. is the biggest economic power, but these are major trading partners.”
Agri-Pulse is subscription only, but can be viewed by clicking here.
Labels: agriculture, Canada, crops, farmers, Mexico, trade
Rural Mainstreet Index in agriculture-and-energy heartland up a bit, still negative
Last month the Rural Mainstreet Index was up slightly but still below 50 on a scale of 100 for the 15th straight month, indicating economic decline in the 10-state region that stretches from Illinois to Wyoming and is dependent on agriculture and energy. Creighton University economist Ernie Goss surveys bank CEOs in rural areas of Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming and the Dakotas.
The index in November was 36.6, up from October when it was 31.8, the lowest since 2009. It was at 49 in September 2015. Farmland prices declined for the 36th straight month and bankers expect 20.7 percent of livestock producer to experience 2016 cash expenses greater than cash revenues
Goss reported, "Farm commodity prices continue to slam Rural Mainstreet economies. Over the past 12 months, livestock commodity prices have tumbled by 27.2 percent and grain commodity prices have slumped by 16.6 percent. The economic fallout from this price weakness continues to push growth into negative territory for seven of 10 states in the region." (Creighton graphic: Rural Mainstreet Index)
Labels: agriculture, economy, energy, farming, landowners, real estate
Cost of Thanksgiving meal for 10 has declined in past year, Farm Bureau says
Average prices (AFBF graphic)
It should cost less to host Thanksgiving this year, according to a survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation. The annual report shows that the average cost this year to feed 10 people will be $49.87, down from $50.11 in 2015. The average price of a 16 pound turkey this year is $22.74, about two cents per pound less than last year.
Dr. John Newton, AFBF director of market intelligence, said in a statement: "Consumers will pay less than $5 per person for a classic Thanksgiving dinner this year. We have seen farm prices for many foods, including turkeys, fall from the higher levels of recent years. This translates into lower retail prices for a number of items as we prepare for Thanksgiving and confirms that U.S. consumers benefit from an abundant, high-quality and affordable food supply."
The survey meal includes enough turkey, bread stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and coffee and milk to serve 10 people, with plenty of leftovers, states AFBH. (Read more)
Written by Tim Mandell Posted at 11/18/2016 10:04:00 AM 1 comment:
Labels: crop prices, food, holidays
Former coal miners in Central Appalachia who are trying to reinvent careers face hurdles
Former miners in struggling coal communities are being forced to reinvent their careers, Sophie Quinton reports from Eastern Kentucky for Stateline, "but reinvention isn’t for everyone. Some locals are too old, sick or poor to restart their lives somewhere else. And retraining isn’t a sure-fire way to get a new job in a place where so few employers are hiring." In many cases, starting a new career also means taking a pay cut for former miners.
While state data show that unemployment in Kentucky was 4.8 percent in September, rates were between 7.9 percent to 15.5 percent in nearly every Eastern Kentucky coal county. (Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet: unemployment rates in September)
Higher rates of unemployment in Eastern Kentucky, along with high rates of poverty, drug overdose deaths, cancer, diabetes and disability are leading some people to leave and others to retrain for jobs in fields such as electrical work and nursing, Quinton writes. But even those that leave don't go far. Analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that "most of the people who packed up their homes in one of the roughly 30 counties in Eastern Kentucky between 2011 and 2014 moved within the region." (Stateline map: Appalachian Kentucky has high poverty and unemployment rates. For an interactive version click here)
Overall, "employers are laying off more people than they are hiring," Quinton writes. "And getting job seekers to switch careers—let alone go back to college—isn’t easy." Another problem is a lack of experience applying for jobs. Jenni Hampton, a career adviser at an employment center in Pikeville, Ky., said that "many of the people who come in looking for help have never had to write a resume or prepare for a job interview before." (Read more)
Labels: Appalachia, coal, employment, jobs, mining, poverty, rural-urban disparities, unemployment
USDA's 'Rural America at a Glance' has data on employment, population, poverty and more
Unemployment in rural areas continues to decline, according to Rural America at a Glance, an annual report by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that includes valuable information on trends in employment, population, median incomes and poverty.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement: "At the depths of the Great Recession, rural counties were shedding 200,000 jobs per year, rural unemployment stood at nearly 10 percent and poverty rates reached heights unseen in decades. Many rural communities were ill-positioned to bounce back quickly. ... Rural America has begun a remarkable comeback."
Rural unemployment, which grew during the recession from 5.2 percent in 2007 to 9.9 percent in 2010, stood at 5.7 percent in 2015, the report states: "Although the number of people working has increased since 2010, declines in the unemployment rate have also reflected fewer people seeking work." The national unemployment rate is 4.9 percent.
The total population in rural counties was 46.2 million in July 2015, "representing 14 percent of U.S. residents in 72 percent of the nation’s land area," states the report. Rural population declined by 136,000—0.3 percent—from 2010-2014, before leveling off in 2015.
Poverty rates, which rose during the recession, "continued to rise until 2013 in rural areas," states the report. "Poverty has been slow to abate in the wake of other recessions since the 1980s. Poverty rates in both rural and urban areas fell slightly in 2014 and more markedly in 2015—by 0.9 percentage point in rural areas and 0.8 percentage point in urban areas—but remain well above pre-recession levels."
Written by Tim Mandell Posted at 11/17/2016 12:55:00 PM No comments:
Labels: economic disparity, economy, employment, migration, population, poverty, recession, unemployment
Rural N.M. county reinvented itself after oil bust through renewable energy, affordable housing
Hobbs, N.M. (Best Places map)
Towns facing an oil bust can look to the success of one New Mexico county, which reinvented itself when the industry crashed in the mid-1980s, taking with it nearly 10,000 jobs, Leah Todd reports for High Country News. Unemployment in Lea County, which has a population of 60,000, tripled when the market crashed, forcing many to flee for greener pastures. For those that stayed and endured, a new boom has come around, in the form of renewable energy and affordable housing.
Without borrowing a dime, the county's largest town, Hobbs, "invested in housing, doubled its police force and pooled resources with five other public and private entities to build a $63.5 million recreation center," Todd writes. "Over the past five years, the town has extended $7 million in incentives to developers building more than 1,500 housing units—affordable and market-rate apartments, even single-family homes—primarily through reimbursing developers for the cost of roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure. Hundreds more units are under construction."
"Oil and gas severance taxes still make up about 50 percent of local tax revenue and one in five local jobs is in mining" and the county lost 1,500 jobs from 2014 to 2015 when oil prices dropped, Todd writes. "But Lea County’s strategic and sustained approach seems to be slowly working. The county boasts above-average salaries and—unique for an oil town—low income volatility, at least compared to other communities its size. During the slow recovery after the 2008 recession, which most gravely afflicted rural areas, Lea County was one of only a handful of counties in New Mexico that actually added businesses."
The county now has four solar power plants and four more are under construction, Todd writes. "Together those operations will produce 288 megawatts—about 19 percent of the state’s solar energy. Wind is growing more slowly, with just one operational plant and another on the way. Lea County’s wind sector will produce about 57 megawatts—7 percent of the state’s wind energy."
Labels: housing, natural gas, nuclear power, oil, rural-urban disparities, solar power, wind power
State health department reports show rising opioid epidemic, especially deaths involving fentanyl
Opioid deaths have been on the rise in recent years, especially in rural areas. Reports from state health departments in Tennessee and Massachusetts show just how bad the epidemic has become and are examples of county-level data that should be available in every state to localize news stories.
In Tennessee 1,451 overdose deaths were reported in 2015, the most on record for one year, says a report from the Tennessee Department of Health. Of those deaths, 72 percent involved opioids and the vast majority were ruled unintentional. Fentanyl, which is often mixed with heroin, contributed to 174 deaths in 2015, up from 69 in 2014. Heroin caused 205 deaths, up from 147 in 2014. The total death rate was 22 per every 100,000 people, up from 19.3 in 2014 and 16.6 in 2011.
Through the first three quarters of 2016 Massachusetts has seen 1,005 unintentional opioid overdose deaths, "with an estimated 392 to 470 suspected opioid-related deaths that may be added to that total," says a report released earlier this month by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Of those deaths 74 percent tested positive for fentanyl. The rate of heroin deaths is down this year. (Massachusetts DPH map: Unintentional opioid deaths,2013-15)
Labels: drug abuse, drug prevention, drugs, federal spending, prescription drugs
W.Va. Supreme Court says pipeline surveyors must have permission of landowners
Roanoke Times map
The West Virginia Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline "cannot survey land for the project without the permission of the landowners," Ken Ward reports for the Charleston Gazette-Mail. "Justices upheld an August 2015 ruling by Monroe County Circuit Judge Robert A. Irons in favor of Bryan and Doris McCurdy, residents of the county who argued that allowing the pipeline company onto their property without their permission violates a basic right of all West Virginians."
The 300-mile pipeline would run from from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to Pittsylvania County, Virginia. In August 2015 a Virginia circuit judge ruled against eight landowners in a similar case, finding "that a controversial law in that state allowing natural-gas companies to survey private property without an owner’s permission is not unconstitutional," Duncan Adams reported for The Roanoke Times.
In Tuesday's ruling, Justice Robin Jean Davis "said there was no proof that the MVP project would serve any 'public use,' a requirement under state law for developers to use eminent domain to force landowners to allow such surveys," Ward writes. Davis wrote, “Thus, this case represents exactly the type of private taking for private use that is prohibited."
Labels: courts, land use, landowners, natural gas, pipelines, state government
Ousted Kansas Rep. Huelskamp first big name to show interest in being agriculture secretary
Rep. Tim Huelskamp
Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp, who lost the Republican primary this year when farm groups rallied around his challenger, has expressed interest in being agriculture secretary in the Donald Trump administration, Philip Brasher reports for Agri-Pulse. Huelskamp, one of the most conservative House GOP members, was outed as a possible candidate at a Capitol Hill forum Wednesday.
A reporter from Breitbart News, whose executive chairman, Stephen Bannon was CEO of the Trump's campaign and recently named to be his chief strategist in the White House, asked Huelskamp "to share with us any discussions you're had about becoming agriculture secretary," Brasher reports.
Huelskamp said he couldn't comment on the question, but later told Agri-Pulse, “People who are in the room have been talking to me. If you're looking to be an outsider I would be quite a pick to fit that. We need to drain the swamp. I certainly am not part of that.”
House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, said Trump has given vice president-elect Mike Pence "the lead role in agriculture policy and would have a say on who is selected as secretary," Brasher writes. Conway told Brasher, “I have not heard who's handling Ag. My guess is that (selecting an agriculture secretary) is not the first priority.” (Read more)
Labels: agriculture, farming, politics
More than 1 million signed up for insurance on HealthCare.gov Nov. 1-12
More than a million people have enrolled in plans on HealthCare.gov since Nov. 1 and more than 300,000 did after Donald Trump was elected president last week, the Obama administration said Wednesday. Of the 1,008,200 sign-ups, 246,000 are new to the federal marketplace. The overall total is 53,000 more than the first 12 days of open enrollment in 2015. While running for president Trump said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has since said he would keep certain popular features.
Andrew Slavitt, acting administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, "said that since Nov. 9, the day after Republicans secured control of the White House and both houses of Congress, the federal marketplace has received 8,000 telephone calls from people wanting to know how the election would affect their insurance coverage," Robert Pear reports for The New York Times. Slavitt said the number of people enrolling “shows that health insurance is something people want and need.”
The Obama administration's comparisons with last year need a caveat. While 39 states use the health care website, Kentucky dismantled its state-based exchange, branded Kynect, forcing residents to only be able to enroll at HealthCare.gov. More than 100,000 Kentuckians had signed up for health insurance on Kynect, reports Kentucky Health News, a sister publication of The Rural Blog.
Labels: health, health care, health insurance, health reform, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act
Teen births down nationally, but more slowly in rural areas, where rates remain high
Teen birth rates, which are highest in rural areas, have declined nationally, but are falling more slowly in rural areas and remain higher in small towns than urban areas, says a report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Birth rates from 2007 to 2015 of teens 15 to 19 fell 37 percent in rural areas, from 49.1 births per 1,000 girls to 30.9 births. Rates dropped 50 percent in large urban counties to 18.9 and 44 percent in small and medium urban counties to 24.3. (CDC map: Percentage change in teen birth rates for rural counties from 2007 and 2015)
The study, based on data from the National Vital Statistics System, found that "the teen birth rate in America’s small towns is 63 percent higher than in its biggest cities," Karen Kaplan reports for the Los Angeles Times. Researchers said they "don’t know why the teen birth rate was lower—and falling faster—in large urban areas than in rural ones. They did not study abortion rates between 2007 and 2015, nor did they examine whether schools in some counties were more or less likely to promote the use of birth control, or abstinence."
States have county-by-county data on teen births. For example, here are Kentucky data.
Labels: children, rural-urban disparities, youth
Significant increase in rural vote and decline in Democratic turnout were keys to election
The combination of an increase in rural voters and a decrease in Democrats casting ballots, especially in urban areas, were the main reasons Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann report for NBC News. Rural areas accounted for 500,000 more votes than in 2012, while urban votes were down about 2.5 million.
Dante Chinni, of the American Communities Project, found that Trump scored big numbers in four types of rural counties: rural middle America, working-class communities, graying areas, and evangelical hubs. In all four areas, voter turnout was up from 2012 and Trump scored much larger victories than Mitt Romney did in 2012. (Click on chart for larger version)
In "Graying America," areas with aging populations, 242,721 more people voted in 2016, increasing Trump's advantage in those areas by 10 points over what Romney did in 2012, Chinni writes. Votes were up by 163,349 in rural evangelical hubs, increasing Trump's winning margin by 12 points, votes were up 99,232 in rural working class communities, increasing Trump's victory by 17 points, and voters were up 16,252 in rural middle America, increasing Trump's victory by 17 points. At the same time, 796,725 fewer people in urban suburbs voted than in 2012 and 1,695,692 fewer people in big cities voted.
Labels: elections, politics, rural-urban disparities, voting
Presidential vote change among whites based on education levels was biggest since 1980
White college graduates backed Hillary Clinton by a 9-point margin, 52 percent to 43 percent, while white non-college graduates backed Donald Trump 52 to 44, "by far the widest gap in support among college graduates and non-college graduates in exit polls dating back to 1980," Alec Tyson and Shiva Maniam report for the Pew Research Center. In 2012 Obama beat Romney among college-educated whites 50 to 48 and non-college educated whites 51 to 47. Trump won the overall white vote. (Pew graphic: White votes compared to all votes, based on education levels)
"Racial and ethnocentric attitudes were deeply implicated in Donald Trump’s remarkable rise to the White House," Michael Tesler reports for The Washington Post. "Racial resentment, anti-Muslim attitudes, and white identity, were all much stronger predictors of support for Trump in the 2016 primaries than they were for prior Republican nominees."
"Donald Trump made racial attitudes more important in the general election, too," Tesler writes. "Racial resentment, unfavorable opinions of African-Americans and ethnocentrism were significantly stronger predictors of whites’ preferences for Trump or Clinton than they were in hypothetical match-ups between Clinton and Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. Many of these same racial attitudes are also heavily influenced by education. College-educated whites and whites who live in highly educated areas of the country have long been much more racially tolerant than other white Americans."
Labels: education, elections, higher education, politics, race, rural-urban conflicts, rural-urban disparities, voting
Rural-urban political divide grows among rural families and their educated relatives in cities
A rural-urban political divide has grown, spurred by people who left working-class rural communities to get a college education and work in urban centers, Sabrina Tavernise and Katharine Seelye report for The New York Times. While their friends and family back home are conservatives who support Donald Trump, they are more liberal and turned their support to Hillary Clinton, with the testy election driving a wedge in family relationships.
One example is Misty Bastian, who grew up in rural Tennessee, has a Ph.D. and works at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. "She said that she had sensed a 'parting of the political ways' from her family for a long time, but that her support for Hillary Clinton seemed to be 'the last nail in the coffin'," Tavernise and Seelye report.
Bastian said she has continued to visit home since joining the Air Force in the 1970s but has no desire to return to her rural roots. She told the Times, “I don’t want to be part of the grand narrative that the ‘liberal elite’ doesn’t get the working class. I am from the working class. I’m now pretty solidly middle class. But to my relatives, I’m elite, over-educated and too well-read: an alien.”
Colin Woodard, author of American Nations, a history and geography of cultural divides in the U.S. "says that 'we are seeing a profound disagreement about what kind of America we should be creating,'" Tavernise and Seelye write. "Some believe society should be organized with an emphasis on individual rights, he said, while others feel the focus should be on maintaining the common good, which requires checks on individuals. Many feel the multiculturalism so prized by liberals has made their communities harder to understand and identify with."
Labels: elections, higher education, politics, rural-urban conflicts, rural-urban disparities, voting
Dozens of wildfires in South threaten rural areas
Locations of wildfires (WSJ)
More than 3,700 firefighters have been sent to the Southeast to fight wildfires caused by drought and suspected arson, Cameron McWhirter reports in a video story for The Wall Street Journal. As of Tuesday, "37 fires comprising 100 acres or more each burned in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia and Alabama," according to the U.S. Forest Service. Overall, 107,599 acres have burned.
One problem in many of the mountainous areas is the inability to bring in heavy equipment to clear land around a blaze so it burns out, McWhirter writes. Unable to bring in heavy equipment Georgia "has sent in work crews made up of park rangers, prison inmates and others to the affected areas to create fire lines with shovels, axes and other tools."
Georgia in October had 944 wildfires, a 220 percent increase over the past five years, and in November has had 399 fires, an increase of 15 percent, McWhirter writes. The biggest damage, in Fannin County, has burned 28,000 acres.
Ken Arney, deputy regional forester for State and Private Forestry in the Forest Service’s Southern region, said one problem is that "the South has denser hardwood forests than many western areas, meaning more fuel for fires to burn, and the region generally has more houses in the forests as well," McWhirter writes. He told McWhirter, "We’re a long way from saying we are in good shape containing these fires." (WSJ video)
Labels: fire, forests
Utah proposes raising more speed limits to 80; studies show increases lead to more fatalities
Utah Department of Transportation photo
The Utah Department of Transportation has proposed raising speed limits on more rural highways to 80 miles per hour, Lee Davidson reports for The Salt Lake Tribune. In other areas limits would be raised from 65 to 75 mph for all vehicles except large trucks.
Robert Miles, UDOT director of traffic and safety, said agency conducted studies in proposed areas "show that 85 percent of motorists often are traveling faster than the posted limit," Davidson writes. He said lower speed limits leads to safety concerns with faster cars trying to maneuver around slower cars, while higher speed limits will lead to more traffic traveling at similar speeds and increase safety.
Reports show that when Utah previously raised speed limits highway fatalities increased, Davidson writes. Miles said the increased deaths were not from highways, but "occurred on arterial roads and city streets," not freeways.
An April report by by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) showed that nationally increasing speed limits led to 33,000 traffic deaths from 1993 to 2013, including 1,900 deaths in 2013. Utah has some of the nation's highest speed limits. In 2014 Utah has 222 fatal crashes leading to 256 deaths, 125 of them in rural areas, according to IIHS. (IIHS map: Highest speed limits, as of January 2013)
Labels: accidents, highway safety, highways, public safety, roads, transportation
Obama says Democrats need to do a better job of reaching rural voters
Obama at press conference (Saul Loeb, Getty Images)
In his first news conference since the election, President Obama said Democratic candidates need to do a better job of campaigning in rural areas, Jessica Taylor reports for NPR. He didn't mention Hillary Clinton but said, "We have to compete everywhere. We have to show up everywhere. I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa. It was because I spent 87 days going to every small town."
Obama said that "when he was campaigning he went to many rural places in a very white, blue-collar state like Iowa and ended up winning twice," Taylor writes. In 2012 Obama beat Mitt Romney in Iowa 52 percent to 46 percent. Donald Trump beat Clinton this year 51.8 to 42.2.
A rural outpouring for Trump this year led to similar results in other states that Obama won in 2012, such as Michigan, Ohio Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Overall, Trump won big in rural areas, where he campaigned heavily, while Clinton spent far less time meeting rural voters or advertising in those areas.
Unhealthy rural communities in the heartland were some of Trump's biggest supporters
Brown County (Wikipedia map)
"Trump Country," the rural areas where Donald Trump scored some of his most decisive victories, includes some of the nation's most unhealthy communities, Dylan Scott reports for Stat, the national health-and-science website of The Boston Globe.
In Brown County, Ohio, Trump beat Hillary Clinton 73.2 percent to 21.9 percent. In Scott County, Indiana, about 130 miles to the west, he won 67 to 29.2.
In Georgetown, located in Brown County, "residents die younger than all but a few other counties in this important swing state," Scott wrote in October. "The suicide rate is well above the national average. Brown County saw a 50 percent increase in drug overdose deaths over two years."
(Wikipedia map)
Austin, in Scott County, was the site of an HIV and hepatitis C epidemic blamed largely on shared needles. The town is not far from the office of Gov. Mike Pence, Trump's vice president-elect.
While Trump easily won both counties, in October even his "staunchest supporters don’t see him as a savior, the cure to their ailments," Scott wrote. "Almost nobody—neither health workers, nor people recovering from addiction, nor regular voters—seems to believe the presidential election will have much consequence for their health." Austin resident Ron Snowden told Scott last month, “Way I look at it, no matter who you get in there, the damage has already been done. Whoever gets in there, it’s going to take 30 years to fix what’s been done.”
Scott wrote, "Brown and Scott are classic examples of Trump’s America, communities in the heartland that are strongly pro-Trump and staggeringly unhealthy. They are also two of the unhealthiest counties in their respective states, according to rankings by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute."
"In these counties, as in other places that have seen stagnating life expectancy among white Americans, drug and alcohol have claimed countless lives, along with conventional killers like cancer and heart disease," Scott writes. "Some political analyses have argued that Trump’s unexpected rise can just as easily be traced to poor health as economic hardship or racial anxiety, as voters flock to a candidate promising to revive their dying towns."
Labels: drug abuse, drugs, elections, health, politics, prescription drug, rural health, rural-urban disparities, voting
Maine approves 'instant runoff' voting via ranking of candidates, but legal hurdles remain
Voters in Maine last week approved ranked-choice voting, also called "instant runoff." Maine, which has the nation's largest percentage of rural population, is the first state to pass ranked-choice voting, but "significant hurdles" lie ahead, Michael Shepherd reports for the Bangor Daily News.
Here's how it would work: In races with more than two candidates, "instead of selecting a single candidate, each voter ranks all the candidates in order of preference," Marsha Mercer reports for Stateline. "If no candidate is the top choice of the majority of voters, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is scratched from every ballot, and there is a second count. This time, on every ballot where the last-place candidate was ranked first, the second-ranked candidate is counted as the voter’s top choice. The counts continue until one candidate is the top remaining choice of a majority of voters."
Proponents of ranked-choice voting "ran a $2 million campaign facing no organized opposition," Shepherd writes. "They pitched the new voting method as a cure for the kinds of plurality elections that have decided nine out of the last 11 gubernatorial races, including Republican Paul LePage’s wins in 2010 and 2014," where he received less than 50 percent of the vote. "It was the polarizing LePage who provided the petri dish" for the experiment. The Maine League of Women Voters endorsed the idea.
The remaining obstacles to ranked-choice voting are "based on concerns, including from Maine Attorney General Janet Mills, that it doesn’t pass constitutional muster." The state constitution specifically allows election by plurality, and says ballots must be received, sorted and counted by cities and towns. Ranked-choice voting would be handled by the secretary of state.
Labels: elections, politics, state governments, voting
Second edition of '13 Ways To Kill Your Community' launched today
The second edition of 13 Ways To Kill Your Community was launched today. The book, by Canadian journalists Doug Griffiths and Kelly Clemmer, is described as "a book for those concerned about the future of their community and are looking for answers on how to find success."
Griffiths recently visited Craig and Moffatt counties in northwest Colorado, "to speak about his book and host a workshop with the community," Patrick Kelly reports for the Craig Daily Press. Local leaders have traveled to Edmonton, Alberta, today as part of the book launch. Moffat County Commissioner Frank Moe "said the trip will help continue the conversation of how to achieve economic diversification as the city and county try to determine a specific project that will stimulate the regional economy." He told Kelly, "Now, we need to pick the project that’s going to help diversify our economy and start creating primary jobs.”
Doug Griffiths speaking in June
in Moffat County, Colorado
(Craig Daily Press photo by Patrick Kelly)
The book focuses on 13 ways to kill a community: Don't Have Quality Water; Don't Attract Business; Ignore Your Youth; Deceive Yourself About Your Real Needs or Values; Shop Elsewhere; Don't Paint; Don't Cooperate; Live in the Past; Ignore Your Seniors; Reject Everything New; Ignore Outsiders; Become Complacent; and Don't Take Responsibility.
Labels: community development, economic development, rural-urban disparities, small businesses, tourism, water, youth
Nonprofit exec in W.Va. fired for racist Facebook post about Michelle Obama that mayor supported
Clay County (Wikipedia)
The director of a government-funded nonoprofit in rural West Virginia has been fired after referring to First Lady Michelle Obama as an "ape in heels" in a Facebook post, and the mayor has been criticized for posting support of the post, Ali Schmitz reports for the Charleston Gazette-Mail. Pamela Ramsey Taylor, an employee of the Clay Development Corp. in Clay County, wrote the post last week and was fired Monday. County Mayor Beverly Whaling responded to the post by posting, "Just made my day Pam."
WCHS-TV reports Whaling apologized on Facebook and said, "My comment was not intended to be racist at all. I was referring to my day being made for the change in the White House! I am truly sorry for any hard feeling this may have caused! Those who know me, know that I am not in any way racist!"
Jason Hubbard, a councilman in the city of Clay, told Schmitz that the corporation is not affiliated with the city. He said the issue would be discussed tonight at a previously scheduled meeting. An online petition was started last weekend to have Whaling removed from office, but an official petition requires signatures from registered voters in the city.
The town of Clay has about 500 people and the county has about 9,000. Only 0.2 percent are African American, notes Lindsey Bever of The Washington Post. About 77 percent of county voters supported Donald Trump in last week's election, John Ra reports for The Associated Press. "In 2012, President Obama received 31 percent of the county vote when Republican Mitt Romney easily carried the state."
Labels: digital media, information technology, politics, racism, social media, technology
Farm Foundation Forum on Nov. 30 will look at various agendas for the next Farm Bill
The next Farm Foundation Forum, on Nov. 30, will focus on the next Farm Bill. Scheduled from 9-11 a.m. ET, the forum, "The Next Farm Bill: What are the Agendas?," will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. It will be available via audiocast and archived on the Farm Foundation website.
Panel members will include Chuck Conner, president and CEO of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives; Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group; and Daren Bakst, agricultural research policy fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Constance Cullman, president of Farm Foundation, will moderate.
There is no fee to participate, but registration is requested. Register here if you plan to attend in person; register here for the live audiocast.
Labels: agriculture, Farm Bill, farming, foundations, politics
Trump will change many energy and environment rules, but some will be harder to reverse
"President-elect Donald Trump vowed on the campaign trail to topple just about every major energy and environment policy enacted in the past eight years," Robin Bravender reports for Environment & Energy News. "But while massive change is expected, Trump will face limits on carrying out his plans."
Even with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, "Passing major energy legislation is time-consuming and politically daunting," Bravender writes. "Writing new regulations is a bureaucratic slog, and those are likely to face protracted legal battles. Trump might also face hurdles unraveling some Obama rules that are already on the books and trying to roll back some executive moves, such as designations of national monuments."
Trump "has big promises to keep ... from torpedoing the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan and international climate deal to expanding oil and gas development and overhauling the regulatory system," Bravender writes. But experts on energy and environmental issues "warn that the Trump administration could overreach and spark a public opinion backlash if it doesn't tread carefully on its regulatory rollbacks."
The biggest and most likely reversals for the Trump administration will be the Environmental Protection Agency's redefinition of "waters of the United States" in the Clean Water Act, strongly opposed by farm interests, and the regulations to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, though the exact procedure for that is uncertain. The rules are designed to fight climate change; Trump said he would "cancel" the international climate-change agreement, but "direct withdrawal from the Paris deal is a four-year process," Bravender writes.
On coal specifically, "A Trump interior secretary is expected to quickly rescind the current moratorium on coal leasing, ending a program review about royalties and climate change," Bravender reports. "Changes at the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement . . . could also undermine the final stream-protection rule, overdue for publication. While a new rule would be required to strike new restrictions on coal mining near waterways, implementation would fall into unwelcoming hands."
West Virginia University law professor Patrick McGinley told Bravender that Republicans have a chance to create "a whole new regulatory regime for coal," but "I don't see any major jump in coal production in the near future, no matter what regulatory, legislative actions are taken by the new administration," due to competition from cheap natural gas.
Trump "will have limited leeway to scotch existing regulations aimed at improving air quality," Bravender reports. "There's probably no going back, for example, from EPA's rule to limit mercury from power plants, one of the most expensive rules ever issued by the agency. As of April, almost all coal-fired plants were in compliance, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Still, the new administration will have more latitude to drag out implementation of more recent regulations — and to simply avoid offering new ones. . . . Trump has more wiggle room to reverse Obama's policies when it comes to energy development on public lands."
Labels: agriculture, air pollution, climate change, coal, energy, environment, farming, global warming, Interior Department, water pollution
Rural wages stagnate because of lack of quality jobs, not a lack of skilled workers
Eonomists say the lack of wage growth in jobs, especially in rural areas, "proves the U.S. has a demand problem—not enough good jobs—rather than a supply problem—not enough skilled workers," Sophie Quinton reports for Stateline. While many employers and politicians point to a need for more job training, other problems are low wages, undesirable shifts, qualifications being defined too narrowly, inadequate recruiting, and lack of transportation or childcare for prospective employees.
"The declining unemployment rate has made it more difficult for employers to find workers, but it’s still tougher than it should be given the current jobless rate. Since the recession ended, the number of job openings has increased faster than the number of new hires," Quinton writes from Le Sueur, Minn, pop. 4,000. "Employers across the country, from manufacturers in rural Minnesota to hospitals in New York City, are having trouble filling jobs. It now takes about 28 workdays to fill the average job vacancy, compared to about 24 days, on average, in 2007." (Stateline graphic: Job openings exceed new hires)
For example, "Minnesota manufacturers said two-thirds of all their openings were hard to fill, but that only 14 percent of positions remained open purely because applicants didn’t have the right education and training," Quinton writes. A survey by Utah’s Department of Workforce Services last year found that only 22 percent of employers named low wages as a hiring problem, but 68 percent of those employers were offering below average wages. A survey in Oregon found that half the jobs are difficult to fill because of "unfavorable working conditions or inconsistent work shifts." (Stateline graphic: It now takes longer to hire workers)
Many of the openings require no training beyond a high-school education, Quinton writes. "The idea that all we need to do is train workers is 'fundamentally an evasion of a profound social challenge,' former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said during a panel discussion last year." Summers told Stateline, “Training is very important and indeed necessary. But it is not sufficient to meet either the near-term challenge of assuring demand and preventing recession or the longer-term challenge of the structural loss of jobs for less-skilled workers.”
Labels: economic development, employment, jobs, manufacturing, recession, rural-urban disparities
Low consumer demand for drones has industry turning more attention to agriculture market
Getty Images photo by Jean Pierre Muller
Low consumer demand for drones is crashing the industry and forcing manufacturers to turn their focus to businesses such as agriculture, Heather Somerville reports for Reuters. "While many drone-makers overestimated demand from hobbyists, they now see big opportunities selling to businesses under newly relaxed U.S. regulations."
The future of drones could be in agriculture, which already leads the market for commercial drone usage, says Lux Research, a Boston-based firm that concentrates on emerging technologies. Agriculture will generate $350 million in revenues in 2025, helping lead the commercial market for drones to $1.7 billion in 2025.
"Farmers can use unmanned aerial vehicles to check fields for areas of dryness or disease, spray fertilizer and pesticide, watch over livestock, and a number of other purposes," reports Futurism. "Drones are more easily serviceable and significantly cheaper than small piloted planes or satellites; ready-to-use agricultural drone systems, together with sensors and software, range in price from $1,500 to $25,000."
Labels: agriculture, air service, drones, farming, photography, photojournalism
Rural newspapers weigh in on the election; send us editorials and columns worth sharing
One of the most unusual presidential elections in American history, and the unpredictability of the winner, is prompting editorial comment from rural newspapers that don't often weigh in on national issues. The Rural Blog is interested in seeing examples of editorials and columns like the one Editor-Publisher Sharon Burton of the Adair County Community Voice in Columbia, Ky., in a strongly Republican part of a largely Republican state.
Burton writes that Trump wasn't among her top three choices for the GOP nomination, but "I do believe I understand at least part of the message Americans were sending when they elected Trump. If nothing else, I think I can clarify what many Americans were not saying," such as "It is okay to degrade people for any reason. . . . I believe Americans weighed Trump's flaws against Clinton's flaws."
Neither are Americans xenophobic, Burton writes: "I think Americans are saying that our nation is spending too much of its resources caring for others and not enough resources taking care of its own. We have approved trade agreements at the expense of jobs. . . . I think the majority of Americans are okay with immigrants coming into America . . . to be contributing members of society."
Burton concludes, "If nothing else, we need Trump to be teachable. . . . I hope we can survive Trump. I hope we can thrive with Trump. Mostly, I think our elected officials have been awakened to the frustration Americans feel toward their inability to address the nation's problems. Frankly, I think the Trump vote was a message to the political elite ... clean up your act, or 'You're fired.'"
Labels: editorial leadership, editorials, elections, journalism, newspapers, politics, president, rural journalism
Trump hoodwinked rural voters on trade, opines daily paper in coastal North Carolina
President-elect Donald Trump hoodwinked rural America, says an editorial by the Daily Advance in rural coastal Elizabeth City, N.C. (Best Places map). The paper says Trump played on fears that "that the country’s demographics and cultural norms are changing too quickly; that too many immigrants are here 'stealing' jobs from Americans; that formerly strict rules on who can get married are gone and need to be reinstated; and that too much of Washington’s attention is focused on the problems of other communities, many of them home to African-Americans, Hispanics and Muslims, and not enough on theirs."
Trump said that if he were elected, "He would renegotiate every U.S. trade deal ever signed to ensure Americans’ interests come first," the editorial notes. "It’s easy to see why rural voters bought this hokum. First of all, many either don’t understand or chose to ignore the fact that trade deals aren’t the culprit for the loss of jobs overseas. Increasing automation and globalization are why those jobs that were once the path to the middle class are gone—and why they’re not ever coming back."
"Secondly, rural voters are scared—and not just about their own economic future, but that of their kids and grandkids as well," says the editorial. "If someone who appears to be successful comes along and says, 'I can fix this thing that’s making your future so vulnerable,' you will probably believe him—particularly if you also agree with him about there being too many immigrants in the country and too much social and cultural change taking place. You are also likelier to overlook the serious character flaws in such a person—and vote to elect him president."
"Despite aggressively stumping in their communities and promising things he can’t deliver, the fate of small-town Americans is not among Trump’s top priorities," says the editorial. As evidence, it cites his vow to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, "a measure that’s been good for rural Americans because it’s allowed many of them, thanks to taxpayer-backed subsidies, to finally be able to purchase affordable health care insurance."
Author who chronicled rural Wisconsin voters' sense of resentment explains why Trump won
In 2015, Katherine Cramer, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin, published a book, The Politics of Resentment, that looked at how voters in 27 rural communities in Wisconsin felt about politics. She found that many feel a "deep sense of bitterness toward elites and city dwellers; just about all of them felt tread on, disrespected and cheated out of what they felt they deserved." That helped Donald Trump score big in rural areas and narrowly take battleground states such as Wisconsin.
"I had not intended to study a rural-urban divide when I sampled the 27 places I had been visiting," Cramer writes for The Washington Post. "But about a year into this project, one thing was inescapable: People in these small communities and rural places deeply resented the two main metropolitan areas of Madison, the state capital, and Milwaukee. I grew up on the northern edge of the Milwaukee metro region, but the depth and the intensity of this resentment surprised me."
"They resented that they were not getting respect," she writes. "They perceived that city folks called people like them ignorant racists who could not figure out their own interests. To them, urban types just did not get small-town life—what people in those places value, the way they live, and the challenges they face."
"Onto this terrain trod Trump," she writes. "And he found firm footing, just as Scott Walker did in his rise to the governorship. His message was basically this: ‘You are right. You are not getting your fair share. And you should be angry about it. You work hard, you are deserving, and yet you are not getting what you should. Instead, the people currently in charge are giving some people way more than they deserve. Elect me and I’ll make American great again. I’ll give you back what you deserve and a way of life you are sorely missing.’ For people who were feeling ignored, disrespected and overlooked by the urban elite, the Trump campaign had a strong appeal.”
Oregon group files, then withdraws, petition to secede from the U.S. in wake of election
A group in Oregon filed, then withdrew, a petition to secede from the U.S., Lizzy Acker reports for The Oregonian. On Thursday, two days after Donald Trump was elected president, a petition was filed for a 2018 ballot initiative called the Oregon Secession Act. Results of the election brought renewed interest in Cascadia (Oregonian map), a proposed country that includes southern Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, parts of Idaho, Montana and Oregon as well as small parcels of northern California, Nevada and Utah.
On Friday organizers filed paperwork to withdraw the petition, Acker writes. They said it didn't get the type of response they had expected, citing death threats they had received and violence in the streets as a result of the election. Christian Trejbal, one of the petitioners, told Acker, "That's not the kind of conversation we were trying to have so we're pulling it." Democrat Hillary Clinton beat president-elect Donald Trump in Oregon, 52 percent to 41 percent.
Labels: elections, politics, secession, voting
Alaskans OK automatic voter registration with signup for checks from oil-wealth fund
Alaskans receiving ballots at a polling station
(Getty Images by John Moore)
Alaskan voters last week passed a referendum that will automatically add to the state's voter rolls all residents who sign up to receive annual payouts from The Alaska Permanent Fund, the state's oil-wealth trust fund, Josh Eidelson reports for Bloomberg News. The proposal, which received more than 63 percent support from voters, makes Alaska the sixth state with automatic voter registration.
"Supporters say the law—which will give Alaskans the chance to opt out of being added to the rolls, rather than restrict voting to those who opt in by getting themselves registered—could create one of the most complete and accurate U.S. state voter registries of all time," Eidelson writes. "Not everyone gets a driver’s license, but in Alaska, almost nobody neglects to sign up each year to get their free dividend check."
Last year about 645,000 residents received more than $2,000 each from the fund, Rory Carroll reported for Reuters. "The annual payout from the fund is credited with keeping many low-income Alaskan families out of poverty."
Labels: elections, politics, voting
Leon Russell, who played classical, rock, country, blues, soul, gospel, jazz and more, dies at 74
Leon Russell, a musical genre-blender who played sessions and then did concerts and records with musical greats and earned a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, died at his home in Nashville Saturday. He was 74.
"With a top hat on his head, hair well past his shoulders, a long beard, an Oklahoma drawl in his voice and his fingers splashing two-fisted barrelhouse piano chords, Mr. Russell cut a flamboyant figure in the early 1970s," Jon Pareles writes for The New York Times. He did "Wall of Sound" sessions with producer Phil Spector, started Shelter Records, led Joe Cocker's band, played at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh and concerts with Jerry Lee Lewis and the Rolling Stones, had hit records with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and by himself, wrote hits for others, played country music as Hank Wilson, did bluegrass with the New Grass Revival, explored jazz and blues, faded into obscurity and then resurfaced in a late-life collaboration with Elton John. The Tennessean of Nashville has a photo gallery of his career.
Russell was classically trained but a birth injury limited his timing and range of motion on keyboards. He told the Los Angeles Times in 1999, "I invented ways to play in a classical style that was not the real deal." Born Claude Russell Bridges in Lawton, Okla., in 1941, he adopted his stage name from a Los Angeles friend who loaned him an ID so he could play clubs when he was under 21. He had "a rich, hearty voice that drifted between country and soul," and his "Union" album with Elton John is "an elegant work that showcases each artist's prowess with the piano and Russell's flair for bridging pop and gospel," writes the LAT's Todd Martens. John called Russell "one of the greatest American treasures."
Russell told the LAT he was hard for radio program directors to figure out because "I was not a brand that they could always expect was going to be the same thing. I'm not as aware of categories in music as some people are. To me it's just music. I'm interested in all kinds of music." In 1978, he issued an album called "Americana" which helped define yet another genre that seemed to fit him best.
Labels: Americana, bluegrass music, blues, country music, music, obituary, rock music
Democrats fault Clinton's lack of attention to rural areas, worry about farm-state Senate races in 2018
Democrats are second-guessing Hillary Clinton's "decision to largely surrender the rural vote" to Donald Trump, Helena Bottemiller Evich reports for Politico. "With their eyes turned anxiously to 2018, they’re urging a new strategy to reach out to rural voters to stave off another bloodbath when a slew of farm-state Democrats face tough reelection battles." Those include Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Jon Tester of Montana.
"The billionaire New Yorker never issued any rural policy plans, but he galvanized long-simmering anger by railing against trade deals, the EPA and the "war on American farmers," Evich notes. The rural vote was also driven by "hollowed-out towns, economic hardship and a sustained exodus" from rural areas. That helped Trump win 65.9 percent of the rural vote, up from Mitt Romney's 60.4 percent in 2012. Clinton won 29.4 percent, well under President Obama's 37.7 percent in 2012, the Daily Yonder calculated.
"Numerous Democrats in agriculture circles buzzed with frustration over what they regarded as halfhearted efforts to engage rural voters," Evich reports. "Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had urged the campaign to shore up rural outreach, multiple sources said, beating the same drum he has for several cycles as Democrats have seen their rural support steadily erode. By all accounts, the Clinton campaign didn’t think it really needed rural voters, a shrinking population that’s reliably Republican. The campaign never named a rural council, as Obama did in 2012 and 2008."
In contrast to Clinton's efforts in upstate New York as a senator and her attention to rural issues in 2008, a source told Evich that her campaign had only one staffer dedicated to rural issues, and "the assignment came just weeks before the election." One young Democrat whom Evich granted anonymity told her, “It’s a tough slog. It’s hard to speak to rural America. It’s very regionally specific. It feels daunting. You have these wings of the party, progressives, and it’s hard to talk to those people and people in rural America, and not seem like you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth.”
Dee Davis, director of the Center for Rural Strategies, told Evich that Clinton hurt herself with comments about "deplorables" and shutting coal mines, Trump's success had little to do with policy: “What Trump did in rural areas was try to appeal to folks culturally . . . A lot of us in rural areas, our ears are tuned to intonation. We think people are talking down to us. What ends up happening is that we don't focus on the policy — we focus on the tones, the references, the culture.”
Labels: elections, politics, president, rural policy, rural-urban disparities
Ag-policy editor's remarks about media depiction of rural voters sting panelists on 'Meet the Press'
Chris Clayton on MSNBC
Donald Trump's 2-to-1 margin in rural America may have been bolstered by resentment at repeated references in the news media to Trump's popularity among both rural and lesser-educated voters, said Chris Clayton, agricultural policy editor for DTN/The Progressive Farmer. Chuck Todd of NBC News interviewed Clayton for MSNBC, and played part of the interview Sunday on "Meet the Press."
"Every time you heard about these polls, you had heard that educated white voters were going for Clinton, while people without college degrees or had no college, supported Trump," Clayton said. "I think they took some of these things that were said over and over throughout the last four, five months of the campaign, also very personally themselves. ... Rural America is not uneducated, even though maybe there are fewer people with college degrees than there might be in the metropolitan areas."
Todd said Clayton's observation "stung me because I, when we would say these things, it was an academic exercise. But the minute he said it, I was, like, 'Oh, my, my late father would've kicked me in the rear for that.'"
Moderately conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, on Todd's panel, said he had a "mea culpa" watching Clayton because while "people with college degrees voted very differently than people with, with high school degrees, but when you say it, when you actually don't have a college degree, you hear, 'Oh, they think I'm stupid.' I'm guilty of that because I use that shorthand too. And you saw so much sense of moral injury when you went around the Trump world."
Brooks said Trump voters told him, "I used to have a code of respectability, and those people are trying to take it away." He said he heard lots of complaints in middle America about being referred to by coastal elites as "flyover country." Katty Kay of BBC said, "The skepticism that has grown up about elites is totally justified." A transcript of the interview is here.
In the MSNBC interview with Todd and other journalists, Clayton said rural voters have long been reluctant to embrace Clinton. He noted that she lost the Iowa caucuses to Obama in 2008, and barely won them over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders this year: "I just don't think she was able to catch on and communicate with your average rural worker or farmer."
In response to a question from Chris Cilizza of The Washington Post, Clayton said race wasn't an issue with rural voters in the Midwest (he noted that Obama carried Iowa twice) but immigration was a huge issue: "People are concerned that they're losing their culture, somewhat."
Asked why Clinton did so much more poorly in Iowa than Obama did in 2012, Clayton said the farm economy was much better four years ago: "We've seen about two years now where commodity prices have continued to slip. The farmers are really tight on working capital and cash. . . . They were just not as willing to give a chance to a Democrat this time around."
Also, regulatory issues also cut against Clinton, especially the Environmental Protection Agency's new definition of "waters of the United States" under the Clean Water Act. "Every farm group in the country, liberal and conservative, have really hammered on this issue; they want to get rid of it, they're terrified of it," Clayton said. Trump said he would abolish the rule, and "That really drove them to Trump in a big way."
Written by Al Cross Posted at 11/13/2016 01:15:00 PM 1 comment:
Labels: agriculture, crop prices, economy, elections, environment, farming, journalism, politics, rural journalism, rural policy, rural-urban conflicts, rural-urban disparities, water pollution
Central Appalachian coalfield voters explain votes for Trump; some are skeptical he can help
Sign in McDowell County, W.Va. (CBS)
With Donald Trump's rural landslide being one of the difference-makers in Tuesday's election, major news outlets dispatched reporters to rural areas to explain their voting to the rest of the nation. Ted Koppel, senior correspondent for "Sunday Morning" on CBS, and Gregory Schneider of The Washington Post both went to the depressed Central Appalachian coalfield.
Koppel went to McDowell County, West Virginia, which Trump carried almost 4 to 1. Sheriff Martin West, a former miner, told him, “I think he can help us. . . . The people is counting on that in order to feed their family, to pay their bills and obey the regulations that we have. But they keep putting more regulations upon us.” Trump pledged to bring back coal jobs but didn't say how.
Another former miner, African American Leroy Johnson, said he voted for Hillary Clinton “because she was more experienced and she was talking about more of the policies that we need, and the things that we need to work on. Donald wasn’t talking that. He was just throwing words out there, giving people what they wanted to hear. And I didn’t think that was right.” But an unnamed Trump supporter told Koppel “I think he can do anything he said he could do. He’s that good.” (Read more)
Schneider went to Coeburn and Lebanon, Va., whose counties gave Trump 80 and 78 percent of their votes. Juan Lopez, 42, said he came from Mexico to the U.S. in 1991, became a citizen and had two children. He works for a company that hauls coal but has idled most of its trucks, and said he voted for Trump to keep his job. “They say if Trump can do it better [with the coal industry], we might be able to have jobs two or three more years. But if not, we might be out by the end of next year.”
But there was much doubt from retired miner William Sisk, 78, of Buchanan County, which gave Trump the highest share of vote in any county during the primaries, 91 percent. “A lot of people talk about Obama’s war on coal, but the coal war was on long before Obama got there. The bottom dropped plum out when he got in there and he got all the blame for it. But I don’t think it’s ever going to come back.” Sisk said he didn't vote, saying of Trump, “He’s too radical. He promised too much. You can promise anything, but you got to deliver.” (Read more)
Labels: Appalachia, coal, elections, energy, environment, jobs, politics, president
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College Track and Field
Cross country and track and field athletes are considered for scholarships together by the NCAA. Therefore, athletes who participate in these sports can be considered for partial scholarships so as not to exceed NCAA limits. Those schools in Division II can, for instance, abide by the 18-scholarship limit if they give the equivalent of half of a scholarship to 36 cross-country or track and field athletes.
During the recruiting process, you will likely have coaches tell you about the benefits of playing track and field in college. For example, some coaches offer new recruits a college scholarship, which provides a tuition free education for student athletes. In addition, college track and field can improve your team building skills. And even if you do not want to go pro, many potential employers tend to favor hiring former student athletes.
During the recruiting process, you will also learn about the different divisions in the NCAA, NAIA, NJCAA and others organizations. Depending on which one you join, there might be a scholarship opportunity.
According to NCAA, only 5.3% (M) and 7% (W) of high school track and field players will move from high school to college. It is imperative for young track and field athletes to develop a strong work ethic early in their careers. By developing these habits they are not only prepared for softball for the real world as well.
Men's Out of 270,095 only 14,270 will participated in NCAA Schools.
Women's Out of 223,518 only 15,632 will participated in NCAA Schools.
How to Get Scholarship at a Division III School
Division 3 schools are not allowed to give athletic scholarships to gymnasts, making it challenging for coaches to find college scholarships and grants for their prospective athletes. Despite the restrictions in giving out athletic scholarships, coaches are still able to recruit some of the best athletes in the nation by giving out academic college scholarships and grants.
Because Division 3 schools are smaller than their Division 1 and Division 2 counterparts, the focus is weighted toward academics. Prospective Division 3 athletes can obtain a list of college scholarships to help piece together a comprehensive financial aid package. With the right list of college scholarships, Division 3 athletes can obtain a quality education at no cost out of pocket.
The official college campus visit is an integral part of the recruiting process. An official campus visit is defined as a trip in which a student-athlete tours a prospective school. During an official visit, the school is allowed to pay for the lodging, transportation, entertainment, and three meals per day for the student-athlete and their parents or guardians.
A student-athlete can make up to five total official visits to Division I schools but only one to each location. During these trips, the student-athlete may be able to attend a game or practice, tour campus housing facilities, and meet with academic advisors about majors.
A student-athlete can participate in an unlimited amount of unofficial visits. However, during these visits, the only thing that the school can pay for or provide is up to three tickets to a home athletics event.
A National Letter of Intent is an official document indicating a student-athlete's decision to attend a Division I or II College for the purpose of participating in the school's athletics program. The agreement is valid for one academic year, provided that the student is admitted to the school. This program is under the direction of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Eligibility Center.
Although signing a National Letter of Intent is voluntary, many students choose to sign the letter as a ceremonial gesture. Because other schools are not allowed to contact student-athletes who have signed their National Letter of Intent, the official signing of this document effectively concludes the recruitment of the athlete.
Individual sports designate specific days as the official signing day for the athletes to commit to participation at a school. If the student-athlete changes their mind after signing their letter, they will need to request a release from the obligation in order to attend a different school. Without an appeal, they may lose one full year of eligibility.
Division III schools are not allowed to use National Letter of Intents as part of the recruiting process.
Recruiting Terms
There is a myriad of sports scholarship terms used to describe the courtship of a college recruit to play college sports. Although the terms used to describe playing collegiate level sports are often used interchangeably, they actually have distinct meanings.
A contact is when a coach or administrator reaches out officially to meet with a prospective student-athlete in an off-campus meeting.
When the coach or recruiter observes the athlete in competition or in a practice situation, it is called an evaluation.
A verbal commitment is when the student-athlete informs the coaching staff of a school that they intend to play college sports with them. This commitment is not binding, as it precedes the official National Letter of Intent. A verbal commitment often happens before the student-athlete is eligible to sign the official letter and it signifies that they want a sports scholarship offer from that college.
Playing collegiate level sports is an immense commitment. When the college recruit wants to make their commitment to a Division I or II school official and binding, they sign the National Letter of Intent. This contract is good for one academic year.
For most high school track and field athletes, the senior year is way too late to start the recruiting process. If your goal is to play college track and field, you will need to submit your college applications prior to the start of your junior season. Because of the time-sensitive nature of track and field recruiting, it is important to use the results of your freshman season to generate your target list for scholarship offers, regardless of whether you have College Scouts and Recruiters at your games.
If the student-athlete is competing, the college track and field coach staff is allowed to telephone or send electronic or written correspondence to the student-athlete only if they have consented to the outreach and it takes place during the admissible times. Any other contact outside of written and telephone communication is not permitted during an event in which the student-athlete is a competitor. This rule even applies if the student-athlete is on an official or unofficial visit. In-person contact is prohibited in the football recruiting process during:
Competition or before the contest while at the event site. The moment the student-athlete is officially participating in any activities related to the athletics event through the completion of the competition. This includes team meetings, press conferences, and meals.
The entirety of the athletics event, including competitions that stretch over more than one day. This contact is not allowed until the student-athlete is released from the high school coach or administrator.
CONTACT PERIOD
EVALUATION PERIOD
DEAD PERIOD
QUIET PERIOD
Understanding the NCAA recruiting calendar can help student-athletes and their parents navigate the often complicated process of committing to further their education while playing sports at the collegiate level. Member schools of the NCAA are required to abide by this official calendar, serving as a guide for both the colleges and the student-athletes. There are four defined periods of this process.
During this period, college coaches are permitted to have face-to-face contact with prospective college student-athletes as well as their parents or guardians. College coaches and recruiters may also visit the high school athletes at their school and watch them compete and practice. This is the most active time period of the recruiting process
Division I - August 22 through December 9, 2018 and January 2 through July 31, 2019.
Like the contact period, coaches may visit high schools and watch the athlete compete and may also write or call the recruit and their parents. However, unlike the contact period, the coach may not have face-to-face interaction with the recruit outside of the college campus.
Division I - August 1-21, 2018
As the most restrictive period, the dead period prohibits all in-person interaction and only allows written and phone communication.
Division II - November 12 (7 a.m.) – 14 (7 a.m.), 2018.
Except:When the dead period occurs during the U.S. Diving National Championships, authorized coach staff members are allowed to watch recruits participating in that competition.
Except:When the dead period occurs during the North American Cup Fencing Championship, authorized coach staff members are allowed to watch recruits participating in that competition.
Except:When the dead period occurs during the Junior Olympic Rifle Championships, authorized coach staff members are allowed to watch recruits participating in that competition.
Division I - December 10, 2018, through January 1, 2019 - March 8-9, 2019 - June 5-8, 2019.
The restrictions intensify during the quiet period. During this time, coaches are allowed to call or write the recruit but the only in-person interaction must occur on the college campus. Recruiters are not allowed to visit the high school and watch the student-athletes compete
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Lecture 2.8: The Ins and Outs of Social Influence
WEEK 2: The Psychology of Self-Presentation and Persuasion
This week's goals are to: (1) learn how people explain their behavior and the behavior of others; (2) explore the link between attitudes and behavior; (3) understand what cognitive dissonance is and why it matters; and (4) gain some practical tips from the science of persuasion and social influence.
Lecture 2.6: How to Be Persuasive15:07
Lecture 2.7: Secrets from the Science of Persuasion (Guest Lecture)13:02
Lecture 2.8: The Ins and Outs of Social Influence18:30
言語を選択スペイン語タイ語中国語（簡体）中国語（繁体）英語
I hope that you enjoyed the guest lecture by Bob Cialdini and Steve Martin. In this video, we'll talk further about Professor Cialdini's research, as well as other studies on the ins and outs of social influence—that is, efforts by an individual or a group to have an influence on another individual or group, whether it might be to donate money, or buy a product, support a political cause or a candidate, comply with a request, and so forth. To take just one example, several years ago, Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona tried to discourage theft by posting a sign intended to have a social influence. The sign said, "Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time." The park thought that by helping visitors understand how small thefts add up to a large problem, stealing would be reduced, but the problem continued, and eventually they turned to Professor Cialdini and asked if he could help. Professor Cialdini's solution is described in a short article that I've assigned as part of this week's reading, so I'm not going to give away the full story, but one problem Professor Cialdini pointed out is that the park was unintentionally signaling that theft is normative, or normal behavior. If 14 tons of petrified wood are removed each year, a tiny piece at a time, that means thousands of visitors are doing it, and in fact, when Professor Cialdini had the park remove the anti-theft message, stealing actually fell by almost 80%. So you have to be careful. Yes, it's important to convey the seriousness of a problem, but if you announce, for example, that in a particular country a woman is raped every few minutes, or most people cheat or steal, you're normalizing the very behavior that you want to change. And even though we know that consensus information doesn't always have an effect on causal attributions, it often has a large effect when it comes to persuasion and social influence. Psychologists have studied a wide variety of social influence techniques. For instance, research suggests that people are more likely to do something when you get them to imagine doing it or to predict that they'll do it in the future (say, voting in an upcoming election). Other research has found that mentioning your name before making a request can increase the chances that the other person will say yes by 50 to 100%— something as simple as "Hi, my name is Scott, and I'm wondering whether you might do me a small favor?" Engaging people in a dialogue also leads to greater compliance with a request, presumably because dialogue resembles friendship more than a monologue does. The idea is to talk with people rather than at people. One very effective technique pioneered by Professor Cialdini is the "Even a penny will help" technique. The original study on this technique was very simple. Students went door-to-door raising money for the American Cancer Society, and they said one of two things. Half the time, they said: "I'm collecting money for the American Cancer Society. Would you be willing to help by giving a donation?" And the other half of the time, they said exactly the same thing but added, "Even a penny will help." The idea here was not only to make it affordable to comply but to make it hard to say no to such a minimal request. And lo and behold, by tacking on this extra sentence (just five words: "Even a penny will help"), compliance jumped from 29% to 50% with no significant difference in the average amount people gave—a very simple technique to keep in mind the next time that you're fundraising. Anyway, these are just a few findings related to social influence, which, like persuasion, has received just a huge amount of research attention. So, to avoid spreading ourselves too thin, I'd like to focus on three of the most famous techniques: first, the foot-in-the-door technique; second, the door-in-the-face technique; and third, the low-ball technique, which car dealers are notorious for using. Let's begin with the foot-in-the-door technique, which was briefly mentioned in the guest lecture and was first studied experimentally by Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser in the 1960s. The premise is that people are more likely to comply with a large request once they've already complied with a smaller one—a foot in the door of the larger request. Freedman and Fraser conducted two experiments. The one I'd like to walk through—and the one that's most famous—is Experiment 2. The participants were 112 innocent residents of Palo Alto, California, who just happened to be home between 1:30 and 4:30 one weekday afternoon when a member of Freedman and Fraser's research team knocked on their door. Every third or fourth home on certain blocks was randomly assigned to one of five conditions: four in which a relatively small request preceded a larger request, and one in which the larger request was made without any prior contact. Four different small requests were used. In one condition, the person at the door introduced herself or himself as a member of the Community Committee for Traffic Safety and asked people whether they'd post a small sign, three inches square, in their window or car that simply said "Be a Safe Driver." Professor Freedman was kind enough to loan me some materials from the original study to share with our class, and as you can see, the sign was printed in black block letters on a white background and generally looked mildly unattractive. If people agreed to the request, they were given a sign and thanked; otherwise, they were simply thanked for their time. In another condition, residents were asked by a member of the Keep California Beautiful Committee whether they would post an equally unattractive sign that said "Keep California Beautiful." In the third condition, residents were asked to sign a petition that supported legislation on safe driving. And in a fourth condition, people were asked to sign a petition in support of legislation to keep California beautiful. So, these were the four small requests: two involving a three-inch sign, and two involving a petition. Then, about two weeks later, a different member of the research team revisited these households to make a much larger request. This time, residents were approached by a member of Citizens for Safe Driving to see whether they would post a very large sign on safe driving in their front yard for a week or a week and a half. This photo, from Professor Freedman, shows a sign smaller than the one eventually used, which completely concealed the front door. And once again, the sign was deliberately designed to look a bit ugly. If people agreed to the request, they were told that more names than necessary were being gathered, and that they'd be contacted in a few weeks if their home were to be used. That way, people didn't actually have to have a sign installed in their front yard. So, in two conditions, the small request concerned the same issue as the large request: safe driving as opposed to keeping California beautiful. And in two conditions, the small request was of the same kind as the large request: posting a sign as opposed to signing a petition. Freedman and Fraser wanted to see whether the small request had to resemble the large request in order to be effective, and if so, whether it was more important to match the large request by issue or by kind of request. What do you think they found? Before I share the results, take a guess. Many people are surprised by the answer. The correct answer is that compliance with a small request increased compliance with a large request, regardless of whether the requests were of the same type or on the same topic. When people were asked to post a large sign without first being asked to comply with a small request, only 17% said yes, but if we average across all four of the other conditions, including everyone who received a small request, whether or not they said yes, compliance jumped to 56%—over three times higher. And what's especially interesting is that compliance was nearly as high, 47%, even when the small request was of a different type and on a different issue. This is fairly dramatic. What we have is more than double the rate of compliance found in the large request only condition, even though the two requests are of a different type (signing a petition versus posting a sign) on a different topic (keeping California beautiful versus safe driving), asked by two different people, and separated in time by roughly two weeks. How would you explain this? Freedman and Fraser concluded that once people agree to a request, they become in their own eyes "the kind of person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to requests made by strangers, who cooperates with good causes." In other words, their explanation was very consistent with Daryl Bem's self-perception theory. People watch themselves behave a certain way and conclude that they hold values and attitudes that match their behavior. Since the time of Freedman and Fraser's study, more than a hundred experiments have examined the foot-in-the-door technique, and the bottom line is that its effectiveness really depends on the details of how it's used. For example, the technique is most effective when you explicitly label the person as helpful or as a supporter, saying something like "I really appreciate you supporting this effort," which strengthens the person's self-perception as a supporter. And the effect is strongest when the large request is presented as a continuation of the smaller request, something that builds on the person's prior commitment—"You did X last month; can you do a little bit more?" But what happens when you ask people for something large without a small request first, and they say no? Does that make them more likely to continue saying no if you come back with a smaller request? This question was posed in the Snapshot Quiz, and you can see your answer here. The correct answer, based on the best available research evidence, is that when people reject a large request, they often become more likely to comply with smaller requests down the road— smaller, not equally large. That's key here. When a large request is scaled back, it has the appearance of a concession, and because there are strong social norms encouraging reciprocity, people often feel obligated to make a concession of their own—to reciprocate and meet the other person somewhere in the middle. In fact, this rejection-then-moderation procedure is so effective that Professor Cialdini and his colleagues, who conducted pioneering research on the topic, gave it a name: the door-in-the-face technique. In one experiment, for example, a member of Professor Cialdini's research team would walk up to students on campus and ask them if they'd like to work two hours per week as an unpaid volunteer at a juvenile detention center for at least two years! Can you imagine? None of the students ever agreed to this, but then, after students had refused the large request, the researcher made a smaller request, like volunteering only once for about two hours. What Professor Cialdini found is that compliance with a small request is much higher if you can first get someone to "slam a door in your face" with a larger request. In Professor Cialdini's research, this technique doubled the rate of compliance, and a later meta-analysis of 87 different paired requests found that the door-in-the-face technique is especially effective when the same person makes both requests, the two requests are made face-to-face with no delay between them, and the requests are prosocial with the same beneficiary—that is, the requests are for the good of others, and the ones who benefit are the same in both requests. Under these conditions, norms of reciprocity and generosity are quite strong, and as long as the initial request isn't so large as to seem unreasonable or greedy, people find it hard to say no. One last social influence technique that I'd like to discuss is known as the "low-ball" technique, and once again, Professor Cialdini and his colleagues conducted ground-breaking studies on the topic. Let me describe just one typical experiment. I think you'll find it very useful to know about. The participants were 63 college students enrolled in a psychology course, and they were randomly assigned to either a control condition or an experimental condition. In both conditions, a research assistant telephoned students and introduced herself as follows: "I'm calling for the Psychology Department to schedule Psychology 100 students for an experiment on thinking processes. The experiment concerns the way people organize facts. We can give you one hour of credit for your participation in this experiment." If students were in the control condition, the assistant told them that the experiment was being run at 7:00 am Wednesday and Friday morning and asked whether they might be able to make it then. Not surprisingly, only 9 of 29 students, or 31%, were willing to make an appointment that early in the morning, and only 24% showed up. In the experimental condition (the low-ball condition), students were informed of the 7:00 am time only after they had already agreed to participate in the experiment; this was the low-ball, thrown at the last moment. When all was said and done, 56% of these students made an appointment, and 53% actually showed up for the 7:00 am experiment. So, although there are obviously limits, it seems that once people commit themselves to honoring a request, the request can often be increased without them withdrawing from the commitment, just as car dealers often throw a low-ball by adding conveyance fees and other charges after people have agreed to buy a car for a particular price. Let's pause for a pop-up question on social influence techniques, and then I'll make a few concluding remarks. Now, what's the value of knowing about these techniques? Well, it's not so that you can go out and low-ball other people, I hope, but rather, that you can protect yourself when other people try to low-ball you. The social influence techniques discussed in this video are very powerful tools, but once you realize that a low-ball has been thrown, or that someone stuck a foot in your door, or gotten you to slam a door in their face, you'll be in a better position to step back and decide whether or not you want to comply with a request. Maybe you'll say yes, or maybe you'll say no, but at the very least, you'll understand the psychological dynamics of the situation and be less likely to be manipulated. Well, with this video you've completed two weeks of the course. Bravo! I hope that you've enjoyed it as much as I have. Before we end, let me just offer a friendly reminder to complete this week's assignment, entitled "What Social Impression Do You Make?" For the assignment, you can either join Social Psychology Network and create your own page if you haven't already, or you can complete the assignment by submitting a CV or résumé. Personally, I would love to have you as a member of the Network, so I very much hope that you will join if it doesn't present a financial hardship, but either way will work just fine for the assignment. What's most important is that you actively engage the course material. If you can spare the time, don't just watch the videos—do the readings and complete the assignments. We're heading into very interesting waters next week, so if you can complete the readings and the assignments for each week, you'll get more out of the course, because it will set up the next week. Until then!
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Pentaho Labs Apache Spark Integration
Today at Pentaho we announced our first official support for Spark . The integration we are launching enables Spark jobs to be orchestrated using Pentaho Data Integration so that Spark can be coordinated with the rest of your data architecture. The original prototypes for number of different Spark integrations were done in Pentaho Labs, where we view Spark as an evolving technology. The fact that Spark is an evolving technology is important.
Let’s look at a different evolving technology that might be more familiar – Hadoop. Yahoo created Hadoop for a single purpose indexing the Internet. In order to accomplish this goal, it needed a distributed file system (HDFS) and a parallel execution engine to create the index (MapReduce). The concept of MapReduce was taken from Google’s white paper titled MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters. In that paper, Dean and Ghemawat describe examples of problems that can be easily expressed as MapReduce computations. If you look at the examples, they are all very similar in nature. Examples include finding lines of text that contain a word, counting the numbers of URLs in documents, listing the names of documents that contain URLs to other documents and sorting words found in documents.
When Yahoo released Hadoop into open source, it became very popular because the idea of an open source platform that used a scale-out model with a built-in processing engine was very appealing. People implemented all kinds of innovative solutions using MapReduce, including tasks such as facial recognition in streaming video. They did this using MapReduce despite the fact that it was not designed for this task, and that forcing tasks into the MapReduce format was clunky and inefficient. The fact that people attempted these implementations is a testament to the attractiveness of the Hadoop platform as a whole in spite of the limited flexibility of MapReduce.
What has happened to Hadoop since those days? A number of important things, like security have been added, showing that Hadoop has evolved to meet the needs of large enterprises. A SQL engine, Hive, was added so that Hadoop could act as a database platform. A No-SQL engine, HBase, was added. In Hadoop 2, Yarn was added. Yarn allows other processing engines to execute on the same footing as MapReduce. Yarn is a reaction to the sentiment that “Hadoop overall is great, but MapReduce was not designed for my use case.” Each of these new additions (security, Hive, HBase, Yarn, etc.) is at a different level of maturity and has gone through its own evolution.
As we can see, Hadoop has come a long way since it was created for a specific purpose. Spark is evolving in a similar way. Spark was created as a scalable in-memory solution for a data scientist. Note, a single data scientist. One. Since then Spark has acquired the ability to answer SQL queries, added some support for multi-user/concurrency, and the ability to run computations against streaming data using micro-batches. So Spark is evolving in a similar way to Hadoop’s history over the last 10 years. The worlds of Hadoop and Spark also overlap in other ways. Spark itself has no storage layer. It makes sense to be able to run Spark inside of Yarn so that HDFS can be used to store the data, and Spark can be used as the processing engine on the data nodes using Yarn. This is an option that has been available since late 2012.
In Pentaho Labs, we continually evaluate both new technologies and evolving technologies to assess their suitability for enterprise-grade data transformation and analytics. We have created prototypes demonstrating our analysis capabilities using Spark SQL as a data source and running Pentaho Data Integration transformations inside the Spark engine in streaming and non-streaming modes. Our announcement today is the productization of one Spark use case, and we will continue to evaluate and release more support as Spark continues to grow and evolve.
Pentaho Data Integration for Apache Spark will be GA in June 2015. You can learn more about Spark innovation in Pentaho Labs here: www.pentaho.com/labs.
I will also lead a webinar on Apache Spark on Tuesday June 2, 2015 at 10am/pt (1pm/ET). You can register at http://events.pentaho.com/pentaho-labs-apache-spark-registration.html.
Open Source: In praise of the profiteering enterprise, the greedy freeloader, and the selfish developer
Recently, Matt Asay talked about a number of different issues causing conflict in the free and open source world in a piece titled “The new struggles facing open source” and comes to the conclusion that currently the biggest problem is the role of enterprises controlling projects (he says “controlling the community” which is impossible, if you’ve every tried it). He makes a lot of sense but I don’t entirely agree with his points about the role of businesses in open source being detrimental. Hadoop, Spark, Storm, Kafka, Hive, HBase etc all came from enterprises that still employ the majority of the core contributors in most cases. Why did these companies create these technologies? Not for philanthropy. Not for the greater good. For better profit via better infrastructure. Having created those technologies they decided to open source them. For the greater good? No. For lower maintenance, and better profits, with side benefits of better mindshare and easier recruiting. Did these companies open source their domain-specific intellectual property that is the basis of their business? No, and they never will. They only open sourced internally developed infrastructure that is tangential to their business. Do these companies believe that all ideas inherently belong to the people of the world? No. They put into open source what was in their best interest to do so. Self-interest all round. Score 1 point for greed.
In another piece titled “Enterprises still miss the real point of open source” Matt argues that enterprises, while they are using a lot of open source, still don’t get it. He finishes with:
Again, merely using open source isn’t enough. Contributions are required.
But let’s look at “The rise and rise of open source” by Simon Phipps. This is a review of Black Duck’s most recent “The Future Of Open Source” survey. The net result is that across all the important metrics usage of open source for running businesses and creating products is now over 50% for the first time. Some of the merits are still rising rapidly. 78% of respondents report they are running their business with open source software. Indicating that an approach based on, and using, open source is now the mainstream, and that purely proprietary approaches are now the minority. As a result InfoWorld is stopping their open source special interest channel, because it is now the mainstream. Yay for open source.
But who are these companies that make up these statistics, that represent the majority of businesses. Are they all contributing to open source? The survey indicates that while 78% of businesses are running on open source, only 64% of those say they are contributing to open source. What do we call the greedy who use open source but do not contribute to it? They are the Freeloaders. Matt Asay says they need to contribute. I say they already have. If the freeloaders weren’t using open source, only 49.92% (78% * 64%) of companies would be running their business on open source. In other words the only reason we can claim today that open source is the mainstream is by the actions of the (apparently) non-contributing the freeloaders. But isn’t tipping the balance of the overall market from proprietary to open source a contribution in itself? Of course it is. The act of merely using open source software displaces a proprietary alternative, and is a contribution in its own right. No matter how little you contribute, even the greedy who contribute nothing, still make a contribution. Score another point for greed.
So now lets look at the people to do contribute. The vast majority of these are paid contributors employed by enterprises and IT/software developers trying to get their job done and to rollout a product or feature. These activities include creating features, fixing bugs, translating, testing etc (the list is long). Enterprises fund these activities for several reasons including:
Getting a product to market
Lowering development costs
Lowering license fees
Improving time to market
Increasing mindshare and thought leadership
Philanthropy? Nope.
Developers fix bugs and contribute them to a project because they don’t want to re-apply the bug in every future release. This is self-serving behavior. Do I care who controls or directs the project? Nope. The core contributors of the project accept the bug to increase quality, which helps adoption, which grows the project. This is self-serving behavior. One of the greatest and most powerful things about open source is that everyone can act out of self-interest, and everyone gains from everyone else acting selfishly. This makes the model very strong. Score another point for greed.
Final score: Philanthropy 0, Greed 3
If open source is ultimately driven by greed and self-interest, how is it any better than proprietary software development? Because it is an inherently better way to develop software, and in so many ways that the fight isn’t even close. Is it philosophically better? Yes, I believe the fundamental principles of open source are better than proprietary development. But is it morally better? No. The underlying power of open source over proprietary development is that greed is naturally converted into useful contribution, whereas with proprietary development greed translates into channel conflict, price fixing, monopolies, class action suits, vendor lock-in, and inefficient, low-quality, bloated software.
Open source rules the day. But philanthropy and the believe that all ideas belong to the world did not get it there.
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Seroepidemiology of clinical isolates of Klebsiella in Connecticut.
E A Blanchette, S J Rubin
E A Blanchette
S J Rubin
The distribution of capsular serotypes of 200 clinical isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae and Klebsiella oxytoca from four Connecticut hospitals was determined. Serotyping was done by an indirect fluorescent-antibody technique. Hospitals included three community hospitals from the Hartford area and one university hospital in New Haven. During the test period, epidemiological surveillance did not detect any nosocomial epidemic involving Klebsiella species. Ninety-two percent of the isolates were typable. Of the 72 possible serotypes, 62 were represented among these strains. Forty-two percent of the typable strains were distributed among 10 serotypes. The predominant serotypes were types 31, 22, and 18 representing 19% of the typable strains (8, 6, and 5%, respectively). No one particular serotype was associated exclusively with a specific site of infection.
Journal of Clinical Microbiology May 1980, 11 (5) 474-478; DOI:
You are going to email the following Seroepidemiology of clinical isolates of Klebsiella in Connecticut.
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Tag Archives: non-chronological story
The Loner
Outside the Lines: A Novel by Amy Hatvany (Washington Square Press, $15.00, 358 pages + A Reader’s Club Guide)
He thought he could white-knuckle his way through to normalcy. He thought he could do it without the meds. He couldn’t decide which was worse – life on the meds or life off of them. He concluded it was just life he couldn’t bear. The simple act of breathing had become too much to bear.
Amy Hatvany’s fourth novel is an engaging and provocative look at mental illness. Eden is a 10-year-old girl whose artist father leaves her and her mother behind in Seattle after he’s attempted suicide and refused to take the medications needed to “silence the rumblings in his head.” The adult Eden achieves her dream of becoming a successful chef in the city, but realizes that she needs to find her father before it’s too late.
I’m not usually a fan of stories that are told in non-chronological order – they tend to be too clever by half – but here the author makes it work, and work well. In fact, some of her time-shifts seem to have been crafted for a screenplay version of the story. Hatvany has a gift for dialogue, although in Outside the Lines she’s created a character in Jack (Eden’s charitable boyfriend) who’s just too good to be true.
“Is he perfect all the time?” Georgia asked when I went on dreamingly about some wonderful thing Jack had said or done. “I might have to hurl if he is.”
While the family novel’s set in The Emerald City, there are side trips to San Francisco and Portland which provide changes of scenery. This is a morality play in which Eden (as in the Garden of…) must save her long-lost dad before she can save herself and the world she lives in.
A review copy was provided by the publisher.
“Hatvany’s novel explores the tragedy of a mind gone awry, a tangled bond of father and daughter, and the way hope and love sustain us.” Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You
“I finally felt like I was contributing to something that made a difference in the world.”
Tagged as a book review by Joseph Arellano: Outside the Lines, A book review site, a novel, A Reader's Club Guide, Amy Hatvany, Best Kept Secret, book review, book reviews, Caroline Leavitt, depression, estranged parent, family novel, family tragedy, father and daughter, female protagonist, hope, Joseph Arellano, Joseph's Reviews, Love, mental illness, non-chronological story, Oregon, Outside the Lines, Pictures of You, popular fiction, Portland, recommended books, San Francisco, Seattle, The Emerald City, The Loner, trade paperback, tragedy, Washington Square Press, women's fiction, women's literature, Wordpress book review blog
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Tag Archives: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley
The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and The Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah” by Alan Light (Atria Books, $25.00, 254 pages)
“People keep finding the song in new ways… I’ve had kids talk to me about ‘Hallelujah’ as if they were the only ones who knew it – it’s a cult classic, like the world’s biggest sleeper hit. It’s like joining a club.” Singer Patrick Stump of the band Fall Out Boy
There are some nonfiction books that read like – and were written as, long versions of magazine articles. These tend to be books with lots of filler, in which not so much new information is found. Such is not the case with The Holy or the Broken – while it reads like it might have begun its existence in the form of a possible magazine article, there’s plenty of new and valuable information here, especially for music fans. For the less knowledgeable, this account may lead them to pursue more information about Leonard Cohen or Jeff Buckley or other musicians named within its pages.
This is the fascinating true story of Cohen’s writing a song included within an album that his record company refused to release. The song would not be discovered and appreciated for 13 years, and – as referenced in the subtitle, it was the late Jeff Buckley’s vibrant cover version that was to make it a worldwide phenomenon. The song is now a staple of televised singing competitions such as American Idol, The Voice and The X Factor.
Author Light details how Cohen’s song – a mixture of joyful and sorrowful sentiments, has benefited from being used as an anthem following tragic events such as 9/11, and via its frequent use on TV and motion picture soundtracks (including Shrek). There’s also the fact that musicians as varied as Bob Dylan, Bono, Sheryl Crowe, Justin Timberlake, Susan Boyle, Rufus Wainright, Lee DeWyze, Willie Nelson, Neil Diamond and k.d. lang have either covered it and/or performed it on stage. The song has become an industry onto itself; one publisher calling the song “a brand.”
The one negative about the narrative is that Light, a former editor-in-chief at Spin magazine, incorporates a bit too much of his personal tastes into the telling – becoming, if you will, more rock critic than unbiased historian. Still, there’s ample fascinating stuff to chew on here – one example being that John Lissauer, the producer of Cohen’s initially-unreleased album Various Positions (which contained Cohen’s original version of “Hallelujah”) confesses that, “I felt like I’d ruined (Cohen’s) career.” Far from it!
“When you hear the Jeff Buckley version, it’s so intimate it’s almost like you’re invading his personal space, or you’re listening to something that you weren’t supposed to hear.” Jake Shimaburkuro
“It’s a hymn to being alive. It’s a hymn to love lost. To love. Even the pain of existence…” Jeff Buckley
The Holy or the Broken is well recommended.
Readers or music lovers wishing to learn more may want to read the excellent book Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley by David Browne, and the new biography I’m You’re Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons.
A review copy was provided by the publisher. The Holy or the Broken is also available as a Nook Book or Kindle Edition download.
Tagged as 9/11, Alan Light, American Idol, Atria Books, Bob Dylan, Bono, book review, book review site wordpress, cover versions of Hallelujah, David Browne, Dream Brother, Fall Out Boy, Hallelujah, Hallelujah covers, hardbound book release, I'm Your Man, inspirational music, Jake Shimaburkuro, Jeff Buckley, Joseph Arellano, Joseph's Reviews, Justin Timberlake, k. d. lang, Kindle Edition, Lee DeWyze, Leonard Cohen, music, music criticism, Neil Diamond, Nook Book, Patrick Stump, recommended books, Rufus Wainright, Sheryl Crowe, Shrek soundtrack, songwriting, Spin magazine, Susan Boyle, Sylvie Simmons, The Holy or the Broken, The Life of Leonard Cohen, The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley, The Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah", The Voice, The X Factor, Tim Buckley, Willie Nelson, Wordpress book review site
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2012 December 3 Jewelry Signature Auction- DallasAuction #5122
Sterling Silver, Gold, Leather Items, Tiffany & Co. . ...
Sterling Silver, Gold, Leather Items, Tiffany & Co.
The lot includes: a disk pendant-necklace and matching earrings (dimensions: 1-1/6 inches x 1-1/16 inches, length: 17 inches), a starfish pendant-necklace and matching earrings (length: 17 inches), a comma brooch (1-3/4 inches x 7/8 inch), a teardrop pen, and a heart bookmark (2-1/8 inches x 1-3/4 inches), all crafted in sterling silver and designed by Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Co.; a woven leaf flexible collar necklace, a sterling and 18k gold cushion ring (size: 7), a fireworks pendant-necklace featuring a black onyx cabochon (length: 18 inches), a pair of nut and bolt cuff links, and six watch straps of various sizes. Gross weight 181.75 grams.
Condition Report*: Designer: Tiffany & Co.
Gem Type: Black Onyx
Overall Condition: Very Good
Notes: All items are marked and come with their own Tiffany & Co. box and pouch, except for leaf necklace--pouch only. Disk necklace also comes with black cord. Watch straps: red lizard 15R, white lizard 17R, blue leather 16R, black leather 18, blue Tesoro, black Tesoro.
Tiffany & Co.: Tiffany & Co. remains the largest luxury-item retailer in the world, offering sterling silver, jewelry, crystal, china, stationery, leather goods, and fragrances. In 1837, Charles L. Tiffany and John B. Young opened “Tiffany & Young” in New York City as a “fancy goods emporium” which sold stationery, European decorative objects, Chinese pottery and umbrellas, desks, and silver. Major silver manufacturers, such as Grosjean & Woodward, William Gale, Gorham, and John C. Moore, supplied the flatware and hollowware selections, and by the mid-1850s, “Tiffany, Young & Ellis” (renamed in 1841 with the addition of partner J.L. Ellis) had become the leading silver retailer in New York. In 1852, the company began utilizing the English sterling silver standard, which was later adopted by the U.S. government as the American standard. In 1853, Tiffany bought out his partners to build the jewelry arm of the firm, at which point “Tiffany & Co.” was officially born.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, Tiffany & Co., or “Tiffany,” became an arsenal for the North, producing swords, flags, uniforms, and surgical instruments, and supplying rifles and ammunition from Europe. By the end of the 1860s, the firm was creating its own silver designs – bowls, pitchers, tea services, and other tableware -- for which it received major recognition, including an award for excellence in silverware at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle and the gold medal for jewelry and the silver prize for silverware at this Exposition in 1878. Wealthy U.S. families, such as the Astors, Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Posts, purchased silver and diamonds from Tiffany, and, beyond this hefty endorsement, the company broadened its sales through a mail order catalog, the “Blue Book,” first published in 1845. When Charles L. Tiffany died in 1902, his son, Louis Comfort Tiffany, became the firm’s first official Design Director.
Tiffany solidified its position as both a team-playing American company and an international tastemaker during the twentieth century. With the onset of WW I and WW II, the firm again turned its attention to the war effort by manufacturing airplane parts and surgical instruments. 1940 saw the opening of Tiffany’s new and now legendary store on 5th Avenue, structured like a grand ballroom with special lighting to offset the silver and jewelry. During the post-War decades, Tiffany’s president Walter Hoving brilliantly increased sales by reaching out to a broader customer base: he hired famous designers to create products for the store -- for example, silver jewelry by Frank Gehry, Elsa Peretti, Paloma Picasso, and Jean Schlumberger and stationery by Andy Warhol – and he opened Tiffany stores internationally. Today, Tiffany operates in twenty-two countries and nets sales of over $3.6 billion.
3rd Monday
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Wiesenthal Center Lists Corbyn’s Labour Party the Top Anti-Semitic Incident of 2019
BY Aaron Bandler | Dec 10, 2019 | World
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - DECEMBER 10: Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn takes part in a phone banking session with Labour activists at Scottish party headquarters during his final campaign tour before polling day on December 10, 2019 in Glasgow, Scotland. The U.K will go to the polls in a general election on December 12. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
The Simon Wiesenthal Center called Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party the top anti-Semitic global incident in 2019.
The UK Daily Mail reports that the Wiesenthal Center argued on Dec. 8 that Corbyn and the Labour Party have mainstreamed “anti-Semitism into the political and social life of a democracy.”
They pointed out that “members and staff who have dared to speak out against the hate were purged, but not those who declared ‘Heil Hitler’ and ‘F— the Jews’ or ‘Jews are the problem.’”
“If Mr. Corbyn wins he will make Britain a pariah on the world stage,” Wiesenthal Center Founder and Dean Rabbi Marvin Hier told the Daily Mail. “It will be a disaster for democracy.”
A Labour Party spokesperson told the Daily Mail that the Wiesenthal Center’s contention was “ridiculous and grossly offensive. Putting Jeremy Corbyn at the head of a list containing neo-Nazi synagogue shooters is a transparent political attack and has nothing to do with tackling anti-Semitism.”
The Wiesenthal Center also released a report on Dec. 9 about Corbyn and the Labour Party, highlighting how in 2012, Corbyn “defended a mural depicting ravenous Jewish bankers taking bites out of the backs of naked third world minorities.” In 2016, he allowed the anti-Semitic slur “Zio” to become common among the Labour Party; in 2018, reports were stating “that Corbyn belonged to three Facebook groups in which anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial were commonplace, and whose members posted stories about Rothschild control of the world’s banking systems and Israeli armed forces harvesting the organs of their Palestinian victims.”
The report concluded that Corbyn’s criticisms of Israel have veered into anti-Semitism, given “that he embraces Hamas as well as Fatah, and celebrates Palestinian terrorists as martyrs. Ditto his admiration for the Tehran Mullahs.”
Britain’s elections for prime minister are on Dec. 12; Corbyn and current Prime Minister Boris Johnson are seen as the top contenders for the position.
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Clinical 13 Abnormal 6 Cognitive 6 Research 5 Child/Adolescent 5 Behavioral Neuroscience 4
Postdoctoral 4 Education 3 Government 3 Neuroscience 3 Aging 2 Clinical Decision-making 2 Development 2 Experimental 2 Health 2
Maryland 2 New York 2 Pennsylvania 2 California 1 District of Columbia 1 Nevada 1
Rhode Island 1 Virginia 1 West Virginia 1
Quantitative Behavioral Applied Psychology Biopsychology Cognitive Neuroscience Other
Post-doctoral Fellow Management Division of Columbia Business School
Dear Colleagues, The Management Division at Columbia Business School is pleased to announce that it is seeking to hire a qualified Postdoctoral Fellow for a period of two years. The Postdoctoral Fellow will receive a research budget and collaborate on projects of mutual interest with faculty. In addition, the Postdoctoral Fellow will be mentored in, and then teach, the MBA course entitled Managerial Negotiations. The position requires someone with a strong background in psychological and behavioral research methods who seeks exposure to a mix of basic and applied research and to the teaching that occurs in a business school. Applicants should have a PhD degree (or expect to complete theirs by Fall 2020) in a relevant social science field, such as psychology or organizational behavior, from an accredited institution, and a record of being an outstanding scholar. The Management Division is a dynamic center of behavioral research, with faculty, post-doctoral and visiting scholars, and doctoral students taking a wide range of approaches to basic social science research with applied implications. Our micro-organizational faculty members include Modupe Akinola, Daniel Ames, Joel Brockner, Shai Davidai, Adam Galinsky, Tory Higgins, Sheena Iyengar, Malia Mason, Sandra Matz, Michael Morris, Katherine Phillips, and Michael Slepian. More information about the Management Division can be found at: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty-research/divisions/management Applicants should submit a cover letter and research statement describing their research interests and accomplishments, a C.V., and three letters of recommendation to: mgmtjobsearch@gsb.columbia.edu . Materials should be submitted by February 1 in order to receive full consideration. Fly outs for job talks will occur in mid-February, and we expect to make a selection early March. Warm regards, Michael Slepian -- Michael Slepian - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics - Management Division - Columbia Business School http://www.columbia.edu/~ms4992/
Columbia University New York, NY, USA Postdoc
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Former Kellogg Doctoral Student
Rodrigo Castro Cornejo
PhD Political Science, Notre Dame, 2017
This profile was current as of 2017, when he was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.
I am a recent Ph.D. graduate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and a prior Garza Ph.D. fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. My area of specialization is comparative political behavior with a special focus in Latin America. My research interests include survey research, public opinion and voting behavior; specifically, I study the role of campaigns, corruption and clientelism in voting behavior. My dissertation studies how and when political campaigns influence vote choice; specifically, I seek to understand why campaigns seem to matter in some party systems but not in others.
To conduct my research, I have received funding from the Notre Dame's Environmental Change Initiative, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Kellogg Institute's Varieties of Democracy project, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the Downes J. Memorial Fund and the Notebaert Professional Development Fund of the Graduate School at the University of Notre Dame, and more recently, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, I earned my BA in Political Science at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City in 2007. After that, I worked as a research analyst at the Inter-American Development Bank (2006-2007) and as associate director of electoral studies at BGC Ulises Beltrán y Asocs, leading survey research firm in Mexico (2007-2010).
PhD Year
Political Parties/Party Systems
Botero, Sandra, Rodrigo Castro, Laura Gamboa, Nara Pavão, and David W. Nickerson. "Are all types of wrongdoing created equal in the eyes of voters?"Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 2019.
2016-2017 Campaign Effects and Party System Institutionalization
2015-2016 Party Identification, Survey Research and Party System Institutionalization in Latin America
Kellogg Institute Graduate Research Grants
2014-2015 Campaign Effects and Party System Institutionalization - fieldwork (Jan-July 2015)
2013-2014 Public Opinion and Elections—New
Recipients of Funding: 2012-2013 Institute for Qualitative & Multi-Method Research, Maxwell School of Syracuse University
Kellogg Institute Professionalization Grants
2010-2015 PhD Fellowship
Comparative Politics Workshop - Who Receives Electoral Gifts? It Depends on Question Wording. Experimental Evidence from Mexico
Work-in-Progress Session: "Do Campaigns Matter? Campaign Effects, Survey Research and Party System Institutionalization"
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A unified framework for adaptive inverse power control
Marko Höyhtyä ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9088-15661 &
Aarne Mämmelä1
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking volume 2016, Article number: 41 (2016) Cite this article
In this paper, a unified framework for adaptive inverse power control is developed. It is based on a modified filtered-x least mean square (MFxLMS) algorithm that is proposed and analyzed. A practical version of the algorithm for closed loop power control is also developed. The filtered-x least mean square (FxLMS) algorithm is widely used for inverse control such as noise cancelation. This is the first paper to apply the algorithm for power control. We have modified the conventional FxLMS algorithm by adding absolute value blocks since power control does not need phase information. The modification makes the algorithm more robust and requires fewer bits to be transmitted in the feedback link. The main contribution of the paper is that the proposed algorithm can be seen as generalized inverse control to be used in power control research. It gives a unified framework for several existing algorithms, linking them to the least mean square (LMS) literature. Numerical results are provided, comparing the performance of the proposed algorithm to existing practical algorithms used, e.g., in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) long-term evolution (LTE) systems.
Inverse control has been used for several applications such as channel equalization [1, 2] automatic gain control (AGC) [3], noise and interference cancelation [4, 5], and transmission power control [6, 7] which is the topic of this paper. Due to stability problems, the least mean square (LMS) algorithm is not directly suitable for active control applications where the adaptive filter works as a controller for a time-variant system. Instead, the filtered-x least mean square (FxLMS) algorithm is a good choice for that kind of applications [4]. It is essentially the LMS algorithm with a few little changes so that algorithm can remain stable. The FxLMS algorithm is developed from the LMS algorithm by inserting the model of the controlled system between the input data signal and the adaptive algorithm that updates the coefficients of adaptive filter. The algorithm was introduced independently in [8, 9] and [10] for adaptive control and noise cancelation.
Conventionally, power control research and LMS algorithm research have been advanced in separate paths. We propose and demonstrate a new use of the FxLMS algorithm in this article, namely power control. This integrates previously separated paths, providing unified framework for adaptive inverse power control.
We described the FxLMS method initially for power control in [11] and compared it by numerical simulations to other practical algorithms in [11] and [12]. We developed also a truncated version of the algorithm in [13] to improve energy efficiency. Truncation means that the transmission is interrupted and transmission power is zero when the magnitude of the channel gain deteriorates under a certain cutoff value. Since transmission power control is a new application for the algorithm, new phenomena occur and modifications are needed. Fading in the wireless channel has a wide dynamic range, and changes are fast compared to conventional control systems. In addition, wireless feedback channel limits the number of bits used in control commands. We have modified the conventional FxLMS algorithm by adding absolute value blocks since power control does not need phase information. The modification makes the algorithm more robust and requires fewer bits to be transmitted in the feedback link.
In this paper, we show with analysis that the proposed algorithm converges exactly to the wanted solution in a noiseless channel. We restrict our investigation purely to the closed loop part, focusing on the algorithm and thus assuming ideal feedback. Simulations show that the algorithm converges well also in a noisy channel. The main contribution of this paper compared to our previous papers is that we create a unified framework for inverse power control for cellular systems. The proposed algorithm links the existing algorithms to LMS type of adaptive algorithms. The modified filtered-x least mean square (MFxLMS) algorithm can be seen as a generalized adaptive inverse control method and several practical algorithms as special cases of it. In addition to theoretical analysis that is made more thoroughly in this paper than in our previous papers, we develop a practical quantized version of the algorithm and compare its performance to state-of-the-art algorithms. The proposed algorithm provides a fast adapting inverse power control solution that does not overshoot the power level as much after a fade as the conventional solution in [14]. Thus, it decreases interference to other users in these cases. We also propose an efficient way to implement the closed loop algorithm described in [15] as an enhanced version of the algorithm presented in [14].
Furthermore, we present novel fast simulation models for a fading channel and diversity. It was reported in [16] that Jakes’ model [17] does not produce wide-sense stationary signals. The authors of [16] proposed to improve the model by randomizing the phase shifts of the low-frequency oscillators. We have modified Jakes’ model further by randomizing also the frequency shifts in the model. Several simulation studies are performed with the practical power control algorithms both in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and fading channels. The model is applicable to a multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) system with certain assumptions as discussed in Section 3. MIMO FxLMS algorithm has been recently studied for vibration control in [18].
The organization of the paper is as follows. Section 2 discusses related literature, and Section 3 presents the system model. Performance metrics are introduced in Section 4. The MFxLMS algorithm with the convergence analysis is presented with several other adaptive inverse power control schemes in Section 5. Achieved results are provided in Section 6, and conclusions with recommendations for further work are drawn in Section 7.
Power control methods can in general be divided into water filling and channel inversion [6]. Basically, the difference between these two approaches is that the water filling allocates more power to the better channel instants whereas channel inversion aims at inverting the channel power gain while maintaining the desired signal strength at the receiver.
Several adaptive inverse control methods have been developed and studied in the literature for power control, e.g., [14, 15, 19–24]. The conventional 1-bit adaptive power control (CAPC-1) method [14, 19] employs delta modulation, i.e., adjusts the previous transmission power up or down by a fixed step. In this paper, the acronym CAPC-x refers to conventional power control using x bits in the power control command. Conventional inverse power control approaches have been proposed and used, e.g., for code division multiple access (CDMA), Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) long-term evolution (LTE), and TV white space transmission. A clear aim of these inverse methods is energy and interference reduction, to use only sufficient power to meet the transmission rate requirements. For example, CDMA power control employs both closed and open loop methods. In the open loop method, the mobile station measures the average received total power by an automatic gain control (AGC) circuit and adjusts its transmission power so that it is inversely proportional to the received power [25]. Nonlinear control is used to allow fast response to the reduced channel attenuation with a maximum of 10 dB/ms but slow response to increased attenuation. This is to avoid additional interference to other users.
Required dynamic range with a limited feedback can be achieved by nonlinear quantization of feedback signaling [26] and variable step (VS) algorithms [27–30]. Nonlinear AGC control can be exponential or approximately exponential [3]. A simple way to compress power control commands is to operate the algorithm in decibel domain [20]. Logarithmic quantization such as μ-law and A-law companding is used in speech codecs [26]. Companding amplifies weak input signals and compresses strong signals to save the needed number of bits to be transmitted. Companding is applied also for reducing peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) in OFDM signals [31].
Many variable step size LMS algorithms have been proposed in order to improve the performance of the LMS algorithm by using large step sizes in the early stages of the adaptive process and small step sizes when the system approaches convergence [27–30]. The step size can be adapted, e.g., based on the received signal power [11] or the squared error signal [19, 20]. Optimization of the step size has been studied in [32], where lag error of an adaptive system is also considered. This error is caused by the attempt of an adaptive system to track variations of the non-stationary input signal.
The system model for adaptive transmission is illustrated in Fig. 1. The input data x k are binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulated and transmitted from the transmitter to the receiver over a fading channel. The algorithm can be used for any linear modulation scheme such as M-ary PSK and M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) without any modifications. On the other hand, the analysis for each modulation scheme must be considered separately. The analysis for quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) is essentially the same since QPSK can be viewed as two independent BPSK signals in a frequency-nonselective channel. The received signal y k can be given as.
$$ {y}_k={x}_k{P}_k{h}_k+{n}_k. $$
System model for adaptive transmission
The complex gain of the channel is \( {h}_k = {\alpha}_k{e}^{j{\theta}_k} \) and n k is the additive white Gaussian noise at time k. The amplitude of the fading gain is α k and θ k is the phase shift. The data are transmitted through the channel and the instantaneous transmit power P k is allocated based on the channel gain estimate \( {\hat{h}}_k \) sent by the receiver. LMS estimation of the channel gain is done as.
$$ {\hat{h}}_{k+1}={\hat{h}}_k+\vartheta {e}_k{x}_k $$
where ϑ is the step size of the algorithm and e k is the estimation error [1]. A typical value for the step size ϑ is 0–0.99. Larger values lead to faster convergence with the cost of reduced accuracy since noise averaging does not work so well [33].
We consider a slowly varying channel that can be modeled using the Doppler power spectrum [16, 17]. The rate of the channel variation, i.e., the effect of mobility, can be characterized by the Doppler frequency f d. We are using a flat Doppler power spectrum that corresponds to an urban environment where the transmitter is set above rooftop level [34].
Sum-of-sinusoids fading channel
To obtain a flat Doppler power spectrum, the time-variant channel gain of a channel with index l is represented by the sum of complex exponentials as.
$$ {h}_l(k)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}}\sum_{i=1}^N{e}^{j\left(2\pi {f}_{i,l}k+{\phi}_{i,l}\right)} $$
where N is the number of subpaths with the same delay, f i,l is the Doppler shift of the ith subpath, i,l is the random phase shift of the ith subpath uniformly distributed in the range [0, 2π], and k is the time. The amplitudes of the subpaths in Eq. (3) are identical due to the flat spectrum. The average energy gain of the channel is normalized to unity [35]. The model is straightforward to generalize to multiple delays.
If the Doppler shifts of the complex exponentials are equally spaced in the interval [−f d , f d], the channel gain (Eq. (3)) becomes periodic in time. Sampling in time domain corresponds to periodicity in frequency domain and vice versa [36]. Periodicity can be removed if the shifts are properly chosen. The Doppler spread is divided into N equal size frequency bins. Within these bins, the frequencies f i,l differ a random uniformly distributed amount from the equal space solution. Thus, we obtain the whole Doppler spread to use in every simulation. The power spectrum is made symmetric with respect to zero frequency, which makes the autocorrelation function of the channel real. This selection also makes simulations faster. The random phases ϕ i,l are not symmetric with respect to the zero frequency.
Diversity channel
A time-variant frequency selective channel model can be represented with a tapped delay line as.
$$ \beta \left(l,k\right)=\frac{1}{L}{\displaystyle \sum_{l=1}^L}{h}_l(k)\delta \left(\tau -{\tau}_l\right) $$
where L is the number of tap weights and τ l is the delay of lth tap generated using Eq. (3). Now, we have a flat impulse response instead of usual exponentially decreasing model. However, from power control point of view, this does not affect since the optimal demodulator for this signal is a coherent demodulator that collects the signal energy from all the received signal paths within the delay span 0 to τ L [2]. In a diversity system, the transmitter power control algorithm should control the power of the diversity combiner output in the receiver. There is no loss in performance in dividing the total transmitted signal energy differently among the L channels, and thus, the model does not change the comparison between the selected power control algorithms. Actually, the time-variant channel gain of the diversity channel can be given as.
$$ H(k)=\sqrt{\frac{1}{L}{\displaystyle \sum_{l=1}^L}{\left|{h}_l(k)\right|}^2} $$
where h l (k) is the channel gain of the lth diversity branch, generated using Eq. (3), and L is the number of diversity branches. Equation (5) corresponds to the ideal maximal-ratio combining. The channel can thus represent also a frequency selective channel. From the subcarrier point of view, frequency selective channel looks frequency-nonselective in an OFDM system [2]. We assume that no intersymbol interference (ISI) or interpulse interference (IPI) is present since we use compressed pulses [2]. In general, a MIMO system with M t transmitter antennas and N r receiver antennas can be used as a diversity system having M t × N r independent diversity branches [37]. With OFDM system, those branches are made frequency-nonselective, and finally, by the use of orthogonal codes, the branches can be separated from each other. The channel must be slowly fading compared to the OFDM symbol rate so that intercarrier interference is avoided. The fading of the adjacent subcarriers is not uncorrelated, but this is typical in all OFDM systems, and it is in practice handled with frequency domain interleaving. Thus, with these assumptions, our system model represents also a MIMO-OFDM system.
Suitable performance metrics are needed to fairly compare the performance of the adaptive algorithms. One of the most important ones to consider is the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) concept. The average transmitted and the average received energies are usually normalized by the receiver noise spectral density N 0 leading to the average transmitted SNR per symbol [35].
$$ {\overline{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{tx}}={\overline{E}}_{\mathrm{tx}}/{N}_0 $$
and the average received SNR per symbol [35]
$$ {\overline{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{rx}}={\overline{E}}_{\mathrm{rx}}/{N}_0. $$
The parameter Ē tx is the average transmitted energy per symbol, and Ē rx is the average received energy per symbol. Transmitted energy is a basic system resource. In a mobile terminal, it is taken from the battery of the transmitter and is therefore limited. Transmitted energy or equivalently transmitted SNR should be used as a performance metric in order to obtain fair comparisons between different adaptive transmission systems. In adaptive transmission, the transmitted signal is a function of the energy gain of the channel. The use of the received SNR as a performance criterion in adaptive transmission system studies can lead to misleading results as was shown in [35].
Learning curve, i.e., plotting the mean square error (MSE) against the number of iterations, can be used to measure the statistical performance of adaptive algorithms [1, 2]. The MSE J(k) can be approximated as.
$$ J(k)=\frac{1}{\eta }{\displaystyle \sum_{i=0}^{\eta -1}}{\left|{\varepsilon}_{k-i}\right|}^2 $$
where ε k is the error signal measured as a difference between the output of the adaptive algorithm and the desired signal. Parameter η defines the number of samples used for averaging. Usually, MSE is compared to signal power, in this case transmission power.
Adaptive power control methods
Theoretical inverse control methods
If the truncated channel inversion (TCI) is used, the transmitted energy is [38].
$$ {E}_{\mathrm{tx}}(k)={\overline{E}}_{\mathrm{tx}}\left({\sigma}_0/{\gamma}_{\mathrm{H}}(k)\right) $$
for γ H(k) ≥ γ 0 and zero otherwise where σ 0 is a constant selected so that the average transmitted energy is Ē tx. The quality of the channel is defined as γ H(k) = Ē tx|H(k)|2/N 0, γ 0, γ 0 is a cutoff value, which is found by numerically maximizing (4.22) in [38], and |H(k)|2 is the instantaneous energy gain of the channel. The cutoff value is γ 0 = 0 for full channel inversion. Channel inversion aims at maintaining the desired signal strength at the receiver by inverting the channel power gain based on the channel estimates.
Adaptive FxLMS algorithm
The power control structure based on the MFxLMS algorithm is introduced in Fig. 2. It approximates the channel inversion. In the following, we will present both original and modified versions of the algorithm. The FxLMS algorithm updates the coefficient c k of a one-tap filter as.
$$ {c}_k={c}_{k-1}+{w}_k $$
FxLMS algorithm-based power control, modified version
where \( {w}_k=\mu {x}_k^{\hbox{'}}{\varepsilon}_k \) is the correction term, μ is the adaptation step size of the algorithm that regulates the speed and stability of adaptation, and ε k is the error signal to be minimized. The c k is the instantaneous transmission power at a time slot k. The filtered input signal for the FxLMS algorithm is \( {x}_k^{\hbox{'}}={\left({\hat{x}}_k{\hat{h}}_k\right)}^{*} \), where x* is the complex conjugate version of x, \( {\hat{x}}_k \) is the estimated input signal, and \( {\hat{h}}_k \) is the estimated instantaneous channel gain. The filtered input signal is \( {x}_k^{\hbox{'}}=\left|{\hat{x}}_k{\hat{h}}_k\right| \) for the MFxLMS algorithm, and the parameter n k is the additive white Gaussian noise. The channel can be modeled using Eqs. (3)–(5).
We have modified the conventional FxLMS structure by adding the absolute value blocks to the algorithm and having a wireless channel as a system to be controlled and inverted. In addition, a large difference in our system to conventional control systems comes with a separate receiver and transmitter. The main reason for the addition of absolute value blocks is that we are adjusting power levels and thus interested only in amplitude values, similar to AGC circuits [3]. Phases are not important from the power control point of view, and in this way, we can reduce control information to be carried. This also makes the system more robust since phases can change fast during deep fades and thus cause problems to the adaptive algorithm [39, 40].
The model is discretized using a matched filter [2], assuming slow changes compared to the symbol rate. Thus, we can use one sample of a symbol in the system model. We can reduce the complexity of the transmitter by doing the main part of the calculations at the receiver. This reduces also information in the feedback channel since only the correction term w k is sent to the transmitter. The filtered input signal \( {x}_k^{\hbox{'}} \) affects the operation of the algorithm. Thus, the control structure is decision directed (DD) [2]. Error propagation is known in DD approaches and remedy strategies have been developed [41, 42]. It was proposed in [42] that pilot on request training (PRQT) is used to mitigate the error propagation. The pilot is requested when error propagation is detected in the system. We assume our system to operate with the PRQT principle. When the error probability is very small, we can assume \( {\hat{x}}_k \) to be x k .
Convergence analysis for the MFxLMS power control algorithm
The choice of initial conditions for the FxLMS algorithm is not critical [4]. The algorithm is stable if μ is small enough, and transients die out just as with the conventional LMS algorithm. A primary concern with the MFxLMS algorithm is its convergence to the optimal solution where \( E\left[{\varepsilon}_k^2\right] \) is minimized. Since absolute value blocks make the analysis of the algorithm very complicated in a noisy channel, we will first analyze the conventional FxLMS algorithm that can also be used in power control. A general analysis for the FxLMS algorithm can be found in [43].
Coherent case
Let us assume a time-invariant channel with perfect channel estimation, i.e., \( {\hat{h}}_k=h \). The error signal is now
$$ {\varepsilon}_k={x}_k-\left(h{c}_{k-1}{x}_k+{n}_k\right). $$
The control command (Eq. (10)) can be given as
$$ {c}_k={c}_{k-1}+{\left({x}_kh\right)}^{*}\mu {\varepsilon}_k, $$
and placing error signal (Eqs. (11) to (12)) yields
$$ {c}_k={c}_{k-1}\left(1-\mu {\left|h\right|}^2{\left|{x}_k\right|}^2\right)+\mu {h}^{*}{\left|{x}_k\right|}^2-\mu {h}^{*}{x}_k^{*}{n}_k. $$
Taking expected value of both sides leads to
$$ E\left[{c}_k\right]=\left(1-\mu {\left|h\right|}^2R\right)E\left[{c}_{k-1}\right]+\mu {h}^{*}R $$
where R = E[|x k |2]. The white noise n k is assumed to be uncorrelated with the input x k . In addition, we assume that the input x k is independent of the weight c k as in the analysis of the LMS algorithm in [4]. The first part of the function in the right-hand side will clearly form a geometric series that will converge only if the geometric ratio has a magnitude of less than unity,
$$ \left|1-\mu {\left|h\right|}^2R\right|<1. $$
Therefore, we can define
$$ E\left[{c}_{\infty}\right]=\underset{k\to \infty }{ \lim }{\left(1-\mu {\left|h\right|}^2R\right)}^k{c}_0+\frac{\mu R{h}^{*}}{1-\left(1-\mu {\left|h\right|}^2R\right)}=\frac{h^{*}}{{\left|h\right|}^2}=\frac{h^{*}}{h{h}^{*}}=\frac{1}{h}. $$
Since the first part of the sum in Eq. (16) will approach zero, the algorithm converges exactly to the inverse of the channel gain. We can see from Eq. (15) that in order to keep the algorithm stable, the step size for updating the algorithm coefficients should be
$$ 0<\mu <\frac{2}{R{\left|h\right|}^2}. $$
The optimal step size for the FxLMS algorithm lies in the middle of stability interval [43, 44]. The convergence will be fastest with this selection. Thus, the optimal step size is now
$$ {\mu}_{\mathrm{opt}}=\frac{1}{R{\left|h\right|}^2}. $$
With this selection, the fixed step FxLMS algorithm is changed to the normalized version of it.
Non-coherent case
From the power control point of view, we would only need the inverse of the absolute value of the channel gain instead of the result of Eq. (16) since we are interested in inverting the power level to maintain the received signal power at a constant level. Thus, let us now consider the MFxLMS algorithm with absolute value blocks in a time-invariant, noiseless channel, assuming perfect channel estimation, i.e., \( {\hat{h}}_k=h \). The error signal is given as
$$ {\varepsilon}_k=\left|{x}_k\right|-\left|h{c}_{k-1}{x}_k\right|. $$
Thus, Eq. (10) becomes
$$ {c}_k={c}_{k-1}+\mu {\left|h\right|}^2{\left|{x}_k\right|}^2-\mu \left|{c}_{k-1}\right|{\left|{x}_k\right|}^2\left|h\right|. $$
In general, we should consider two separate cases: c k > 0 and c k < 0. However, there is no need to use negative values in power control since the solution we want to achieve is to maintain certain SNR at the receiver. The case c k < 0 leads to the converged solution that is a negative version of the solution for the case of c k > 0. When c k > 0, |c k | = c k . Now,
$$ {c}_k=\left(1-\mu {\left|{x}_k\right|}^2{\left|h\right|}^2\right){c}_{k-1}+\mu {\left|{x}_k\right|}^2\left|h\right|. $$
Convergence conditions for the MFxLMS algorithm can be found from this version quite straightforwardly, leading to the same solution as is shown in Eq. (15). Therefore, we can write
$$ {c}_{\infty }=\frac{1}{\left|h\right|},\kern0.75em {c}_k>0. $$
The algorithm converges exactly to the inverse of the absolute value of the channel gain. We can see from the results above that in order to keep the algorithm stable, the step size for updating the algorithm coefficients should be exactly in the same interval as the one shown in Eq. (17). Thus, the optimal step size for the MFxLMS algorithm in a noiseless channel is given in Eq. (18).
Convergence of the MFxLMS algorithm when noise is present in the system becomes mathematically intractable due to the absolute value blocks. Now, Eq. (10) can be rewritten as
$$ {c}_k={c}_{k-1}+\mu \left|h\right|{\left|{x}_k\right|}^2-\mu \left|h{x}_k\right|\left|h{x}_k{c}_{k-1}+{n}_k\right|. $$
The algorithm cannot be analyzed straightforwardly due to absolute value of the term that includes noise. Simulations are also used instead of analysis in reference state-of-the art algorithm developments due to mathematical intractability [14, 15, 19–21]. Based on the simulations, the MFxLMS algorithm behaves and converges almost identically with the algorithm without absolute blocks in a fading channel when the transmitted SNR is high enough. Actually, the MFxLMS algorithm is more robust since fast phase changes do not affect its performance. Nonlinearity causes threshold phenomenon for the modified algorithm in low SNR regime that is always a problem in noncoherent systems using some combining or averaging.
Time-variant channel
Usually, the adaptation step size of the FxLMS algorithm is not time variant. The algorithm with a fixed adaptation step size corresponds to a first-order system. It cannot track the fastest changes in the time-variant channel without a lag error [32] that can be quite large. A better performance is achieved by optimizing the adaptation step size with the instantaneous power of the input signal. It means that the FxLMS algorithm with a fixed step size is changed to the normalized version of it. The normalized version of the FxLMS algorithm corresponds to the filtered-x recursive least squares (FxRLS) algorithm when μ = 1 − λ where λ is the forgetting factor which gives exponentially less weight to older samples.
In a slowly fading channel, h k can be assumed to be constant over the memory [4] of the MFxLMS algorithm. Thus, the stability condition to the structure when noise is ignored and the channel state is known is the same as presented in Eq. (17) when h is replaced by h k . The optimal step size can be found for each different h k in Eq. (18) by replacing h by h k . Therefore, the optimal adaptation step size should be time variant. When the channel gain is estimated in Eq. (18), the system becomes unstable if this step size is used due to errors in the estimate [45]. To stabilize the control, the step size is given by.
$$ {\mu}_{\mathrm{s}}=\frac{a}{R{\left|{\hat{h}}_k\right|}^2+b} $$
where b is a small real number that prevents the adaptation step size to grow uncontrollably when the estimated received power is close to zero. Parameters a and b are dependent, e.g., on SNR and L, but the values need to be found experimentally to optimize the trade-off between lag error and noise averaging for different channel dynamics. Default values for these parameters can be given as \( a=1/\sqrt{L}\kern0.5em \mathrm{and}\kern0.5em b=0.2/{\overline{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{rx}} \) where \( {\overline{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{rx}} \) is the received SNR defined in Eq. (7). Smaller a means slower convergence, better noise averaging, and a larger lag error while the parameter b has an opposite effect.
Quantized MFxLMS power control
In the following sections, only the MFxLMS algorithm is considered. In practice, the power control command has to be quantized while obtaining a decent performance. In the case of the MFxLMS algorithm, the signal w k has to be fed back to the transmitter as shown in Fig. 2. It is good to quantize frequently occurring small values of the signal in more detail and then use coarser steps for the less frequent large signal levels to preserve needed information [26]. The signal w k is first compressed, then quantized uniformly, and sent to the channel. The received signal is expanded to get close to the original version of the power control command.
The μ-law compression is defined for real input signal w k as
$$ {v}_k=F\left({w}_k\right)=\mathrm{s}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{n}\left({w}_k\right)\frac{V \ln \left(1+{\mu}_{\mathrm{q}}\left|{w}_k\right|/V\right)}{ \ln \left(1+{\mu}_{\mathrm{q}}\right)}. $$
where V is the peak magnitude of the input signal. This is also a peak value of the output. A typical value for the compression parameter μ q is between 50 and 300. In our case, we have quantized the signal in the range [−1, 1] to be able to effectively combat the deep fades even though the average power of the signal v k is roughly 0.1. The maximum value is close to unity during the deepest fades. We have not scaled the signal before quantization. If the signal is scaled up, the clipping is increased while the quantization noise is reduced. Scaling down reduces clipping but increases noise. Received quantized signal q k is expanded using
$$ {\hat{w}}_k={F}^{-1}\left({q}_k\right)=\mathrm{s}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{n}\left({q}_k\right)\left(\frac{V}{\mu_{\mathrm{q}}}\right)\left({e}^{\left|{q}_k\right| \ln \left(1+{\mu}_{\mathrm{q}}\right)/V}-1\right),\kern0.5em 0\le \left|{q}_k\right|\le 1. $$
The proposed practical version of our MFxLMS algorithm allows fair comparison with other practical algorithms presented in the literature.
Conventional adaptive power control
Typically, the time interval between power control commands in CDMA systems is around 1 ms [14]. The method is shown in Fig. 3. The base station measures the average received power over m symbols and compares it to a reference signal to interference plus noise (SINR) level γ ref. As a result of a comparison, the base station tells the mobile station to adjust its transmission power upwards when the error signal δ k is positive or downwards with negative error by a control step size ΔP. Practical CAPC-1 method [14, 19] uses 1 dB steps. The power control algorithm can be written as.
$$ {P}_k={P}_{k-1}+{C}_k\varDelta P\kern1em \left[ dB\right] $$
Conventional power control structure
where the power control command is
$$ {C}_k=\left\{\begin{array}{c}\hfill +1,\kern0.75em {\delta}_k>0\hfill \\ {}\hfill -1,\kern1em {\delta}_k\le 0\hfill \end{array}\right.. $$
The weakness of this fixed-step power control method is that it is too slow to track changes in a fading channel.
Variable step adjustment power control
Variable step power control methods have been proposed to overcome the weakness of the fixed-step solution. The basic idea is that when the power of received signal is far from the desired, the control step is increased to reach the desired level faster. A recently proposed 2-bit version of the CAPC (CAPC-2) method is described in [15] where power control command C k values are C k = {−4, − 1, 1, 4} (dB). In the mentioned document [15], only step sizes are given. No rules how to use them in practice are included. Based on the simulation studies, we have conducted the following rule that was found to achieve a good performance:
$$ {C}_k=\left\{\begin{array}{l}4,\kern7em \mathrm{when}\kern0.75em {\delta}_k<-5\kappa \\ {}1,\kern6.25em -5\kappa \le \kern0.75em {\delta}_k<0\\ {}-1,\kern7.5em 0\le \kern0.75em {\delta}_k<5\kappa \\ {}-4,\kern10.25em {\delta}_k>5\kappa \end{array}\right. $$
where κ = 0.5ΔP. An asymmetric 3-bit version of the conventional adaptive power control (CAPC-3) proposed in [20] is
$$ {C}_k=\left\{\begin{array}{l}3,\kern6.5em \mathrm{when}\kern1.25em {\delta}_k<-5\kappa \\ {}2,\kern6.75em -5\kappa \le \kern1.25em {\delta}_k<-3k\\ {}1,\kern7em -3\kappa \le \kern0.75em {\delta}_k<-k\\ {}0,\kern7.5em -\kappa \kern0.5em \le \kern0.75em {\delta}_k<\kappa \\ {}-1,\kern7.62em \kappa \kern0.5em \le \kern0.75em {\delta}_k<3\kappa \\ {}-2\kern11em {\delta}_k<3\kappa \end{array}\right. $$
Variable step algorithms can be implemented with the structure depicted in Fig. 3. The only difference to the 1-bit CAPC method is in the quantization, i.e., more bits are used for power control commands in CAPC-2 and CAPC-3.
Comparison between the FxLMS and conventional algorithms
The idea to use the FxLMS algorithm started from the observation that analogy can be seen between the control structure in Fig. 3 and the LMS algorithm. Actually, the conventional algorithms can be seen as a special case of the FxLMS algorithm. The following modifications are needed from the MFxLMS structure in Fig. 2 to the CAPC structure in Fig. 3: (1) First, the CAPC structure uses square-law detection instead of envelope detection used in the MFxLMS structure. These have shown to provide comparable performance but the former is usually easier to analyze [46] while the latter allows a larger dynamic range [47]. (2) The CAPC method uses averaging to remove noise. The LMS algorithms are in principle based on exponential averaging [1]. An additional averaging block could be used as well, but it does not provide additional performance gain for the algorithm [48]. It is better to use instantaneous gradient estimates as is used in our power control structure. (3) Companding, i.e., going first to decibel domain (compressing) and then back to linear domain (expanding), is used in the CAPC algorithm. Compressing is used to cover the large dynamic range in a fading channel. In the practical MFxLMS structure, companding focuses on the task of nonlinear quantization, i.e., to reduce the number of bits in the power control command. (4) One-bit quantization is used in the CAPC-1 method to simplify feedback signaling. The MFxLMS method is using quantization as in Eqs. (25)–(26). Power control command needs to be more than 1 bit for variable step power control. That is true also for the variable step algorithms that are based on the structure shown in Fig. 3. (5) The CAPC-1 method uses a fixed scaling factor ΔP whereas in the MFxLMS method, the step size scales based on the channel state. The similarities between the CAPC methods and the LMS method are so clear that the MFxLMS method can be seen as a generalization of inverse power control approaches.
Power control over an AWGN channel
We performed simulations for FxLMS variants with a fixed channel gain h = 1. The error signal ε k used in the MSE calculations is given in Eq. (11) with c 0 = 0, leading to ε 0 = 1 that is set as the first value to Eq. (8). The parameter η used in the simulations was η = 6, increasing from η = 1 in the beginning until enough samples for η = 6 were achieved. Ensemble averaging over 100 independent trials was performed to obtain the results for the FxLMS and the MFxLMS algorithms. We used BPSK signal in transmission and thus the choice of μ = 1 corresponds to the normalized algorithm using the optimum step size defined in Eq. (18). As expected, the larger the step size is the higher the converged mean squared error is. The performance of the algorithms is almost identical in the AWGN channel.
Learning curves for the practical algorithms are shown in Fig. 4 together with the normalized MFxLMS algorithm and the normalized FxLMS algorithm, using 20 dB received SNR. Numbers of iterations to the convergence are 28, 10, 5, and 4 for the CAPC-1, CAPC-3, CAPC-2, and MFxLMS algorithms, respectively. Used error signal in simulations for CAPC-x algorithms was e k = x k − (P k − 1 h k + n k ) to obtain a fair comparison with the MFxLMS results. The step sizes for CAPC-x algorithms are defined in Eqs. (28)–(30) and the parameter γ ref = 20 dB. For the criterion for the convergence, we used 10 % misadjustment [4].
Learning curves for studied algorithms in an AWGN channel
The CAPC-1 is the slowest one due to fixed step size and the variable step size algorithms clearly outperform it. The CAPC-2 is faster than CAPC-3 since it uses a larger maximum step size for fast adaptation. CAPC-1 and CAPC-2 algorithms adapt the power up and down all the time. Other variable step algorithms can set the power to the wanted level and keep it there.
Power control over a fading channel with the non-quantized MFxLMS algorithm
Both conventional and modified versions of the FxLMS algorithm operate well in the AWGN channel as expected. However, robustness of the FxLMS is not as good as the robustness of the MFxLMS algorithm when we look at the performance in the fading channel modeled with Eq. (3). Two different channel realizations are considered in Fig. 5. It shows the received SNR levels for the simulations over a fading channel modeled using Eq. (3) with value of N = 12 and f d = 10 Hz. The LMS channel estimation with parameter value of ϑ = 0.1 is used in the FxLMS simulations. In addition, the values of \( a=1\kern0.5em \mathrm{and}\kern0.5em b=0.2/{\overline{\gamma}}_{rx} \), where \( {\overline{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{rx}} \) is the received SNR, were chosen for Eq. (24). The larger SNR is used, the more stable the control is and the smaller correction term is needed. In all the shown simulations, the power control update rate was 1000 Hz.
Performance of the FxLMS algorithm in two different fading channels
In the first row in Fig. 5, the channel variations both in phases and amplitudes are not too fast for the algorithms to make inversion accurately. The performance of the conventional and modified FxLMS algorithms is almost identical. However, in the second row, the faster phase variations during deep fades [39] clearly cause problems to the conventional FxLMS algorithm.
The MFxLMS algorithm performs robustly, and the received SNR variation remains at an acceptable level since it follows the amplitude variations rather well also during the deep fades. Fig. 6 presents performance of the FxLMS and the MFxLMS algorithms in a fading channel in low and medium SNR regimes when the channel realization of row 1 of the Fig. 5 is used. When the transmitted SNR is above 8 dB, the performance of the algorithms measured with standard deviation of received SNR is almost identical. The more robust MFxLMS obtains better performance than the conventional FxLMS below 8 dB due to problems caused by rapid phase variations to the latter. However, the performance of the MFxLMS collapses when the transmitted SNR drops below 5 dB while the FxLMS operates also below this limit. The reason for the collapse is the inclusion of noise term in Eq. (23) inside the last absolute value term. When the noise term is strong enough compared to the signal power, the algorithm cannot converge anymore. Above this performance limit, the MFxLMS is more robust and provides either equal or better performance compared to the conventional FxLMS. Thus, in all the remaining results, only the MFxLMS algorithm is considered in comparison with the CAPC-x algorithms.
Performance of the FxLMS algorithm in low and medium SNR regimes
Results with the channel model shown in the row two of the Fig. 5 are presented in Fig. 7. With the CAPC-1 method, the received SNR is too low during a deep fade. Then, the transmission power is adjusted upwards, and because of lag error, the power is too high for a while. The variable step methods perform better. The CAPC-3 and MFxLMS methods can keep the received signal close to the desired value. The CAPC-2 and CAPC-1 methods are changing the power by 1 dB up and down even when they are close to the target level.
Received SNR values with different power control methods
Variable step size methods have larger step sizes which make adaptation faster. This can be seen in the rise times in Table 1. The rise time is the time required for the received signal to change from the initial value, when transmitted signal is 0 dB, to the required 20 dB value in a time-variant channel (Eq. (3)) using the same parameters as for generating the Fig. 5. The results are average values over several simulations. The MFxLMS algorithm sets the transmission power to the required level fast. In addition, the system is able to compensate deep fades without suffering lag error. That is the reason for the better performance for adaptive step size algorithms.
Table 1 Performance of the practical algorithms
It is impossible to obtain identical received and transmitted SNRs since different algorithms use different amount of transmitted energy for communication due to their different adjustment methods. However, the difference is very small between CAPC-2, CAPC-3, and MFxLMS methods as shown in Table 1. Thus, the performance comparison between these methods is fair. The performance of the CAPC-1 method is decreased since it is spending more time during deep fades with a lower power and consequently the outage time is also higher. Standard deviation of the received SNR, averaged in the decibel domain, shows clearly the gain of using adaptive step sizes in control with the studied control command rate. Standard deviation is measured after the rise time to exclude large differences between the required SNR and the actual signal level at that time. The MFxLMS algorithm achieves the best performance among the compared algorithms.
The bit error rate (BER) performance of the studied algorithms in the channel (Eq. (5)) when L = 1 is considered in Fig. 8. The same metric was applied in [49] to compare fixed step and adaptive step power control. Simulations are carried out to establish the effect of power control step size (variable versus fixed) on the average BER performance. BPSK modulation is used in the simulations and its BER performance in AWGN channel plotted as a reference. The performance of the full channel inversion (FCI), referring to Eq. (9) with γ 0 = 0, and the optimal TCI in a known channel are plotted as references to show the effect of adaptation in the BER performance. The difference of roughly 5 dB between the FCI and AWGN curves is caused by fading. The difference can be reduced with diversity. In the low SNR regime, the noise error is the dominating source of errors and the variable step algorithms are not performing better than the CAPC-1 method that was studied with two different step sizes, ΔP = 0.5 dB and ΔP = 1 dB. The crossing in the BER curves between the MFxLMS and CAPC-1 methods around 12 dB SNR is due to effect of noise. When the SNR is higher, the standard deviation of the MFxLMS and the corresponding BER values are smaller. Variable step methods are using larger step sizes to correct the errors caused by the noise and that makes their performance worse in the low SNR regime. Smaller step sizes are better for noise averaging.
The bit error rate as a function of average transmitted SNR in channel (Eq. (5)), L = 1
Also, the theoretical FCI method is worse than the CAPC-1 method in the low SNR regime since it allocates more power to the deep fades whereas the CAPC-1 method cannot invert the channel totally, making it actually a truncated algorithm. When the SNR is increasing, the variable step methods can follow better the channel fading. The CAPC-1 method is too slow to invert the channel during fast changes especially with the smaller step size and the lag error makes the performance of it worse when SNR is increasing. The FxLMS method outperforms the other algorithms in the high SNR regime when the fastest converging step size defined in Eq. (24) is used, i.e., with a = 1. However, during low SNR values, the smaller step size is better due to better noise averaging properties. The FCI performance approaches the TCI curve when SNR increases since the probability of outage of the TCI method is reducing.
Power control over a diversity channel with the quantized MFxLMS algorithm
The previous results are provided for the non-quantized MFxLMS algorithm to see its capabilities. Quantized version is needed to verify the practicality of the algorithm. The experiments were made over the diversity channel since that would be an obvious feature to be used in practical systems. The diversity channel with L = 2 branches for simulation studies was generated using Eq. (5) and parameter values N = 12 and f d = 10 Hz. In order to see the effect of companding in the results, we made several simulation runs where we used either companding or pure quantization the feedback channel. The standard deviation of the received SNR of the algorithm with quantization was significantly lower with companding. Thus, we use companding in the following simulations. In addition to the proposed use of sending the correction term (Eq. (10)) in the feedback channel, we made experiments by sending the signal c k − 1 in the feedback channel to minimize calculations at the transmitter. However, the signal level variation using the correction term w k is smaller in the diversity channel, providing better performance with the quantization. Simulation results using the quantized correction term are shown in Figs. 9 and 10.
Bit error rate performance comparison in a diversity channel (L = 2)
Performance comparison in a diversity channel (L = 2)
The bit error rate performances of the studied algorithms are shown in Fig. 9 as a function of transmitted SNR. The performance of the full channel inversion in a known channel is plotted as a reference. It is actually a better reference in a diversity channel than in a channel without diversity where truncation gives a clear advantage. Full channel inversion without cutoff is the optimal inversion method in a diversity channel [12]. Control rate of the adaptive algorithms is 1000 Hz. Control step size of the MFxLMS algorithm in a diversity channel was experimentally found to provide good tradeoff between lag error and noise averaging when the parameters in Eq. (24) were \( a=1/\sqrt{L} \) and \( b=0.2/{\overline{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{tx}} \). With higher SNRs, the inversion is more accurate due to reducing effect of the noise error. All the tested algorithms work rather well in a diversity channel. The MFxLMS algorithm needs less SNR than other adaptive algorithms to achieve BER <10−4 due to accuracy of the adaptation. Very close to the performance of the non-quantized MFxLMS algorithm is achieved with a 4-bit power control command. The performance of the MFxLMS algorithm approaches the ideal inversion when the channel is changing more slowly. The performance differences between the algorithms in the high SNR regime can be well understood when we look at the accuracy of the algorithms measured with the standard deviation of received SNRs.
It can be seen from the results shown in Fig. 10 that the MFxLMS control achieves comparable performance to the best earlier algorithm studied, i.e., the CAPC-3 method. Accuracy of the CAPC-1 and CAPC-2 algorithms is restricted due to the minimum step size of 1 dB. The same crossing as detected in the BER curves between the MFxLMS and CAPC-1 methods around 12 dB SNR is seen also in Fig. 10. When the SNR is higher, the standard deviation of the MFxLMS and the corresponding BER values are smaller. In a diversity channel, the additional larger step size of the CAPC-2 decreases the accuracy of the control compared to the simple CAPC-1 control since the fading can be controlled with smaller steps. Variable step size algorithms are still outperforming fixed step algorithms in a diversity channel in the high SNR regime. However, the gain is achieved by using a higher feedback channel rate.
In order to see the effect of control rate to the accuracy of the control, simulations were performed with two different control rates, 1000 and 500 Hz. Results are shown in Fig. 11. Main comparison is made between the most accurate variable step algorithms, the MFxLMS and the CAPC-3 algorithm. CAPC-1 results with 1000 Hz control rate using 1 dB step size are provided as a reference curve. The results show that reduction in the control rate still keeps the accuracy of variable step algorithms better than with a 1-bit algorithm with 1000 Hz rate. The number of control bits needed to send over the feedback channel is 1500 and 2000 bits/s for variable step CAPC and MFxLMS algorithms, respectively. CAPC-1 with a higher control rate requires only 1000 bits/s, i.e., with a proper step size selection it gives rather good performance with a low feedback control rate. The rate depends on the fading rate of the channel and can be decreased, e.g., when higher order diversity is applied.
Performance comparison in a diversity channel (L = 2) with different control rates
We have developed the MFxLMS algorithm for inverse power control. We analyzed the algorithm in a noiseless channel, and simulations show that it converges well also in a noisy channel. The proposed algorithm provides a unified framework for many existing practical algorithms and can be seen as a generalization of inverse power control algorithms. We compared the proposed method to the well-known CAPC-1 method and its variable step variants. Simulations in fading channels with diversity show that the best conventional algorithms give comparable performance to the theory-based MFxLMS solution. However, the most important contribution is the linking of the LMS-based theory and conventional power control algorithms that have traditionally been developed in separate paths.
An interesting future topic would be to study the optimization of the step size (Eq. (24)) of the MFxLMS algorithm in a time-variant channel. Some related work has been done for direct estimation and decision feedback equalization in [32], but more investigation is needed to find solutions for inverse control. Another interesting problem to study would be the development of the algorithm to handle vector type signals. The algorithm could be able to take into account the correlation between subcarriers in the OFDM system.
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This work was performed in the framework of the SANTA CLOUDS and SOCRATE projects, partly funded by the Finnish Funding Agency of Technology and Innovation. In addition, the work has been funded by VTT’s own AWARENESS project. Authors would like to thank Prof. Simon Haykin for his encouraging comments that helped in preparing the manuscript.
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, P.O. Box 1100, FI-90571, Oulu, Finland
Marko Höyhtyä
& Aarne Mämmelä
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Correspondence to Marko Höyhtyä.
Höyhtyä, M., Mämmelä, A. A unified framework for adaptive inverse power control. J Wireless Com Network 2016, 41 (2016) doi:10.1186/s13638-016-0540-5
Feedback control systems
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The Conference is also a forum where social and labour questions of importance to the entire world are discussed freely - sometimes passionately. Delegates explore the course of social progress in the world, but the central theme is the report presented each year by the ILO's Director-General. The Conference also passes resolutions that provide guidelines for the ILO's general policy and future activities.
Every two years the Conference adopts the ILO's biennial work programme and budget, which is financed by Member States.
The Conference is tripartite and Kenya is usually represented by the Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Services, Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) and the Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) as well as technical advisors. The total number from Kenya averages 20 people a year. Lately, the Kenya delegation has included representatives of the National Social Security Fund, Judges of the Industrial Court, Senators and other relevant institutions.
The Governing Body is the executive body of the International Labour Organization (the Office is the secretariat of the Organization) It meets three times a year, in March, June and November. It takes decisions on ILO policy, decides the agenda of the International Labour Conference, adopts the draft Programme and Budget of the Organization for submission to the Conference, and elects the Director-General.
It is composed of 56 titular members (28 Governments, 14 Employers and 14 Workers) and 66 deputy members (28 Governments, 19 Employers and 19 Workers). Ten of the titular government seats are permanently held by States of chief industrial importance (Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States). The other Government members are elected by the Conference every three years (the last elections were held in June 2014). The Employer and Worker members are elected in their individual capacity.
Kenya is the only unique country that is holding titular positions in the Governing Body as the Government, Worker (COTU) and Employer (FKE) representatives are elected members of the Governing Body.
Kenya Participation In The Africa Group Meeting Of The Governing Body
As a result of the deliberations at the Africa Group Meetings, the group was able to agree on various positions for the Governing Body Session for the period 2014-17. Kenya will represent Africa in the following committees:
Committee Mandate of the Committe
Institutional Section (INS) Deals with issues related to the functioning of the Office and of the Organization, including constitutional obligations. This encompasses standing items such as reporting, constitutional obligations, and urgent matters arising between or during sessions. This is the Committee with the longest agenda item of the Governing Body.
The Working Party on the functioning of the Governing Body The Committee discusses ways in which the Conference might be made more dynamic and efficient.
Committee on Freedom of Association The Committee was established in 1951 to study complaints about violations of freedom of association, whether or not the country concerned has ratified the relevant ILO Conventions. Complaints may be brought against a member state by employers' and workers' organizations. It is composed of an independent chairperson and six representatives each of governments, employers and workers. Kenya will be the only Africa Group Representative during this session.
Board Member of the International Training Centre Turin This is the training centre that builds the capacity of ILO constituents. Kenya is a Deputy Member during this session.
ILO's Assitance To Kenya
Kenya joined the ILO in 1964 and ever since, the country derives maximum benefits from its membership in this world organization. There are various projects which are undertaken in the Country funded by ILO and other development partners. In 2001, A Task Force funded by the United States of America through the ILO was gazetted by the Attorney General to review old labour laws. The Task Force was composed of nominees from the wider society and representatives of the Key Social Partners, stakeholders – Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE), Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) and the Government. The new laws continue to be reviewed even now with the assistance of the ILO. Learn more about the laws here.
The Office’s work is expected to contribute to the improvement of labour relations, social justice and laws and policies consistent with regional and International labour standards. The overall impact should be an environment suitable for business growth, creation of decent employment and poverty reduction.
The International Labour Organization and the Italian Government established the International Training Centre in 1964 in Turin, Italy, as an advanced vocational training institute. The Centre is the training arm of the International Labour Organization. It runs training, learning and capacity development services for governments, employers' organizations ,workers' organizations and other national and international partners in support of Decent Work and sustainable development. It has since matured into a focal point for high-level in-service training. This takes place in Turin, in course participants' home countries or via the Internet. The Centre provides training and related services that develop human resources and institutional capabilities. It contributes to achieving the ILO’s goal of decent work for women and men.
It is a unique institution whose specific assets includes:
A reservoir of expertise on employment, labour, human resources development and capacity-building
In-depth knowledge of the specific social, economic and cultural conditions of different countries and region.
World-wide network of partner institutions and resource persons
Close links with the ILO and the whole United Nations system
Strong client orientation, multi-lingual delivery, inter-disciplinary perspective and gender sensitivity
Constant evaluation and fine-tuning of our services
Cutting-edge information and communication technology
Modern residential facilities on our campus in Turin, Italy
Favorable location for relevant study visits, in the heart of Europe
Advanced training facilities, global scope and multi-cultural learning environment
The specific role of the Centre is therefore to strengthen specific competencies of the ILO constituents. A large number of staff from the Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Services, COTU and FKE have undergone training at the International training Centre of the ILO in Turin and continue to benefit from Standard Courses and training activities at regional and Country level. Africa’s representatives in the centre at the Turin Board are as follows – Ghana, Sudan, Zimbabwe as regular members, substitute members include Kenya, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Chad and Mali.
Refugees Policy
Permanent Mission of the Republic of Kenya to the U.N. Office Geneva, Switzerland
1-3, Avenue de la Paix 1202 Geneva Switzerland
+41(0)22 906 40 50/73
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Cusick, Washington facts for kids
Cusick, Washington
Nickname(s): čmq̓ʷoqnú
Location of Cusick, Washington
Pend Oreille
0 sq mi (0 km2)
460.0/sq mi (177.6/km2)
Pacific (PST) (UTC-8)
PDT (UTC-7)
Cusick (Salish: čmq̓ʷoqnú ) is a town in Pend Oreille County, Washington, United States. The population was 207 at the 2010 census. Cusick is the headquarters of the federally recognized Kalispel Indian Community of the Kalispel Reservation.
Cusick occupies the former site of the largest village of the Pend d'Oreilles tribe, where as many as 1,000 people once lived.
Cusick was founded in 1902 by Joseph W. Cusick. Cusick was officially incorporated on March 15, 1927. One of the last Town Marshals was Kevin Derrick, who was the Marshal in the late 1970s.
Cusick is located at 48°20′12″N 117°17′46″W / 48.33667°N 117.29611°W / 48.33667; -117.29611 (48.336552, -117.296204).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.45 square miles (1.17 km2), all of it land.
1940 404 6.3%
Est. 2015 205 −1.0%
As of the census of 2010, there were 207 people, 86 households, and 56 families residing in the town. The population density was 460.0 inhabitants per square mile (177.6/km2). There were 101 housing units at an average density of 224.4 per square mile (86.6/km2). The racial makeup of the town was 73.4% White, 2.4% African American, 19.8% Native American, 1.4% from other races, and 2.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.4% of the population.
There were 86 households of which 32.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.9% were married couples living together, 22.1% had a female householder with no husband present, 8.1% had a male householder with no wife present, and 34.9% were non-families. 30.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.41 and the average family size was 2.96.
The median age in the town was 42.8 years. 24.6% of residents were under the age of 18; 9.3% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 19.8% were from 25 to 44; 33.3% were from 45 to 64; and 13% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the town was 57.5% male and 42.5% female.
As of the census of 2000, there were 212 people, 87 households, and 60 families residing in the town. The population density was 624.9 people per square mile (240.7/km²). There were 106 housing units at an average density of 312.4 per square mile (120.4/km²). The racial makeup of the town was 95.28% White, 3.77% Native American, and 0.94% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.47% of the population.
There were 87 households out of which 36.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 42.5% were married couples living together, 21.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.9% were non-families. 27.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 12.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.44 and the average family size was 2.90.
The median income for a household in the town was $14,583, and the median income for a family was $14,000. Males had a median income of $30,625 versus $21,250 for females. The per capita income for the town was $11,371. About 36.2% of families and 41.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 61.7% of those under the age of eighteen and 6.1% of those sixty five or over.
Municipalities and communities of Pend Oreille County, Washington, United States
County seat: Newport
Blueslide
Dalkena
Cusick, Washington Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.
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Kentucky Wesleyan’s Diane Earle Honored with Endowed Scholarship
Kentucky Wesleyan College and the Owensboro community honored and surprised Dr. Diane Earle at Opening Convocation on Aug. 31 with the announcement of an endowed scholarship for music students in her name. Funds for the Dr. Diane Earle Endowed Scholarship were raised by college and community members.
President Barton D. Darrell remarked, “Very few colleges or universities have the caliber of faculty we have at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Dr. Diane Earle is one shining example. Her talent and work ethic have combined to make her an internationally renowned pianist who has brought great distinction not only to Kentucky Wesleyan College, but also to our community, state and nation. But Dr. Earle is, incredibly, so much more. Our students are influenced by her intellect, experiences, passion for music and, as anyone who knows Dr. Earle knows – her love and enjoyment of people and life. Kentucky Wesleyan is so grateful to the supporters of Dr. Earle’s great work who have invested in this endowed scholarship in her name, so more young people have the opportunity to benefit from a Kentucky Wesleyan education.”
Dr. Earle is a professor of music, co-director of the music program and artist in residence at Wesleyan. She is also the director of music at Settle Memorial United Methodist Church in Owensboro, principal pianist with the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra and ambassador to the Nyali Music Schools and Centre in Mombasa, Kenya.
She founded and directs the Good Samaritan Concert Series at Settle Memorial, which raises thousands of dollars each to year to help combat area homelessness. Dr. Earle also directs the Panther Pianists, who perform in area senior living centers. She performs and educates thousands of elementary, middle and high school students in their schools and at the RiverPark Center each year. The City of Owensboro honored her as Grand Marshal of the 2014 Christmas Parade.
Dr. Earle has performed in 16 countries and 31 states. She was honored as the Kentucky Arts Council’s featured performer in May and June. In 2017, she will perform in Asia, Africa and on two concert tours to Europe.
She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of music degree from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and a master of music and doctor of musical arts degree from The Ohio State University. She did additional doctoral and post-doctoral work at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and Indiana University.
KWC names scholarship for Earle
By Keith Lawrence Messenger-Inquirer
Photo by Greg Eans, Messenger-Inquirer
Kentucky Wesleyan College surprised Diane Earle, professor of music, co-director of the KWC music program and artist in residence, Wednesday with a $25,000 endowed scholarship created in her honor.
The scholarship will be for future music students at the college.
“What really touches my heart is that this is a scholarship and it will go on into the future,” Earle told the school’s opening convocation, which filled Legacy Owensboro Church next door to the KWC campus.
President Bart Darrell said, “Everyone who has ever heard a note played on a piano knows Diane Earle. She has performed all over the world. She has brought great distinction to this college and this community.”
Earle has performed in 16 countries and 31 states, and next year, she plans to perform in Asia, Africa and on two concert tours in Europe.
The Kentucky Arts Council honored her as its featured performer in May and June.
Darrell presented Earle with a framed list of the college and community members who donated to the Dr. Diane Earle Endowed Scholarship.
“This is overwhelming,” Earle said. “I’m very grateful to everyone who contributed.”
She said she moved to Owensboro in 1984 to teach at KWC.
“I’ve had opportunities to move,” Earle said. “But there was no reason to. There is so much heart in this community. You give more to me than I give to you.”
Darrell said, “Very few colleges or universities have the caliber of faculty we have at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Dr. Diane Earle is one shining example. Her talent and work ethic have combined to make her an internationally renowned pianist who has brought great distinction not only to Kentucky Wesleyan College, but also to our community, state and nation.”
Earle is also the director of music at Settle Memorial United Methodist Church, principal pianist with the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra and ambassador to the Nyali Music Schools and Centre in Mombasa, Kenya.
She founded and directs the Good Samaritan Concert Series at Settle Memorial, which raises thousands of dollars each year to help combat homelessness.
Earle also directs the Panther Pianists, who perform in area senior living centers.
She performs and educates thousands of elementary, middle and high school students in their schools and at the RiverPark Center each year.
In 2014, Earle was honored as Grand Marshal of the Christmas Parade.
She has a bachelor of music degree from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and a master of music and doctor of musical arts degree from The Ohio State University.
Earle also did additional doctoral and post-doctoral work at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and Indiana University.
klawrence@messenger-inquirer.com 270-691-7301
Why I Give: Jeffrey White ’72
Kentucky Wesleyan College to host Constitution Day presentation
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Latest Tech News Blog
Home Apple Here are all of the Apple retail store openings, moves, and remodels...
Here are all of the Apple retail store openings, moves, and remodels in 2018 & 2019
With a few setbacks, Apple is almost continuously expanding and updating its global retail chain, now over 500 locations. Here’s the company’s evolution in 2018 and 2019 so far, updated on June 20 with news of a remodeled store in Hawaii.
Apple Ala Moana – June 20
Apple is due to reopen its outlet in Honolulu’s Ala Moana Shopping Center on June 21 following a round of renovations. The company sent out email notifications inviting past customers to experience new Today at Apple sessions at the remodeled store, located in the world’s largest open-air mall.
Nashville – June 15
OliverMcMillan and Spectrum Emery in conjunction with construction firm Skanska are continuing work on Nashville’s Fifth and Broadway space, still expected to be the home of an Apple store. The renovated center that the expected store will occupy will also be home to 200,000 square feet of retail and entertainment, as well as a 34-story apartment complex.
Neither Apple nor the firms involved in construction have commented on the matter, but as with the April 2 report, the Nashville Post claims to have confirmed the location.
Apple offered a sneak peek at its Xinyi A13 location in Taipei ahead of a 10 a.m. grand opening on June 15. A glass-and-stone pavilion design is reminiscent of other recent flagships, such as Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
The outlet will be the first in Taiwan to host artist-led Today at Apple sessions. Also new to the country is a Genius Grove, which affords people the opportunity to work with Geniuses under a canopy of trees.
After closing in March for renovations, Apple Bondi in Australia is scheduled to reopen on June 29 at 9:30 a.m., the company announced in an update to its regional website. Like other recently updated retail sites, the Bondi location is expected to receive the “Apple 2.0” treatment.
Apple is due to reopen the Apple Passeig de Grcia store in Barcelona on June 20, according to the company’s regional website. The outlet closed earlier this year to receive a modern “Apple 2.0” makeover.
Apple Xinyi A13. | Source: Mobile01
Apple SVP of Retail Deirdre O’Brien in a post to Instagram on Tuesday revealed the company’s second Taiwan store, Apple Xinyi A13, will open on June 15.
The upcoming Apple outlet is located at the base of Taipei’s Xinyi A13 shopping mall and, when opened, will be the city’s second brick-and-mortar Apple store.
Apple’s signature Puerta del Sol store in downtown Madrid is undergoing renovations but still operating, according to iPadizate. The company has temporarily blocked off access to the second floor, including even a central “light patio.” It’s unknown when work will be finished and/or if it will spread to the first floor.
Apple Pioneer Place in Portland, Ore. will reopen May 31 at 10 a.m. local time. The shop is on 450 SW Yamhill, and has been closed for renovations since March 24. Apple is presumably upgrading to its latest standard design, which includes things like video walls and forum seating.
The company is meanwhile preparing its second Taiwanese store, based in front of the Xinyi A13 mall in Taipei. No opening date has been set.
In development for some three years, Apple Carnegie Library in Washington, D.C. will finally open on May 11 at 10 a.m. The shop measures roughly 19,000 square feet, and making room for Apple required relocating the library’s book collection.
To mark the launch Apple is hosting a “StoryMakers Festival” between May 18 and June 29. The event will consist of a variety of creatively-themed Today at Apple sessions, headlined by names like GoldLink, Nigel Barker, and No Kings Collective.
A massive 20,000-square-foot store is en route to London’s Knightsbridge district, according to The Evening Standard. Apple has reportedly signed a deal for a space between Harrods and Harvey Nichols.
The company already has five stores in the London area, but the city also has a population of over 14 million people, and is regularly flooded with tourists and other travelers.
In the U.S., Maryland’s Mall in Columbia shop is moving into an 8,000-square-foot space, 9to5Mac says. The existing storefront was founded in 2006, and measures 5,000 square feet.
Three U.S. locations — Scottsdale Quarter, Eton, and Ridge Hill — are upgrading with video walls and forum spaces. Scottsdale will additionally be getting new shelving.
Apr. 8
A mockup of the proposed Pacific Centre store.
The city of Vancouver, Canada’s Urban Design Panel has voted 4-3 against supporting a proposed design for an Apple store at the Pacific Centre, CityDuo says. One point of criticism was a planned “green” wall behind Apple’s outdoor pavilion, but the broader theme among members was that they didn’t feel the pavilion would blend well with the mall it would be attached to.
The panel is only an advisory group and is unable to block the project, but its opinion will likely come into play when the city’s Development Permit Board makes a decision on May 13.
Apple may be replacing its existing Cherry Hill Mall store in New Jersey with a bigger, more modern location, a Courier Post report suggests. The city’s planning board recently met to discuss a “flagship” store for an unspecified tenant, and a lawyer for the mall’s owner said this tenant “is an internationally recognized technology equipment store” that currently occupies 5,700 square feet.
Renderings strongly resemble an Apple store. If Apple is indeed the new tenant, it will be replacing a North Face and occupying some 10,000 square feet, with the added bonus of facing a 2,000 square foot plaza.
According to industry sources, Apple is looking at Nashville’s Fifth + Broadway location. A mostly completed section of a new-build retail area has been demolished, to “meet tenant needs” link text“>according to the Nashville Post.
Apple has reportedly scrapped plans to launch any Israeli retail store in the near future, despite potentially lucrative sales.
The company had been considering a shop at the base of the Azrieli Sarona Tower, but the Azrieli Group rejected proposed financial terms, according to Haaretz. The paper further claimed that no mall owner in the country has been willing to accept Apple conditions, leading to it stepping back after a year or more of searching.
One of Apple’s demands was help covering marketing and inventory costs, a Haaretz source said. The company has made similar demands with carriers selling iPhones, even though it makes tens of billions in profits each quarter.
Apple’s flagship Dutch store in Amsterdam is undergoing partial renovations, iCulture.nl says. While one floor is being kept open, the other is being shut, forcing things like the Genius Bar and accessory displays to move. In photos indoor construction barriers can be seen, and the company is apparently using temporary shelving to handle product overflow.
The full extent of Apple’s plans in unknown, but text on the barriers promises that the shop will become “even more beautiful” and gain “improved Today at Apple sessions.” One source indicated that the renovation work will last until October 2019 — a long time for any Apple renovation work, much less a single floor. That may be because of the Amsterdam store’s historic architecture.
Elsewhere, minor upgrades are being made at two Australian stores: Apple Highpoint near Melbourne, and Apple Broadway near Sydney. Highpoint at least is getting its own video wall. In the U.S., Dallas’ Apple Knox Street has started its own previously-promised renovations.
A dome at Marina Bay Sands, allegedly for Apple, is already under construction.
The company’s second and third Singapore stores are in development, according to the The Straits Times. One should open within Jewel Changi Airport, and the other at Marina Bay Sands, close to the city’s business district. The Marina shop may have a dockside location replacing the Avalon night club, as well as a dome structure completely unique within the Apple retail chain. It may be linked to the rest of the shopping center by way of an underwater tunnel, similar to one used for a Louis Vuitton outlet.
Apple has confirmed the impending closure of two Texas stores, located in Plano and Frisco. Willow Bend and Stonebriar will both shutter on Apr. 12, the former being one of the oldest in Apple’s retail chain, dating back to 2002. The pair are being replaced on Apr. 13 by a Galleria Dallas location, even though that’s a 30-minute drive from Frisco.
It may be that Apple is trying to remove its retail presence from the Eastern District of Texas, a notorious venue for patent trials given relatively little court traffic and plaintiff-friendly judges. Without local Apple stores, it may be harder for patent holders to establish standing.
The Yarra Building.
In a Future Melbourne Committee meeting held on Tuesday, city councilors and local organizations alike expressed opposition to a permit application by Federation Square management for demolishing the Yarra Building. Removing that building would pave the way for a long-controversial Apple store.
In the run-up to the meeting, over 100,000 people signed a petition against the store, and the city council received some 1,100 like-minded submissions. A single submission came in Apple’s favor, and during the meeting only one councilor backed the permit.
Although many people aren’t fans of the Square’s architecture, groups like “Our City, Our Square” have argued that it’s now integral to Melbourne’s identity, and that an Apple store would permanently alter this. The company isn’t out of the game yet — Heritage Victoria has yet to approve or deny the demolition.
In the U.S., a Carnegie Library store — also controversial because of cultural appropriation — is now expected to open by late spring, possibly as soon as April. The library’s book collection is being relocated, and reading rooms are being turned into product demo spaces. Apple is also paying Events D.C. between $1 million and $2 million in compensation.
Apple Pioneer Place in Portland, Ore. will close for renovations on March 24 with no firm reopening date. The shop technically dates back to 2005, though its current outdoor space was only established in May 2014. Apple is presumably upgrading to its latest design aesthetic, which includes things like video walls and forum seating.
Apple Bondi, located on Oxford Street in Bondi Junction, Australia, is closing for renovations beginning March 24. The company hasn’t said when the store will reopen or what changes are being made, but the shop will likely catch up with a modern design aesthetic including things like wooden shelves, a video wall, and possibly forum space.
Apple has filed permits to open a store in Galleria Dallas, an indoor mall located at the corner of Interstate 635 and the Dallas North Tollway. The company is looking to occupy 8,155 square feet on the first floor.
Existing stores in the outlying communities of Plano and Frisco will close, possibly as soon as mid-April, sources told 9to5Mac. It’s possible that Apple will assign at least some of those stores’ workers to Galleria Dallas, since Plano and Frisco are about 30 minutes away and part of the larger Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Apple confirmed the closures in a statement to AppleInsider and other venues.
We’re making a major investment in our stores in Texas, including significant upgrades to NorthPark Center, Southlake and Knox Street. With a new Dallas store coming to the Dallas Galleria this April, we’ve made the decision to consolidate stores and close Apple Stonebriar and Apple Willow Bend. All employees from those stores will be offered positions at the new Dallas store or other Apple locations.
Speculation exists that the move is to skirt the “rocket docket” that has developed in the Eastern District of Texas patent court. However, as Apple has at least 12 other corporate facilities in the region that AppleInsider is aware of, all of those would have to be closed as well.
Apple might be eyeing a massive expansion to its street-front store in Reston Town Center in Reston, Va., according to a report from Reston Now. Building permits point to a takeover of a recently vacated Pottery Barn location that sits adjacent to Apple’s current outlet. Plans mention a video wall, suggesting the company intends to transform the location into a next-generation Apple Store.
Separately, Apple’s Natick Collection store in Natick, Mass., will resume business on Feb. 16 at 10 a.m. local time. The spot has been closed for renovations since May 31 last year, and should take up Apple’s current fashion-oriented aesthetic with touches like wooden shelf displays and an oversized video wall.
Rendering of the proposed CF Pacific Centre outlet. | Source: Perkins + Will Architects
Documents unearthed by The Daily Hive suggest Apple has settled on a location for a long-awaited flagship store in Vancouver. A development application submitted by Perkins + Will Architects outlines plans for a major reworking of the CF Pacific Centre’s rotunda entrance building into a two-story retail pavilion.
While Apple has yet to make an official announcement, the document includes mention of a metal cantilevered roof, all-glass facade and other design hallmarks of Apple’s flagship stores. Outside, the building is slated to feature warm grey limestone cladding, granite paving, wood soffits and low-iron glass, while the interior boasts wood ceilings and bench seating running the length of the second level, according to the report.
The flagship is expected to replace the current Apple Store located inside the adjacent Pacific Centre shopping mall.
Apple Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto is relocating to a bigger space within the same mall, one currently held by Abercrombie & Fitch, MacRumors sources say. The latter company is already poised to move to a new spot this spring, though Apple’s relocation might not be complete until sometime in 2020.
The mall’s existing Apple store occupies just 4,977 square feet, extremely small given that Toronto is Canada’s biggest city. The A&F space is 10,680 square feet, and Apple could potentially choose to annex surroundings for even more room.
A long-rumored store at The One, a skyscraper in development at the corner of Yonge and Bloor, is meanwhile apparently confirmed by a brochure for a nearby condominium complex at 19 Bloor Street West. The marketing claims that the store will primarily face Bloor, with just a small section running along Yonge.
The One won’t be completely finished until 2022 or later, but the ground-level retail space could be ready in 2020.
A store in the northern Japanese city of Sendai will be shuttering Jan. 25. The shop launched in the Ichibancho shopping district in December 2005, but has remained largely unchanged, and now finds itself as the country’s smallest Apple store. It’s not clear if and when Sendai will get a replacement.
Stateside, Apple Bridgewater in New Jersey is temporarily closing for renovations starting Jan. 27. No reopening date is available.
Florida’s Altamonte Springs shop will close on Jan. 13 for renovations. The location in Altamonte Mall dates back to 2008, and sports aesthetics Apple now considers outdated, such as steel panels. The company is likely to take the opportunity to expand into a nearby vacant space.
During the closure, people wanting in-person shopping or tech support will have to turn to stores in Orlando. No reopening date has been set.
Elsewhere in the state Apple is continuing its renovations of Waterside Shops in Naples, which closed Sept. 2. According to The Next Miami, the company will also be relocating its Aventura store to a bigger space next to the Aventura Mall’s outdoor slide.
An architect’s render of the new design.
Apple will be using a multilevel layout for its replacement store in Atlanta’s Lenox Square mall, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The current outlet, dating back to 2002, occupies a single floor. Other changes will include a wood-planked roof and a new facade consisting of six floor-to-ceiling glass panels. Sitting on either end will be curved stone walls.
The updated shop should be based between a Zinburger restaurant and the mall’s entrance from Peachtree Road. An opening date is uncertain, but past reports have pointed to late 2019.
Apple previewed Paris’ new Champs-Elysees store ahead of its Nov. 18 opening. For more details and photos, check out our news story.
Lynnwood, Wash.’s Apple Alderwood Mall will finally resume business on Nov. 17 at 10 a.m. local time. The shop has been closed for renovations since Feb. 25, suggesting a major overhaul. Lynnwood is just north of Seattle, and some traffic may have been picked up by Apple University Village, which debuted this summer.
Apple’s new leading Parisian store, Apple Champs-Elysees, will launch Nov. 18. Since late October the building has had work from 15 artists on its windows, and the company is preparing an assortment of special Today at Apple sessions, including live art, a Music Lab with Songe and Myd, and two concerts.
The Westchester outlet in White Plains, N.Y. will reopen Nov. 10 at 10 a.m. The shop has been closed since Apr. 2, suggesting major renovations.
Apple Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Calif. will reopen on Nov. 17 at 10 a.m. local time. The shop has been closed since Sept. 16 for renovations, and in its new form will include a video wall plus a forum for Today at Apple events.
Undergoing renovations since April, Apple Southlake Town Square will resume business on Nov. 3 at 10 a.m. Central time. Exact changes are unclear, but the store will presumably catch up with the company’s current retail aesthetics, which including things like oversized video displays. Southlake is a town in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Apple has updated grand opening news for its ICONSIAM location in Bangkok. The outlet is due to open Nov. 10, and will be the company’s first shop in Thailand.
Tokyo’s Apple Shibuya will reopen on Oct. 26. The store has been undergoing renovations for 11 months, forcing Apple Omotesando to take in extra traffic. Such a long remodeling is unprecedented, suggesting that Apple intends to wow the public and make it a key Japanese location. The whole country has only nine Apple stores, despite a population of over 127 million.
Having been closed for four months of renovations, Apple’s Covent Garden store in London will finally reopen on Friday, Oct. 26. That’s also the official ship date for the iPhone XR.
The extent of Apple’s changes is unknown, but as a prominent location the store is likely to get a “forum” space for Today at Apple events in addition to other modern touches like an oversized video wall.
The closure of the Carrousel du Louvre outlet in Paris will take place on Oct. 27, Apple has announced. As revealed last month, it will be replaced by a Champs Elysees location in November. Workers from the Louvre store are being offered jobs elsewhere in the city.
Image Credit: AppleInsider reader Rob R.
Apple Deer Park in Illinois, which is relocating to a former Restoration Hardware in Deer Park Town Center, will throw open its doors this Saturday at 10 a.m. local time. Last-minute construction work is underway.
The Robina Town Centre shop in Queensland, Australia will reopen Sept. 29 at 9 a.m., having moved to a different location within the same mall. As usual with recent relocations, the store will have an overhauled design including a video wall, and in this case forum seating for Today at Apple events.
A new shop, Scottsdale Fashion Square, is set to open outside of Phoenix, Ariz. on Sept. 29 at 10 a.m. It will replace the city’s aging Biltmore location, which is smaller and lacks Apple’s current retail aesthetics.
Opening the same day will be Nashville’s renovated Green Hills store. The space closed in February, but the downtime comes with the benefit of a greatly expanded footprint.
The relocated Apple Eastview in Victor, N.Y. will reopen on Sept. 21, the same day the iPhone XS, XS Max, and Apple Watch Series 4 will become available. For those launches the shop will open at 8 a.m. instead of its usual 10.
Changes to the shop are uncertain, but it should offer a bigger space and a modernized design. The Eastview outlet first opened in 2005 and went largely unaltered until the relocation effort.
A long-expected Champs Elysees outlet in Paris will open this November, the company told France’s LCI. The new flagship will be located at 114, and occupy at least two floors, with the rest of the space being dedicated to offices. Annual rent should be about 14 million euros ($16.2 million), three times what the previous tenant paid.
Design work is being handled by Apple’s usual ally Foster + Partners. The store should also be powered entirely by clean energy.
In a tradeoff, the company will be shuttering its Carrousel du Louvre location once its lease expires. Workers there will be offered other jobs in the Paris region, presumably including Champs Elysees.
Apple is set to open a new outlet in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China. Photos of the store, currently under construction in the iconic Gate to the East building, were posted to a Weibo page dedicated to Apple retail openings.
With an official “coming soon” facade in place, Apple Suzhou should open soon.
The Third Street Promenade location in Santa Monica, Calif. will close on Sept. 16 for renovations. It’s unknown when work will complete, but the shop will at least be out of action for Apple’s usual fall iPhone launch.
One compensation is that Santa Monica is a part of the greater Los Angeles area, and the city has numerous Apple stores, including Apple Century City only 15 minutes away.
The SouthPark store in Charlotte, N.C. is slated to reopen on Sept. 2 at 11 a.m. local time following four months of renovations. The shop dates back to 2004 and in fact relocated to a bigger space in 2013.
Sept. 2 will also signal the beginning of planned renovations at Waterside Shops in Naples, Fla.
Opening Aug. 25, Apple Kyoto will be the company’s first outlet in Japan’s former imperial capital. Located on Shijo Dori, which has served as Kyoto’s shopping mecca since the 1600s, the thoroughly modern retail store features design elements inspired by local materials, architecture and tradition.
The upper levels of the space are covered in a “translucent envelope” inspired by Japanese toro lanterns, while the upper facade uses lightweight timber and special paper that references Japan’s traditional houses, Apple says. Indeed, a picture of what appears to be an upper level of the store shows a wall design that resembles a shoji door’s wood-and-paper paneling.
Inside, a sales floor is split between multiple levels, each of which opens to a central atrium where Apple plans to host Today at Apple sessions. Boasting an “Apple Store 2.0” aesthetic, the interior layout is open with ample room for Apple’s custom-built demonstration tables, accessory shelves and, on ground level, a 6K video wall.
Two U.S. shops will be reopening in bigger spaces on Aug. 18. These include Apple Orland Square Mall in Orland Park, Ill., and Apple Irvine Spectrum Center in Irvine, Calif. Both date back over a decade, and until relocation efforts the Orland Square Mall store was notoriously small, with aisles easily choked by traffic.
Apple’s new store in Kyoto, Japan will launch at 10 a.m. local time on Aug. 25. The shop will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day of the week, operating out of the Kyoto Zero Gate building.
The company has eight other stores in the country, but until now has never had one in Kyoto.
Apple Waterside Shops, located in the Florida town of Naples near Fort Myers, is scheduled to shutter temporarily starting Sept. 2 while renovations are in progress. It’s unknown when work will be finished.
The store dates back to March 2007, and needs a number of changes to bring it in line with Apple’s current design aesthetics. These include adding a forum space and an oversized video wall.
An official mockup of Apple’s renovation plans.
Apple has revealed more about its plans for Tower Theatre in Los Angeles. The company’s senior director of retail design, B.J. Siegel, told the Los Angeles Times it will be “in the upper echelon” of the company’s stores, different from anything else in the city, retaining some of its theatrical design touches and hosting events meant to draw hundreds of people. The place where the theater’s movie screen used to be will play home to a video wall.
The shop should become a “mecca” for talks by experts in movies, TV, and music, Siegel added, taking advantage of Los Angeles’ role as an epicenter of mainstream commercialized culture.
By way of city work permits, Apple has confirmed plans to restore and convert the well-known — but long abandoned — Tower Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, according to Curbed. The structure was originally built in 1927 and was the first L.A. theater to be wired for sound, but is now known only as a landmark thanks to its period architectural details.
Apple is set to replace the gallery mezzanine, as well as retrofit the building to better withstand earthquakes. It’s unknown when Apple might be ready to open a store.
Apple’s relocated Walnut Creek, Calif. store will open on July 28 at 10 a.m local time. The new shop is based in Broadway Plaza, at the location of a former California Pizza Kitchen. Architecturally it should resemble the likes of Apple’s Michigan Avenue, with a flat roof and glass walls that blend the store with its surroundings.
Apple Piazza Liberty in Milan will officially throw open its doors on July 26, retail head Angela Ahrendts told Io Donna. The shop will be open 24 hours a day, the same as the Apple Fifth Avenue location in New York City.
One of Apple’s renderings of the proposed Stockholm location.
Through Sept. 12, the Swedish public has been given a chance to see and comment on Apple’s draft proposal for a shop bordering Stockholm’s Kungstradgarden. Also looking at the proposal are 24 regional organizations, and a consultation meeting is set for Aug. 23.
The shop’s look would take after Apple’s more recent buildings, such as its Michigan Avenue store in Chicago, or the Visitor Center in Cupertino. This includes a low, flat roof, curved glass, and wood planking for the ceiling.
Apple has been working towards the Kungstradgarden shop since early 2016, but has encountered resistance from some members of the public concerned about commercializing a historic location, even if Apple’s store would simply be replacing a TGI Fridays. The company’s architects did tone down the original design, which could help it blend into surroundings.
Apple Cotai Central in Macau, opening June 29, has been revealed has having a millimeter-thick stone “curtain,” as well as a bamboo grove.
A DTLA Rising report resuscitated rumors that Apple may take over Los Angeles’ famous Tower Theater. Tenants in exterior stalls have been told to vacate by the end of June, and one source claims that Apple is hoping to “encase the entire Tower Theater in a glass cube,” though more likely is a restoration given the Tower Theater’s historical significance.
Apple has confirmed that its updated University Village store in Seattle will open at 9:30 a.m. local time on June 30. Replacing the old outlet, the new one has more interior space including a Forum and video wall for hosting Today at Apple events. The space also focuses on the use of natural light, through both the facade and a skylight.
The company’s renovated Palo Alto, Calif. location on University Avenue is set to reopen on the same day at 10 a.m. Pacific time.
Apple’s upcoming flagship in Milan, Italy should open in late July, possibly as soon as July 18 according to Corriere della Sera, though the company doesn’t typically open stores midweek. The shop was allegedly going to open in December 2017, then this February, but was delayed by the discovery of asbestos in walls and pipes.
Apple’s first Israeli store could potentially open in Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Sarona Tower. At the moment, though, the Azrieli Mall Group is in “preliminary negotiations,” according to Globes. Another publication, Yediot Achronot, indicated that talks have been in progress for “several” months.
The company confirmed that its second store in Macau, Apple Cotai Central, will throw open its doors on June 29. Its name stems from the nearby Sands Cotai Central casino resort.
Two of Apple’s bigger stores — Covent Garden in London, and Wangfujing in Beijing —were announced as closing for renovations later in the month.
Apple Natick Collection in Natick, Mass. has shuttered for renovations. It’s not known when the store will reopen.
In a rare announcement, Apple said it would permanently shutter its Pier store in Atlantic City, N.J. without opening a replacement. 52 people were affected, forced to either find new jobs with Apple or a different employer.
The last dedicated Apple Watch pop-up outlet, located in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward, finally reached an end.
Apple’s first flagship-level store for Latin America is reportedly under construction at Antara Fashion Hall in Ciudad de Mexico’s (CDMX) upscale Polanco district. It should be a single-story structure, but have the trappings of any flagship, such as a boardroom for business clients.
The company’s Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall, Pa. was revealed to be relocating to a bigger space in September.
Apple was sued for $15,000 over injuries caused during an “active shooter” drill at the Florida Mall Apple Store.
The crush of battery replacement demands forced Apple to stretch its workforce to cope.
Apple Shinjuku opened in the Japanese capital of Tokyo, not far from Shinjuku Station.
Apple’s Westchester mall store in White Plains, N.Y. closed for renovations.
Apple’s Bluewater outlet in the U.K. reopened after nine months of renovations.
The landlord behind Apple’s flagship Michigan Avenue store in Chicago put the space up for sale, though Apple itself is liable to stay put.
A New Orleans police officer was accused of stealing AirPods from Apple Lakeside Shopping Center — while still in uniform.
Apple’s first Austrian store opened on Vienna’s Kaerntner Strasse.
Apple Southlake Town Square in Dallas-Fort Worth was announced as closing for renovations on March 4. It was later revealed that changes would include an expansion and various external improvements.
Two Apple workers were hospitalized after a battery rupture at a shop in Hong Kong.
Plans were made to close its stores in Green Hills, Nashville and Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood for renovations.
Apple opened its first South Korean store in Seoul.
Apple began hunting down a workforce for its Carnegie Library store in Washington, D.C.
The company’s discounted battery replacement program — started in the wake of Apple admitting it was throttling iPhones — caused a rush on supplies, particularly for the iPhone 6 Plus.
Yet another iPhone battery fire, this time at the Calle Colon store in Valencia, Spain.
An iPhone battery fire forced the evacuation of a store in Zurich, Switzerland.
Apple sued the activist organization Attac for staging protests at its French stores, claiming the group “put the security of our customers and employees at risk.” Attac has accused Apple of exploiting tax loopholes at the expense of the public, depriving social services of billions in funding.
Rumors meanwhile emerged of a new store in Toronto, Canada at the corner of Yonge and Bloor, not far from Queen’s Park and the Royal Ontario Museum.
An embarassment for the company’s high-profile Michigan Avenue store in Chicago was the need to rope off the surrounding area to cope with falling ice and snow. While some initially blamed poor architecture, failing to account for Chicago winters, Apple insisted that the problem was a result of glitches in the rooftop heating system.
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Home Environmental Law Michigan Belleville
Belleville, Michigan Environmental Lawyers
Dennis Palmieri
Ann Arbor, MI Environmental Law Attorney with 32 years experience
(734) 764-9182 1239 Kipke Dr
Environmental and Administrative
I am not in private practice. I work for the University of Michigan and do not take clients.
Southfield, MI Environmental Law Lawyer with 28 years experience
Environmental, Antitrust, Business and Personal Injury
Laura Sheets
Detroit, MI Environmental Law Lawyer with 19 years experience
(313) 392-0015 975 E Jefferson Ave
Environmental and Consumer
Laura L. Sheets is an associate with Liddle & Dubin, P.C. Ms. Sheets believed that a law degree would be a tremendous tool to help people. She wanted to use that tool to make a positive impact in people’s lives and in their communities. She has fulfilled that goal working for Liddle & Dubin, P.C. Ms. Sheets has been with LD for more than a decade and has devoted the bulk of her practice to helping people who have been damaged by catastrophic sewage backups or who have suffered because of a neighboring corporate polluter. ...
Douglas Callahan
Fenton, MI Environmental Law Attorney with 44 years experience
(810) 955-5248 242 W Caroline St
Environmental, Business, Criminal Defense and Real Estate
I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on the day of my Father's graduation from the University of Michigan Law School. I graduated from Fenton High School as a Member of the National Honor Society. I served my classmates as their Vice President of Student Council, Sophmore Class President, Vice President of Senior High Student Council, Law Day Judge. In addition I played and lettered in tennis my Sophmore, Junior and Senior years. I earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Humanities Pre-Law from Michigan State University. At MSU I served my classmates as Floor President of Wilson Hall, Member...
David Dubin
Detroit, MI Environmental Law Attorney with 23 years experience
Mr. Dubin joined the firm in 1997 and became a partner in 2007. Since then, Mr. Dubin has devoted his entire career to fighting the injustice of flooding, air pollution, evacuations caused by industrial accidents and environmental contamination. The problem with decaying sewer infrastructure is a significant problem felt by residents throughout the Midwest. The typical consequence of this neglect is flooding of homes and businesses. Unfortunately, many Midwest residents have first-hand knowledge of this problem. As a result of Mr. Dubin’s hard work, thousands of flood victims have obtained the compensation they deserve. Mr. Dubin has represented...
Nicholas Alexander Coulson
Detroit, MI Environmental Law Attorney with 6 years experience
(313) 392-0015 975 E. Jefferson Avenue
Free ConsultationEnvironmental and Consumer
Nicholas Coulson is an associate with Liddle & Dubin, P.C. Mr. Coulson first joined the firm as a law clerk in June, 2012. As an attorney, he is proud to continue his work protecting people’s property rights from the actions of corporate and governmental entities. As a law clerk, Mr. Coulson was closely involved with the firm’s successful appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Bell v. Cheswick Generating Station, GenOn Power Midwest, L.P. In that case the Third Circuit ruled, in a precedential opinion, that homeowners’ claims for pollution of their...
Steven Liddle
Steven D. Liddle is a lifelong resident of Michigan having attended Michigan State University and the University of Detroit School of Law. As the managing partner of Liddle & Dubin, P.C., he has successfully represented thousands of individuals in class actions in cases involving sewage backups, air pollution and consumer fraud. In representing his clients, Mr. Liddle will passionately utilize all legal means necessary to advance the interests of his clients. Some examples: 1. Fox Creek litigation. As a young lawyer Mr. Liddle was approached by residents of the lower east side of Detroit...
Marc Shaye
Franklin, MI Environmental Law Attorney with 50 years experience
(248) 851-1936 32500 Scenic Ln
Franklin, MI 48025
Free ConsultationEnvironmental
Born Detroit, Michigan, December 14, 1942; Admitted to Bar 1969, Michigan,
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit,U.S. Supreme Court; 1970, District of Columbia; 1996, Ohio.
University of Michigan (B.A., 1965); Wayne State University, 1965-6 MBA Program, Wayne State University School of Law (J.D., 1969)
Member:; Oil Spill Response Plan
Negotiation Committee to Develop Federal Regulations Pursuant to
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990;
Certified by the State of California as an Environmental Assessor;
Lecturer, Master of Science Program, Hazardous Waste Management,
Wayne State University;
Guest lecturer HAZWOPER course Wayne State University 2014
Member: The District of Columbia Bar;...
David Oppliger
Port Huron, MI Environmental Law Attorney
(810) 966-1881 1111 Pine Grove Ave
Port Huron, MI 48060
Environmental, Business, Collections and Real Estate
Attorney with over 25 years experience. Practice is located in Port Huron Michigan which is one hour north of Detroit on the shores of the St. Clair River and Lake Huron.
Terrance P Sheehan
Grand Blanc, MI Environmental Law Lawyer with 56 years experience
(810) 953-1100 G-8469 S. Saginaw Street
Environmental, Animal, Appeals and Business
Mr. Mark A. Cooley
Ovid, MI Environmental Law Lawyer
Ovid, MI 48866
Philip Rosi
Traverse City, MI Environmental Law Lawyer with 56 years experience
(231) 941-5878 735 S Garfield Ave
Environmental, Energy, Estate Planning and Real Estate
The John Marshall Law School and The University of Chicago Law School
A resident of Traverse City since 1980, Philip Rosi was born in Chicago, Illinois. He is a graduate of Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) with an Engineering Degree. After a brief stint with Lockheed Aircraft as a Design Engineer, he attended and graduated from The University of Chicago Law School. He served in the Executive Office of the President Lyndon Johnson and was the Assistant to the Comptroller of the Federal Power Commission. Before moving to Traverse City he practiced law in Brattleboro, Vermont for ten years. His practice in Michigan has centered, in...
W. Dane Carey
Traverse City, MI Environmental Law Attorney
(231) 929-0500 100 Park Street
Environmental, Administrative, Business and Real Estate
Eric R. Gielow
Norton Shores, MI Environmental Law Lawyer
(231) 747-7160 281 Seminole Road - 2nd Floor
Norton Shores, MI 49444
Environmental and Real Estate
David C. Hill
Grand Rapids, MI Environmental Law Attorney
(616) 254-8400 171 Monroe NW
Environmental, Business, Collections and Estate Planning
Richard Glaser
Grand Rapids, MI Environmental Law Lawyer
Environmental, Arbitration & Mediation, Business and Legal Malpractice
Michael David Almassian
(616) 364-2100 230 E. Fulton Street
Environmental, Bankruptcy, Business and Products Liability
Environmental Attorneys in Nearby Cities
Environmental Attorneys in Nearby Counties
The OneCLE Lawyer Directory contains lawyers who have claimed their profiles and are actively seeking clients. Find more Belleville, Michigan Environmental Lawyers in the Justia Legal Services and Lawyers Directory which includes profiles of more than one million lawyers licensed to practice in the United States, in addition to profiles of legal aid, pro bono and legal service organizations.
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Comparing Monkey Story with Wizard of Oz
This Comparing Monkey Story with Wizard of Oz lesson plan also includes:
Students compare and contrast the characters in the Monkey stories with the Wizard of Oz story.
8 Views 55 Downloads
monkey stories, wizard of oz
Inference in Literature: The Wizard of Oz
We're off to see the wizard! Practice making inferences in literature with two sample paragraphs from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Each passage provides questions about the pleasantness of the place it describes, and kids...
6th - 8th English Language Arts
The Wizard of Oz: Novel Study
There's no place like home. Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz wonders if she will ever make it back to Kansas after a tornado drops her in a magical land. Scholars learn about the friends she meets along the way, and they have fun of their own...
Find the Main Idea: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Readers are asked to use the provided graphic organizer to list the main idea and supporting ideas in a passage from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Compare and Contrast Stories
Compare and contrast up to three stories with this graphic organizer! There are designated squares to capture information regarding the characters, setting, and problems of each story. Which are similar, and which are different? This...
2nd - 5th English Language Arts
Applying Ahimsa to Traditional Stories
Investigate the life of Mahatma Gandhi by researching non-violent lifestyles. Learners define the word ahimsa and discuss the personal characteristics that made Gandhi a peaceful warrior. They also create a poster about the story "The...
Walk Two Moons: Story Impressions
Story chains connect literary concepts, reinforce context clues, and even help learners predict what's coming next! Using words from the next chapter of Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, middle schoolers craft story chains to determine...
The Importance of Setting in a Story
Where does it happen? When did it happen? These are two questions that play a key role in understanding the setting of a story. The fourth and final video in a Language Arts playlist uses a song to explain how the setting connects to...
3 mins 6th - 12th English Language Arts
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Take a journey over the rainbow with a 24-chapter audiobook featuring the classic tale The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. After a tornado passes through her farm, a young girl named Dorothy finds herself in a colorful world filled with...
Follow the journey of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion down the Yellow Brick Road. An eBook version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz features the original text and graphics. Notice how colors change between...
3rd - 8th English Language Arts
Genre: Short Story
Discover the genre of short stories with sixth graders. They discuss the characteristics of short stories from the book America Street. Then, they compare and contrast movies and television shows and chart story characteristics. Various...
6th English Language Arts
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Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth’s biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction. It is an interdisciplinary subject drawing on sciences, economics, and the practice of natural resource management.
The rapid decline of established biological systems around the world means that conservation biology is often referred to as a “Discipline with a deadline”. Conservation biology is tied closely to ecology in researching the dispersal, migration, demographics, effective population size, inbreeding depression, and minimum population viability of rare or endangered species. To better understand the restoration ecology of native plant and animal communities, the conservation biologist closely studies both their polytypic and monotypic habitats that are affected by a wide range of benign and hostile factors. Conservation biology is concerned with phenomena that affect the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biodiversity and the science of sustaining evolutionary processes that engender genetic, population, species, and ecosystem diversity. The concern stems from estimates suggesting that up to 50% of all species on the planet will disappear within the next 50 years, which has contributed to poverty, starvation, and will reset the course of evolution on this planet.
Conservation biologists research and educate on the trends and process of biodiversity loss, species extinctions, and the negative effect these are having on our capabilities to sustain the well-being of human society. Conservation biologists work in the field and office, in government, universities, non-profit organizations and industry. They are funded to research, monitor, and catalog every angle of the earth and its relation to society. The topics are diverse, because this is an interdisciplinary network with professional alliances in the biological as well as social sciences. Those dedicated to the cause and profession advocate for a global response to the current biodiversity crisis based on morals, ethics, and scientific reason. Organizations and citizens are responding to the biodiversity crisis through conservation action plans that direct research, monitoring, and education programs that engage concerns at local through global scales.
Information about Conservation Biology
Inaugurated in 1987, the journal, Conservation Biology was originally developed to provide a global voice for an emerging discipline. It quickly became the most important journal dealing with the topic of biological diversity. The journal continues to publish groundbreaking scientific papers on topics such as population ecology and genetics, ecosystem management, freshwater and marine conservation, landscape ecology, and the many human dimensions of conservation and is the most frequently cited conservation journal in the world.
In concert with the larger goals of the Society for Conservation Biology, the journal promotes the highest standards of quality and ethics in the activity of conservation research and encourages the communication of results to facilitate their application in conservation decision-making. With provocative essays and editorials, regular topical reviews, practical approaches to conservation, and the publication of original research, Conservation Biology remains instrumental in defining the key issues contributing to the study and practice of conservation.
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Beau Wrigley Jr.
Beau was the fourth generation member of the Wrigley family to lead the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, a global leader in confections founded in 1891. He began his career with the company in 1985 and, after serving in multiple roles, became the Chairman, President and CEO in 1999. During his leadership, the Wrigley Company tripled in size and expanded its reach to consumers in 180 countries. In 2008, Wrigley was sold to privately held and family-owned Mars, Incorporated. Currently, Beau is Chairman and CEO of Wrigley Management Inc., a family office, and WWJr. Enterprises Inc., an investment company that invests in a range of venture capital and private equity interests. Beau is also Co-Founder and Chairman of higi, a wellness and incentive reward platform that empowers individuals to measure and manage their personal health and well-being. Beau also has significant experience serving on public company, private and not-for-profit organizations’ boards. Beau is an active philanthropist, currently serving as a director for Everglades Foundation, and Co-Chair of Conservation International’s Ocean Health Council. Beau is a 1985 graduate of Duke University with a B.A. in Economics and attended the Wharton School of Business Advanced Management Program in 1994.
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Squall’s “Whatever” Line in Japanese Final Fantasy VIII
Today marks the 20th anniversary of Final Fantasy VIII ’s release in Japan, so I thought it’d be nice to take a look back at one of the most memorable quotes from the game: “whatever”.
About “Whatever”
The game’s main character, Squall, says “whatever” many times throughout the English version of the game. Naturally, fans latched on to this quote and have made countless jokes about it over the years. Wherever you look, the name “Final Fantasy VIII” and the word “whatever” often go hand-in-hand.
Any video or article about Squall will likely include his "whatever" in some form
An inspirational "whatever"
A wearable "whatever" made by MetalSorcery (you can even get your own here!)
I’ve always been curious, though – what is this “whatever” quote in the Japanese version? Is it even in the original game? Let’s find out!
Squall’s Many Whatevers
I compiled a list of all of Squall’s “whatever” lines that I could find, and then I gathered screenshots from the Japanese and English versions of Final Fantasy VIII . I’ve probably missed one or two, though, so let me know if you can think of any others.
Because Final Fantasy VIII is such a long game, I got the following screenshots from several YouTube videos made by good ol’ HCBailly, R-GAMES, kikuri, and LobosJr.
Whatever #1
In this scene, Squall’s teacher makes a joke about how enamoring she must be. In Japanese, Squall responds by thinking something like, “I can’t believe this teacher…”. In English, this became “whatever”.
Headmaster Cid asks Squall how he felt while on the battlefield during a mission. One option in English is “whatever”. The same option in Japanese is something like “nothing much”, “no big deal”, or “meh”.
During a big party, Squall’s teacher tells him it’s strange that he’ll dance with a random stranger, yet he can’t stand being around his own teacher.
In English, Squall replies to this with a simple “whatever”. In Japanese, he says warukatta na, a terse apology that feels sort of like a plain “sorry”, “well, excuuuse me” or “my bad”. As we’ll see, this warukatta na line slowly becomes his catchphrase in Japanese.
A character named Rinoa scolds Squall for not being a team player. In English, Squall responds by thinking “whatever”. In Japanese, he instead thinks something like “man, you’re annoying” or “get off my case”.
A new character joins and suggests a change of party members. Afterward, Squall gets to respond with his thoughts on the new party lineup. In English, the first choice is “Yeah, whatever”. It’s basically the same in Japanese, maybe leaning a little closer to “Yeah, okay”, “I guess that’ll do”, or “Sure, I guess”.
Squall shows Rinoa around his academy. At one point, while explaining in the cafeteria that hot dogs are very popular, Rinoa teases Squall for explaining so seriously. In response, Squall says “whatever” in English. In Japanese, he says his warukatta na (“well, excuse me”) phrase again.
Incidentally, they talk about hot dogs in the English version, but in the original Japanese script they talk about pan: Japanese-style breads that usually have filling inside.
Squall and Rinoa have a short conversation after some intense battles. There are two possible conversations you can get, depending on what you did earlier in the game. In both cases, though, Rinoa tries to get Squall to open up emotionally.
During one of these conversations, Squall thinks something like “just leave me alone” or “get off my back” in Japanese. In English, this became “whatever”.
During some downtime, a character named Selphie seems a little glum. If you try to cheer her up, she’ll start teasing Squall a little bit. In response, Squall says “yeah, whatever” in English. In Japanese, he says his warukatta na (“well, excuse me”) line again.
Squall’s teammates put on a surprise concert for him to raise his spirits. Squall isn’t particularly pleased, so in English he thinks “whatever”. It’s pretty similar in Japanese and has a sort of “give me a break”, “oh, geez”, or “ugh” feel to it.
Whatever #10
Selphie teases Squall and suggests that maybe Squall is acting strangely because he secretly likes her. In response, Squall thinks “whatever” in English. In Japanese, he thinks something like “leave me alone”.
An alternate option in the same scene with Selphie leads to separate “whatever” in English, this time in response to Selphie saying that Squall isn’t acting like himself at all. In Japanese, he thinks his warukatta na (“well, excuse me”) line again.
Later in the game, you get to choose whether Squall remembers a certain name or not. In English, the last option is “whatever”. It’s basically the same thing in Japanese, and could also have been translated as something like “it doesn’t matter” or “I don’t care”.
Probably the most iconic “whatever” in Final Fantasy VIII happens during a key scene in the game.
Squall and Rinoa are floating around in a spaceship, and Squall catches and holds Rinoa for a while. Rinoa shares her feelings with Squall while teasing him at the same time:
But now… Squall, you’re the one who gives me the most comfort. Comfort and happiness… And annoyance and disappointment, too!
In response to this, Squall says his warukatta na (“well, excuse me”) catchphrase in Japanese. Rinoa says the same phrase at the exact same time, as if she expected him to respond that exact way.
Later in the game, while aboard an airship, Squall’s teacher decides to tease him some more. In response, Squall says “whatever” in English. In Japanese, he again uses his warukatta na (“well, excuse me”) catchphrase.
Eventually, Squall meets an important character who has a lot of important information to share. This character tells Squall that he looks way too serious. In response, Squall says “Whatever” in English. His Japanese response basically translates into “whatever” too, but could also be translated “I don’t care” or “I don’t give a crap”.
In the screenshots above, we can see that Squall says nine different things in Japanese, but only one thing – “whatever” – in English:
Squall’s Japanese phrases
Squall’s English phrases
I can’t believe this teacher Whatever
No big deal Whatever
Well, excuse me Whatever
Man, you’re annoying Whatever
Sure, I guess Whatever
Get off my case / leave me alone Whatever
Oh, geez Whatever
Doesn’t matter Whatever
I don’t care Whatever
Basically, Squall’s English catchphrase appears much more often than his Japanese catchphrase. What’s more, Squall’s Japanese catchphrase is also a little more like “my bad” or “well, excuse me” – it’s a curt, possibly sarcastic apology and not quite the same as the dismissive “whatever”.
It’s been years since I last played Final Fantasy VIII , so I’m sure I’ve missed some more of Squall’s “whatevers”. If you know of any others, let me know and I’ll add them to this list or whatever.
If you liked this article, you might like my other 100 or so Final Fantasy translation articles too. My personal recommendation is my big Final Fantasy VI translation analysis!
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Sky Render February 11, 2019 at 4:16 pm
The greatest disservice the FF8 translation did to Squall was cutting down his many and diverse ways of telling others to piss off into just a single word. Sure, it’s a memorable character trait as a result, but it also cheapens just how many ways Squall has given thought to telling others to go stuff themselves.
ME February 11, 2019 at 8:17 pm
This genuinely made me laugh, good sir.
Whelkman February 11, 2019 at 4:19 pm
That the dialogue was made even crappier than intended somehow makes me hate this game even more. The prerendered backgrounds have held up surprisingly, well, though, especially compared to most prerendered games of the 90s.
MasterMarkus February 12, 2019 at 8:33 pm
Part of me was (and still sort of is) kind of mad at Square because they somehow made FF VIII models like, the best human models I’d ever seen on the PS1 but somehow two years earlier, the best they could apparently do (or perhaps wanted to do) for FFVII were these shite chibi ones with Popeye arms that looked outdated within like, the year.
I’m pretty sure it was more art direction than technical limitations. The battle models were much better than the map models, but the battles were fully 3D while the only only polygons on the map were the character models and some interactive objects. I think Square was stuck in “map models must be low-detail chibi” even though there was no good reason to. It got even worse when the FMV picked up when you were still controlling the map character then after a brief cut the super-detailed pre-rendered model appears on the screen. Switching to FMV worked okay with a transition but the “action cuts” from map models to FMV models were jarring. One complaint I don’t have about FF VIII is how well it integrated FMV and polys. It’s definitely better than VII in that regard.
I agree with you after some thought. It makes sense that they were stuck thinking “make it like the old stuff”! So they made everyone chibis on the field maps.
While there were pre-rendered cutscenes with the more detailed models jarringly SOME pre-rendered scenes ARE done with the chibi characters, making some dramatic scenes a little silly-looking (i.e. Tifa and Cloud in Mideel when it’s attacked by Ultimate Weapon). It definitely didn’t age as well as chibi sprite art.
I’ve really noticed it because I’ve been playing a PC patched version with the “Reunion” mod that includes field models that are more like the battle models, but they obviously couldn’t replace the pre-rendered cutscenes so they really stick out.
Kakahan44 February 13, 2019 at 10:15 am
The weird thing is that the game before VII uses the same sprites for the overworld and in battle.
Whelkman February 13, 2019 at 10:56 am
Is it possible a portion of the Japanese audience complained about this? Square really waffled on the issue, to the extent where it seemed like they tried to please everyone with the detailed but disproportionate models of FF IX. Even western publications mentioned how the deformed models represented a return to the classic, comfortable Final Fantasy everyone was used to. I realize SD/chibi has always been popular, but it seemed to be really popular in the 90s, for reasons beyond video game technical limitations. I don’t recall if it was official artwork, but Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI had 3D modeled SD character sets that were very popular during the Geocities era of the early Internet.
I really hate this game. Most of the later Final Fantasy games, for that matter. Starting with 7, i felt the series really went downhill. I did like 9, but it still wasn’t as good as the first six games. I stopped playing after 10. I heard 12 was pretty good, and i may check it out when the Switch port comes out, but otherwise i just really don’t care about the Final Fantasy franchise anymore. I’ve mainly switched over to Dragon Quest these days, which i’m really enjoying the hell out of. I’m currently up to 9, and hope to finish it by the time the Switch port of DQ11 comes out.
Amen, buddy. This game made me hate Final Fantasy. 20 years later and I still haven’t gotten over it, lol. In a way, this is the worst game I ever played in terms of disappointment and lasting effect.
Rebochan February 12, 2019 at 7:44 am
It’s okay, we all know you meant “Chrono Cross” *runs*
Whelkman February 12, 2019 at 12:31 pm
Yeah, Chrono Cross is another polarizing title from the same era. I haven’t touched it since it was relatively new, but I recall it being solid enough but not really in the vein of Chrono Trigger.
I still cannot figure out Chrono Cross’s weird color-battle system. It’s been years since i last tried playing it, but i think i tried like 5 times and every time i would give up after a couple of hours.
Kyle March 1, 2019 at 4:14 pm
Personally, I felt the battle system took a little extra to grasp well, but just really not that bad. If you can understand a system where Fire and water oppose each other, you should be able to understand this. To me, the element system is actually simpler with just the idea of colors but because the combat system as a whole is more complex like with the Field effects and innate color. Basically, just know a red attack on Red Character will be weak, but a Red attack on a Blue Character will be strong. Know that concept and the rest you can almost ignore and just enjoy the game. Personally, I loved it. I’m not saying its you know in the top 10 of all games ever made in the world, but its solid. The music alone makes it worth it. I know some people complain about the sequel/naming thing, but I say its not like they named it Chrono Trigger 2….
CC > FF8 February 12, 2019 at 3:10 pm
Chrono Cross was leagues better than FFVIII honestly. At least the story was more interesting and the gameplay was easier to understand than equipping spells to stats.
Good Taste in this Thread February 12, 2019 at 7:18 am
Really? You hold FFII in a higher regard than FFX, FFXII, or FFVII? Oh, stopped playing after FFX? Well…
I guess I’m glad someone likes FFII or III. And IV is supes not overhyped boring garbage. Also, we’ve now found the one FFV fan in existence. /s
Sarcasm aside, every FF before VI was a mixed bag of good and bad that happened to edge on the side of good. Sadly, aside from VI being one of the best in the series, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XIV are all better than the first 5. The rest (XI, XIII, XV) are about as good as any of the first V.
Nerds about to feel some kinda way because it’s fashionable to rag on XIII and act like II is some god-tier shit.
Nerds have been doing this ever since FF7 came out. This is fandom that exists not to enjoy any of the franchise’s output, but to attack other people for not liking the game that came out when when they were twelve… durr, I mean, “The objectively best game ever that I totally am not using my nostalgia goggles on.”
I mean I remember SNES series fans just tripping over themselves to declare FF7 the worst game ever made. And that’s even after you sort out the die-hard Nintendo fans that were really just mad it hopped platforms. They had no idea what they were talking about, but man did they hate that other people were having fun. And it just multiplied with every release – it’s always in fashion to talk about how Final Fantasy __ is the worst game ever made and ruined the franchise and games were so much better in *my* day and *fart*
But hey man, don’t rag on V. Poor V. Poor neglected forgotten V. It gave us Greg, the greatest FF character ever.
Wote February 12, 2019 at 7:57 am
I mean, on what basis are you judging “good” versus “bad”? Like, are we talking gameplay? Story? Artwork? Music? All of the above?
… Also, where are you finding people who defend the original version of II unironically, because I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to report them to The Hague instead of using them in internet flames. 😛
Lol, sorry but your comparison to two just reminded me of this: https://twitter.com/WeebSimpsons/status/1046984068586512385
MarsDragon February 16, 2019 at 12:08 am
FFV has a bunch of fans now, they’re just all playing the Four Job Fiesta.
ManofTruth November 13, 2019 at 2:34 am
FFV is fantastic you tasteless manchild.
For the record, I first got into the series with the GBA port of 1&2. 1 had solid gameplay but a week story, while 2 was the opposite with a strong story but week gamplay. Overall though, i still enjoyed both of them. Then I tried the GBA ports of 4, 5, and 6 as they came out and thoroughly enjoyed all of them. Then I got a cheap PS1 at a yard sale and bought used copies of 7-9 off of ebay. I HATED how they handled the jump to 3D, particularly the fixed camera. Then when the DS ports of 3 and 4 came out, i felt like that was how the PS1 games should have handled being in 3D. Another thing i hated was how starting with 7, they gave up on the medieval fantasy style over a more futuristic setting (which is one of the primary reasons why i actually liked 9). Then there’s 10, which had decent gameplay and finally did away with the fixed camera garbage, but i could not STAND Tidus and several other of the main characters. That was when i finally quit. Literally the last Final Fantasy game i played was the two Theatrhym games on the 3DS (which were really good).
As I said before, though, I may be willing to give 12 a chance when the Switch port comes out.
Nanashi February 12, 2019 at 9:36 pm
For the record, FF2 is VERY dependent upon which port you play. The original Famicom version is really, really bad. Every problem with the level up system is a thousand times worse.
Wahui March 27, 2019 at 3:56 am
Which is understandable considering it was the first foray with that SaGa style idea until they polished it more in later rereleases and ports.
I have generally mixed feelings on Final Fantasy, but I definitely haven’t given up on it because of some of the failures.
I never gave Dragon Quest a serious try because the premises of the games always looked like “generic fantasy RPG” to me and I’m not into that. I could be wrong but even seeing the newest and most well-regarded DQ games being played gives me that impression.
When it comes to Final Fantasy:
I’m not a big fan of 1-3 because of the simplicity of the story, and they were a bit before my time so I was never used to JRPGs being that simple.
I like 4,5,6 pretty well though 5 is more forgettable than the other two IMO. Although I liked the story, I did find 6 a little easy at points (especially because the Figaro brothers can knock large swathes of enemies out in the early game).
I really like 7, partially because I love that it’s a bit cyberpunk and I’m really excited for the remake. My biggest problem with it was that the characters were kind of unbalanced and I much prefer 6’s magic system to the Materia system, especially since the latter meant I had to keep unequipping / reequipping characters every time I switched them out. It’s a shame that Crisis Core was the only kind of good expanded universe thing (besides the books maybe; and Crisis Core still should’ve been without Gackt’s character) because I do think the world of that game is pretty interesting, especially from the grittier side of Shin-Ra and the Turks.
I never played 8 or 9. From what I’ve seen there’s a bit of charm to 8 but a lot of the characters are forgettable and if I didn’t like the Materia system it looks like I’d hate the junction system. 9 just didn’t appeal to me as I didn’t like the way it tried to look “cartoony” and have stereotypical and comedic characters.
10 is pretty cheesy and kind of silly but also fun to watch in that way, and the battle system is very effective.
I’ve never played the MMO games, 11 or 14 because I just have no interest in MMOs.
12 is a game I REALLY wanted to like because I’m a big fan of the FF Tactics games, so I love the “world”, but I really dislike the battle system and all the characters besides Fran and Balthier feel rather boring and the story isn’t very engaging so while I own it I haven’t finished it.
I haven’t played the 13 games, though the gameplay, story, and characters don’t appeal to me.
I’m a legitimate fan of 15 despite it’s jankyness as I think it has great characters and a lot of heart and detail put into it, it just needed to be set on the right track (i.e. not being another 13-based game) earlier so it could end up more polished, but even without that a lot of improvements have been made after the fact. The combat takes some getting used to but I think it’s fun as long as you don’t over-level your characters.
Love this game, and one of many I’ve wanted to try in the original Japanese. I like the idea that Squall has more character in the Japanese phrases, but I think the effect of the repeated “Whatever..”s translates to moody teenager better for English. Most of his responses in Japanese are rude or dismissive, but what’s more dismissive than a good mid-90s “Whatever…” ?
Rebochan February 11, 2019 at 7:59 pm
Thanks for this. I had heard from people that played the Japanese version that the English script wasn’t really very good, making a lot of mistakes or shit like the constant “Whatever” line that just doesn’t happen as much and isn’t nearly as dickish or apathetic. Apparently a *lot* of the dialog for the characters was messy like this – Rinoa in particular is more popular in Japan because apparently her dialog is supposed to be cute and friendly and the English translators went with “Giant idiot toddler woman”.
People just didn’t really notice because the technical competency of the script was a step up from the blatancy obvious issues with the FF7 script.
I feel bad ragging on an Alexander O. Smith script but I’m pretty sure I remember him commenting at some point that this project was poorly managed so it’s likely not really his fault.
I love this game, fuck the haters that have already camped in here showing off their FF hipster cred and being their usual insufferable selves.
leeloo February 12, 2019 at 7:25 am
Yeah, I partially blame the bad translation for some of the not-so-positive opinions people have of FFVIII’s characters. I have a friend who played the Japanese version long before he played the English version, and he said the translation was so different that it gave the game a completely different feel than when he first played it. He said the biggest differences were Squall and Riona – in the Japanese version, Squall was stoic and broody while still being respectful when the occasion called for it, but in the English version he said Squall was a lot more dismissive and mean. In the Japanese version, Rinoa was naiive and cutesy yet was assertive when she needed to be, but in the English version she was a lot more childish and brash which made her a lot less likeable in my friend’s opinion. He particularly hated the childish insults she’d use, like calling Squall a “meanie”, because Japanese Rinoa wouldn’t speak like that. He said a lot of characters and NPCs were weirdly baby-ish or used childish terms, when that wasn’t the case in the Japanese version.
Another thing I thought was interesting was that the Ultimecia=Rinoa fan theory doesn’t really exist in Japan because there are lines in the Japanese version that explain more about Ultimecia (which negates the theory). Apparently during the final battle it’s explicitly stated that Ultimecia reaches into Squall’s mind to find what creature he is most scared of and use it against him, and that creature ends up being Griever. In the English version, it just seems like Griever is Ultimecia’s GF.
David February 12, 2019 at 9:56 am
Is it ever explained what a griever is?
bronzeheart92 February 15, 2019 at 11:31 am
It does explain the status of Griever in-game but it’s easy to miss. It’s Scan description states that ‘in Squall’s mind, the strongest GF’ or something to that effect. So yeah, Griever exists within Squall’s mind and Ultimecia just happened to Draw it in order to give it form.
Since you mentioned it: I like FF7 as much as the next guy, but I have no idea how it got so popular in the west when the English script had so many problems and many of the other scripts based on that translation were even worse.
It turns out people are surprisingly good at not caring about translation issues, unless they get to Moon Dwellers levels of bad.
JB February 16, 2019 at 9:38 pm
To my recollection, people thought the game was supposed to be deep and complex like Evangelion. So it wasn’t a nonsensical word salad, it was just demanding our attention and analysis.
Squall February 11, 2019 at 8:16 pm
… Whatever.
Link February 12, 2019 at 3:03 am
Well, excuse me, Princess!
Whoa February 12, 2019 at 8:46 pm
Oh thank you so much. I was repeating that Link line but couldn’t recall where from. All I can imagine right now is Squall saying “Well, excuuuse me.” No bueno but… Whatever…
Polinym February 11, 2019 at 8:36 pm
Do you think the translator was trying to create a catchphrase? Regardless, it’s pretty funny. I actually used Squall’s “whatever” catchphrase a lot in the ROM hack I recently finished called EightBound. It’s a hack of EarthBound that makes the game like a Final Fantasy game and unites all of the first nine games. Reading this article reminded me of how I wrote Squall’s dialogue in the hack.
To see what I’m talking about, check out EightBound here:
https://forum.starmen.net/forum/Community/PKHack/EightBound-A-Final-Fantasy-Experience-An-EarthBound-Hack/page/1#post2249469
DoubleXXCross February 12, 2019 at 5:05 am
I have no doubt that the quality of this set of “whatevers” would be drastically improved with voice-acting and facial animation. It’s one of those words that’s more of an empty noise and requires all the other emotional cues to flavour it. Let’s get a cutesy eye-roll and an audible smirk into that love scene, for example.
Whatever... February 12, 2019 at 7:19 am
Having re-played the early KH games, which includes a version of Squall with voice acting and facial expressions…
Eh… It… Makes it all soo much more cringey.
Oof February 12, 2019 at 8:49 pm
I loved it lol. David Boreanaz was a great vocal fit for my young teenage heart at the time.
Okay, but you’re also talking about the early Kingdom Hearts games, which weren’t exactly known for their great voice acting and facial animations.
The first game has LANCE BASS as SEPHIROTH for feck’s sake!
bronzerheart92 February 12, 2019 at 9:15 am
FF8 was the first ever FF game i’ve played and thus holds a special place in my heart. In fact, I suppose FF8 might offer interesting translation tidbits assuming someone’s willing to tackle it…
Just wanted to let you know your comment was the 10,000th comment on the site 😯
Midna February 14, 2019 at 7:29 am
Do they win a free iPhone?
Nah, he’s just being sarcastic… But yeah, the games on PS1 certainly gives me lots of fond memories. FF8, Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot… I so wish I could go back to those much simpler times…
Not Sarcasm February 18, 2019 at 12:08 pm
It doesn’t look like sarcasm. I think he said that comment with amazement, since he’s probably surprised how much turnout this site has received.
Mercuric February 12, 2019 at 1:05 pm
I don’t agree that “My bad” and “Well, excuse me” have the same intended meaning in English. “My bad” may have been equivalent at one point, but it is rarely said these days with any sort of intonation that implies indignation on the part of the apologist. It is a shorthand way of thanking someone for informing you that you’ve inconvenienced or offended them in some way, and that you will work to avoid it in the future, even though you consider the infraction to be somewhat minor. “Well, excuse me” is a much more put out way of telling someone that you’ve been offended or insulted by the other’s objections, and feel that the action you took was probably justified anyway.
“Thank you for rescuing me, but I can’t swim” (as you have to reach your escape boat).
“Oh, my bad, I’ll bring the boat over.”
“Thank you for rescuing me, but did you have to get me all wet?” (as you climb onto the escape boat)
“Well, excuse me.”
Of course, context is key here, but I’m curious how other English speakers interpret the two phrases. If a character simply said, “my bad”, I would not interpret the character as being annoyed, but would believe that the character believed that they made a genuine error. I suspect age and region may also play large roles in this, and possibly knowledge of Latin (“mea culpa” anyone?).
Agree: my bad = mea culpa. As for “well, excuse me”, while on the surface it appears to be the same thing, I think a lot of people would say something like “I beg your pardon” to communicate the same sentiment without the risk of being perceived as dismissive. Interestingly, it seems to be the “well” that makes it dismissive because I think “excuse me” on its own would be taken better. It should be noted that my opinion is likely influenced by, “Well, excuse me, Princess!”
Anon February 12, 2019 at 1:47 pm
“Warukatta na” can be used as both a not-overly-apologetic apology and a sarcastic non-apology. Mato wasn’t saying those two phrases were identical in meaning, but that they’re both possible translations of the Japanese phrase, depending on the tone and context it’s used in.
This is correct – warukatta na (like many other things, including “whatever”) can be taken as-is (a weak apology) or as a sarcastic statement, it just depends on tone and context. I tried to offer examples of both interpretations: “my bad” and “well, excuse me”. I guess I should make it clearer in the article that they’re definitely not the same thing in English, yet they can both be valid translations for warukatta na.
Thanks Anon and Clyde, I did not catch that and now it makes a lot more sense.
Astion February 12, 2019 at 3:16 pm
I always fine with Squall’s constant stream of whatevers thrown about, despite I have little love for FFVIII. Years after I played the game’s initial release, I came to realize he spoke a bit differently in Japanese after reading up on it via various translation sources. And it’s funny people bring up the differences with Rinoa because it reminded me of this article: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/the-three-great-she-devils-of-square/
*I was always fine
(This site needs an editing feature.)
Wow, Rinoa is a “she-devil” for having a previous relationship before the game starts? Damn otaku O_o
Single Japanese males are…pretty weird. If they see a hot fictional girl in a game or other production, assume she’s single, then find out she has a previous relationship that she may or may not be in (but still flirts with the main hero), apparently that makes her a she-devil in their eyes. I don’t understand why they think the “hot young lady at the office” should still single to remain pure to them.
This reminds me of how Rorona from Atelier Rorona was unjustly accused of being “impure” at one point because of a scene with a male character that male Japanese gamers vastly misinterpreted.
*remain single
Bearing in mind that not all Japanese male gamers think this way. It’s just a select group of them have taken to referring to these particular types of women as she-devils.
I’ve heard that in “idol culture” a lot of effort is expended in presenting the girls as virginal and available but not easy (invoking feelings of being slutty or promiscuous). This sounds like a sentiment along the same lines. Though I’m not confident in what I just said, so it could be a stretch.
Astion February 14, 2019 at 12:26 pm
You’re certainly not wrong, Whelkman. Idol culture in Japan is freakishly toxic.
…but this is literally the exact same thing the west does with ITS idols like Miley Cyrus and Jusin Bieber and whatnot? Stones, glass houses, etc etc…
Trusty B February 15, 2019 at 11:25 am
Astion isn’t throwing stones in glass houses. He’s making a valid point. I think this is a lot worse than what happens here: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2019-01-14/ngt48-management-apologizes-to-fans-members-in-press-conference/.142040
Yeah, those Japanese, man. They should do like the civilized west and just run countdowns in their newspapers to when it’s no longer pedophilia to masturbate to the Olsen twins instead.
There’s this rather nasty tendency to scream about all this terrible stuff crazy Japan from people that pretend the countries they live in are far above any such degeneracy, and I don’t think we really need that kind of hypocrisy in this comment section.
I think there’s been a misunderstanding here. I wasn’t implying Japan is the only place in the world where such toxicity is, just that idol culture itself is toxic with all the overreactions and death threats from certain types of fans. Please don’t break out into arguments here.
Fair enough. I just get tired of seeing comments like these all over the place. None of the stuff you’re complaining about is unique to Japan at all, but these complaints are usually written as if this is the case, and that gets tiresome.
Squall Leonheart February 20, 2019 at 8:18 pm
Another Anon March 12, 2019 at 9:33 pm
What’s tiresome is some random anon continually defending a country that they’re not even from or were even born in. They don’t care one iota about your empty efforts, so why exactly did you throw a hissy fit over Astion’s post?
You are a sad little man August 27, 2019 at 8:53 pm
You’re a sad little man, Anon.
Effie February 13, 2019 at 5:16 pm
I have a wee figure of Squall, Play Arts Kai Mini Squall, I think, which is an officially licensed Square Enix toy. It comes with a couple of transparent Japanese speech bubbles that you can attach next to him to give the impression he’s talking. One says “俺は単純じゃない” and the other says “… … 別に” (betsu ni). This is kinda interesting to me because you don’t find a lot of examples above where Squall says betsu ni in the Japanese – it’s not his catchphrase. But I kinda wonder if the designers felt that “Whatever” was recognised as his catchphrase even in Japan and chose to include “betsu ni” because it’s a pretty close translation (feels closer than Warukattana)
Doubt I’ll ever know for sure. Oh well.
seifd February 19, 2019 at 1:49 pm
Squall’s team mates should have played him United States of Whatever.
Princess Madelyn February 24, 2019 at 7:19 am
What I’m getting here is that the English translation of FF8 was actually kinda lazy. Or maybe this was the result of another translator/editor/localizer that was far too overworked for a game with this much text.
Fun fact, “doudemo ii” became the catchphrase of another JRPG protagonist a few years after this one: the male protagonist of Persona 3
Bill December 21, 2019 at 2:39 am
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You know how the news media (and general audiences) get games, science, and technology stuff wrong all the time? I feel the same way when it comes to entertainment and video game translation, so I decided to use my professional experience to shed light on this mysterious topic.
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All articles filed in live music
“I Keep Forgettin'” by Laura Jane Grace
By: lyriquediscorde 6 Jan 2019 4 Jan 2019
about the songs, Cover Songs, live music, Music, songs, Under the Covers, Under the Covers Sundayabout the songs, cover songs, Laura Jane Grace, live music, lyrics, Michael McDonald, music, songs, Under the Covers, Under the Covers Sunday, weeklyLeave a Comment on “I Keep Forgettin'” by Laura Jane Grace
The first Under the Covers Sunday of 2019 features Laura Jane Grace’s live cover of a Michael McDonald track – “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)”
“Into the Mystic” by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
By: lyriquediscorde 24 Aug 2018 24 Aug 2018
about the songs, Cover Songs, Daily, live music, lyrics, Music, Song of the Day, songs, SOTDabout the songs, cover songs, Daily, Into the Mystic, Jason Isbell, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, live music, lyrics, music, song of the day, songs, SOTDLeave a Comment on “Into the Mystic” by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Today’s Song of the Day is Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s live cover of my favorite Van Morrison song, “Into the Mystic”.
“A Case Of You” by Joni Mitchell
about the songs, Daily, live music, lyrics, Music, Song of the Day, songs, SOTDA Case Of You, about the songs, Daily, Graham Nash, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, live music, lyrics, music, song of the day, songs, SOTDLeave a Comment on “A Case Of You” by Joni Mitchell
Today’s Song of the Day is one of my all-time favorite Joni Mitchell Songs, “A Case Of You”, from the quintessential 1971 album, Blue.
Top 5 Music Obsessions featuring Jane Birkin
By: lyriquediscorde 31 Jul 2018
Cover Songs, Lists, live music, lyrics, Music, My Top 5, songs, Top 5, Top 5 Music Obsessionscover songs, Guided By Voices, Jane Birkin, Lists, live music, lyrics, music, My Top 5, My Top 5 Music Obsessions, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Pete Yorn, Scarlett Johansson, songs, The Killers, Top 5, Top 5 Music ObsessionsLeave a Comment on Top 5 Music Obsessions featuring Jane Birkin
Today’s Top 5 Music Obsessions feature songs by Jane Birkin, Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson, Guided By Voices, The Killers, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
We make a little history featuring Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
By: lyriquediscorde 25 Jun 2018 25 Jun 2018
live music, lyrics, Music, songs, Us, We Make a Little Historylive music, lyrics, music, Nick Cave, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, song of the day, songs, Us, We Make a Little HistoryLeave a Comment on We make a little history featuring Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Top 5 Music Obsessions featuring The Velvet Underground
live music, lyrics, Music, My Top 5, songs, Top 5, Top 5 Music Obsessions, UncategorizedCocteau Twins, David Bowie, live music, Lou Reed, lyrics, Minutemen, music, My Top 5, My Top 5 Music Obsessions, PJ Harvey, songs, The Velvet Underground, Top 5, Top 5 Music ObsessionsLeave a Comment on Top 5 Music Obsessions featuring The Velvet Underground
Top 5 Music Obsessions featuring songs by The Velvet Underground, Minutemen, David Bowie, PJ Harvey, and Cocteau Twins
“I Can’t Be With You” by The Cranberries
By: lyriquediscorde 30 Apr 2018 29 Apr 2018
1990's, 90's, about the songs, live music, lyrics, Music, Song of the Day, songs, SOTD, the 90's1994, about the songs, live music, lyrics, music, song of the day, songs, SOTD, the 1990's, the 90's, The Cranberries1 Comment on “I Can’t Be With You” by The Cranberries
“I Can’t Be With You”, my Favorite Song off of The Cranberries’ 1994 Album No Need to Argue, is Today’s Song of the Day. We miss you, Dolores
“Don’t Go To Strangers” (live) by Paul Weller and Amy Winehouse
By: lyriquediscorde 18 Apr 2018
about the songs, live music, Music, songs, Weller Wednesdayabout the songs, Amy Winehouse, live music, music, Paul Weller, songs, Weller WednesdayLeave a Comment on “Don’t Go To Strangers” (live) by Paul Weller and Amy Winehouse
Weller Wednesday presents Paul Weller and Amy Winehouse performing their version of “Don’t Go To Strangers” live.
“7&3 is the Strikers Name” by Paul Weller
about the songs, live music, songs, Weller Wednesdayabout the songs, live music, Paul Weller, songs, Weller WednesdayLeave a Comment on “7&3 is the Strikers Name” by Paul Weller
Weller Wednesday presents “7&3 is the Strikers Name” by Paul Weller, from the 2010 Album ‘Wake Up the Nation’
“And I want to walk with you on a cloudy day”
By: lyriquediscorde 28 Mar 2018
live music, Movies, songs, Wordless WednesdayBefore Sunrise, live music, Movies, Norah Jones, songs, Wordless WednesdayLeave a Comment on “And I want to walk with you on a cloudy day”
Wordless Wednesday – “Come Away With Me” (live) by Norah Jones
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Home Religion Religion in the Ranks: Belief and Religious Experience in the Canadian Forces
Modernization and Religion in the CF
Some of the hallmarks of life in late modernity include the differentiation and bureaucratization of society, secularization, the rise of pluralism and the privatization of religion, individualism, and the sub- jectivation of experiences, as well as access to a variety of alternative ways of viewing the world through global culture and modern technological advances. All of these elements are evident in Canadian military society. Furthermore, all of these aspects of late modernity influence the role and nature of religious identity within that society.
Differentiation and the bureaucratization of Canadian society (including military society) resulted in the increasing separation of roles for religious and public life in Canada. Religious authorities lost their ability to impose beliefs and values through public institutions such as government and schools. In part these developments occurred in order to 'modernize' Canada in response to the demands of democracy and modern economies. Not surprisingly, many of the Christian values of both the French and English communities formed the basis of the new, putatively secular 'Canadian values' established in Canadian laws and institutions.
Differentiation occurred at the same time that many Canadians were leaving the traditional religious institutions in which they had been raised. While some of these people continued to hold on to their traditional religious identity in their private lives, they became increasingly reluctant to identify themselves publicly with a formal religious organization. In other cases they abandoned religious affiliation and belief altogether or joined different religious communities. This period of secularization and privatization of religion further de-emphasized the public role of religious authorities in Canada and elevated the rights and freedoms of individuals over traditional religious authority.
Even as numbers of Canadians departed the churches, Canadian society became more religiously diverse owing to increasing immigration from non-European countries. Furthermore, increasingly sophisticated technological advances and accessibility of international travel meant that members of religious minorities in Canada had less need to assimilate than in previous generations. As a result, many recent immigrants actually became more committed to their religious identities than they had been in their home countries and organized broad community initiatives centring on mosques, gurdwaras, and temples. Canadian commitments to multiculturalism and religious freedom as well as visible evidence of religious diversity in Canada further undermined the traditional religious influence of the Christian churches. At the same time, these developments highlighted the need for laws and policies to ensure the inclusion of members of these and other minority groups. Given that the Canadian Forces - and especially its chaplaincy - had been organized around an assumed common Christian identity (split as it was between Protestants and Roman Catholics), this diversity continues to represent a new and real challenge.
The effects of the broad social developments of modernization can be seen in the role that religion plays in the Canadian Forces. The differentiation and bureaucratization of the forces marginalized religion to one formal sphere, that is, a chaplain branch governed by policies to ensure efficiencies, maintain standards, and ensure equality for its members and those they serve. Secularization and privatization of religion meant that fewer military members were engaged in formal religious communities at the same time that religious pluralism contributed to the increasing presence of members of religious minority groups. Ironically, this meant that there was greater evidence of religious identity (through the accommodation of the uniform for religious minority personnel) at the same time that formal participation in traditional Canadian churches by others in the ranks began to wane. This will mean that conflicts over religion in the CF will no longer pit the Christian majority against religious minorities; rather, it is more likely that conflicts will centre on the demands of religious people in the face of a pervasive secular culture that ignores religion or believes that it should remain a wholly privatized affair.
Religion in the Canadian Forces then, like religion in Canada, is a product of the late modern social context from which it stems. It is differentiated, for the most part, from other aspects of military life. It reflects the secularization of wider Canadian society and gives evidence of privatized notions of belief even as numbers of participants belonging to a variety of religious communities increase. It relies first and foremost on individual and subjective interpretations of belief to govern behaviours, establish values and morals, and cope with the harsh conditions of military service.
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Sleep apnea, congenital heart disease may be deadly mix for hospitalized infants
September 17, 2018 , University of Arizona
Infants often aren't screened for sleep apnea, but a new study suggests the disorder may be tied to an increased risk of death in infants with congenital heart disease.
Researchers at the University of Arizona College of Medicine—Tucson have found that hospitalized infants with congenital heart disease and central sleep apnea are four times more likely to die during their stay in the hospital than infants with congenital heart disease alone. Their findings are published this week in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
"We were surprised that together these two conditions had such a strong association with death," says Sairam Parthasarathy, MD, a professor in the Department of Medicine and a sleep specialist who contributed to the new study.
For the project, researchers mined through data from the Kids' Inpatient Database, the national database that collects pediatric discharge information from more than 4,100 U.S. community hospitals.
Between 1997 and 2012, the team found that 4,968 infants with congenital heart disease age 1 year or younger were diagnosed with sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea presents itself in several different forms, including central sleep apnea and obstructive sleep apnea. In central sleep apnea, the body temporarily pauses or decreases breathing efforts during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea arises when the throat muscles temporarily relax and block the airway.
Of the infants with a heart abnormality, 193 had central sleep apnea and 679 had obstructive sleep apnea. The remaining 4,096 infants had sleep apnea, but its type was not specified in the discharge documentation.
Analysis of the discharge data showed that infants with central sleep apnea and a heart abnormality fared the worst. Not only were they four times more likely to die in the hospital, they stayed twice as long and had double the hospital bills at discharge.
Daniel Combs, MD, an assistant professor in the UA Department of Pediatrics and a sleep specialist who led the study, believes physicians must be vigilant if they are caring for an infant with a heart abnormality.
"Screening is important to prevent this," Dr. Combs said. "We have to lower our threshold to screen for sleep apnea; that could improve these negative outcomes."
He added, "If we learn that infants do have sleep apnea, we can refer them for treatment."
Treatments for central sleep apnea include supplemental oxygen or positive airway pressure therapy, a device that helps with breathing while asleep. In children with obstructive sleep apnea, tonsil removal usually is curative.
Dr. Parthasarathy advises parents of infants with congenital heart disease to talk to their pediatrician about the study's findings and request a referral to a sleep center or sleep specialist for further potential care.
Dr. Combs admitted that gaps in knowledge remain.
"By studying a limited supply of data, we only got a snapshot of these hospital cases. We were not able to see everything, like what medications the infants were on or what diagnosis they had," he explained.
The researchers hope to continue studying infants with both conditions to fill these gaps.
More information: Daniel Combs et al. Sleep-Disordered Breathing is Associated With Increased Mortality in Hospitalized Infants With Congenital Heart Disease, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (2018). DOI: 10.5664/jcsm.7334
Journal information: Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine
Provided by University of Arizona
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Study questions routine sleep studies to evaluate snoring in children
3-D facial photography offers quick way to predict sleep apnea
Severe sleep apnea during REM sleep tied to acute CV events
Portable sleep monitoring accurate in heart failure patients
Floppy eyelids may be sign of sleep apnea, study finds
Study finds no link between sleep apnea and joint pain
Diagnosing sleep apnea
Sleep apnea common in atrial fibrillation patients
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I Will Fly...
Soulfly frontman Max Cavalera is planning to complete the mixing of three rough demos later this week, two of which are brand new songs, while the other is a cover of Palehead's "I Will Refuse". However, the songs are not expected to see a release, though it looks as though Max himself may produce the upcoming new effort from Soulfly, which will most likely begin recording late this year / early next year.
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Hundreds of thousands of unsold Snap Spectacles are wasting away in a warehouse
Image: AFP/Getty Images
By Yvette Tan 2017-10-24 07:08:10 UTC
Looks like Snap may have gotten ahead of itself.
Hundreds of thousands of unsold Spectacles are sitting in a warehouse in China, according to an article by The Information.
Spectacles were greeted with near fervour when they were first introduced, leading Snap to overestimate demand, ordering "hundreds of thousands" of additional units. But when the hype died down soon after, the company found itself left with too many units.
SEE ALSO: Snapchat's next trick: More dancing hot dogs, but as ads
Keep in mind that each pair of glasses costs $129.99, not a small sum of money.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed earlier this month that the company has sold "over 150,000 units" — which, if you take into consideration that there likely a greater number sitting in a warehouse, doesn't sound great.
According to The Information, the unsold inventory includes assembled parts in a warehouse in China, so it is possible that Snap could modify the parts and use them in a new version of the Spectacles.
Still, Spiegel has downplayed the importance of hardware to Snap in the near future.
"Our view is that hardware is going to be an important vehicle for delivering our customer experience maybe in a decade," he said at a conference earlier this month, according to news outlet TechCrunch.
"But if we believe it's going to be important in a decade, we don't want to be starting a decade from now."
If you say so, Snap.
WATCH: Watch the first surgery recorded with Snapchat Spectacles
Topics: evan-speigel, snap, snap spectacles, Snapchat, snapchat-glasses, snapchat spectacles, Tech, warehouse-china
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Dr. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram, is a distinguished professor, a management consultant and a corporate advisor.
Dr. Kalyanaram is the Editor-in-Chief of Management Review and the Journal of Economics and Public Policy.
Dr. Kalyanaram is currently an advisor to and professor at International University of Japan. He advises the University on academic and accreditation matter. He is also a professor at City University of New York, and a visiting professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
Dr. Kalyanaram served as the Inaugural Dean for Research at NMIMS University. Reporting to the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Kalyanaram led, mobilized, nursed and mentored research efforts across all schools at NMIMS including in the Schools of Business, Commerce, Economics, Engineering, Pharmacy, and Science.
Dr. Kalyanaram has also served as Dean for Research, Dean for Business, Director of the Master’s Programs, Director of Research and as the Senior Faculty Liaison for External Development. He has been a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, and the Inaugural Endowed Professor in Kazakhstan.
Dr. Kalyanaram’s areas of expertise are marketing, innovation and management science, and international business and strategy. His research and teaching have been eclectic and inter-disciplinary. He has been a tenured professor, management consultant and an academic administrator. He got his doctoral degree from MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a well-known scholar whose research work is highly cited. His publications have appeared in major journals such as Business and Strategy, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, and Review of Industrial Organization. He has served on many editorial boards including those of Management Science and International Journal of Research in Marketing, and he currently serves on the editorial boards of International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing and Journal of Indian Business Research.
Highlights of Dr. Kalyanaram’s research scholarship and other professional information can be obtained HERE.
Dr. Kalyanaram has lectured and taught at many renowned universities all over the world, including Boston University, Jiang Xi University of Finance, London School of Economics, Loughborough University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), New York Institute of Technology, St. Petersburgh State University, and The University of Texas.
Dr. Kalyanaram is also a management consultant. He has consulted with several universities globally, and major corporations.
Dr. Kalyanaram has been recognized by MIT with Harold Lobdell Award for his contributions. He has served on several MIT boards and committees including the Alumni/ae Board, Enterprise Forum Board, Nomination Committee for Visiting Committees and Technology Day Committee. Currently, he serves as the President-elect of MIT South Asian Alumni/ae Association. Dr. Kalyanaram has received the Outstanding Educator of the Year by Greater Dallas Asian American Chamber of Commerce, and he has been listed in the Who’s Who in America.
Dr. Kalyanaram got his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Email: nmimssbm.journal@gmail.com and nmimsepp.journal@gmail.com;
For more information, please refer to www.gkalyan.com and http://www.gkeducationalservices.com/
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Alumni Association searches for board members
Prakriti Adhikari|April 17, 2018
The Alumni Association is going through a selection process for new board of director members.
According to Executive Director of Alumni Relations Michelle Biggs, the board of directors is “a group that helps and guides the Alumni Association.”
Alumni Relations is currently looking for four executive members including a president, vice president, secretary and treasurer, eight members-at-large and two members appointed by the president of alumni relations. They will all serve for a period of two years.
Biggs explained what roles the board of director members will have in representing the Alumni Association.
“It’s vitally important because they are the leaders of our overall Alumni Association, so they help guide the mission of Alumni Association in conjunction with the mission of the university,” said Biggs. “They represent the alumni of the university, so we want to make sure that they are out there spreading the word of the university and being ambassadors on behalf of the Alumni Association.”
Biggs explained that the new members will be involved with the university by helping Alumni Relations function effectively.
“They need to be involved and to help guide the Alumni Association to set the goals of identifying programs and events that benefit the alumni,” said Biggs.
The call for nominations was sent out via email and social media in March. Individuals were either nominated by members of university community or through self-nomination. According to Biggs, forms were due to her office on April 6 following the review of application by the nominating committee on April 10.
Biggs discussed the criteria required to be a member, which include being members who paid dues and are in good standing.
“They have to have demonstrated involvement and support of the university over all,” said Biggs. “They have to be willing to give their time and expertise. They attend four board meetings, and throughout the year, we meet on a quarterly basis, and they need to be active within the alumni chapter or be in a committee.”
The new members will be selected based on the voting done by the dues paying members of the Alumni Association. Letters will be sent to voting members on April 20, and the ballots will be due back on May 18. The new members will be notified to attend orientation on May 25.
Prakriti Adhikari, Staff Reporter
Prakriti Adhikari is an accounting major and an international student from Kathmandu, Nepal. Adhikari has been working as a reporter for The Lion's Roar...
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Humanitarian Action for Children 2018 - Latin America and the Caribbean (Revised May 2018)
The Latin America and Caribbean region is increasingly impacted by natural disasters as well as population movements. In 2017, more than 15.6 million people - including 8 million children were affected by natural disasters. Hurricanes resulted in aggravating the humanitarian situation of more than 1.4 million people in Cuba, Haiti and the Eastern Caribbean islands. Mexico was severely hit by two major earthquakes in September 2017, while floods and landslides further exacerbated the needs of vulnerable children and their families in Colombia and Peru. The region has also been affected by several outbreaks such as Zika, cholera and yellow fever, as well as the reemergence of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and diphtheria. Most recently, the increasing outflow of Venezuelans to neighbouring and other countries has been severely affecting children and women, who are facing a wide range of changing protection risks and needs. Throughout the region, natural disasters and population displacements challenge children’s access to basic services and rights, including health, clean water, education, nutrition and protection. Despite significant progress in recent years, the humanitarian situation illustrates the importance of addressing urgent needs while strengthening emergency preparedness and disaster risk reduction capacities.
Regional humanitarian strategy
In 2018, UNICEF's Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office continues to work with governments, humanitarian and development actors, providing technical and programmatic support in WASH, education, health, nutrition as well as child protection. UNICEF emphasizes support to emergency preparedness and response, and promotes the implementation of improved risk-informed programming. UNICEF is increasing its human and financial resources, rolling out its supply and logistics strategy, and further investing in surge strategy to ensure that each Country Office is equipped to address the growing humanitarian needs. The regional office also invests its resources in preparedness by providing technical support to ensure compliance with the Minimum Preparedness Standards and to help COs develop risk analysis. There is special emphasis on addressing emerging needs associated with children on the move through supporting governments and partners in providing access to education, protection, basic services and rights. Building on the experience of Zika response, the regional office is ensuring readiness for responding to health emergencies, focusing on provision of essential supplies, tools and procedures for high-risk countries. The regional office continues to promote cross sectoral activities such as community engagement or communication for development, to reinforce the humanitarian-development nexus and maximize UNICEF’s impact to affected populations.
Results in 2018
As of 30 April 2018, UNICEF had US$3.9 million available against the original US$10.5 million appeal. In the first quarter of 2018, the region has already achieved results and advanced in its implementation of the new preparedness procedures. The RO has directly supported training and rollout in eight priority countries and all Country Offices (CO) are advancing toward completion of the Emergency Preparedness Platform by mid-year. All CO Representatives have been updated in preparedness and response, and risk informed programming, and have benefited from collective reflections on the lessons learned from recent emergencies. Risk analysis through the INFORM and application to CO risk informed programming has advanced in with working sessions and collaboration with national authorities in four target countries in the first quarter. Shock-resistant social protection systems have been promoted and strengthened in COs and with partners. The regional office has reinforced its human resource capacities in emergency management, supply and logistics, water and sanitation, nutrition in emergencies and human resources.
Migration flows in Latin America and the Caribbean
The scale of needs resulting from the outflow of Venezuelans is rapidly surpassing the capacities of receiving countries, further straining already vulnerable host communities. More than 1.5 million people have moved from Venezuela to Latin America and Caribbean countries. It is estimated that almost 1.8 million additional people may leave Venezuela by the end of 2018. Women, unaccompanied children and indigenous groups are particularly at risk of violence, discrimination, trafficking, exploitation and abuse. More than 600,000 people are estimated to be in need of WASH services throughout the neighbouring countries, and the health and nutrition situation of children and lactating women is also deteriorating due to the lack of available quality food and drinking water, and unsanitary conditions. While the situation is evolving and assessments are still ongoing in many of the receiving and transit countries, nearly 1.3 million people (400,000 children), including both migrants and host communities, are estimated to be in need of assistance in Colombia, Brazil, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. Thousands of children are not enjoying their right to education, as they face barriers related to language, legal status or local schools’ absorption capacities given the scale of migration. The dynamic and complex nature of population movements require ongoing monitoring and assessment and a differentiated and flexible response for the diverse group of vulnerable people.
Response strategy for migration flows in Latin America and the Caribbean
UNICEF is scaling up its response to children and women on the move, seeking to reach 180,000 children by the end of 2018. UNICEF will prioritise its response and scale up its capacities, field presence and programme activities in countries bordering Venezuela, while also providing advocacy and technical assistance to these and other receiving countries. The regional strategy promotes cross-sectoral activities such as cash-based programming and community engagement, while also ensuring to link humanitarian and development activities to improve the resilience of communities. UNICEF WASH response will reach nearly 120,000 people with access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in schools, health centres and communities; UNICEF will also support the governments to ensure health and nutrition preventive and curative services to the most vulnerable populations. To address protection concerns, UNICEF will reach 56,000 children with protection services, including by establishing safe spaces and providing psychological support. More than 145,000 children will benefit from improved education services, including through supplies, learning spaces and enhanced capacities of national and local systems. To respond to emerging needs, UNICEF regional office will support country teams to continuously adapt risk analysis, through multi-sectoral assessments, preparedness plan and prepositioning of supplies in the most at-risk areas.
UNICEF is actively engaging with government partners, UN agencies as well as civil society organisations, while also to undertaking its coordination role as cluster lead for education, nutrition, WASH and child protection.
UN Children's Fund
Brazil: Yellow Fever Outbreak - Jan 2017
Colombia: Floods - Apr 2018
Hurricane Irma - Sep 2017
Hurricane Maria - Sep 2017
Mexico: Earthquakes - Sep 2017
Peru: Floods and Landslides - Feb 2017
Land Slide
2018-HAC-Latin-America-and-the-Caribbean-Region-rev-May.pdf (PDF | 833.18 KB)
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PM's Post-Cab 16/12/19: Disaster Responses
By: The Scoop Team
PM's Post-Cabinet Press Conference, 16 December 2019: Disaster ResponsesTranscript follows below
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern began her last post-cabinet press conference of 2019 by offering sympathy to those affected by the eruption of Whakaari/White Island a week ago, and giving an overview of the response. There will be work on whether any government inquiry into the disaster is necessary and a decision will be made in the new year.
Ms Ardern also announced a five million dollar fund to support Whakatane after the disaster and Westland following recent transport disruption, particularly targeting small businesses. Citeria for this has not been set.
She took questions on this fund, on whether the ACC encouraged business risk taking, possibilities for government inquiry processes and for charges, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison tweeting about the number of deceased and discussions between him and Ardern, issues around planning a memorial, wider tourism industry safety and different approaches around volcano tourism, assessing the emergency response, the ongoing load on hospitals, the probability of any overarching inquiry, he texted congratulations to Boris Johnson on his win and plans for a phone call, her earlier tweet regrading the possibility of Boris Johnson becoming UK Prime Minister, and lessons for the New Zealand Labour Party from UK Labour's result, her relationship with Jeremy Corbyn, discussions around Ihumātao, developing plans for public broadcasting and media mergers, the Reserve Bank Act review, and the status of the investigation into Labour's handling of sexual assault allegations.
POST-CABINET PRESS CONFERENCE: MONDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2019
PM: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the last post-Cab of 2019. Today our thoughts continue to be with the family and friends of those who died and were injured in the Whakaari / White Island eruption. I do want to give an overview of the status of the tragedy one week on. Police with the navy will continue their recovery operation for the two remaining victims, reassessing the risk each day. Police have begun to release the names of some victims.
Our health professionals keep continue to care for 14 people in hospital; 10 in a critical condition. Thirteen people have been transferred to Australia. One has, sadly, passed away upon their return. The coronial team is working to identify and return victims to their loved ones. Sixteen people have now been confirmed deceased; many succumbing to the injuries after first responders removed them from the island.
The volcanic alert level of the island remains at level 2. Alongside people across New Zealand, we observed a minute’s silence at 2.11 p.m., including the entire Cabinet. Our thoughts continue to be with the families of those who have passed and with those who were injured.
As I’ve said many times, there remain now questions to be asked and questions to be answered. As you’ll know, on 10 December, WorkSafe opened a health and safety investigation into the harm and loss of life caused by the eruption. They will do this as the workplace health and safety regulator and administrator of the adventure activities regulations. As they said at the time, they will be investigating and considering all of the relevant work health and safety issues surrounding this tragic event.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 covers work and workplaces in New Zealand and WorkSafe is the primary regulator. Its role also encompasses public safety where this is affected by work. The primary duty of care is held by the person conducting a business or undertaking and they, usually an organisation, are required to manage the health and safety risks to people, including workers and public, arising from their activities. Tour operators, cruise ship companies, emergency responders, and land owners fall under this.
WorkSafe can prosecute for breaches of the Act, and penalties and criminal sanctions range from $50,000 to $3 million and up to 5 years in prison.
I understand the WorkSafe investigation may take a year. The coronial processes are also likely to continue for some time. As a Cabinet, we know that it’s possible there will be broader issues that won’t be covered by these inquiries. Therefore, I have asked for advice from officials to look into whether there are any gaps that need to be addressed that fall outside of a potential coronial enquiry and the WorkSafe investigation. I expect advice on this in the new year.
I can also confirm that today Cabinet approved a $5 million fund for the impact of recent events both in Whakatāne and Westland. Particularly this fund will focus on small businesses who may have been adversely affected. Obviously we have criteria that has been established with past events that may have had similar effects on small businesses.
Criteria will be established, drawing on experience of the past, and a delegated group of Ministers will work through that criteria and administration of the fund over the summer period.
We don’t see this necessarily being the totality of the need in both of these areas but we thought important to make sure that we were working to address immediate needs in Whakatāne but also in Westland.
In terms of the week ahead, Parliament’s final sitting day will be on Wednesday, and I will be in the House for question time and the adjournment debate. On Tuesday, I will be in Māhia for the closing ceremony of Tuia 250, in attendance alongside Minister Davis. For now, though, I am happy to take any questions that you might have.
Media: That $5 million dollars, will White Island tourism or any of the other tour operators at White Island be eligible for some of those funds?
PM: We haven’t concluded the establishment of the criteria. What we are acknowledging is that there are likely to be wider impacts on an area, a place that has traditionally relied on tourism for employment and for economic activity. So I am going to allow MBIE, alongside Ministers, to work through some of the final criteria, but keeping in mind, obviously, there are a number of employees who have been affected and will be affected by what has happened on Whakaari / White Island.
Media: The tour operators, arguably, put people at risk in the first place by taking people out there.
PM: Again, pointing out that we haven’t concluded the establishment of the criteria or how this distribution of funds will work except to acknowledge that there will be impacts for Whakatāne, in the same way we expect impacts in Westland. We’ve established a contingency, which Ministers will now work through the criteria around, to support those communities.
Media: In broader terms, under ACC, it’s pretty hard to sue people in New Zealand. Do you think this has made it too easy for some businesses to take too many risks—
PM: No.
Media: —and to not face consequences as a result?
PM: No, not at all. Obviously, we have regulatory regimes that are around the management of risk and particularly health and safety regulations. Those are entirely separate. I do not see—I simply do not agree that ACC in any way has led to there being less focus on health and safety issues. Obviously, here, we need to work through a process, and WorkSafe will, around exactly what has happened in this case. We need to await that work to be done.
Media: In terms of that advice that you’re waiting for in the new year regarding further investigations, do you envisage that it could go as far as a royal commission?
PM: Not necessarily. In fact, having—keeping in mind, obviously, what WorkSafe are able to do can be reasonably comprehensive, and also potential coronial inquests equally.
Having looked back over some of the accidents previously in New Zealand, the 2008 canyon disaster for instance—we had a parachuting incident in Fox Glacier. In both those cases, you saw the then Department of Labour, who held responsibility at that time, or the Transport Accident Investigation Commission investigate alongside coronial inquests. So we haven’t always had separate inquiries. Again, what I want to ensure is that we answer all the questions that need to be answered, to try and do that with as little duplication as possible.
But I’m waiting for a bit more advice on that.
Media: Does a public inquiry seem like the best method to achieve that?
PM: No. Again, having looked at a number of accidents, significant events in recent years in New Zealand, they have often been investigated by, for instance, the Department of Labour, coronial inquests. They haven’t always had then separate inquiries. What I want to make sure is that we answer all of the questions we need to answer, that we don’t duplicate, and, importantly, we don’t get in the way of what WorkSafe needs to do as part of their job.
So, really, I am awaiting that advice. I want to make sure we’re properly considered here.
Media: Just to be clear, some of these operators, entities, and individuals could be simultaneously investigated via WorkSafe while receiving Government funds?
PM: No. I have not said that. I’ve said we’re yet to work through that. What we’ve decided as a Cabinet today is that there will be, undeniably, impacts on Whakatāne and on Westland as a result of, in Westland, recent weather events, and the eruption in Whakatāne.
We need to make sure we’re prepared to support particularly small businesses who will experience knock-on effects from that. We are prepared for that. Now Ministers will go away and do the work around criteria.
Media: So there are some small businesses who will also be simultaneously investigated by WorkSafe?
PM: Again, I have not confirmed that. What I am saying is that we’re prepared to provide the support required. There will be a number of businesses that will be affected here. I’m going to let Ministers now go away and work up, off the back of Kaikōura, for instance, the kind of support packages that we need.
Media: But you’re not ruling it out either?
PM: Because we’ve made no decisions. So, again, I’m going to leave that to Ministers to do that work. Again, there are a number of employees in situations here that need to be thought about too, but, again, no decisions have been made. We do need to move with some reasonable pace to get that in order and provide certainty, though, for those businesses more broadly affected.
Media: If WorkSafe has the oversight when it comes to volcanic tourism, is it likely—I mean, they are obviously running their own investigation, but surely there’s going to have to be something much wider that actually takes a look at what WorkSafe’s role and responsibilities were and actually properly looks at their, sort of, role going forward. Would that be fair?
PM: Yeah, and, obviously, that’s not something that necessarily WorkSafe—obviously, WorkSafe can’t do that, but it wouldn’t be out of the question, for instance, for a coronial inquest to potentially do that. So you can understand why I just want to make sure that we get some proper considered advice, look at all of the issues that we rightly expect to be dealt with here, and make a considered judgment in the new year.
Media: On time frames, what would be their time frame to actually get that set up, make that decision, and is a time which you mentioned before of up to a year for this investigation—is that acceptable to you?
PM: Yeah, so, obviously, WorkSafe already have announced that they’ll be undertaking, as you would expect, a full investigation. They have a 12-month period by which, if they are going to, they would need to pursue any charges, if they determine that that’s necessary. So there’s already a time limit set for WorkSafe. I’ve been advised that it is likely to take them a year to undertake this investigation. Look, as we’ve seen, inquiries can sometimes take more than that time, so it’s not for me to judge whether or not that’s an appropriate time frame. They need to do their job properly and it needs to be properly considered. In terms of the other work, it’s up to the coroner as to whether or not they undertake the nature of their investigatory work. That is a matter for them. For us, as I said, I expect to get some more formal advice in the New Year around any potential gaps that we might need to fill.
Media: Would you potentially wait until that WorkSafe investigation is completed, until the public inquiry or whatever other kind of inquiry—
PM: Not necessarily. If we do determine that there are gaps, you know, then that may well be something that we can move on beforehand. I do want to get some advice, though, particularly from Crown Law, as to whether or not that jeopardises the work of WorkSafe and/or how we might be able to manage if we do make a decision that that is required. So, again, there is already an investigation under way. That’s critically important. That has started—has been announced by WorkSafe. Now it’s just a question of what else might we need to look at to make sure that we look at every angle of what has happened here.
Media: When will that $5 million be freed up to those small businesses who have been affected?
PM: Well, obviously, we made a decision today to enable further work to be done before Cabinet resumes in the New Year, so that $5 million is available now for Ministers that we’ve delegated to go and work up some of that criteria over the summer period. So they’re free to do that without Cabinet having to come back to it.
Media: Which Ministers are those?
PM: So we’ve included Minister Twyford from economic development, Minister Robertson, our Minister for tourism, Kelvin Davis. Minister Mahuta, obviously, has a role from a local authority perspective. Minister Henare will be involved from a civil defence perspective, as well. I think that’s the—yes, I believe that’s the complete list.
Media: Would you expect tours to resume to Whakaari / White Island before those investigations report back?
PM: Look, that’s ultimately not a decision for me. That is something that, as I understand, would primarily sit with a determination from WorkSafe, so I’ll leave them to make that determination.
Media: Could they make that ruling before reporting back?
PM: My understanding is that—twofold, actually: that there exists provision from a civil defence perspective, and that also WorkSafe, as I understand, helping from within their health and safety remit, if there is an imminent threat, then they have that provision as well. But ultimately, those are judgments that don’t sit with me.
Media: The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison today tweeted that the tragedy has so far claimed 19 lives. The death toll stands at 16; two people remain unaccounted for. Do you have any information about a 19 th victim?
PM: No. My understanding is as you’ve set out.
Media: Do you know why this misleading information is ending up in the public sphere?
PM: Oh, look, I’m not going to make any judgment there, because, obviously, we have a scenario here where we, obviously, have two individuals missing. There have been medevacs where people have then very sadly passed in Australia. I’m making no judgment there around what’s occurred, but, ultimately, we’ve tried to keep that information flow going as well, and we’ll try to keep doing so.
Media: What did you discuss with foreign Minister Payne today, and will there be any requests for support for [Inaudible]?
PM: Oh, look, you know, as I think I’ve probably said before, the contact between Prime Minister Morrison and I has been frequent: multiple phone calls, multiple messages, giving updates where I can, and likewise PM Morrison discussing what he believes might be occurring on their side. You know, a focus there for a time around being able to make sure that loved ones are in close proximity to one another in a medevac. That is a very resource- intensive operation, of course, providing the flights themselves, multiple health professionals for every single individual patient. So that was an enormous undertaking from Australia where we worked in partnership together and has been now almost entirely completed, as I understand. So there’s been good cooperation.
Media: A minute’s silence was obviously observed today. Have there been any discussions around, I guess, a memorial event in coming weeks or months?
PM: There have been discussions. One thing we’re very mindful of, of course, Ngāti Awa have played an incredible role working alongside the families of the victims, not just from within Whakatāne but those internationally too, and it was one of the things that some of those families from abroad really raised as being something that had particularly stood out to them as being unique, and they saw it as being important as well. So really working alongside Ngāti Awa. My understanding is at this stage that there’s a desire, of course, to wait for families to be reunited with their loved ones. That will take some time, but I don’t expect we’ll have a memorial as a result any time soon.
Media: Have you personally been to White Island?
PM: No, I have not, but I’ve had family members who have.
Media: Do you anticipate of any of those future investigations or inquiries that you might take a wider look at tourism as a whole, if you think about places like Tongariro, Franz Josef, and if there’s a [Inaudible] could be quite dangerous at times?
PM There was work done under the last Government around adventure tourism, and so that was fairly recent. I think it’s likely that if there are particular issues relating to that regime, that may well be covered by some of the work that’s already under way. But keeping in mind it wasn’t that long ago that that wider work was done. Obviously, here we have some very particular circumstances that are unique to volcanic activity, and so there may well be wider learnings, but, as I have had it explained to me, there are also different regimes that have applied to Whakaari / White Island versus others. Again, that may well be something that is discussed in some greater detail as a result of any inquiry work that’s undertaken.
Media: Is one of the big problems there the fact that the island is privately owned? Did that complicate the responsibilities and who’s responsible?
PM: I wouldn’t want to make an assertion about that until that work is undertaken, but I think there are some differences around the level—DOC, obviously, is involved in other volcanoes. That doesn’t necessarily point to White Island being specific because of private ownership, but it may point to some differences because of DOC governance. Again, I’ve always been really careful in all of this not to pre-determine or make any assumptions here.
I do think it’s important that we allow the work to be done properly and just not to get ahead of that, particularly given the scale of this incident.
Media: The emergency services’ response to Whakaari, will that be covered in any of the WorkSafe investigations or the coronial inquest?
PM: No, in the same way that, actually, in the immediate aftermath the response to the incident itself, if you take March 15, for instance, that wasn’t necessarily covered by any work that was done in the aftermath, but it was something that was looked at specifically by, for instance, the New Zealand Police. I’ve had a preliminary conversation with officials just this morning around making sure that we do reflect back on what happened in those moments after and the emergency response, because involved in that was everyone from our emergency management teams, the New Zealand Police, first responders like St John, and even Coastguard were involved, and then there was the role of those who privately operated helicopters. I do think that we need to look at that immediate aftermath, and I do think we owe it to the families to look at that immediate aftermath. I’m looking for other ways to pursue that and the police have done a fine job in the past of being involved in that, but those conversations are ongoing.
Media: Is that one of the questions that remains unanswered that we would need to look at an inquiry?
PM: No, not necessarily. We didn’t for 15 March. Looking at an emergency response, I think, is a very separate piece of work that actually you can move on fairly quickly. So I’ve raised today questions around the police doing that, being involved in that, and, again, our emergency management team. So I don’t think that is something that has to be delayed. I do think we can probably get on with that fairly promptly.
Media: Are there any concerns about the ongoing load that’s being imposed on the medical facilities, and is there any suggestion that there may be some external help needed—
PM: Ah, look, actually, I’ve visited Christchurch Hospital in particular, and managed to have a conversation with some of the staff there—that medivac of a number of Australian victims so that they could be reunited not only with their loved ones who were in other hospitals in New Zealand, because, as you can imagine, once they came to Whaktāne Hospital, it wasn’t always possible to identify those who were either travelling together or related, and so in some cases they were moved to different hospitals.
The medivac process has allowed them to be reunited in one go, and also put them closer to their loved ones. That has considerably reduced down the number in critical care in New Zealand. My understanding is that we have two in Christchurch, two in the Hutt, two in Waikato, and eight in Middlemore, so, actually, the fact that they’re dispersed means it has taken the pressure off. There has been some impact I think in the short term, and I do want to personally check in on Middlemore, but otherwise I hear that our services are coping very well Media: Is it appropriate to be working with Ngāti Awa on a memorial when they could potentially be under investigation as an owner of White Island tours?
PM: In the same way that Ngāti Awa provided and facilitated a role for the deceased who returned on Friday, in the same way that they provided their marae facilities, the same way that, actually, they provided a place for people to gather for the minute’s silence, I think it is important to remember that, regardless of their commercial interests, they are local iwi, and they have been providing a very important role locally.
Media: Is it highly likely that there won’t be a further over-arching inquiry at all?
PM: Again, I don’t want to predetermine that. As I say, I am still waiting for some official advice, but just looking across at some different incidents we’ve had, that tells me that, actually, we have in the past had coronial inquests and Department of Labour—now WorkSafe—able to look thoroughly into these incidents, or tragedies of this nature. But, again, I do want to be assured myself, by getting that advice in the new year as to whether or not there’s further work that won’t be picked up by them that we need to look at.
Media: So if those two agencies can investigate those two things and there can be a separate sort of independent look at the first response, then what are the questions that still need to be answered in—
PM: Some have been raised around whether or not—of course, WorkSafe will be looking at the regulatory framework they’re operating in, so did the operators fulfil the expectations around health and safety audits, and so on. The question may well be: was that regime itself adequate, and did WorkSafe do their job? Of course, WorkSafe can’t look at it themselves, so I just want to get a bit more advice on that.
Media: You indicated on the AM Show that there absolutely would be an inquiry. Are you still sticking to that?
PM: Oh, as I said, WorkSafe are undertaking these coronial inquests, considered to be of that nature as well. The question is, for me, whether or not we need a third.
Media: On Friday, you said that you texted Boris Johnson to say congratulations for his election victory. What was his reply to that text, or did he get back to you?
PM: I haven’t received a reply, but we have been working on a phone call, and nor would I expect, in the immediate aftermath of a busy election—equally, I’d only heard from him three days prior.
Media: When’s your phone call going to be and what are you going to discuss?
PM: Look, at some time in the near future, I imagine, but I won’t put an exact time line on that for someone who’s just been elected Prime Minister. I imagine very much, with me, anyway, I will first and foremost acknowledge the fact that UK citizens have been caught up in the tragedy of White Island; secondly, of course, congratulating him on his election result; and thirdly, of course, our joint FTA aspirations and further plans around Brexit.
Media: Do you regret calling him a “gaffe man” back in a 2012 tweet?
PM: Well, clearly I was wrong, wasn’t I, because in that same tweet it was speculating whether or not he would be Prime Minister. To be fair, I would not have speculated that I myself at that time would become Prime Minister.
Media: Do you regret calling him a “gaffe man”?
PM: Oh, again, I’ve been proven wrong, and from what I know of PM Johnson, I imagine we’d both have a bit of a laugh about it.
Media: As Labour leader are there any lessons for you from what happened to the British Labour Party?
PM: I don’t see every Labour Party as being uniform around the world. I think that we’ve got our own challenges here in New Zealand that as a Labour Party we’re working hard to address, and we successfully formed a Government, and we’ve built our support from the public since then. So I’m not sure that necessarily you can uniformly compare the position of every Labour Party around the world.
Media: Is there a warning there about getting too far away from the base, though?
PM: Well, again, it depends on whether or not that’s what you’re accusing us of, Richard.
Media: I meant Jeremy Corbyn.
PM: Oh, right. Well, again, you know, that’s something that I tend to leave for other commentators. I think it’s enough to run your own party rather than making judgment on anyone else’s handling of their own.
Media: When was the last time you contacted Jeremy Corbyn?
PM: To be honest, I’ve met Jeremy Corbyn once. You tend to form ongoing relationships with leaders and party leaders that you have relatively frequent contact with, but I just haven’t had those opportunities with Jeremy Corbyn.
Media: Would you send him your commiserations?
PM: Sorry?
Media: Would you send him your commiserations as a fellow Labour leader?
PM: Oh, look, I haven’t done that as a general rule of thumb for every progressive person who’s been unsuccessful in elections. So that’s not something I’ve generally done. If I knew someone reasonably, then I may well, but, again, it just depends on the relationship.
Media: Why were you so incredulous at the prospect of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister?
PM: That’s not how I would actually describe that tweet.
Media: [Inaudible] Boris Johnson as a possible candidate for PM?
PM: Emphasis the reader’s own. Again, keeping in mind this was, again, this was several years ago and, as I said, I’ve been proven wrong.
Media: Did you discuss a deal for the land at Ihumātao today?
PM: Look, we’ve had, obviously, since July, a range of discussions amongst Cabinet colleagues, and I would describe talks there as being a work in progress, as being positive, but, again, we’re not at a point for announcements to be made, but we are making some positive progress.
Media: Will you make a resolution before Christmas?
PM: Again, we are not at a point to make announcements, but progress has been positive and ongoing, and as soon as we are in a position to make announcements, of course we will. But that’s not today.
Media: Have Auckland councils made a decision at all about what they would like to happen with it?
PM: Again, conversations have been ongoing with all parties that have an interest. Of course that includes King, mana whenua, Fletchers, and, of course, local government in the form of Auckland Council. They have an interest because Heritage New Zealand is proposing lifting the status of that land, and, ultimately, it will then come on council to make sure that’s upheld in their unitary plan. So they have an interest now too.
Media: Did Cabinet made a decision on any of the [Inaudible] media work before it currently?
PM: As Minister Faafoi has indicated, we’ve had a preliminary discussion as a Cabinet.
Further announcements down the track I’ll leave to Minister Faafoi, but I think it’s fair to say that we all agree that we need to make sure that we’re bolstering public broadcasting in the current environment. But we’ve had that preliminary discussion and it will be ongoing.
Media: On the Stuff-NZME merger, did that come up in Cabinet at all today?
PM: Again, as you’ll appreciate, I don’t divulge every conversation that’s had by Cabinet. I put the emphasis here on the focus and agreement amongst Cabinet around needing to bolster public broadcasting. Ultimately, there are separate processes for things that involved some of the other mergers that have been discussed in the public domain. OK, I’ll take a couple more.
Media: Will there be an announcement on public broadcasting though before the end of the year, as Minister Faafoi has indicated?
PM: He indicated that Cabinet would have discussions and they have. Again, as I’ve said, there will be an iterative process.
Media: Are the Government parties broadly on the same page when it comes to public broadcasting?
PM: Yes. Final question.
Media: Did Cabinet discuss phase two of the Reserve Bank Act review?
PM: Again, as you’ll recall, I don’t divulge every single conversation, otherwise we’d go through probably a fairly tedious exercise of ruling things in or out. Ultimately, when announcements are ready to be made in any given area I allow it up to Ministers to undertake that unless I steal it for myself for post-Cab. All right everyone, thank you—oh, sorry, I will allow that final question.
Media: Has Labour received the sexual assault investigation?
PM: We are very keen, of course, to make sure that we complete that process. We have not yet received the report from Maria Dew, and, of course, that is ultimately up to her to conclude. It was an independent process by a QC, so we are all still, unfortunately, awaiting that report.
Media: Do you think you’ll receive it before the end of the term?
PM: I would hope so, yes, and we will look to move as quickly as can, but, ultimately, it still sits with her and so we are awaiting that in the same way that you are. All right, thanks everyone.
conclusion of press conference
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Finland’s pivotal presidential election of 2012
In the beginning of February, Finland elected its new president for a six-year term. Having completed her second term, the outgoing Tarja Halonen could not be reelected.
Eight political parties nominated candidates for the presidency: Pekka Haavisto for the Green League, Paavo Lipponen for the Social Democratic Party of Finland, Timo Soini for the True Finns, Sauli Niinistö for the National Coalition Party, Eva Biaudet for the Swedish People’s Party, Paavo Väyrynen for the Centre Party, Sari Essayah for the Christian Democrats, and Paavo Arhinmäki for the Left Alliance.
In Estonia, the president is elected either by Parliament or an electoral council; Finland elects its president through a direct vote. Although the Finnish president’s power has been significantly curbed in recent years, mainly leaving intact representative functions, the position still provides influence that a skillful politician can use effectively. Direct elections rule out the possibility of party arrangements and political manipulation in determining the president, thus making the election campaign much more intriguing and diverse.
As expected, the main policy issues of the election were the European Union and the euro zone crisis, economic issues, rising Russian influence, and NATO membership. The campaign was a typical Nordic one - polite and circumspect, and free of mudslinging. In the event that criticism was expressed, it was directed toward supporters and not the candidates themselves. It could even be said that the presidential elections were boring and uneventful. The most extreme actions involved the tearing down of campaign posters. Interestingly, these attacks were mainly directed toward Timo Soini. Nor was there anything surprising in the television appearances or debates, in which the presence of several presidential candidates could be described as etiolated. The exceptions were Niinistö and Haavisto, in which case both candidates and their backing were strong.
From the start, the front runners were Sauli Niinistö of the National Coalition Party; Timo Soini of the True Finns, who unexpectedly failed to achieve the same success he had during the parliamentary elections; and the Centre Party’s Paavo Väyrnynen, who came into politics during the time of Kekkonen, and whom the party did not initially endorse but did so only later, when it became evident that Väyrynen had a large support base. The Social Democrats, whose candidate Lipponen was considered too old, suffered an embarrassing failure. Biaudet, Essayah and Arhinmäki were marginal players whose votes were largely given to influence the results of other candidates.
In the first round of the election, on January 22, none of the candidates received more than 50 percent of the votes. It is worth noting that most of the candidates who did not make it into the second round vowed to give their votes to Niinistö. On February 5, Niinistö faced off with Haavisto, who surprisingly came in second in the first round.
More than 1.8 million people voted Sauli Niinistö into office (Haavisto received 1.1 million votes). Niinistö received 62.6 percent of the votes and Haavisto 37.4 percent. The new president received more votes than his predecessors, Martti Ahtisaari and Tarja Halonen. More importantly, the election marked the end of the Social Democrats’ three decades in power, now replaced by the victory of a conservative world view. For that reason the election represented, at least in theory, a significant turning point.
On the other hand, voter participation had not been so low since Urho Kaleva Kekkonen was elected president in 1978. Another curiosity was an unprecedented number of spoilt election ballots - more than 25,000 in just the second round.
Sauli Niinistö, the presidential candidate of the National Coalition Party, is followed by a TV crew on his way to the election night rally at the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki on 5 February 2012.
As was already mentioned, the biggest surprise of the presidential election was the success of Haavisto, who managed to effectively use social media to his benefit. In fact, widespread use of social media and social networking by all of the candidates was the newest characteristic of the presidential election. An elections expert featured in Finnish broadcasting, Risto Uimonen, has said that, in the end, Haavisto’s homosexuality and partnership with a younger South American man became his fatal flaw in the election. Other influencing factors included Haavisto’s civil service (the president serves as supreme commander of the armed forces), lack of higher education, and the fact that he is not a church member. There were doubts about whether Haavisto could cope in complicated situations, such as in Russian relations. His fairly large number of votes was also the result of protest votes against Niinistö. Haavisto himself said that time was against him and he would only have needed a few more weeks to reach success.
The new president, Niinistö, is popular among the people of Finland and has a long political experience. His supporters voted for traditional values, security and stability. The election will likely have little impact on EU-Finnish relations, although Niinistö’s campaign was sometimes critical of the EU. Niinistö does not have the same kind of close personal ties with Estonia as did his forerunner.
During his campaign, Niinistö repeatedly asserted that Finland will not join NATO. Although baffling for us, the lukewarm attitude toward NATO tends to make Finland, lying between two centers of power, a geopolitical gray zone. Although Russia is not currently seen as a direct threat, its invasion of Georgia has stirred caution in Finland as well. Compared to his forerunner Halonen, Niinistö, who has the rank of captain in the army reserve, is more concrete in his views of Russia. From the Estonian standpoint, this could be beneficial.
Henn Põlluaas. Photo: Mihkel Maripuu/Postimees
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Jennifer Aniston reveals gritty details of bitter feud with mom Nancy Dow: 'I did not come out the model child she's hoped for'
Jennifer Aniston has spoken about how she could not handle the 'critical' and 'petty' nature of her mother.
By Mangala Dilip
Updated On : 11:02 PST, Dec 2, 2018
Tags :Jennifer Aniston,Brad Pitt
Jennifer Aniston and her late mother Nancy Dow had one of the most complicated relationships that resulted in one of the most public fallouts and the duo remained estranged until Dow’s death in 2016. It has been speculated that a lot of their issues stemmed from the unrealistic expectations that Dow had of Aniston and in her upcoming Netflix flick 'Dumplin’ the daughter is set to more or less parallel their relationship.
Aniston’s 'Dumplin' is set to release Friday, December 7, and in it, she will play a former teen beauty queen Rosie Dickson, who runs the pageant circuit in her town. Meanwhile, her daughter, Willowdean, aka the titular Dumplin, is a plus-sized girl portrayed by Danielle Macdonald, who finds it difficult to relate to her mother, who is too focused on her own beauty and appearance to pay attention to her daughter.
Danielle Macdonald and Jennifer Aniston (Netflix)
In an interview with Aniston related the plot of the film to her own life and her relationship with her mother. “She [Dow] was a model and she was all about presentation and what she looked like and what I looked like,” Daily Mail quotes her as saying.
Dow was famous a TV star in the 1960s, has credits in titles such as ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ and ‘The Wild Wild West.’ “I did not come out the model child she's hoped for and it was something that really resonated with me. This little girl just wanting to be loved by mum that was too occupied with things that didn't quite matter,” she added.
In a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Aniston revealed how she could not handle the “critical” and “petty” nature of her mother. “She was critical. She was very critical of me,” she said, adding, “Because she was a model, she was gorgeous, stunning. I wasn't. I never was. I honestly still don't think of myself in that sort of light, which is fine. She was also very unforgiving. She would hold grudges that I just found so petty.”
Jennifer Aniston in Dumplin (Netflix)
Aniston and Dow had stopped talking altogether after the latter wrote a tell-all book about their relationship, titled, ‘From Mother and Daughter to Friends: A Memoir’, in 1999. The continued to not speak for many years, with Dow being kept out of the guest list for Aniston’s wedding to Brad Pitt in 2000.
They did reconcile after her divorce, though, but continued to have a very tumultuous relationship. At the time of Dow’s death, they hadn’t spoken for several years, at least not since Dow’s stroke in 2011. However, Aniston did attend her mother’s funeral service on May 27, 2016, which was held at Dow's apartment in Los Angeles two days after her death.
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Home / News / Human Interest
Age of Extinction: Another North Atlantic right whale dies raising 2019 toll to 10 for a species with just 400 left
Snake Eyes, a North Atlantic right whale, was found dead off Long Island last week. So far, there have been 30 deaths, 10 of those this year alone, largely due to fishing gear entanglements or ship strikes
By Priyam Chhetri
Published on : 05:30 PST, Sep 24, 2019
Tags :New York,Phoenix,Boston
Last week, a well known and highly endangered North Atlantic right whale named Snake Eyes was found dead off the coast of Long Island, New York. With only about 400 of them alive in the world's waters, the species is spiraling fast into extinction.
Unfortunately, Snake Eyes, who was fondly called so by scientists at the New England Aquarium because of the two scars on his head that looked like a pair of eyes when he swam wasn't the first one to die in the recent years. He was at least 40 years old.
Prior to his death, Snake Eyes was last seen alive on August 6 caught in rope in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. The rope had been going through his mouth all the way to his tail, they said. On September 16, he was found floating south of Fire Island, New York. (Twitter)
In fact, according to marine activists, this year alone we've lost 10 right whales and that follows the death of 17 more in 2017 including in both Canada and the United States. That puts the number at 30 whales we've lost in the two countries' waters since 2017, which is roughly 7 percent of the entire population. These spates of death are attributed to reduced calving rates (which were 12 in the same time frame of the deaths) and lackluster protection.
Despite being protected for over 50 years, the species has not recovered
Kristen Monsell, Oceans Program Litigation Director who works on North Atlantic right whales for the Center for Biological Diversity urged the two countries to take immediate and strong action to ensure the species' survival and promote its eventual recovery. "This includes implementing additional seasonal closures of fisheries to protect the whales while they’re feeding and migrating, and significantly reducing the amount of vertical line in the water, including through the use of ropeless fishing gear," she said.
A full-scale model of Phoenix, a North Atlantic Right Whale, is seen on display at the Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural HIstory during a press preview September 24, 2008 in Washington, DC. The model was made from images of the actual whale currently being monitored by scientists. The hall, showcasing the ocean and its many connections to humans opens to the public September 27. AFP PHOTO/KAREN BLEIER (Photo credit should read KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)
The right whales, which were the first to be hunted by American whalers, get their name from being considered the "right" kind of whales to hunt because of their slow movement and the fact that they float after dying. Despite being protected for over 50 years, the species has not been recovered. The North Atlantic right whales call the Atlantic ocean their home.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) announced September 10 the extension of the voluntary vessel speed restriction zone southeast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, through this week to give the whales room. This is done with the intention of reducing the risk of serious injury and mortality of right whales and while it is a step in the right direction, it is neither fast or far enough, said Monsell.
Adult right whales never grow old, they die first
Snake Eye, Wolverine, Clipper, Punctuation and Comet are among the few right whales that have been killed due to various causes in the ocean. Punctuation, who had been studied by researchers for nearly 40 years was killed in June this year after being injured by a vessel.
A reproductive female, she had had 8 calves in her lifetime. With her death, her female lineage is extinct, according to Anderson Cabot Centre for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium. All of the mentioned whales went through entanglement in fishing gear at least once in their lifetimes, often severe.
Snake Eye's necropsy was conducted after his carcass was found to determine the cause of death. The final findings will be available anywhere in a few days to a few months, NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman Jennifer Goebel said.
A rare North Atlantic right whale surfaces June 27, 2001 off the coast of Massachusetts. Scientists launched a second rescue attempt July 10, 2001 to remove fishing line embedded in the infected jaw of the endangered 45-foot whale. (Photo by Getty Images)
Prior to his death, when he was last seen alive on August 6 he had been caught in rope in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. He looked like he was being dragged down and experts believe he could have been anchored to the bottom. The rope had been going through his mouth all the way to his tail, they said. On September 16, he was found floating south of Fire Island, New York.
Like most of his species, he didn't get to grow old. Two human causes – fishing gear entanglements or ship strikes – kill them first, said Jane P. Davenport, Senior Staff Attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. Three right whales killed last year in the U.S waters were killed because of the first reason, fishing gear entanglement, she said.
Fishing gear entanglements in the vertical lines used in trap or pot fisheries for lobster and crab remains the leading cause of right whale mortality, also reducing birth rates, she added. According to an estimate, from 2003 to 2018, 51 percent of all right whale deaths diagnosed was because of entanglements. 83 percent of these whales also have scars from previous such entanglements.
Reduce vertical commercial fishing
The most effective solution would be to reduce the vertical fishing lines that occur in the areas where the right whales are, like New England and Atlantic Canada, which are hundreds of thousands by number. There's a need to impose speed limit zones on ships as well, Davenport said.
MISCOU ISLAND, NB - JUNE 7: Pierre-Yves Daoust, a member of the core investigation unit, directs other scientists during a necropsy of a right whale on Miscou Island in New Brunswick on June 7, 2019. This North Atlantic right whale - among the most endangered species on the planet - was known by researchers as Wolverine, for three propeller cuts on its tailstock that reminded them of the trio of blades used by the comic book character of the same name. (Photo by Nathan Klima for The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Oceana's Campaign Director Whitney Webber agrees with her - there is a need for a dramatic collaborative effort. "The U.S. and Canadian governments must work together and take aggressive action to prevent North Atlantic right whales from becoming extinct," she said reiterating that reducing the number of vertical fishing lines in the water and requiring ships to slow down can help save this species.
Webber also recommended the two governments need to also additionally implement effective fisheries closures that remove threats to right whales when they are present, modify fishing gear and practices to reduce the likelihood and severity of entanglements, enhance fisheries monitoring and require public tracking of fishing vessels, enact seasonal restrictions where right whales frequent and short term ones in areas where they are detected as well as financially aid research, monitoring and risk reduction for right whales in the long term capacity.
What is required to do to save them from extinction is not a mystery, said Davenport. "The only missing piece is the political will to take decisive, effective, and immediate protective measures before it’s too late," she said.
If you have a news scoop or an interesting story for us, please reach out at (323) 421-7514
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Mechanical Landscapes
· 7 items
Shadows of the North - SAMPLE
It's been a long time in the making, but this is the first in my series of ebooks, and is a vastly expanded accompaniment to my Shadows of the North exhibition.
Shadows of the North is a selection of images from the Mechanical Landscapes project. This particular selection, as befits the venue, is an exploration of the remains of the northern textile industry. In many areas of the North this industry dominated, both directly and indirectly, the landscape, the economy, the community and the social life of many towns and villages.
Although textile manufacturing has almost vanished from the UK, it's legacies can still be witnessed today in our urban landscapes, the ethnic make up of our communities, and the impressive Town Halls and Civic Centres of towns like Bolton, Accrington, and others.
But while some of the remaining textile mills and chimneys (such as where you are standing now) have been carefully restored and repurposed, many are stood quietly decaying, waiting for demolition or reuse. It is in this uncertain period that I have photographed these giants of our past.
The full book will be 70 pages, black and white.
19 page sample
Other items from Mechanical Landscapes
The View From The North 2007-2017
15x12 Print
12x8 Print
9x6 Print
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Clearwater Realtor® Wins Florida Realtors® First Spirit of Advocacy Award
A recent survey from the Consumer Federation of America found that less than half of respondents (44%) understood that a credit score is used to measure risk for a bank when lending money. Of those polled 22% mistakenly thought credit scores measured the amount of debt a person had.
source -Consumer Federation of America
posted by Editor, 10th September 2019, Categories: Awards Winners 2019
2019 Florida Realtors President Eric Sain presents the inaugural Spirit of Advocacy Award to Nancy J. Riley, 2007 president of Florida Realtors, during the state association’s convention in Orlando.
ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 10, 2019 — Florida Realtors has recognized Nancy J. Riley, a member of the Pinellas Suncoast Association of Realtors and the 2007 president of the state association, as the first recipient of its new Spirit of Advocacy Award. The award was presented during the Florida Realtors’ recent annual Convention & Trade Expo at Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, Fla.
This new award honors a member of Florida Realtors who has demonstrated excellence in advocacy at the local board, state association, national association and community within the governmental or political arena over their lifetime. Monetary donations are not a consideration of the award.
Riley has an extensive resume of contributions to public policy issues, committees and advocacy at the local, state and national Realtor association levels. She has passionately been dedicated to advocacy throughout her life.
She has served her local Realtor associations in numerous capacities, including as the 1999 president of what was then the Greater Clearwater Association of Realtors (now part of the merged Pinellas Suncoast Association) and was honored as 2000 Realtor of the Year by the Greater Clearwater Association. In 2008, Florida Realtors recognized Riley as its Realtor of the Year.
She has been active with numerous community, social and political organizations. Riley was elected Republican State Committeewoman for Pinellas County in 2000 and has served in that role since then. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Republican Party of Florida from 2001-2016. A graduate of the Leadership St. Pete Class of 1995, she was a voting delegate to the Republican National Convention in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016.
Three different Florida governors – Charlie Crist, Lawton Chiles and Robert “Bob” Martinez – appointed Riley to serve on state committees or task forces, including the Taxation & Budget Reform Committee, HOPE (Home Ownership Promotes the Economy) Task Force, Keep Florida Beautiful and the Tampa Bay National Estuary Committee. She is a past member of the St. Petersburg Charter Review Committee, St. Petersburg Baseball Task Force (to bring baseball to St. Pete) and the St. Petersburg Code Enforcement Task Force.
As Florida Realtors 2007 president, Riley once said, “The Florida Association of Realtors has built a foundation for a strong political presence in Tallahassee and in Washington, D.C. Our Realtor members can expect to see their state association resources committed to a broad spectrum of property rights and quality-of-life issues.”
Riley serves as a crusader for private property rights, a strong voice for engagement and investment, and boldly represents the real estate profession.
Florida Realtors® serves as the voice for real estate in Florida. It provides programs, services, continuing education, research and legislative representation to its 187,000 members in 51 boards/associations. Florida Realtors® Media Center website is available at http://media.floridarealtors.org.
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Medievally Speaking
An Open Access Review Journal Encouraging Critical Engagement with the Continuing Process of Inventing the Middle Ages
Adventures in Anglalond: Angles, Saxons, and Academics
Adventures in Anglalond:
Angles, Saxons, and Academics
Richard Utz (ricutz@me.com)
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress determined, among many other and more important matters, that a committee of three, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, should recommend a seal for the new United States of America. By August, each of the men suggested different designs, with scenes and symbols deriving from the usual suspects: Classical mythology, the Bible, and the Middle Ages. Adams settled on the figure of Hercules as he contemplated abstractions of Virtue and Sloth; Franklin imagined Moses extending his hand and destroying Pharao and his armies; Jefferson agreed with seeing Moses and Pharaoh on one side of the seal or medal they were considering. On the reverse, however, he added a surprise element: “Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon chiefs from whom we claim the honor of being descended, and whose political principles and form of government we have assumed.” None of the three proposals ended up being picked, and several other versions were also rejected, including one with a shield flanked by the maiden America and a medieval knight in armor.
Clearly, certain ideas and tropes of the medieval past loomed large in the imaginary of the country’s late eighteenth-century founders. Jefferson’s anchoring of American claims of self-determination with a pair of mythographic Germanic settler-colonizers, whom he seems to credit with creating a form of self-rule in early medieval Kent, is rather ironic. After all, his own grandparents on his father’s side had immigrated from Northern Wales, a region that became part of the “Celtic fringe” (roughly today’s Cornwall, Ireland, Isla of Man, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany) into which the indigenous Romano-Celtic inhabitants of the ‘British’ isles retreated as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes expanded their territories.
Of course, historical accuracy and exact genealogy were not priorities when a late eighteenth-century politician yearned to demonstrate the manifest destiny of his nation. Jefferson’s priority was to unite the new nation behind what he felt was a linguistically and culturally plausible ‘English’ national heritage of entrepreneurial colonizers. And as nationalism gradually increased during the nineteenth and early twentieth-century, the practitioners of medieval studies in the U.S., European countries, and many of their colonies worked within similar nationalist paradigms. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that medieval studies would never have succeeded at finding broad acceptance at the modern university if it had not been in lockstep with these very paradigms: The heavy research focus on national epics (Song of Roland, Nibelungenlied, El Cid), the use of linguistics to prove ‘ownership’ of medieval texts (Beowulf as a Danish, German(ic), or English/British narrative), or nationalized methods of textual editing (Karl Lachmann vs. Joseph Bédiér) provide evidence for the long-standing interdependence of nationalism and medieval studies. Numerous critical evaluations, from Reginald Horsman’s Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (1981) through Mary Dockray-Miller’s “Public Medievalists, Racism, and Suffrage in the American Women’s College” (2019) demonstrate the same interdependence in the area of “Anglo-Saxonism”.
Because most academic nomenclatures date back to the foundational phase of their respective fields, it is little wonder that various fields, organizations, journals, and awards prolong the nationalist origins within which they came about. In addition, they often continue concomitant mentalities about gender and race prevalent when the field was founded. Scholars in premodern studies have dealt with these semantic burdens in different ways:
The political appropriation of the term “Aryan” by racists and nationalists between 1870 and 1945 led to its gradual disappearance, and thus “Indo-European” is today accepted as the most appropriate term to describe the group of languages comprising most European and several Asiatic languages. Notable exception: Some German-speaking linguists still use “Indo-Germanic,” maintaining the word remains unsullied by nationalist and racist mentalities.
Women were most certainly not consulted when the Medieval Academy of America decided, in 1926, to name its flagship journal Speculum. It took until the 1990s for feminist scholars to convince the Academy and its journal to confront its gendered past, open its gates to feminist scholarship, and publish a special 1993 issue on Studying Medieval Women: Sex, Gender, and Feminism. Unfortunately, journal’s title has remained unchanged.
Enter the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS) in 2019: According to its official website, it was constituted as (relatively) recently as 1983 at the society’s first conference. Its objective is “to provide all scholars interested in the languages, literatures, arts, history, and material culture of the period with support in their research and to facilitate an exchange of ideas and materials within and among all disciplines.” The “period” is defined in the preceding phrase as “the culture of early medieval England.” With hindsight, it is difficult to understand why the ISAS members and leadership decided to call themselves a society of “Anglo-Saxonists.” Did nobody see that the term conflated the group’s scholars with the people they were studying? Society for the Study of Anglo-Saxon Culture would have avoided that problem. Or they could have picked the neutral titles of a Society for the Study of Early Medieval England, or an Early Medieval English Culture Association. They didn’t.
Some weeks ago, the ISAS was charged by some of their own adherents and advisory board members with a panoply of accusations, including elitism, gatekeeping, bullying, discrimination, and protecting known sexual predators and abusers. It’s difficult to verify all these accusations. However, when one considers the overall picture, the 1983 name choice almost feels like a consciously anachronistic one; a choice that sustained some of the problematic behaviors and traditions reminiscent of the foundational period of medieval studies. Anachronistic because, when the ISAS members picked their name, archaeologists of early medieval England already publicly questioned and then gradually abandoned their attachment to tribe-based (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) and race-adjacent (Anglo-Saxon) concepts. And, like so many contributors to the early volumes of Studies in Medievalism and The Year’s Work in Medievalism in the 1980s, they found these concepts to be grounded in supremacist attitudes originating from nineteenth- and twentieth-century European nationalism and imperialism, the very ideology already visible among Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries.
And so change – name change – has come to the “ISxx,” as some currently call it. A majority of the society’s members elected to drop their current name but decided, understandably, to take a little more time to deliberate what to call themselves in the future. The decision avoided another war or jousting match among medievalists, as some journalists have exaggeratedly called the field’s social media squabbles during the last two years.
For this group of scholars, whose most crucial duty is to appropriately represent their area of scholarship, it was reasonable to reconsider, albeit belatedly, what scholars of medieval reception and archaeology had established around the time the ISAS was founded. Public accusations against them by voices external to the Society may have put additional pressure on them to act more quickly. However, it was not, as one colleague claimed, the “relentless ideological pressure from a rump group of leftist scholars with agendas and bullying issues of their own” that obliged the Society “to capitulate to a passing social-justice fad that sees racism and misogyny everywhere.” After all, as Shankar Vedantam rightly asked in a recent NPR program on how outrage is hijacking our culture, and our minds: “When was the last time you changed your mind because someone screamed at you?” Long-time members have told me that the Society was ready for change, but did not know how to make the necessary moves.
Unlike the unfounded 2017 charges of racism against the program faculty and organizers of the International Congress on Medieval Studies, the ISxx’s decision will be supported by a good many medievalists after they will have had sufficient time to reflect on it. Sure, it will create complications with the titles of existing book series (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England), journals (Anglo-Saxon England), and several dozen other nomenclatures, but those complications may be less crucial than avoiding the troubling associations mentioned above. Just check out the reaction to the ISxx name change by right wing commentators, and you will understand what I mean.
There will also be conflicts about the use of the term at conferences and for peer reviews by colleagues who have strong convictions for or against the future use of the term. There will be more echo chambers. But how is that any different from the usual academic storm in an espresso cup?
We academics often believe we are the center of the universe. In our socially sorted ivory towers and media enclaves we don’t realize that our decisions remain mostly ‘academic’ to the rest of the world, even in the 21st century. The use of “Anglo-Saxon,” enshrined as it is world-wide as a general synonym for Englishness, will not be affected by the ISxx incident: English-speaking Canadians will continue to be called “Anglos,” and Spanish-speaking communities will use “Anglo” as a derogatory collective term for all non-Hispanic ethnicities; “Anglo-American” will still refer to a person in the U.S. who is of ‘English’ origin and to “a North American whose native language is English, especially whose culture and ethnic background is of European origin” (Merriam-Webster); “Anglophone” will remain a common expression for anyone from a region in which English is spoken; and in dozens of other languages the loan words for “Anglo-Saxon” will continue to be the second most common adjective applied to anyone from the United Kingdom. The most common one, “English,” has cached its etymology better, but it too derives from “Engle” and means “of or belonging to the Angles;” and “Engle” is also the origin of “Anglalond” or “Englalond,” the “land of the Angles.”
Will we also ‘clean up’ all these (and similar) terms and their troubling cultural and ideological histories? Has the process already begun, albeit perhaps in a way too close for comfort for scholars professing (medieval) English? Over the last decade, students have been voting with their feet against academic degrees in English, both in the United Kingdom and in North America, and not only because of the victory march of STEMM disciplines. Could it be that the linguistic and cultural nationalism that once brought about the term “Anglo-Saxon,” the academic study of premodern “English,” and “English departments” might be replaced by more multilingual, multicultural, and global considerations and usher in more appropriate academic nomenclatures and curricula?
Richard Utz
Posted by ricutz at 11:37 AM
Anderson: Postmodern Artistry / Medievalist Fiction
Earl R. Anderson: Postmodern Artistry in Medievalist Fiction: An International Study. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2018
Reviewed by Jesse Swan (jesse.swan@uni.edu)
There is much to appreciate and admire about Earl R. Anderson’s compendious detailing of “medievalist fiction.” Although Anderson draws on much pre as well as post-medieval literature, his best contributions to learning come in his discussion of twentieth-century work. Most admirably, he reads in multiple languages and expresses perspicacious knowledge and judgment about important translations. This multilingualism inspires confidence throughout the many expositions, expositions served especially adeptly by remarkably expert and incisive summaries. The student new to medievalist fiction will benefit most from this feature. The concentration on the “artistry” of postmodern medievalist fiction is meant to ground the exposition in objective and rhetorical features of the essentially abstract, amorphous, and ephemeral literary phenomenon. This concentration is forthrightly presented as a heuristic, and as such, it functions well, particularly, no doubt, for the reader more accustomed to modern protocols over pre or postmodern literacies. And his presentation of central problems, notably of the distinctions between the modern and the postmodern, as sorites, or problems of rhetorical structure, like his imaginative recourse to the concept of “Daimon” (9), drawn from Angus Fletcher (Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode), to characterize the composite features giving power to a work, is clever and useful.
About drawbacks of his study, Anderson himself tries to present a sort of justification and explanation in the Postscript. “One reviewer” of the manuscript, Anderson reports, notes that Anderson “is in a position to draw important conclusions about medievalist fiction and postmodernism’s legacy” (191). The reviewer further exclaims, “I’d recommend taking that opportunity” (191). Declining to heed the reviewer’s advice, Anderson says that he favors leaving such intellectual contributions to “younger scholars” (191). Although he declines to make original contributions to the intellectual history of medievalism and postmodernism, he does offer a rudimentary quantitative analysis of references in the Modern Language Association International Bibliography, which he calls a “’Pareto experiment’” (192), and three exhortations for those who might attempt to take his manuscript reviewer’s advice. The “’Pareto experiment’” Anderson derives from the Pareto effect, which is derived from the engineer and early economist, Vilfredo Pareto. Paralleling artistic accomplishment with material productivity of industry, the latter Pareto’s concern, Anderson endeavors to show that most of the productivity of postmodern artistry with medievalism comes from very few authors and is recognized by even fewer critics, scholars, and literary historians. The three exhortations to intellectuals who attempt to make various sorts of conclusions about postmodernism and medievalisms are as follows: “First, pay attention to artistry. . . . Second: more literature, with less theory. . . . Third: pay attention to serious authors who seem to be unfairly neglected in academic criticism” (191).
The Introduction to the book is much more promising than the book as a whole, in terms of providing critical, theoretical, and literary historical or historiographical judgment, judgment that seems, again in the introduction, both susceptive and penetrating. Anderson’s over-reliance on the equational grammar of linking verbs – usually “is” – can provide the feeling of simplicity, clarity, and substance, but by the middle of the first chapter of the body of the book, it becomes clear that the grammar controls the thinking and the mode. This is unfortunate, implicitly, for the manuscript reviewer referenced in the Postscript as well as, explicitly, for this reviewer. It surprises, given Anderson’s obvious intelligence, breadth of knowledge, polyglotism, and expressed preference for the postmodern over the modern. In considering the “mantra” that “’postmodern’ does not mean ‘better,’” Anderson decides, “I disagree. In my research I encountered a handful of weak novels in the ‘postmodern’ category. Postmodern storytelling options offer no guarantee of superior artistry – but usually these coincide” (9).
As Anderson points out, features generative of the postmodern challenge modern modes by mixing and participating, mixing forms of knowledge and genres and participating in past and future works and readings. He prefers these postmodern medievalist works, such as Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosaand Italo Calvino’s Il cavaliere inesistente, yet he refuses to engage them on their terms. This is probably why he recommends drawing upon “less theory,” since the criticism, scholarship, and literary history that he considers “theory” does participate with the literature on the literature’s own, postmodern terms. Anderson, instead, treats the literature in stabilized, mechanical, modern terms. For example, in discussing the postmodern medieval artistry of Eco, Calvino, and Laura Esquivel, in terms of their engagement of semiotics, Anderson explicates them in relation to Augustine and Roger Bacon. In the usual way of homogenizing the past according to one’s own present, Anderson modernizes Augustine and Bacon as well as Eco, Calvino, and Esquivel. An approach that would match the postmodern authors he promotes would do as they do. To use Anderson’s own apt words, a postmodern appreciation of the postmodern medievalist works would resist a stabilizing, mechanical modernity: “In the context of authority and hierarchy, postmodernism says ‘no’ but then follows up with a positive assertion of its own” (142). An important “no” postmodern scholarship asserts is the rejection of the tight synchronic linearity of modernity. Postmodern scholarship does this by noticing and appreciating distinctions that disrupt as much as it notices features that seem to build. With Augustine, one might be sure to bring to bear his theology and, with Bacon, one might keep foregrounded his scholasticism. Both Augustine’s theology and Bacon’s scholasticism are very different from Eco, Calvino, and Esquivel’s post-secularisms, even as there are connections among the five. Anderson’s manner of thinking about the literature and style of writing about medievalism and postmodernism occludes such important nuances in favor of blunter assertions of connections.
While some readers will wish the obvious intelligence and admirably broad knowledge informing this study would have provided critical, literary, and historiographical conclusions about postmodern medievalism, all readers will be rewarded by the expert summary and presentation of major works of literature and criticism forming recognized and less recognized instances of literary medievalisms of the twentieth century.
Jesse Swan
University of Northern Iowa
Posted by ricutz at 3:50 PM
Turner: Chaucer, A European Life
Marion Turner. Chaucer: A European Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
Reviewed by Robert J. Meyer-Lee (meyerlee@aya.yale.edu)
Addressing Chaucer’s legacy in the epilogue to Chaucer: A European Life, Marion Turner writes, “Chaucer became a monumental poet, enclosed in a monumental tomb, with monumental volumes of his Complete Works functioning as the bedrock of the English national canon” (506). By this point, Turner’s readers will readily understand that the repetition of the adjective monumental here signals that this eventuality represents a regrettable distortion of the real significance and actual tenor of the poet’s writings, as Turner has characterized them in the preceding pages. Acknowledging that “[i]n death, Chaucer came to represent Englishness, patriarchy, authority[,]” Turner ends her account of his life by highlighting, in contrast, his current status as “an inspiration for diverse writers around the globe…the starting point for Refugee Tales, a collection published in 2016 that brings together contemporary politics, current writers, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (508). In a nutshell, this concluding move—which repositions Chaucer from authoritative, national literary patriarch to inspiring, approachable global story teller—encapsulates the most essential aim of this remarkable new biography.
Without question, this book is an astounding scholarly achievement, one that will evoke in current and future readers of Chaucer tremendous gratitude, serve as a springboard for innumerable new research projects, and leave more than a few of us gaping in awe. Its approach to its subject, however, involves a bit of a paradox, given that its very existence depends, of course, on the history of Chaucer’s canonical monumentality. (This is not a criticism: it is inescapable.) Moreover, the volume is itself monumental, in at least a couple of ways. Most obviously, the book is massive, totaling more the 600 pages from title page through the end of its exceptionally detailed index. Since very little actual new biographical information about Chaucer has been unearthed since, say, Derek Pearsall’s popular 1992 biography of the poet (and the vast majority of documents were compiled in Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olson’s 1966 Chaucer Life-Records), potential readers of this new one may wonder what is on offer that escaped Pearsall’s seemingly thorough 375 pages. The answer lies in Turner’s innovative organization.
To be sure, the book’s largest contours are predictable, as it progresses chronologically through Chaucer’s life and, as the titles of its three major parts (“Becoming,” “Being,” and “Approaching Canterbury”) suggest, presents that life teleologically, as culminating in the composition of his consensus literary masterpiece. Yet, just one level down, with the individual chapters, we encounter a striking difference: rather than zooming in on a more fine-grained subdivision of Chaucer’s life, each of the twenty chapters instead focuses on a specific kind of physical space. Some of these are geographical places (such as Chapter 4’s “Hainault and Navarre” or Chapter 15’s “South of the Thames”), some are institutions (such as Chapter 12’s “Parliament” or Chapter 20’s “Abbey”), and some are abstractions closely associated with physical objects or positions (such as Chapter 8’s “cage” or Chapter 19’s “threshold”). In this organization, the raison d'être of each chapter is not simply to account for Chaucer’s life but also to evoke more broadly a vivid, detailed sense of a particular facet of the late medieval world through which Chaucer moved—to weave a historical narrative fabric in which Chaucer’s life serves as just one thread among others, albeit the most prominent and intertwined thread. Each chapter, therefore, may be appreciated as a standalone essay, a set piece that may be comprehended in its own terms and that might serve as a reading assignment for, say, medieval history courses, as well as literature courses.
Within the chapters, one of Turner’s frequent methods is to take a single item or set of related items from the Chaucer Life-Records and follow the chains of references leading out from these terse bureaucratic texts, constructing thereby a sort of thick description of the context that produced them. For example, in Chapter 6, Turner considers the commission for Chaucer’s 1372-73 journey to Genoa and Florence, tracing its political, economic, social, and cultural implications in ever-widening circles that eventually attain global scale. In addition, then, to noting the usual significance ascribed to this trip—that it represents Chaucer’s first exposure to trecento literature—Turner paints a detailed picture of fraught international systems of commerce and the various conflicts that they engendered. In this way, Turner shows us the Chaucer that many of his contemporaries would have most readily recognized: a minor but still important player on the international political stage, a skilled, valued diplomat who adroitly negotiated multiple competing interests. In chapters such as this one (and they are the overwhelming majority) this method—and more generally Turner’s thematic-space focus—produces a thoroughly absorbing, illuminating, and informative essay.
In a few instances, in contrast, I found that the method foundered a bit, typically because the relations between the thematic space and life records are rather loose. In Chapter 19, for example, the thematic space of the threshold serves to bind together the end of the Canterbury Tales, the end of Chaucer’s life, and the end of Richard II’s reign; but in this case the rather general concept of threshold functions more as an umbrella term than as a specific facet of Chaucer’s world that illuminates a network of otherwise obscure relations. To be sure, since the chapters may be read as standalone essays, the occasional miss does not much matter among the many hits. Yet, since this biography nonetheless does proceed chronologically, if readers consult it specifically for an account of the late 1390s, they cannot avoid Chapter 19. But in fact I doubt that readers will much use the book in the latter fashion, as it is simply not organized in a manner that easily facilitates this use (like, say, Pearsall’s is). That is, I imagine that readers will turn to this volume not so much as a reference work (or as an introduction to the poet) but instead for a series of literary critical touchstones—for bracing encounters with Turner’s views on a particular moment in Chaucer’s life, a particular cross-section of late medieval history, a particular literary work, or, most important, the myriad relations among these. (Although those who do use the volume for this purpose may sometimes be frustrated by how its organization entails that the readings of some of Chaucer’s works are distributed across several chapters. For this reason, the index, as I have mentioned, is appropriately capacious, but this means that it is also unwieldy.)
Another way that this biography is monumental has profounder implications but is just as evident. In seeking to counter the monumentalization of Chaucer as English poetic patriarch, Turner provides exactly that: a counter-monumentalization. The biography as a whole, that is, constructs a memorializing representation of Chaucer that is plainly designed to elicit, on balance, admiration. Turner’s Chaucer is tolerant, urbane, and cosmopolitan. He has his eyes on the street, among the people, not cast up toward the clouds, dazed by numinous philosophical and spiritual abstractions. He is troubled by political absolutism, skeptical toward empire, and appreciative of cultural, ethnic, and social difference. He has egalitarian ideas regarding class and gender. He is appreciative of visiting foreigners and resident immigrants. He is a critical thinker, wants to foster critical thinking in his readers, and is fully cognizant of the complexities, subjectivity, and open-endedness of interpretation. He aims to empower his readers to make sound ethical decisions without imposing upon them any kind of rigid moral framework. Throughout the book, for example, are comments similar to the following: “In his Canterbury Tales years, Chaucer embraced the idea of equivalence—in terms of genre, interpretation, social status, and gender. This ability to equalize without homogenizing is central to Chaucer’s ethical stance and to his poetic art. The genius of the Tales lies in its valuing of difference qua difference…Readers must make decisions for themselves” (366-67). This Chaucer is, in short, a decidedly attractive one (to me, at least), especially, and not at all coincidentally, when set against the backdrop of the twenty-first century chauvinism so evident in Brexit and Donald Trump.
The question that this counter-monumentalization inevitably provokes, then, is whether a Chaucer so attractive in twenty-first-century ideological terms is also a historically accurate one. And, certainly, Turner devotes her considerable facility with the nitty gritty of historical inquiry into building precisely this argument. Nonetheless, I suspect that readers will have a variety of estimations of her success in this regard. In my case, as much as I want her to be right about Chaucer, and find myself in full agreement on many points, I could not help but notice those moments in which her argument rests on highly contestable readings of particular literary works. For example, for Turner the Knight’s Tale is a critique of political absolutism, the Wife of Bath exhibits empowered agency over the misogynist texts from which she is drawn, and the Parson’s Tale, far from providing an authoritative conclusion to the Tales, presents “a vision that codifies the self in relentlessly simplifying ways[,]” one that “contrasts starkly with the ethical and compassionate emphasis on gentilesse as a quality not determined by gender, class, or age in other tales” (478). None of these readings is in itself especially far-fetched, and all are well argued. Yet, taken together, at times they seemed to constitute a carefully curated wardrobe in which potentially embarrassing items have been pushed to the back rack.
Along these same lines, the rather brief treatment (about two pages of sustained discussion) of what is today the single most fraught element of Chaucer’s biography—Cecily Champaigne’s rape charge—will raise some readers’ eyebrows. This discussion itself, laudably, seeks neither to defend Chaucer nor even especially to muddy the waters of the possibility that he was a perpetrator of sexual violence. Nevertheless, by the end of the discussion Turner notably shifts the emphasis, observing that Chaucer’s “life gave him multiple experiences of women as thinking and independent beings, strong women, even though they underwent all kinds of legal and social constraints” (212). The cumulative effect of such shifts is to ensure that what the book most memorializes about Chaucer is what many of those who treasure his writings would most prefer to remember.
Any book this ambitious and complex will also provoke other, more minor quibbles. For example, some of the more speculative discussions—about dates of composition, about the early circulation of Chaucer’s poems—I sometimes found less than helpful or even tendentious. And considerations of the complications and uncertainties of the manuscript evidence for Chaucer’s works, and especially for the Canterbury Tales, are rather less frequent and less in-depth than I think are needed. But these are indeed quibbles. Turner’s biography will without doubt become one of the anchors of Chaucer Studies for many years to come. Even more important, it will likely help spur the creative energies of those “diverse writers around the globe” that Turner spotlights in her epilogue—those crucial readers of Chaucer who will, more than anyone else, continue to make this late medieval English poet matter.
Robert J. Meyer-Lee
Posted by Leah at 11:53 AM
Interviews & Op-eds
What is Medievalism?
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Medieval and Anglican Liturgy
by Jesse D. Billett
Medieval Liturgy
Editions of the Prayer Book Text
Historical Studies of the Prayer Book
General Histories
The Prayer Book in the Church of England
Cranmer’s Liturgical Work
The Tudor Prayer Books, 1549–1559
The Grand Debate: Conformity, Puritanism, “Laudianism,” 1559–1661
The 1662 Prayer Book
Non-Jurors and Non-Conformists
The Long Eighteenth Century
The Nineteenth-Century
Twentieth-Century Revision
The Prayer Book in North America
Studies of Liturgical Rites
Calendar and Liturgical Year
Table of Lessons
Morning and Evening Prayer
Collects
Epistles and Gospels
Solemnization of Matrimony
Visitation of the Sick
Burial of the Dead
Churching of Women
Ordination of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons
In addition to the following scholarly printed texts, Charles Wohlers’s outstanding website The Book of Common Prayer has excellent digital texts and links to online editions of prayer books of many dates from around the Anglican Communion.
The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662. Edited by Brian Cummings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
A very fine complete edition, following original spelling, of an early printing of the 1662 BCP, together with the most important sections of 1549 and 1559, as well as selected later texts. Helpful introduction, bibliography, and annotations.
The First and Second Prayer-Books of King Edward the Sixth. Introduction by by E. C. S. G[ibson]. Everyman’s Library 448. London: Dent, 1910.
A handy edition, with original spellings, of the 1549 and 1552 BCPs. The Introits, Collects, Epistles, and Gospels of 1549 are given in full. Those of 1552 (which omits Introits altogether) are given only when different from 1549.
The Book of Common Prayer, 1559: The Elizabethan Prayer Book. Edited by John E. Booty. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the Folger Shakespeare Library, 1976.
Frequently referred to in the scholarly literature, and essential for its annotations.
Donaldson, Gordon. The Making of the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1954.
Includes the standard scholarly edition of the ill-fated 1637 Scottish BCP.
The English Rite. Edited by F. E. Brightman. 2nd ed. rev. 2 vols. London: Rivingtons, 1921.
A mighty work, still not superseded: verbatim texts of 1549, 1552, and 1662 in parallel columns, with changes indicated by different typefaces. All serious researchers must take account of its historical introduction, though in its details it needs correction in the light of more recent literature.
The Liturgy of Comprehension, 1689: An Abortive Attempt to Revise the Book of Common Prayer. Edited by Timothy J. Fawcett. Alcuin Club Collections 54. Southend-on-Sea: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1973.
Excellent edition and study of the failed revision proposed after the Glorious Revolution, which was intended to win moderate Presbyterians back to conformity.
Grisbrooke, W. Jardine. Anglican Liturgies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Alcuin Club Collections 40. London: SPCK, 1958.
Eucharistic texts produced by Non-Jurors and and Scottish Episcopalians. Includes a full text of the 1764 Scottish Communion Service. Excellent historical discussion and commentary.
The Liturgy in English. Edited by Bernard Wigan. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Texts of all Anglican Eucharists, plus the influential Church of South India liturgy, down to the Canadian revision of 1959.
Prayer Book Parallels: The Public Services of the Church Arranged for Comparative Study. Edited by Paul V. Marshall. New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1989.
American BCP revisions in parallel columns, designed for use alongside Brightman.
Avis, Paul. “Prayer Book Use and Conformity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies, edited by Mark Chapman, Sathianathan Clarke, and Martyn Percy, 125–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Cuming, Geoffrey J. A History of Anglican Liturgy. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1982.
The indispensable standard history. Not infallible.
———. The Godly Order: Texts and Studies Relating to the Book of Common Prayer. Alcuin Club Collections 65. London: SPCK, 1983.
Excellent collection of articles supplementary to the same author’s A History of Anglican Liturgy.
Griffiths, David N. The Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer, 1549–1999. London: The British Library, 2002.
Hefling, Charles, and Cynthia Shattuck, eds. The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Wide-ranging collection of essays, many by eminent BCP scholars, covering the whole history and contemporary reality of Anglican worship. Uneven in quality, especially in bibliographical information; many essays ignore the traditional BCP and concentrate on recent liturgical revisions.
Jacobs, Alan. The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.
A short, lively history of the BCP; something even for experts to learn here — even if other parts of the book may irritate them. The author has a website to supplement the text: http://bookofcommonprayer.tumblr.com/
Jasper, R. C. D. The Development of Anglican Liturgy, 1662–1980. London: SPCK, 1989.
Platten, Stephen, and Christopher Woods, eds. Comfortable Words: Polity and Piety and the Book of Common Prayer. SCM Studies in Liturgy and Worship. London: SCM Press, 2012.
Papers given at a conference marking the 350th anniversary of the 1662 BCP, covering the whole historical range. Brief, incisive, and helpful for recent bibliography.
Duffy, Eamon. “Cranmer and Popular Religion.” In Thomas Cranmer: Churchman and Scholar, edited by Paul Ayris and David Selwyn, 199–215. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993.
Jeanes, Gordon. Signs of God’s Promise: Thomas Cranmer’s Sacramental Theology and the Book of Common Prayer. London: T. and T. Clark, 2008.
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Thomas Cranmer: A Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
Null, Ashley. Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Essential in its totality. But for the BCP see especially the section “Repentance in the Liturgy,” 236–45.
Ratcliff, E. C. “The Liturgical Work of Archbishop Cranmer.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 7 (1956): 189–203.
The Tudor Prayer Books
Booty, John E. “Communion and Commonweal: The Book of Common Prayer.” In The Godly Kingdom of Tudor England: Great Books of the English Reformation, edited by John E. Booty, 139–216. Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1981.
Bowers, Roger. “The Chapel Royal, the First Edwardian Prayer Book, and Elizabeth’s Settlement of Religion, 1559.” The Historical Journal 43, no. 2 (June 2000): 317–44.
Uses musical evidence to show that at Elizabeth I’s accession the royal court assumed that the BCP of 1549, not 1552, would be restored.
Durston, Christopher. “By the Book or With the Spirit: The Debate Over Liturgical Prayer During the English Revolution.” Historical Research 79, no. 203 (February 2006): 50–73.
The Hampton Court Conference and the 1604 Book of Common Prayer. Edited by Colin Buchanan. Joint Liturgical Studies 68. London: Alcuin Club and the Group for Renewal of Worship, 2009.
Kim, Joong-Lak. “The Scottish-English-Romish Book: The Character of the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637.” In The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland: Essays for John Morrill, edited by Michael J. Braddick and David L. Smith, 14–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Lake, Peter. “The Laudian Style: Order, Uniformity, and the Pursuit of the Beauty of Holiness in the 1630s.” In The Early Stuart Church, 1603-1642, edited by Kenneth Fincham, 161–85. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.
Lane, Calvin. “The Evolution of Early Stuart Conformist Thought: The Liturgical Theology of John Donne.” Reformation and Renaissance Review 7 (2005: 223–48.
Maltby, Judith. “‘By this book’: Parishioners, the Prayer Book and the Established Church.” In The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642, edited by Kenneth Fincham, 115–37. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.
———. Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
A brilliant performance, identifying a non-Puritan, non-Laudian core of the Church of England under Elizabeth and James I that was loyal to a mainstream tradition of BCP worship.
———. “‘The Good Old Way’: Prayer Book Protestantism in the 1640s and 1650s.” In The Church and the Book, edited by R. N. Swanson, 233–58. Studies in Church History 38. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 2004.
———. “Suffering and Surviving: The Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Formation of ‘Anglicanism,’ 1642–1660.” In Anglicanism and the Western Christian Tradition: Continuity, Change and the Search for Communion, edited by Stephen Platten, 122–43. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2003.
McCullough, Peter. “Absent Presence: Lancelot Andrewes and 1662.” In Comfortable Words: Polity, Piety, and the Book of Common Prayer, edited by Stephen Platten and Christopher Woods, 49–68. London: SCM Press, 2012.
Spinks, Bryan. “Durham House and the Chapels Royal: Their Liturgical Impact on the Church of Scotland.” Scottish Journal of Theology 67 (2014): 379–99.
Stephens, Isaac. “Confessional Identity in Early Stuart England: The Prayer Book Puritanism of Elizabeth Isham.” Journal of British Studies 50 (2011): 24–47.
A subtle corrective to Maltby’s thesis about Prayer Book conformity, identifying a “moderate Puritan” position that conformed to the BCP without endorsing it.
Turrell, James F. “Uniformity and Common Prayer.” In A Companion to Richard Hooker, edited by Torrance Kirby, 337–66. Leiden: Brill, 2008.
Cummings, Brian. “The 1662 Prayer Book.” In Comfortable Words: Polity and Piety and the Book of Common Prayer, edited by Stephen Platten and Christopher Woods, 98–120. London: SCM Press, 2012.
Ratcliff, E. C. “The Savoy Conference and the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer.” In From Uniformity to Unity: 1662–1962, edited by Geoffrey F. Nuttall and Owen Chadwick, 89–148. London: SPCK, 1962.
Cuming, G. J. “Branching Off the Via Media.” In A History of Anglican Liturgy, 128–46. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Gregory, Jeremy. “‘For All Sorts and Conditions of Men’: The Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer during the Long Eighteenth Century: or, Bringing the History of Religion and Social History Together.” Social History 34 (2009): 29–54.
Jacob, William. “Common Prayer in the Eighteenth Century.” In Comfortable Words: Polity and Piety and the Book of Common Prayer, edited by Stephen Platten and Christopher Woods, 83–97. London: SCM Press, 2012.
———. “Conducting Worship.” In The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680–1840, 173–202. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
White, Laura Mooneyham. Jane Austen’s Anglicanism. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.
Nineteenth-Century England
Hammond, Peter C. “The Church.” In The Parson and the Victorian Parish, 72–107. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977.
Jasper, R. C. D. Prayer Book Revision in England, 1800–1900. London: SPCK, 1954.
Spinks, Bryan D. “The Transition from ‘Excellent Liturgy’ to Being ‘Too Narrow for the Religious Life of the Present Generation’: The Book of Common Prayer in the Nineteenth Century.” In Comfortable Words: Polity and Piety and the Book of Common Prayer, edited by Stephen Platten and Christopher Woods, 98–120. London: SCM Press, 2012.
Revision in the Twentieth-Century Church of England
Maiden, John G. “Discipline and Comprehensiveness: The Church of England and Prayer Book Revision in the 1920s.” In Discipline and Diversity, edited by Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory, 377–87. Studies in Church History 43. Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 2007.
Armitage, W. J. The Story of the Canadian Revision of the Prayer Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922.
Exhaustive account of the 1918/1922 Canadian revision.
Blott, William R. Blessing and Glory and Thanksgiving: The Growth of a Canadian Liturgy. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1998.
A short account of the 1959/1962 revision of the Holy Communion. Unfortunately the only substantial published account of any aspect of this book.
Hebb, Ross N. “Seabury and Inglis and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.” In Samuel Seabury and Charles Inglis: Two Bishops, Two Churches, 61–82. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010.
Buchanan, Colin. “The Winds of Change.” In The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey, edited by Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck, 229–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Northup, Lesley Armstrong. The 1892 Book of Common Prayer. Lewiston: Mellen, 1993.
Important study of the American 1892 revision.
General BCP Studies and Commentaries
Blunt, John Henry, ed. The Annotated Book of Common Prayer. New impression, 1899, re-issue with additions and corrections. London: Longmans, Green, 1903.
Anglo-Catholic slant; some pre-critical liturgical scholarship; but often extremely helpful.
Brook, Stella. The Language of the Book of Common Prayer. London: Deutsch, 1965.
Clarke, W. K. Lowther, ed. Liturgy and Worship: A Companion to the Prayer Books of the Anglican Communion. With the assistance of Charles Harris. Corr. repr. London: SPCK, 1933.
Essays by various authors on the history of the BCP and on individual rites.
Daniel, Evan. The Prayer-Book: Its History, Language, and Contents. 20th ed. rev. and enlarged. London: Wells, Gardner, Darton, 1901.
Excellent and thorough in analyses of rites. Now dated in its historical sections.
Dowden, John. The Workmanship of the Prayer Book in its Literary and Liturgical Aspects. 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1902)
———. Further Studies in the Prayer Book. London: Methuen, 1908.
Two very influential collections of essays on particular aspects of the Prayer Book’s rites. Still very rewarding to consult.
Procter, Francis. A New History of the Book of Common Prayer with a Rationale of its Offices. Rev. and rewritten by W. H. Frere. London: Macmillan, 1905.
Still extremely useful, though superseded in details.
Shepherd, Massey Hamilton, Jr. The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950.
Reproduction of the 1928 American BCP with learned commentary on facing pages; useful for the whole BCP tradition.
Stevenson, Kenneth, and Bryan Spinks, eds. The Identity of Anglican Worship. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1991.
Wright, J. Robert. Prayer Book Spirituality. New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1989.
Extremely useful anthology of excerpts from “classical” Anglican writers relevant to individual rites in the BCP.
Cressy, David. “God’s Time, Rome’s Time, and the Calendar of the English Protestant Regime.” Viator 34 (2003): 392–406.
[Keble, John]. Sunday Lessons: The Principles of Selection. Tracts for the Times 13. London: Rivingtons, 1833.
Willis, Geoffrey G. “The Historical Background of the English Lectionary of 1955.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 9 (1958): 73–86.
Billett, Jesse D. “A Spirituality of the Word: The Medieval Roots of Traditional Anglican Worship.” Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 27, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 157–79.
Bradshaw, Paul F. “The Daily Offices in the Prayer Book Tradition.” Anglican Theological Review 95 (2013): 447–60.
Guiver, George. “After the Great Upheaval.” In Company of Voices: Daily Prayer and the People of God, 115–25. Rev. ed. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2001.
Middleton, Arthur. “The Daily Office.” In Towards a Renewed Priesthood, 49–64. Leominster: Gracewing, 1995.
Pauley, John-Bede. “The Monastic Quality of Anglicanism: Implications for Understanding the Anglican Patrimony.” In Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church: Reflections on Recent Developments, edited by Stephen E. Cavanaugh, 161–83. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011.
The Collect in Anglican Liturgy: Texts and Sources, 1549–1980. Edited by Martin R. Dudley. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994.
Gray, Donald. “The Anglican Collect.” In The Collect in the Churches of the Reformation, edited by Bridget Nichols, 50–66. London: SCM Press, 2010.
———. “Cranmer and the Collects.” In The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology, edited by in Andrew Hass, David Jasper, and Elisabeth Jay, 563–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Curry, David P. “Doctrinal Instrument of Salvation: The Use of Scripture in the Prayer Book Lectionary.” In The Prayer Book: A Theological Conference Held at St. Peter’s Cathedral, Charlottetown, P.E.I., June 25th–28th, 1985, 29–70. Charlottetown, PE: St. Peter’s Publications, [1985].
Buchanan, Colin. “What Did Cranmer Think He Was Doing?” In An Evangelical Among the Anglican Liturgists, 71–113. Alcuin Club Collections 84. London: SPCK, 2009.
Dunbar, Gavin. “Like Eagles in This Life: A Theological Reflection on ‘The Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion’ in the Prayer Books of 1559 and 1662.” In The Book of Common Prayer: Past, Present and Future; A 350th Anniversary Celebration, edited by Prudence Dailey, 85–105. London: Continuum, 2011.
Sykes, Stephen. “Cranmer on the open heart.” In This Sacred History, edited by D. S. Armentrout, 1–18. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1990.
Sykes, Stephen. “Love Bade Me Welcome.” In Unashamed Anglicanism, 49–63. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Useful Ecumenical Studies
Gese, Hartmut. “The Origin of the Lord’s Supper.” In Essays on Biblical Theology, 117–40. Translated by Keith Crim. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1981.
Cressy, David. “Baptism as Sacrament and Drama.” In Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, 97–123. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Jones, Simon. “‘Outward Ceremony and Honourable Badge’: The Theological Significance of the Sign of the Cross in the Baptismal Liturgies of the Church of England and Scottish Episcopal Church.” In The Serious Business of Worship: Essays in Honour of Bryan D. Spinks, edited by Melanie C. Ross and Simon Jones, 143–58. New York: T&T Clark International, 2010.
Spinks, Bryan. Reformation and Modern Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From Luther to Contemporary Practices. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.
Stevenson, Kenneth. The Mystery of Baptism in the Anglican Tradition. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1998.
Sykes, Stephen. “Baptism Doth Represente Unto Us Oure Profession.” In Cranmer: A Living Influence for 500 Years, edited by Margot Johnson, 122–43. Durham: Turnstone Ventures, 1990.
Buchanan, Colin. “Confirmation.” In Growing in Newness of Life: Christian Initiation in Anglicanism Today, edited by David R. Holeton, 104–26. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1993.
Turrell, James F. “‘Until Such Time As He Be Confirmed’: The Laudians and Confirmation in the Seventeenth-Century Church of England.” The Seventeenth Century 20 (2005): 204–22.
Wright, Susan J. “Confirmation, Catechism, and Communion: The Role of the Young in the Post-Reformation Church.” In Parish, Church, and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion, 1350–1750, edited by S. J. Wright, 203–27. Londone: Hutchinson, 1988.
Cressy, David. “Nuptial Vows.” In Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, 336–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Stevenson, Kenneth. “The Anglican Prayer Book Traditions, 1549–1929.” In Nuptial Blessing: A Study of Christian Marriage Rites, 134–52. Alcuin Club Collections 64. London: SPCK, 1982.
Gusmer, Charles W. “The Prayer Book and Healing.” In The Ministry of Healing in the Church of England: An Ecumenical-Liturgical Study, 60–90. Alcuin Club Collections 56. Great Wakering: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1974.
Cressy, David. “Ritual and Reformation.” In Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, 396–429. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Keble, John. “On the Burial Office.” In Letters of Spiritual Counsel and Guidance, 223–32. Edited by R. F. Wilson. 2nd ed. Oxford: Parker, 1870.
Rowell, Geoffrey. “Reformation and Post-Reformation Rites.” In The Liturgy of Christian Burial: An Introductory Survey of the Historical Development of Christian Burial Rites, 74–98. Alcuin Club Collections 59. London: SPCK, 1977.
Cressy, David. “Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women in Post-Reformation England.” Past and Present 141 (1993): 106–46.
Ray, Donna F. “A View from the Childwife’s Pew: The Development of Rites around Childbirth in the Anglican Communion.” Anglican and Episcopal History 69 (2009): 443–73.
Bradshaw, Paul F. The Anglican Ordinal: Its History and Development from the Reformation to the Present Day. Alcuin Club Collections 53. London: SPCK, 1971.
Bradshaw, Paul F. “Ordinals.” In The Study of Anglicanism, edited by Stephen Sykes, John Booty, and Jonathan Knight, 155–65. Rev. ed. London: SPCK, 1998.
Lacey, Andrew. “The Office for King Charles the Martyr in the Book of Common Prayer, 1662–1685.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 53 (2002): 510–26.
A Holy Week Sermon for Trinity College
C. S. Lewis on the Christian Pilgrimage
Prayer Book Society USA Conference 2018
The Stars at Night…
Some Memories of King’s for St. John’s, Elora
Medieval Liturgy: Scholarly Literature
Popular Press
Sermons and Homilies
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
Christ Church Deer Park, Toronto
Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, Toronto
St. Bartholomew's Church, Regent Park, Toronto
Liturgy by Bosco Peters
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Turtles arrive on a Oaxaca beach to lay their eggs.
More than 4mn turtles arrived last year in Oaxaca, thanks to conservation
The number is up from just 120,000 in the 1980s
Published on Monday, September 3, 2018
The number of olive ridley sea turtles arriving on Oaxaca beaches continued to increase the last nesting season thanks to a ban on turtle hunting in place since 1990 and other conservation efforts aimed at protecting the species.
Laura Sarti Martínez, coordinator of the National Sea Turtle Program at the Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp), told the newspaper Milenio that more than 4.6 million turtles came ashore at the Playa Escobilla and Morro Ayuta sanctuaries during the 2017-2018 nesting season, which ended in February.
The two beaches are considered the most important in the world for the reproduction of the species known in Mexico as the tortuga golfina.
The number of arrivals last season represents a massive increase on the number of turtles nesting at the beaches in the 1980s before the hunting ban was enforced.
“The olive ridley turtle was hunted legally in the 70s, they were captured in quotas by certain fishing cooperatives in Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Colima and Jalisco. In 1990, the ban was declared due to the decline of turtles nesting on the beaches of the Mexican Pacific. Currently the [Oaxaca] population is the biggest in the country. From 120,000 nests in the 80s to . . . four million is a clear trend,” Sarti said.
The number of hatchlings reaching the water has also increased exponentially, from 3.7 million in 2012 to 79.2 million last season.
But despite the turtle’s impressive recovery, the golfina is still considered in danger of extinction.
Valeria Towns, a Conanp director who coordinates conservation efforts, said that more needs to be done to raise awareness about the risks sea turtles face.
“. . . Yes, in recent years, we have managed to increase the number of turtles that are nesting, the population has increased but that doesn’t mean that risks have decreased and that their removal from the endangered species list could be considered,” she said.
One of those risks — fishing nets — last week caused the death of as many as 380 olive ridley turtles off the coast at Barra de Colotepec, a community near Puerto Escondido.
The Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) said Wednesday that the nets that trapped the turtles belonged to coastal fisherman and not a tuna or shrimp boat as initially thought, while the coordinator of the Mexican Turtle Center in Mazunte alleges that the turtles were deliberately targeted.
Source: Milenio (sp)
Ecology experts and conservationists have urged authorities to make a coordinated effort to save the jaguar, under threat from poaching and habitat loss.
Red tide parasites caused sea turtle deaths in Oaxaca: Profepa
Parasites flourishing in the phenomenon known as red tide caused a massive die-off of green and olive ridley sea turtles on the Oaxaca coast in December.
Bag ban brings renewed interest in traditional bags at Mexico City market
Traditional reusable shopping bags seem to be making a comeback in Mexico City, where a ban on single-use plastic bags went into effect on January 1.
Stores eliminate plastic bags 5 months early in Monterrey
Although Nuevo León’s new plastic bag ban doesn’t enter into force for another five months, supermarkets in Monterrey have already stopped providing them.
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DDP Yoga
Michael Cavacini
An award-winning arts and culture blog.
Archive for the tag “Breath of the Wild”
Nintendo In The 2010s
The past 10 years have been some of the greatest in the history of Nintendo, which is pretty incredible considered what the company has accomplished throughout its existence. The Big N kicked off the decade in 2010 with one of its greatest games of all time: Super Mario Galaxy 2. The following year, in 2011, it launched the Nintendo 3DS, and in 2012 the world was introduced to the Wii U. 2013 saw the Nintendo 2DS, followed by the wildly popular Amiibo that debuted in 2014. In 2015 we got the New Nintendo 3DS XL, and Pokemon Go took over the world in 2016. The NES Classic was also released in 2016, demonstrating how much demand there was for retro content and kick-starting a wave of additional mini-consoles in the future. If I had to pick one year from the decade as Nintendo’s greatest, it would be 2017. This year saw the launch of the Nintendo Switch, which has sold more than 40 million hardware units and more than 250 million software units (as of September 2019). The Nintendo Switch was home to major game releases in 2017, including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Splatoon 2. In addition to all of this, Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Classic the same year. This mini-console, like its predecessor, went on to sell millions of units and took the world by storm. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Kirby Star Allies, and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, among other games, came to the Nintendo Switch in 2018. And this year, 2019, brought us Yoshi’s Crafted World, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Pokemon Sword and Shield, and more. This is also the year that the Nintendo Switch Lite and Ring Fit Adventure made their debut.
Posted in News, Video Games and tagged 1000 Miles of Life, 2010s, Breath of the Wild, Decade, Kirby, Michael Cavacini, NES, Nintendo, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, SNES, Super Mario, Super Smash Bros., Zelda | Leave a comment
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Creating a Champion
Dark Horse is back with another beautiful hardcover book celebrating The Legend of Zelda. Entitled Creating a Champion, this oversized tome is the ultimate companion to the award-winning video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and includes material from both of its DLC packs. This book features nearly fifty pages of sketches and official illustrations from Takumi Wada, two-hundred and ninety-six pages of design artwork and commentary about the making of the game from the creators, a fifty-five-page historical section that divulges the history of Hyrule as it is known in-game, and interviews with key members of the development team, including Hidemaro Fujibayashi, Satoru Takizawa, Takumi Wada, and Eiji Aonuma.
Posted in Books, Review, Video Games and tagged Book, Breath of the Wild, Creating a Champion, Dark Horse, Michael Cavacini, Review, The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Zelda | Leave a comment
Nintendo Switch: Three Months Later
#ThankYou @nintendo! Never did I think I'd get the #NintendoSwitch on launch day. Can't wait to try it out and, after spending a considerable amount of time with it, write a review. 😀👍😎 #Nintendo #VideoGames #MerrySwitchmas
A post shared by Michael Cavacini (@mcavacini) on Mar 3, 2017 at 8:08am PST
It’s been nearly three months since the release of Nintendo Switch, so now is a great time to review the hardware, design, games, and online capabilities.
Posted in Review, Video Games and tagged Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, Mario Kart 8, Michael Cavacini, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Review, Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild | Leave a comment
Nintendo Minute: Zelda Art And Artifacts Book
This week’s Nintendo Minute video provides a preview of The Legend of Zelda: Art and Artifacts book, which is being released February 21:
Posted in Books, Video Games and tagged Art and Artifacts, Book, Breath of the Wild, Michael Cavacini, Nintendo, Nintendo Minute, The Legend of Zelda, Zelda | Leave a comment
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John Breckinridge (1805–1806)
John Breckinridge was born in Augusta County, Virginia, on December 2, 1760, and received his education at William and Mary College. Breckinridge enjoyed an auspicious beginning to his political career, becoming the youngest elected member ever of the Virginia House of Burgesses at nineteen years of age (1780).Following a brief stay in the Virginia militia during the Revolutionary War and a decade of distinguished law practice, Breckinridge served as attorney general of Kentucky (1795-1797). He was elected to the Kentucky State House of Representatives (1798-1800), acting as Speaker in 1799 and 1800, and was a member of the state constitutional convention in 1799. His reputation firmly established, Breckinridge gained a seat in the United States Senate, serving from 1801 to 1805.
Breckinridge's senatorial career came to an end when he was appointed to President Thomas Jefferson's cabinet, assuming the duties of U.S. attorney general in 1805. Breckinridge died the next year, on December 14, 1806, near Lexington, Kentucky.
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8 Questions With / artist / director / Life / movies / Music / poetry / Writing
8 Questions with……… producer/director/musician Michael C. Perry
Weclome to another edition of “8 Questions with…..”
Once in a while I’ll get asked how I find my interview subjects and I have to admit,sometimes they find me,be it directly or in the case of Michael C. Perry, through a very good friend who felt Michael had a story to share. Being that this friend is none other then C. Stephen Foster,I knew that 1.) Stephen is a excellent judge of character and talent 2.) Stephen has led me to several wonderful people to chat with in the past and 3.) Stephen is always right….
Michael Perry is one of my favorite kind of interviews,he is terribly talented- a music producer,a poet,film director and a musician himself,one can’t help but see Michael in his office enjoying some coffee and wondering where is life is going to take him next.
The best thing about this? Now we get a chance to tag along and see how Michael creates. Everyone alsways enjoys a finished picture but for me,the joy is watching the artist work. I am grateful that we are able to slow Michael down long enough to ask him 8 Questions…..
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your current project.
Hello, I am Michael Perry. I currently reside in Long Beach, California. I am a combination musician, music producer, and film director. I intermix the three areas together to produce what I call, short musical films. They are a cross between music videos and short films. I usually produce the music first then develop the video/film around the music and lyrics. In many of the films, the music stops or pauses for dialogue within the presentation.
I am currently working on a new project named Youthful Faces. For this project, I have teamed up with twelve New York City Broadway dancers, award-winning choreographer/actor, Lane Napper–many may recognize Lane from the hit TV show, “Victorious” on where he played “Lane Alexander” the schools hip and zen Guidance Counselor—and cinematographer, Rose Lu. Youthful Faces is a dance film to the song, Youthful faces, which projects the need for our youth to speak out and raise their voices about societal and global concerns. The song and film will be released in February 2020
I am also in preproduction of a narrative film named, A New Sound. The screenplay was written by award-winning West Virginia screenwriter, Joey Fama, and is about the collision of art, technology, and commerce. Ok, that sounds too big. It’s a complicated love story with music. We intend to start filming in late 2020.
Where did you grow up and what was life like in the Perry household?
Were your parents artistic?
In my early years, I grew up in Long Beach, California. I played bass guitar in the Junior High School Band and also played in a cover band. Later, our family moved to Huntington Beach, California, where I became more interested in football than music and did not play any music in high school. I did not start playing music again until I was in my mid-twenties. My parents were not very interested in the arts. They were more sports minded, yet they did support my musical / artistic interest with private music lessons, etc. I do think I missed out not playing music in High School. My friends that continually played throughout those years became far ahead musically. I don’t think I really ever caught up. I play, yet I would not say I am a fantastic player. But I do surround myself with fantastic players for recording and live events. So I am definitely pushed always to learn and improve. As for filmmaking, I started that in my late twenties after attending film school at the University of Southern California. I always loved films and wanted to combine my love for music and film together.
What was attending the USC School of Cinema like? Was there a process to getting a spot?
Going to Cinema School at USC was fantastic. My major focus was on the critical studies of film. The Critical Studies program not only gave you a hands-on filmmaking experience, yet allowed me to examine how film captures a society’s beliefs, thoughts, and desires at a specific historical point in time. For example, the 1967 film, The Graduate, the story was not only about a romantic relationship but reexamined how the youth of that time period was feeling. They were uncertain about the future and life options in a time of new politics, the sexual revolution, acid, rock, and the new bohemia. Getting into USC was not an easy task. My application was rejected several times. While continuing to apply each semester, I finished my general education in community college. I finally was accepted on my fourth try and entered the USC Film Studies program as a junior. It was well worth the effort.
What attracted you to directing? What is your mindset between shooting a commercials and a music video?
I really like stories. They allow you to see an alternative perspective through another person’s point of view. When I was growing up, I would go to the movies at least two times a week. I think they taught me a great deal about life and diversity. My mindset between shooting commercials and music video is entirely different. Directing commercials, while it can still be art, is driven more by commerce. The director is more of an organizer to get all the pictures needed as per the storyboards and wants of the advertiser. Most of the time, you have very little influence in the outcome. The vision and story are in the hands of the advertising agency and their client. Your job is to make sure you get each shot, movement, and picture look perfect. As for music videos, I think you have a lot of latitude to try alternative artistic avenues; especially if the music video is for your own music. I do storyboard the videos, yet when it does not seem to be in a groove, I instantly change paths and find a shot or movement that works. I also do all my own editing, so when we do principal photography, I already have an edit in mind and know what will or will not work.
Tell us how your award winning animated musical “Empty Box of Wine” came into being?
I wanted to try something completely different than any of my other projects. Empty Box of Wine is the final creation from that desire. The project seems fairly straight forward in the beginning but ended up one of the most difficult projects I have ever done. We combined still backgrounds, shot in San Francisco, green screened character movement, shot in my living room, and animated effects of rain, birds, etc. to tell the love story of two musicians living in San Francisco. What made the project so difficult was turning the still background photography, live green screen characters, and effects into different animated looks. We used an auto rotoscoping program (StudioArtistPro) to convert the live footage into an artistic animated look. This process took six months with the auto rotoscoping running on five computers twenty-four hours a day. We then took each of these elements and married them together in editing. I have never before edited so many elements together. My computer was so taxed it was barely running in the end.
Before Empty Box of Wine, I had never been part of the film festival circuit. Most of my work was commercial directing for hire. I thought Empty Box of Wine was different enough that it may be accepted in festivals. We started entering the film and ended up with multiple nominations and awards. Plus I also ended up really liking festivals. At festivals, the films are extremely creative and different than the typical mainstream media presentations on television and at your local theaters. I also met many filmmakers and started to collaborate on projects together. Currently, my second film, The Carnival Kid, is a collaboration with writer Joey Fama, whom I met at the Northern Virginia International Film and music festival, and is doing even better on the festival circuit than Empty Box of Wine. I think being part of a festival really inspires and motivates filmmakers to come out from their comfort zone and take creative chances, which is how real art is born.
What three people have influenced you the most in your career so far?
In my quest for filmmaking, the three directors that really inspired me are James Mangold—especially his low budget film “Heavy”, Atom Egoyan,” The Sweet Hereafter”, and almost all Ron Howard films. What surprises me is these three directors are extremely different in style, theme, pace and genre. Yet, they all have the ability to forward a character’s humanity and vulnerability in a way that you can really feel their emotion, their dilemma, their desires. What I really liked about James Mangold’s film “Heavy”, the plot focuses on an unhappy overweight cook whose life is changed after an enchanting college drop-out begins working as a waitress at his and his mother’s roadside tavern, and Atom Egoyan’s film “The Sweet Hereafter”, the story of a school bus accident in a small town in Canada, is the sparse use of dialogue. Both Mangold and Egoyan use the camera to tell the story not copious amounts of words. Each camera movement, or non-movement, sends the viewer an emotion, a feeling. They both give the actors and story time to breath. What I like about Ron Howard films is how he captures our ordinary so well. He takes things we do each day and shows how they are comedic and tragic at the same time. It’s a fantastic directorial balancing act. For example in Ron Howard’s film, Parenthood, there is the pivotal scene where Jason Robards (Frank Buckman) asks his son Steve Martin (Gil Buckman) for advice. Here is the scene. Ron Howard’s delicate balance captures “Father and son – both proud, both stubborn, both in crisis, yet with comedic hope. Not an easy task.
Also, If you want to see a current film that incorporates many of the aspects I mentioned above go see “Hell or High Water” by David Mackenzie. It is one of the best films I have seen in years. Everyone should check it out.
What are your three favorite musical bands and singers and what makes them so special?
My three favorite artist are Jackson Browne, Paul Simon and Coldplay. Jackson Browne’s music has always resonated with me. His songs are real in a way that I can feel what he is saying. I think he is a very honest songwriter. He writes about issues that are important to him and it really shows. He does not try and write formulaic hits. His music is what is inside him at a specific place and time. Honest. Paul Simon seems to have the ability to reinvent himself over and over with many different musical styles and important lyrics for the current place and time. For example, he went from playing a folk song style, Sound of Silence, The Boxer, etc. and later emerges with the African flavored, Graceland. It still has a collective style but within a new genre of music. Coldplay has the ability to reach all ages and demographics of listeners, I have heard many times from the musician crowd, “they are just a three chord pop band”. Ok, maybe they do not play complex jazz arrangements, yet their music has the ability to ignite a listener’s emotion. At live concerts, the audience has tears in their eyes with their arms raised in a kind of a religious/spiritual experience. One of my friends was reluctantly dragged into taking his daughter to a Cold Play concert for her birthday. I remember him saying he hoped he could tolerate “three hours of pure crap” with a bunch of teenagers. After the concert, he said it was truly life changing and opened his mind to experiencing new music. He also said it brought him and his daughter into a closer bond. Here is a clip from San Paulo, Brazil that seems to capture the experience.
You have a band called Jour Majesty, tell us about it.
Jour Majesty is the name I release my music under. The band consists of basically me. If I have a live gig that needs a band, I call my friends, and they will play if they are not on tour with another act. But most of the time I just play acoustic gigs, work in the studio on recording and film projects.
As for my songwriting, it is all done in my home studio. My recording process is a bit different than how production flows typically. I rarely see my studio players face to face; we only talk on the phone. They live all over the world. I first make a rough musical demo and chart of the new tune. I then send the demo for example, to my drummer with an eight-bar click up front for timing. He or she will lay their tracks down at their studio and email the tracks back to me. I then edit the drum tracks, include them in the new demo and send it to the next musician, for example, my bass player, etc. I keep this process going until I have all the tracks I need. I then take the final tracks to a high-end studio for the mix. This process seems to keep production costs low, and I can go at my own pace.
How do you approach the songwriting process? What makes a good song great in your opinion?
I approach songwriting more like a short script. I come up with the three-act story and basically convert it to three verses. The chorus separates the verses or acts. A good song brings something to the listener. This something may be an emotion of remembrance, a previous life event, it may teach you something about yourself or it might to just make you want to forget everything and dance. Now a great song is a really, really good song that has become great because it becomes embedded into the culture. It says something to the masses and hits our ears at the perfect time in history. For example, the fantastic Beatle’s song, “Let it be” came out when the world was in a societal transformation. It captured the feeling of a changing world. The song was important to both our youth and the older generation. Even when we hear the song today, it still resonates and brings tears.
What advice would you give someone who just starting out in entertainment business?
The best advice came from my Director of Photography, Rüdiger Barth. He always tells inspiring young filmmakers that “To be in the business, you need to be in the business”. What he means is that if you really want to work in the entertainment business, and make a living doing it, you need to do it full time, build relationships, get experience, keep moving forward. Now if you just want it as an artistic hobby, which is also fine, do it in your spare time, but you cannot expect to build a full-time career and reputation that way. I think he may be right.
I like to thank Michael for his time and willingness to share his voice with us. Michael has several different ways you can follow him online as you can see by the various links.
Official Website: www.jourmajesty.com
Also, on my @jourmajesty twitter account, I post a short poem every day called “Short Poem of the Day”. Theses are short poems from poets from all over the world.
Instagram: Jour Majesty
Facebook: Jour Majesty (Jour Majesty)
Facebook for Michael C. Perry
Bandcamp: Jour Majesty
SoundCloud: Jour Majesty
Vimeo: Jour Majesty
YouTube: Jour Majesty
As always I also would like to thank you for supporting these artists by your dropping by and reading. If you feel you have a story,no matter what kind it is,feel free to drop me a email and we’ll chat.
Michael has very generously offered to give away two copies of Jour Majesty’s music away. These copies are on vinyl,will be signed and will go to the 4th and 8th person who leaves a comment below.
Tags: 8 Questions With, art, Film director, Jour Majesty, Life, Long Beach-Ca., Michael C. Perry, movie musical, movies, Music, music producer, musician, storyteller, USC Film School. Bookmark the permalink.
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3 thoughts on “8 Questions with……… producer/director/musician Michael C. Perry”
Chuck Jensen says:
Michael, so great to read about all of your accomplishments! Wishing you Continued success and creativity. Coach Chuck Jensen
Thank you for dropping by and supporting Michael here….he is quite a remarkable man,isn’t he?
Remarkable isn’t really big enough, is it? He’s amazing! The only thing I’d differ on with him is loving Ron Howard as a director, lol !!!
But Michael has enough creativity and ambition to power a small city for eons.
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Rayat Shikshan Sanstha’s Mahatma Phule Arts, Science and Commerce College, Panvel District- Raigad (Maharashtra) is one of the prime educational institutions affiliated to University of Mumbai. It is run by Rayat Shikshan Sanstha, Satara, presumably the largest educational institution in Asia, founded by the visionary Late Padmabhushan Dr. Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil. It relishes the dream of socio-economic upliftment of the rural masses and their overall development by the means of education.
The college was established in June 1970 in the purview of the Sanstha’s splendid aphorism to educate students of farmers, workers, fishermen and saltpan workers of Raigad District, especially of Panvel, Pen, Uran and Khalapur tehsils. Our college was the sole option made available by the Sanstha of higher educational opportunities to the children of the aforesaid populace at the time of its establishment. It has successfully been marching ahead and taking efforts endlessly for the betterment of its stakeholders.
We feel proud to mention that the college has made commendable contribution in shaping careers of its thousands of students and played an astonishing role in the overall development of them who in turn have brought laurels to the college, state and country alike. The students have been benefited from the quality education provided by the college and attained the top positions in academic, social, political, cultural, sports, etc. provinces.
The college offers traditional programmes like B.A., B.Com. B.Sc. at UG level and M.A., M.Com, M.Sc. at PG level. The college also runs value added programmes like B.Sc. in Information Technology and B.Sc. in Bio-Technology. Besides, it has recognized Ph.D. centres in Hindi and Chemistry. The college offers 04 Add-on Courses and 13 Short-Term Courses to cherish the dream of ‘One Student One Skill’ by inculcating career-oriented skills among the students. Furthermore, the college has a Competitive Examination Guidance Centre that trains the students for different competitive examinations. The academic programmes and career oriented courses offered by the college have been proved beneficial in mounting placement of the students in different fields.
Extension activities carried out under NSS, NCC, DLLE, Arts Circle, Vivek Vahini and WDC are one the features of the college and its commitment towards societal responsibilities. The college conducts variegated outreach activities each year with the help of its support services to instill life skills among the students. It also takes care of the students’ engagement in research activities through Avishkar and other research related ventures like paper/poster presentations, participation in conferences/seminars/workshops, training programmes, etc.
The college has made remarkable growth over the years in its infrastructure and facilities to cope with the changing scenario of higher education and modern demands in the context of globalization. Teaching-Learning and Evaluation Process of the college has been supported with conducive educational atmosphere and moderate infrastructural facilities. The college has adequate number of classroom and well-equipped Administrative Office, science laboratories, Research Labs, Computer Labs, Language Lab, Commerce Lab, Central Library, Departmental Libraries, Auditorium, Seminar Halls, Placement Cell, Competitive Examination Guidance Centre, Examination Sections, Boys’ Hostel, Botanical Garden, ICT equipments and peripherals, etc. to facilitate the curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. IT component has effectively been implemented in teaching-learning and evaluation by the faculty and students. Moreover, it has a Sport Complex with a huge playground, Staff Quarters and other infrastructural segments that contribute towards the overall development of the stakeholders and smooth functioning of the college.
Student Support and their progression to higher education are looked after by the college sincerely. It offers welfare schemes for both the staff and students. Earn and Learn Scheme, Management Scholarships, Cipla Endowment Scholarships, CIDCO Stipend, Student Aid Fund, Proactive Alumni Association, Yuva Raksha Vima Yojana (Group Insurance), Parent-Teacher Scheme, Mentorship Canteen, Boys’ Hostel, Book Bank Scheme, BC Book Bank Scheme, Transportation Facility, Prerana College Magazine, Rang-Tarang Cultural activity, Remedial Coaching, Academic and Career Counseling, Wallpapers, Technical support to avail governmental scholarships, Annual Prize Distribution Ceremony, Concession in CDF or Admission Fees, Payment of Admission Fees in installments, Special Incentives to the NCC cadets and sport persons, etc. are some of the remarkable mechanisms/schemes to support the students.
The college has well defined organizational structure that fosters decentralized governance, leadership and management systems by involving all its stakeholders in the general administration and functioning of the college. The staff and students are provided with representations on academic and administrative bodies that help in turn to attain the institutional goals. Besides, the college has functional Internal Quality Assurance Cell established in 2003 as per the guidelines laid down NAAC. The college has successfully undergone through the institutional reaccreditation by NAAC in 2010. It has been reaccredited at B Grade with CGPA Score of 2.86 by NAAC.
Eco-friendly campus is one of the outstanding features of the college. The college has beautiful campus of 12.99 acres with lush green environmental conditions and academic ambience accompanied by a check dam and biodiversity affluent with some rare and endangered species of plants. We take conspicuous efforts for the conservation of natural resources and the environment. Green Audit and Energy Audit by the competent authorities are carried out by the college as its commitment towards nature and its preservation. College Check Dam, pure drinking water facility, e-waste management, hazardous waste management, use of renewable energy, recycling of waste papers, solid and liquid waste management, plantation of trees, carbon neutrality, etc. are looked after by the college on priority basis to provide the stakeholders with healthy and hygienic college campus.
We feel proud to mention that the college, its proactive staff and students have been accorded with prestigious awards during recent past years by the State Govt. of Maharashtra, University of Mumbai, the Sanstha and NGOs for their commendable contribution in the spheres of higher education, active research, social service and extension/outreach activities. Following are some of the awards attained by the college during the last five years:
• Best College Award by University of Mumbai (2010-11)
• Best NSS Unit Award by University of Mumbai (2012-13)
• Best NSS Programme Officer Award by University of Mumbai (2012-13)
• First Prize for Jagar Janivancha Abhiyan at Raigad District Level by State Govt. of Maharashtra (2012-13)
• First Prize for Jagar Janivancha Abhiyan at Mumbai University Level by State Govt. of Maharashtra (2012-13)
• First Three Rankers at T.Y.B.A. Examination in University of Mumbai in the subject of R.D. (2013-14)
• Karmaveer Paritoshik (Best College Award) by Rayat Shikshan Sanstha, Satara (2014-15)
• 03 Gold Medals by Gandhi Research Centre, Jalgaon (2014-15)
• Best NSS Volunteer Award by University of Mumbai (2014-15)
• Best NSS Unit Award by University of Mumbai, Mumbai. (2015-16)
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Once On Team Usher on the Hit Show, The Voice, Michelle Chamuel Reveals Where Life Has Taken Her Since and Where’s She’s Headed Next!
Michelle Chamuel’s debut album is set for release in early 2015. The full-blown pop opus inverts pop conventions while refining them, thanks to hand-crafted production, precise songwriting and an exuberance that could jump-start a stopped heart. From the moment Chamuel...
After Receiving Over 2 Million Views of Her Michael Jackson Cover on YouTube, The DIY Artist, Kawehi, Reveals How It All Happened!
Kawehi is the very essence of a DIY artist. Hailing originally from Hawaii, she is a incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist. Using loops, effects, and a mini-keyboard, she invents creative and unique covers to songs we all know and love. Kawehi’s cover of Michael...
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Institutional Group • 127 people
Lock Me In Delight
Songs of Sleep, Dreams, and Awakening
Thursday, April 4, 2019 · 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Earl and Darielle Linehan Concert Hall
This 90-minute program of art song for piano and voice, presented by soprano Laura Choi Stuart and pianist Joy Schreier, explores the mystery and delight of sleeping and dreaming, and spans the breadth of art song repertoire from three centuries and six languages. Stuart will guide the performance with notes delivered from the stage as the program explores musical interpretations of sleep by composers including Handel, Strauss, Schubert, Fauré, and Rachmaninov.
Hailed as “a lyric soprano of ravishing quality” by The Boston Globe, Laura Choi Stuart has appeared on the mainstage with Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Boston, Annapolis Opera, Lake George Opera, the In Series, and Opera North in roles including Musetta, Adina, Gilda, Pamina, and Frasquita. Equally comfortable in recital and concert settings, she was honored for art song performance as 2nd prize winner at both the 2010 and 2012 National Association of Teachers of Singing Artist Awards and as one of the 2009 Art Song Discovery Series winners for the Vocal Arts Society.
Described by Plácido Domingo as an “orchestra at the piano” and hailed as a pianist who “really has it all — fiery technique and a rich, warm tone,” Joy Schreier is praised by The Washington Post as a “responsive accompanist” and an “ideal support” at the piano. Schreier has been presented in recital at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the White House, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and has performed internationally in England, Scotland, Wales, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
$15 general admission, $10 seniors, $5 students, free for UMBC music majors and music faculty/staff, available onlineor at the box office one hour prior to the performance.
UMBC is located about 10 minutes south of the Inner Harbor along I-95. For this event, free visitor parking is available in Lot 8, directly adjacent to the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, where Linehan Concert Hall is located — please see here for additional information.
Get Tickets Add to Calendar
Maryland Winds
Apr 19 at 3 PM
Bergamot Quartet
Balance Campaign
Apr 17 at 7:30 PM
Lisa Cella, flute
Apr 9 at 7:30 PM
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Displaying 1 - 57 of 57 tests
Amyloid A & Amyloid P Amyloid A and P react with amyloid deposits in many tissues. When accompanied by Congo Red, Amyloid A and P can be used to distinguish primary and secondary amyloidosis. Because these stains are…
AR Androgen receptor (AR) is responsible for the regulation of the growth of the prostate epithelial cells. In untreated prostate carcinoma, AR positive cells are more likely to be responsive to…
BerEP4 Ber-EP4 recognizes two glycoproteins of 34 and 49 kDa present on the surface and the cytoplasm of all epithelial cells except the superficial layers of squamous epithelial, hepatocytes and parietal…
BG8 This antibody is specific for the Lewis Y (Type 2 Chain) carbohydrate antigen. Lewis Y has been evaluated as a clinical marker for the diagnosis and prognosis of cholangiocarcinoma, hepatocellular…
BRAF Mutation Analysis Bi-directional sequencing of exon 15 of the BRAF gene, which includes qualitative detection of V600 mutations E, K, D, and others, plus other significant exon 15 mutations. For solid tumors, tumor…
BRAF Rearrangement Probes: BRAF (7q34)Disease(s): Brain cancer, thyroid cancer, melanoma
Breast Cancer Index® (BCI) Breast Cancer Index (BCI) is an RT-PCR assay performed on FFPE breast tumor tissue that integrates two gene expression-based biomarkers: 1) the HOXB13:IL17BR ratio (H/I), which is associated with…
CAM 5.2 Anti-Cytokeratin (CAM 5.2) has a primary reactivity with human keratin proteins that correspond to Moll`s peptides #7 and #8, Mr 48 and 52 Kd. Cytokeratin 8 is present on secretory epithelia of…
CancerTYPE ID® with reflex to NeoTYPE® Cancer Profile CancerTYPE ID is a proprietary molecular cancer classifier used to identify unknown or unclear tumor types and subtypes in patients with metastatic cancer. When ordered through NeoGenomics,…
CD34 CD34, a single chain transmembrane glycoprotein, is selectively expressed on human lymphoid and myeloid hematopoietic progenitor cells and endothelial cells. CD34 antibody labels many…
CD4 CD4, a single chain transmembrane glycoprotein, is found on a T-cell subset (helper/inducer). It is also present on a variety of monocyte-derived cells, including Langerhans and other dendritic cells…
CK HMW (CK903/34BE12) CK903 (34betaE12) is a high molecular weight cytokeratin present in all squamous epithelium and their carcinomas. This antibody recognizes cytokeratins 1, 5, 10 and 14 that are found in complex…
CK20 Cytokeratin 20 (CK20) positivity is seen in the majority of adenocarcinomas of the colon, mucinous ovarian carcinomas, transitional cell, and Merkel cell carcinomas, and frequently in adenocarcinomas…
CK5/6 D5/16 B4 clone of CK5/6 antibody reacts strongly with cytokeratins 5 and 6. Cytokeratin 5/6 have been found valuable for the distinction between low differentiated squamous cell carcinoma and…
CK7 Cytokeratin 7 (CK7) antibody reacts with proteins that are found in most ductal, glandular and transitional epithelium of the urinary tract and bile duct epithelial cells. CK7 distinguishes between…
cMET The cMET tyrosine kinase receptor, normally expressed by epithelial cells, is overexpressed and amplified in a variety of human tumors, including non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). High levels of…
Extended Leukemia/Lymphoma Panel - 31 markers Available as global and tech-only. Markers are CD2, CD3, CD4, CD5, CD7, CD8, CD10, CD11b, CD11c, CD13, CD14, CD15, CD16, CD19, CD20, CD23, CD33, CD34, CD38, CD41, CD45, CD56, CD64, CD71, CD117, CD138…
Factor VIII RA Factor VIII-related antigen is a component of Factor VIII complex. Factor VIII-related antigen is one of the available immunohistochemical markers of endothelial cells. It has also been demonstrated…
Factor XIIIa Factor XIIIa is a dermal dendrocyte marker and shows variable reaction with these types of tumors. It can be used for histiocytic phenotyping and has been reported to mark capillary hemangiomas and…
HMB45 Antibody clone HMB45 recognizes a melanoma-specific antigen by reacting with melanoma cells, nevus cells and neonatal melanocytes. HMB45 is expressed on the majority of malignant melanoma cases as…
HRAS Mutation Analysis Bi-directional sequencing of HRAS exons 2 and 3 which includes sites of common activating mutations in codons 12, 13, 59 and 61.
INSM1 INSM1 is a transcription factor that is a sensitive and specific marker for neuroendocrine tumors. It is a nuclear stain, and is as good if not better than synaptophysin and is superior to…
Ki67 Ki67 is a nuclear protein that is expressed in proliferating cells. Ki67 is preferentially expressed during late G1, S, M, and G2 phases of the cell cycle, while cells in the G0 (quiescent) phase are…
Melan A (Mart1) Melan A (Mart1, Melanoma Antigen Recognized by T-cells 1), is a differentiation antigen that is expressed in melanocytes, most melanomas. Melan A recognizes a subcellular fraction found in…
MET FISH Probes: MET (7q31) | Centromere 7Disease(s): Multiple solid tumor cancers including lung (NSCLC), gastric, esophageal, endometrial
Microsatellite Instability Analysis (MSI) PCR and fragment analysis of paired normal and tumor tissue to determine microsatellite instability (MSI) at the standard five NCI-recommended loci. Positive results are reported as MSI-high (at…
MMR Panel by IHC (MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, PMS2) A well-defined subtype of colorectal cancer (CRC) is characterized by deficiencies in the mismatch repair (MMR) pathway. MMR status may impact prognosis and benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy. MLH1,…
MSA Muscle Specific Actin (MSA) antibody recognizes the alpha and gamma isotypes of skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscle cells. It is non-reactive with other mesenchymal cells and all epithelial cells…
NeoARRAY™ SNP/Cytogenetic Profile The NeoARRAY SNP/Cytogenetic Profile is available for hematological, solid tumor, and pregnancy loss indications. With the best genome-wide coverage available, this test employs an enhanced SNP…
NeoSITE™ Melanoma Probes: RREB1 (6p25) | MYC (8q24) | CDKN2A p16 (9p21) | Centromere 9 | CCND1 (11q13)Disease(s): MelanomaRead more about the NeoSITE Melanoma panel.
NeoTYPE® Melanoma Profile The NeoTYPE Melanoma Tumor Profile analyzes 28 biomarkers through a combination of next-generation sequencing (NGS), FISH, and IHC as listed below. Test orders include summary interpretation of all…
NeoTYPE® Discovery Profile for Solid Tumors The NeoTYPE Discovery Profile analyzes 336 biomarkers through a combination of next-generation sequencing (NGS), FISH, and IHC as listed below. Test orders include summary interpretation of all…
NeoTYPE® Other Solid Tumor Profile The NeoTYPE Other Solid Tumor Profile analyzes 30 biomarkers through a combination of next-generation sequencing (NGS), FISH, and IHC as listed below. Test orders include summary interpretation of…
NeoTYPE® Precision Profile for Solid Tumors The NeoTYPE Precision Profile analyzes 83 biomarkers through a combination of next-generation sequencing (NGS) and IHC as listed below. Test orders include summary interpretation of all results to…
NGFR Nerve Growth Factor Receptor (NGFR), also known as P75NTR or CD271, is a neurotrophin receptor belonging to the tumor necrosis factor receptor family. NGFR is expressed mainly in Schwann cells and…
NRAS Exon 4 Mutation Analysis Bi-directional sequencing of NRAS exon 4 is performed using PCR primers designed to target hotspot mutations in codons 117 and 146, among other regions in exon 4. Testing is available separately or…
NRAS Mutation Analysis Bi-directional sequencing of NRAS exons 2 and 3 which includes sites of common activating mutations in codons 12, 13, 59, and 61. Testing is approved for specimens from the state of New York.
NTRK 1, 2, 3 FISH Panel Probes: NTRK1 (1q23.1), NTRK2 (9q21.33), NTRK3 (15q25.3) Disease(s): Various solid tumors.
p21 p21 is a cyclin dependent protein kinase inhibitor and is a member of a family of proteins that functions to slow down cell division. p21 is found in t cells as they transitions from G1 phase to S…
p27 p27 (KIP1) belongs to the family of cell cycle regulators that cause cell cycle arrest in G1 phase. p27 promotes apoptosis, plays a role in terminal differentiation of some tissues and mediates…
p53 The product of the p53 gene is a nuclear phosphoprotein that regulates cell proliferation. Excess accumulation of the mutant p53 gene product results in inactivation of its tumor suppressor function…
Pan Melanoma (S100 + Melan A + Tyrosinase) The Pan Melanoma staining combination increases sensitivity for melanomas. Since many skin biopsies are small, the triple stain conserves valuable tissue while saving time. Melan A (brown cytoplasmic…
Pan Melanoma/Ki67 Pan Melanoma/Ki67 serves as a tool to identify the proliferation rate of melanocytic lesions. A high Ki67 rate of a melanocytic lesion raises the possibility of malignancy.
Pan-Cytokeratin Monoclonal antibodies AE1 and AE3 recognize the acidic and basic subfamilies of cytokeratin, respectively, thus the combination of these two antibodies can be used to detect almost all human…
PD-L1 28-8 FDA (OPDIVO®) PD-L1 IHC 28-8 pharmDx is a qualitative immunohistochemical assay using Monoclonal Rabbit Anti-PD-L1, clone 28-8 intended for use in the detection of PD-L1 protein in formalin-fixed, paraffin-…
Periodic Acid Schiff (PAS)- Non HEME Special stain.
pHistone H3 (PHH3) Phosphohistone H3 (PHH3) is a marker of cells in the late G2-M phase of the cell cycle. It is not expressed in apoptotic cells which may be confused with mitotic figures on a routine H&E stained…
PIK3CA LDT Mutation Analysis by Sequencing Bi-directional sequencing of PIK3CA exons 1, 9, and 20 which are the most commonly-mutated regions of the gene.
PLAP Normally human Placental Alkaline Phosphatase (PLAP) is produced by syncytiotrophoblasts after the twelfth week of pregnancy. PLAP is expressed by both malignant somatic and germ cell tumors. PLAP…
PMS2 PMS2, also known as PMS1 protein homologue 2, is a DNA mismatch repair (MMR) protein. The PMS2 protein forms a heterodimer with the MLH1 protein which is then activated in the presence of ATP; this…
PTH Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is expressed in normal parathyroid, parathyroid adenomas and primary and secondary hyperplasia of parathyroid. This antibody is useful in the differential diagnosis of…
S100 S100 belongs to the family of calcium binding proteins. Antibody to S100 stains Schwannomas, ependymomas, astrogliomas, almost all benign melanocytic lesions, melanomas and their metastases. S100…
SOX10 SOX10 is a sensitive marker of melanoma, including conventional, spindled, and desmoplastic subtypes. It is also a useful marker in detecting both the in situ and invasive components of desmoplastic…
Standard Leukemia/Lymphoma Panel - 24 markers Available as global and tech-only. Markers are CD2, CD3, CD4, CD5, CD7, CD8, CD10, CD11c, CD13, CD14, CD16, CD19, CD20, CD23, CD33, CD34, CD38, CD45, CD56, CD64, CD117, HLA-DR, kappa, and lambda.
TP53 Mutation Analysis Bi-directional sequencing of TP53 exons 4-9.
Tyrosinase Tyrosinase is a copper-containing metalloglycoprotein that catalyzes several steps in the melanin pigment biosynthetic pathway. Mutations of the tyrosinase gene occur in various forms of albinism.…
Vimentin Vimentin is the major intermediate filament in a variety of mesenchymal cells, including endothelial cells, all fibroblastic cells, macrophages, Sertoli cells, melanocytes, lymphocytes and ovarian…
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STEM Star: The Caretaker
Sarah Blitz '20, neuroscience and biochemistry Twitter
Blitz remembers the moment she realized she wanted to pursue a career in medicine. She was a junior in high school, volunteering with an EMT crew, when they were called to assist in the transportation of a distraught autistic teenager who had lashed out toward his mother. Police officers handcuffed the boy to a stretcher in the back of the ambulance to restrain him. As Blitz sat nearby watching, she noticed the boy, who was about her age, was wearing a T-shirt featuring characters from the Disney film Frozen. She moved closer to him and began singing “Let It Go.” The boy joined her. The unexpected duet had a dramatic impact: The boy calmed down; officers removed the handcuffs. “That was such a defining moment to me,” Blitz says. “It showed me that medicine is so much more than science and disease. It’s about caring for people.”
That experience has fueled Blitz since. At Lafayette, she decided to pursue a dual degree in neuroscience and biochemistry because the combination, she says, enhances her understanding of the functioning of the brain. Over her college career, she has accumulated many honors and accolades, most recently the prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship, which recognizes undergraduates with outstanding academic and research credentials. She also received the John F. and Dorothy M. Dorflinger Summer Research Endowment Fund, which enabled her to spend this past summer at Columbia University to study spinal cord development. The year prior, as a LEARN Scholar, she joined a Stanford University lab to work with one of the country’s leading researchers in synaptic plasticity. Blitz credits Lafayette and in particular, the work she has done with Prof. Lisa Gabel’s brain-computer interface research, for giving her the foundation that enabled these opportunities.
“It’s so exciting—and humbling—to get to do research at these huge universities,” says Blitz, who is in the process of applying to medical schools. “I wouldn’t have gotten those opportunities without Lafayette. I’ve been able to do independent research here since my freshman year. Lafayette has given me the skills and knowledge to be able to feel confident, ask questions, lead conversations, and hold my own.”
Read about other STEM Stars.
Categorized in: Academic News, Biochemistry, Neuroscience, News and Features, Pre-med, Research, Scholarships and Fellowships, STEM, Student Profiles, Students
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Association to honor three counselor educators
by K.C. Jaehnig
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Three counselor educators from Southern Illinois University Carbondale will be honored Friday, Oct. 17, in Indianapolis by the North Central Association for Counselor Education and Supervision.
Kimberly K. Asner-Self has won the group’s outstanding mentor award, Tracy A. Stinchfield has won the outstanding supervisor award, and Brett E.D. Zyromski has won the outstanding professional teaching award. Each will receive plaques during a luncheon awards ceremony to be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
“When a department has a faculty member recognized by his or her peers in this way, it is indeed a proud moment to share,” said Lyle J. White, chair of the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education.
“To have three faculty members from the same program honored in the same year by one professional association is highly unusual. Drs. Asner-Self, Stinchfield, and Zyromski are truly extraordinary faculty.”
Asner-Self, an associate professor who joined the faculty in 1999, specializes in teaching multi-cultural counseling, group counseling and community counseling courses. Her research interests include acculturation, trauma, international students, professional identity formation and groups. She earned her undergraduate degree in 1983 from Rice University in Houston, masters’ degrees in 1990 and 1993 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., respectively, and her doctorate in 1999, also from George Washington.
Stinchfield, an assistant professor who came to SIUC in 2005, specializes in teaching courses related to marriage, couples and families, while her research focuses on supervision and on motherhood and academia. She earned her bachelor’s in 1994 from the University of Pittsburgh, her master’s in 1999 from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania and her doctorate in 2002 from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
Zyromski, also an assistant professor, arrived last year and specializes in school counseling coursework and practicums. His research also focuses on various aspects of school counseling, including distance-learning components. He earned his bachelor’s in 1998 from Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., his master’s in 2001 from the Houston Graduate School of Theology and his doctorate in 2007 from North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
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Debate team captures two tournament titles
by Andrea Hahn
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- It was Super Bowl weekend for many around the country, but for the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Debate Team, it was crunch time.
SIU Carbondale walked away with wins in both of the last two tournaments of the regular debate season. The Round Robin Tournament of Champions is an invitation-to-top-teams-only event, while the Sunset Cliffs Classic is open to all collegiate debate teams. Approximately 70 teams from universities around the country participated. Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, Calif., hosts both tournaments.
The tournament-winning duo on the SIU Carbondale Debate team is Ben Campbell (Springfield, Mo.) a junior political science major, and Mike Selck (Blue Springs, Mo.), a junior speech communication major.
SIU Carbondale is the only team in history to win both tournaments in the same year, and it has done so three times. The other two times, Kevin Calderwood, now a graduate assistant working with the SIU Carbondale debate program, was on the team.
“Ben and Mike say they are in good company (winning both tournaments),” he said. “It’s nice of them to say that, but the truth is it’s me in good company. If they keep this up, they’ll break all my records.”
The junior team of Sid Rehg (Swansea), a junior speech communication major, and Josh Rivera (Chicago), a freshman political science major, put in a good showing at the Sunset Cliffs Classic tournament, finishing with a tie for ninth place. Rehg earned an individual award for third best individual debater in the tournament.
Todd Graham, director of debate at SIU Carbondale, described the weekend as “sleep-deprived” and “relentless.”
“All I do is put the machine on autopilot and watch the brilliant people around me do their jobs,” he said. “Our University’s debate team won two more incredibly difficult and highly prestigious tournaments -- yeah, they’re awesome.”
The SIU Carbondale Debate Team will spend the next month, before the national championship debates, in intensive research sessions to prepare. In 2008, the team won the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence, otherwise known as the national championships, placing second in 2009 and third in 2010, among other honors. In 2008, the team received special recognition and honor from the governor of Illinois, and was introduced and honored on the floors of both the Illinois House and Illinois Senate.
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SportyCo in Gymnastics, Story July 5, 2019
A very talented 13-year-old gymnast Kaliya Lincoln could be, by the opinion of some, the next Simone Biles. But for that, she’ll need some financial support, since her family simply can’t afford the astronomic costs the sport brings. Back in 2016, her parents created a GoFundMe page to help make her dreams come true.
At that time Kaliya has been invited to the exclusive USA Gymnastics Team Training Camp at Karolyi Ranch, that has trained Olympians Gabby Douglas and Biles. And as her idols, she wants to be next. “I want to be an Olympian and win an Olympic gold medal,” she said. “I just want to compete for my country and feel that experience and feel how amazing it is.”
Kaliya was invited to the camp before, but couldn’t attend it due to financial constraints. The camp season included nine week-long sessions from fall 2016 to next fall. Her parents, therefore, hoped to raise $20,000 to cover the cost of each trip.
Her parents say gymnastics has made Kaliya blossom from a small and shy kid to a confident athlete. “She was a really tiny kid obviously, really quiet, kind of introverted, shy and just kind of trying to find herself. And once she started doing gymnastics and she found out she was good at it, she said ‘Ok, this is why I’m so small. This is what I’m supposed to do,” her father explained.
Kaliya, that is a fourth child, took to gymnastics recreationally when she was 5 years old. She makes a 120-mile round trip from Tracy to Santa Clara five times a week to practice at Airborne Gymnastics and trains 30 hours per week under coach Cale Robinson. She is home-schooled so she can balance the practices.
Gymnastics is estimated to be one of the most expansive sports for kids. At the beginning costs start at around $15-$20 per class, but once the kid gets compatible it escalates over $300 per month. By progressing to higher levels, families can expect to pay $1,000 a month, and even more when reaching elite status. On usual the annual costs are of about $15,000.
Her coach says Kaliya is a very talented athlete, always pushing herself. “It’s very rare to get that combination of being really self-motivated as well as uber-talented all in one little package. She’s rare. You can definitely tell there is something special about her.”
Kaliya goals are to compete in the 2024 Olympic games. Her parents are very supportive of that but have an even bigger desire for her. “Of course every little girl has big dreams and wants to compete for their country,” said her mom. “But ultimately our goal is to make sure she secures a college scholarship and can compete on that realm as well.”
So what do you think? Could Kaliya or other gymnasts with similar stories be suitable to have a campaign on the SportyCo platform? 😉
Sources: NBC Bay Area, Forbes
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At SportyCo, we believe that every promising athlete deserves the opportunity to pursue their professional career and every small investor should be able to back an athlete they believe in.
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Books and Ebooks, UFOs & the Unexplained
Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth
Man-Made UFOs: 1944 to 1994
Legend Tripping: The Ultimate Adventure
“I Remember Lemuria” and the Shaver Mystery by David Hatcher Childress and Richard Shaver (paperback)
SKU: 9780932813633 Categories: Books and Ebooks, UFOs & the Unexplained Tags: UFOs, Unexplained
The notion that the Earth is hollow, or at least pitted with vast caverns and tunnel systems and populated by secretive, ancient civilisations who have spaceships, death rays and mind-control machines, became entrenched in popular mythology with the publication of a letter by Richard Shaver in the December 1943 issue of “Amazing Stories”. The subject was an Elder Race of Teros and Deros, lost continents, and the Mantong alphabet—which Shaver believed to be the original language from which the root words of other languages were derived.The Shaver Mystery came into its own with the March 1945 publication of “I Remember Lemuria”, but by the end of 1948 the publishers of “Amazing Stories” had tired of these so-called ‘true’ stories—though the public certainly hadn’t. Editor Ray Palmer quit to start up Fate magazine and continued to promote Shaver’s stories. Released as a book in 1948, “I Remember Lemuria” quickly sold out and has been out of print ever since. Now it is reproduced in “Lost Continents & The Hollow Earth”, along with another (co-authored) Shaver ‘novel’, titled The Return of Sathanas. The rather bizarre subject matter, though presented as fiction, prompted a flood of letters from people who claim to have had strange encounters with the Teros and Deros.
However, there is a substantial body of literature and circumstantial evidence which lend support to this kind of ‘high strangeness’, and author David Hatcher Childress devotes a chapter each to related areas of the Hollow Earth theory, UFO bases in Antarctica, tunnel systems beneath South America, the underground Himalayan city of Agartha, plus the history of the Shaver Mystery itself. Fringe fantasy, yes, but you never know: some of it may just be true!
Abominable Snowmen
Legend Come to Life by Ivan T. Sanderson
How to Find Your Missing Bit
by Gareth Owen (paperback)
Cloak of the Illuminati
Secrets, transformations, crossing the stargate by William Henry
Legend Tripping: The Ultimate Adventure by Robert C. Robinson (paperback)
Hidden Finance: Rogue Networks and Secret Sorcery
The Fascist International, 9/11, and Penetrated Operations by Joseph P. Farrell
Hitler's Flying Saucers: A Guide to German Flying Discs
Hitler’s Flying Saucers: A Guide to German Flying Discs
A Guide to German Flying Discs of the Second World War by Henry Stevens (paperback)
Anti-Gravity and the Unified Field
edited by David Hatcher Childress (paperback)
Extraterrestrial Archaeology
Photographic evidence of inhabited planets by David Hatcher Childress (paperback)
Ancient Aliens and Secret Societies
Ancient Aliens and Secret Societies by Mike Bara (paperback)
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On Thursday 28 March (7.45pm) our guest speaker will be Charles Barr who’ll be giving a talk about The D’Oliveira Affair – 50 Years On.
Some will recall the events of 1968, others will at least know of them: a year of upheavals and protests worldwide, and of non-violent upheaval in the cricket world, provoked by the reluctance first of the England selectors, and then of the white South African government, to accept the exiled Cape Coloured player Basil D’Oliveira as a member of the England team to tour his native country. The repercussions from this led to South Africa’s exclusion from international cricket for 25 years, while D’Oliveira himself remained an integral member of the England side for several more years.
Front cover of The Cricketer, September 1968
This talk is not linked to a book launch, or to the visit of a star cricketer, but is based on an insider’s account of the protest campaign of September 1968, mounted from within the MCC, the private club which in those days still controlled the game. Society member Charles Barr initiated the campaign and helped to orchestrate its early stages, drawing in others like David Sheppard and Mike Brearley. Here he recalls and reflects on those events from the perspective of today.
Charles is a retired UEA academic whose main publications have been on British film history, but he writes occasionally for the Journal of the Cricket Society, e.g. in the Autumn 2018 issue, and for Wisden, and is a member of the Wisden production team.
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NYtize | Daily source of news
Home World At least 52 dead in a riot in a prison in Brazil
At least 52 dead in a riot in a prison in Brazil
A fight between gangs has triggered the killing in a prison in the State of Pará
At least 52 people have died on Monday in a riot that has already been neutralized in a prison in Altamira (in the State of Pará, north of Brazil). The superintendent of the state prison system has reported that the origin of the riots was a fight between factions that began at seven in the morning (local time) when prisoners of a criminal organization, imprisoned in a prison wing, entered another wing where inmates of another group are locked. The same source has assured that when the incidents began, the facilities were closed and, he added, the prisoners set them on fire, so that some of them died asphyxiated.
Sixteen of the dead in the five hours that the event lasted were beheaded and the rest died asphyxiated. The authorities have detailed that two prison officers were held hostage, but have already been released following the negotiations of the authorities.
This is the second most serious massacre of this year in Brazilian prisons, which are the frequent scene of riots and deaths. Only two months ago, 57 inmates died in a prison complex in Manaus, the capital of the Amazon, where two years ago another revolt in a prison ended with the death of 56 people.
The majority of Brazilian prisons are state-run. They are hypermasified and living conditions are often unfortunate. Usually members of different criminal factions – such as the Vermelho Command of Rio de Janeiro, the PCC (First Capital Command) of São Paolo, the Familia do Norte, etc. – are separated into different galleries to avoid clashes.
In recent years, northern Brazil has become one of the main confrontation scenarios between rival factions. As a result of these confrontations over the dominance of drug trafficking routes and the recruitment of new members in prisons, there are often clashes between bars, which sometimes involve the involvement of smaller groups with local implementation such as the Class A Command.
The violence in prison contrasts with the fall of the murders outside it, in the streets. Negotiations and possible agreements between criminal gangs in most states have resulted in a drop in homicide figures, something that was already happening in São Paulo under the influence of the PCC. Violence Monitor data indicates that the murders have fallen in 2018, when there were 57,117, compared to almost 64,000 in the previous year.
The prison where the riot occurred had an occupation well above its capacity. Although it was prepared for 208 prisoners, there were 384 people held, according to the latest official figures, of 2016.
The secretary of the Pará Penitentiary System, Jarbas Vasconcelos Carmo, explained after the incident that the unit is home to two factions, the Vermelho Command, from Rio, and the Classe A Command, a local group. He said the attack was unexpected: “We did not receive any report from our intelligence that pointed to a possible attack of this magnitude.” The head of state prisons added: “We found decapitated bodies and the others killed by suffocation. We don’t take them all out because the place is still hot. It is an old container-shaped unit. ” The first information points to the victims belonged to the faction of Rio, one of the most powerful in Brazil.
Last May relatives of the inmates demonstrated in front of the Altamira prison so that the prisoners of the criminal gangs were transferred to other prisons, reports Folha de S. Paulo. The authorities refused to carry out the transfers and the prison service of Pará assured that it followed in real time the movements of the prison population. In that jail, preventive prisoners are separated from those convicted.
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Extreme Poultry: Hunting Really Fresh Chicken
By Bryan Miller • 04/05/04 12:00am
Like most Americans, I eat a significant amount of poultry-mostly supermarket poultry, that innocuous white bread of the protein world. I’m not sure that I exceed the national annual average of 81 pounds per person, which is about equal to three cutlets a week. But as it’s so convenient, and hard to botch up, I put away a good deal of it.
For this reason I can’t help but wince every time I buy a bird from, say, Tyson or Perdue, well knowing that it has been shot up with more growth hormones than Barry Bonds. Yes, there are organic and so-called “free-range” chickens (an elastic term), but as of yet, few major supermarket chains carry them. And if they do, they most likely come from large-scale free-range farms which, by USDA definition, need only provide the birds unobstructed access to the outdoors. In practice, however, most remain in the barn with hundreds or thousands of other birds, because that’s where the food is.
I have always been intrigued by the live poultry markets that can be found in some of the ethnic neighborhoods in the city-mostly Latino and Asian. Recently, I drove past a busy one on 125th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Called La Granja Live Poultry #2 (the original is farther north, in Inwood), it is a penitential-looking, two-story cement rectangle with iron bars covering two boarded-over windows-really stimulates the appetite.
I did not have time to drop in that day, but I decided to return and maybe make some purchases in several of these markets in order to see how they operate (are they clean? Are they rigorously inspected?), how the animals are treated, who shops there and, just as important, how the chickens taste.
Poultry has been in the news for some months now because of outbreaks of the disease avian influenza, most seriously in the U.S. in Delaware and Maryland-an affliction that, in its most virulent stage, can wipe out tens of thousands of chickens. Avian influenza does not affect a chicken’s meat, and it is extremely rare for humans to contract the disease.
My sidekick on this mission was Barry Wine, who was-for the benefit of readers born after the Watergate break-in-one of the most influential chefs of the past 25 years at his groundbreaking American restaurant, the Quilted Giraffe, which operated in Manhattan from 1979 to 1992. The man knows his chicken.
On a blustery Thursday afternoon, we hopped into Barry’s Mercedes and, with scant help from his fancy dashboard mapping gizmo, eventually arrived at a dispiriting stretch of 122nd Street in East Harlem. In the middle of the block was a garage-like space with corrugated metal doors and the pastoral name Chicken Farm New York.
In the front was a tollbooth-sized office, but no one inside; the long rectangular space held five seven-foot-high stacked steel cages that were teeming with all sorts of feathered inmates: white chickens, black-feathered chickens (new to me), small turkeys, brown-feathered hens, sizable ducks and (cute) rabbits.
Some of the cages were more densely populated than others, with several holding so many birds that they could barely turn around. This roommate problem was gradually ameliorated, however, with every visit of the grim reaper.
I had expected a horrendous stench, but it wasn’t too bad, owing in large part to a bent, knotty old man who was hosing down the place with great zeal. As he seemed to be the only employee on the premises, I asked him, both in English and in Spanish, how we could go about buying a chicken. Apparently he was unfamiliar with both tongues. He looked at me with bewilderment until I gestured, performing my best mime of a man holding a sizable bird.
He pointed at a glass partition, where we saw an aproned woman, a Mexican, taking a cleaver to a couple of recently departed chickens. The long rectangular room with stainless-steel counters was quite clean, having recently been hosed down by our friend.
The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets strictly monitors the approximately 70 live-animal markets in the five boroughs. State officials and representatives of the poultry industry had told me that live-poultry markets are shrinking in most American cities, but in New York they continue to expand to meet the demands of arriving immigrants.
Inspectors are supposed to visit the markets monthly to assess their cleanliness, the health of the animals and their treatment. Four times a year, the markets are required to close for several days to receive a major disinfecting.
Whereas major outbreaks of avian influenza in Texas and Delaware involved live-poultry markets, New York so far has been spared.
“We have the most strict regulations in the nation for live-poultry markets,” said Jessica A. Chittenden, a spokeswoman for the department. “Public health is No. 1; the health of the birds is a close second.” Fines for violations are relatively minor, starting with $300 for a first offense and $600 for a second. After that, Ms. Chittenden said, the department moves in to help them correct the violations.
“We really don’t have a lot of problems with them,” she maintained.
Most of the birds sold in New York City’s live-poultry markets come from small end mid-size breeders in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They are not necessarily organic or free-range.
” ¡Hola, como estás! ” I called out to the woman. Carmen Acevedo Jimenez had been working at Chicken Farm New York for a month-though you wouldn’t know it watching her eviscerate a chicken with the speed of a Vegas poker dealer. Since the boss wasn’t there, she invited us to follow a bird from its clucking cell to a plastic shopping bag. (It gets a little gory here, so you might want to send the kids to bed.)
The first stop was a holding room with a long stainless-steel table inset with what resembled several inverted megaphones. Carmen first passed a knife over the chicken’s throat, then placed it, head down, into one of the cones so the blood would drain out.
In about five minutes, the chicken was transferred to an amazing defeathering machine. A steel bowl about four feet across held what looked like a huge ball bearing that was studded with corrugated rubber cylinders. The ball bearing rotates at blinding speed, and when the chicken is tossed in, the feathers are removed in seconds.
At this point, Carmen removed the internal organs (“Youwantfeetand head?”), rinsed them and placed them in a plastic tote bag-still very warm.
Barry and I each ordered afour-poundchickenat roughly $1.25 per pound, and a duck at $2.50 a pound.
Our next stop was the La Granja Live Poultry #2, in West Harlem. The odor was prevalent here, but not overwhelming. (In the interest of investigative journalism concerning this odor issue, I returned five days later: The stench was so powerful that it nearly blew off my baseball cap. Maybe I had arrived between hosings.)
The menu here was the same as at the first market. The birds were very crowded. Two customers, a creased older woman of Puerto Rican descent and a Dominican woman, stopped by for a single chicken each. I asked the former why she bought live poultry instead of going to the supermarket.
“It’s good. It’s real,” she replied in Spanish. “It’s barato [a good buy].”
The other woman told me that when she was a teenager in the Dominican Republic, they always had fresh chickens.
“Sometimes I got to chop off the head,” she recalled with a smile.
Several workers in long white coats dashed in and out of the execution chamber, while the ladies, both in head scarves, waited patiently.
Dinner in hand, Barry and I took our leave for the taste test. That night, I coated the duck with a zesty spice rub and placed sliced apples and prunes in the cavity (I served it with a prune, orange and red wine reduction). The breast meat was dense and rosy, with a pronounced gamelike flavor. The taut, muscular legs could double as croquet mallets, so they require long braising.
Similarly, the chicken breast was firm and moist, with a lovely golden skin. It tasted like chicken.
Filed Under: Media, The Observatory, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Barry Bonds, Jessica Chittenden
SEE ALSO: Sandra Tsing Loh Finds a New Home
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Web pages Data Sets
Tag Archives: ice extent
A fractured winter
Arctic sea ice is nearing its winter maximum and will soon begin its seasonal decline. Ice extent remains below average, in part a result of the persistence of the negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation that has kept winter temperatures warmer than average. The Antarctic passed its summer minimum ice extent, reaching the second highest level in the satellite record at this time of year, primarily due to continued higher-than-average ice in the Weddell Sea.
Overview of conditions
Figure 1. Arctic sea ice extent for February 2013 was 14.66 million square kilometers (5.66 million square miles). The magenta line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that month. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data
Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center
High-resolution image
Average sea ice extent for February 2013 was 14.66 million square kilometers (5.66 million square miles). This is 980,000 square kilometers (378,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average for the month, and is the seventh-lowest February extent in the satellite record. Since 2004, the February average extent has remained below 15 million square kilometers (5.79 million square miles) every year except 2008. Prior to 2004, February average extent had never been less than 15 million square kilometers. Ice extent remains slightly below average everywhere except the Bering Sea.
Conditions in context
Figure 2. The graph above shows Arctic sea ice extent as of March 3, 2013, along with daily ice extent data for the 2012, the record low year. 2013 is shown in blue, and 2012 in green. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
Through the month of February, the Arctic gained 766,000 square kilometers of ice (296,000 square miles), which is 38% higher than the 1979 to 2000 average for the month. Air temperatures at the 925 hPa level were 2 to 5 degrees Celsius (4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average across the Atlantic sector of the Arctic, especially near Iceland and in Baffin Bay. Temperatures were lower than average by 2 to 6 degrees Celsius (4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago, and in the Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian seas, linked to anomalously low sea level pressure over Alaska and Canada. The dominant feature of Arctic sea level pressure for February 2013 was unusually high pressure over the East Greenland and Barents seas, consistent with a predominantly negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation.
February 2013 compared to previous years
Figure 3. Monthly February ice extent for 1979 to 2012 shows a decline of -2.9% per decade.
Average Arctic sea ice extent for February 2013 was the seventh lowest for the month in the satellite record. Through 2013, the linear rate of decline for February ice extent is -2.9% per decade relative to the 1979 to 2000 average. Although the relative reduction in winter sea ice extent remains small compared to reductions in summer, the linear trend represents an overall reduction of more than 1.57 million square kilometers (606,000 square miles) from 1979 to 2013.
Persistence of the negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation
Figure 4. These ice motion images for November 2012 (left) and December 2012 (right) show strong export of ice through the Fram Strait in November, while in December ice export through the Fram was about average.
As discussed in the January and February posts, sea level pressure in the Arctic has remained higher than average, resulting in persistence of the negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation (AO). During the negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation, enhanced poleward transport of warm air tends to keep temperatures in the Arctic above average. At the same time, the negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation allows for more cold Arctic air to intrude or mix with air at lower latitudes. These cold air outbreaks can result in low temperatures and increased storminess in mid latitudes.
The Arctic Oscillation also impacts sea ice movement in the Arctic. The negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation is linked to an increase in the strength of the Beaufort Gyre and reduced outflow of ice through Fram Strait. A negative AO used to help promote ice survival through summer by strengthening the Beaufort Gyre and thereby increasing the distribution of old, thick ice along coastal Alaska and Siberia. However, the location and strength of positive sea level pressure anomalies has varied throughout winter, with varied impacts on ice motion.
For example, during November (weak AO index of -0.111) positive sea level pressure anomalies were centered over the Bering Sea and Alaska, resulting in strong ice motion from the central Arctic towards coastal Canada and north of Greenland outwards towards Fram Strait. In December, the strong negative AO index of -1.749 was reflected in positive sea level pressure anomalies centered over the Kara and Barents seas, enhancing ice motion from the southern Beaufort into the Chukchi sea and out towards the Bering Sea. Export of ice out of Fram Strait was about average. Similar variations in positive sea level pressure anomalies have continued, with the largest positive anomalies over the central Arctic in January, and over the Barents Sea in February.
This pattern is similar to that observed during the extreme negative Arctic Oscillation year of 2009/2010, when old ice was transported into the southern Beaufort and Chukchi seas where it then melted out during summer 2010, further depleting the Arctic of its store of old, thick ice.
Ice fracture
Figure 5. In this series of images from February 13 to March 2, from the NASA Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), a large crack expands in the sea ice near the coasts of Canada and Alaska. Black areas indicate where the satellite instrument did not collect data due to lack of sunlight. The dark area decreases as the sun rises in the Arctic. Rapid Response imagery was obtained from the NASA Land Atmosphere Near-real time Capability for EOS (LANCE) system.
Credit: NASA LANCE/National Snow and Ice Data Center
View the image series
During the last couple of weeks of February, a broad area of sea ice has fractured off the coast of Alaska and Canada, extending from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic to Barrow, Alaska. This fracturing event appears to be related to a series of storms that moved across central Alaska starting on February 10, 2013, causing intense easterly winds along the coast and strong off-shore ice motion.* The large area of fractured ice is located in predominantly first-year ice, which is thinner and easier to fracture than thick, multiyear ice. Similar patterns were observed in early 2011 and 2008, but the 2013 fracturing is quite extensive. The animation (Figure 5) shows the progress of the fracturing, and the general strong rotation of the Beaufort Gyre ice motion pattern during late February. (See also this animation of the fracture from the AVHRR instrument, posted on the Arctic Sea Ice Blog.)
* Note: We originally attributed the fracturing event to a storm that passed over the North Pole, and stated “This fracturing event appears to be related to a storm that passed over the North Pole on February 8, 2013, creating strong off-shore ice motion.” We corrected this sentence after reexamining weather charts. The updated version now reads, “This fracturing event appears to be related to a series of storms that moved across central Alaska starting on February 10, 2013, causing intense easterly winds along the coast and strong off-shore ice motion.”
Antarctic sea ice extent continues above average
Figure 6. Antarctic sea ice extent for February 2013 was 3.83 million square kilometers (1.48 million square miles). The magenta line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that month. The black cross indicates the geographic South Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data
The Antarctic sea ice minimum extent appears to have passed, on February 20. Ice was quite extensive throughout the austral summer period. Monthly average sea ice extent for February 2013 was 3.83 million square kilometers (1.48 million square miles) and minimum daily sea ice extent for the Antarctic region was 3.68 million square kilometers (1.42 million square miles) on February 20. Unusual circulation patterns, likely resulting from higher-than-average pressure in the Bellingshausen Sea, pushed sea ice in the northwestern Weddell Sea far to the north, as we mentioned in our February post. NASA’s Earth Observatory posted this image of ice in the Weddell Sea as Image of the Day for March 1st, 2013. Extent was also well above average for the Ross Sea region relative to the entire 1979 to 2013 satellite record.
The Odden
Figure 7. This image shows sea ice cover in early May, 2012 in the east Greenland Sea. Sea ice extent is provided at 4 kilometer resolution by the NSIDC/NIC multi-sensor MASIE product and sea ice concentration (varying from 0 to 1) at 25 kilometer resolution by NSIDC’s Near-Real Time Passive Microwave product. The red dot shows the estimated position of an ARGO profiling float deployed as part of a NASA-sponsored project led by Michael Steele and Patricia Matrai. This float is capable of storing ocean data while under the ice pack, which are then received via satellite when the ice recedes. Ongoing analysis of these data indicates that cold, fresh surface water lies just under the ice extension along the Jan Mayen Ridge, a signature of Arctic waters.
Credit: M. Steele, University of Washington and P. Matrai, Bigelow Lab/National Snow and Ice Data Center
Within the East Greenland Sea, an ice tongue about 1,300 kilometers (807 miles) in length, referred to as “The Odden” (Norwegian word for headland), would regularly form during winter months eastwards from the main East Greenland ice edge. The Odden would form in winter because of an eastward flow of very cold ocean waters in the Jan Mayen current and may have played an important role in winter ocean convection as new ice would form. It would form as early as December and as late as April and was present during the 1980s, a few times in the 1990s, and very rarely since 2000. While the Odden rarely formed in last two decades, there is frequently a small extension of ice along the Jan Mayen Ridge, which may indicate that eastward flow of cold ocean water is still occurring.
Posted in Analysis | Tagged Antarctica, Arctic, Arctic Oscillation, arctic sea ice, february, ice extent, sea ice, winter
Arctic rapidly gaining winter ice
Ice extent doubled in October. The rate of increase since the 2012 minimum was near record, resulting in an October monthly extent 230,000 square kilometers (88,800 square miles) greater than the previous low for the month, which occurred in 2007. Despite this rapid growth, ice extent remains far below normal as we begin November.
Figure 1. Arctic sea ice extent for October 2012 was 7.0 million square kilometers (2.7 million square miles). The magenta line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that month. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data
Average ice extent for October was 7.00 million square kilometers (2.70 million square miles). This is the second lowest in the satellite record, 230,000 square kilometers (88,800 square miles) above the 2007 record for the month. However, it is 2.29 million square kilometers (884,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average. The East Siberian, Chukchi, and Laptev seas have substantially frozen up. Large areas of the southern Beaufort, Barents and Kara seas remain ice free.
As of November 4, sea ice extent stood at 8.22 million square kilometers (3.17 million square miles). This is 520,000 square kilometers (201,000 square miles) below the extent observed in 2007 on the same date, and ice extent remains 2.04 million square kilometers (788,000 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average for this date.
Figure 2. The graph above shows Arctic sea ice extent as of October 31, 2012, along with daily ice extent data for 2011 and for the previous record year, 2007. 2012 is in blue, 2011 is orange, and 2007 is shown in green. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
After the record minimum ice extent on September 16 and through October 31, the Arctic gained 4.19 million square kilometers (1.62 million square miles) of ice. Ice extent doubled during the month of October. The average rate of ice growth for October was 121,000 square kilometers (46,700 square miles) per day, causing the extent to temporarily climb above the extent observed during October 2007 for a period. This led to a monthly average extent slightly above levels in 2007, the previous record low October. Slower ice growth during the last few days of the month then brought extent below 2007 levels.
On October 20, ice extent went above 6.0 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles) for the first time since August 6.
October 2012 compared to previous years
Figure 3. Monthly October ice extent for 1979 to 2012 shows a decline of -7.1% per decade.
Due to the rapid ice growth during October, Arctic sea ice extent for October 2012 was the second lowest in the satellite record, above 2007. Through 2012, the linear rate of decline for October Arctic ice extent over the satellite record is -7.1% per decade.
Asymmetric ice growth and temperatures
Figure 4. This graph shows rates of ice growth in the Arctic since the September 16, 2012 minimum extent and through October 31. Growth has been particularly rapid in the East Siberian and Laptev seas.
Credit: Julienne Stroeve/National Snow and Ice Data Center
While overall the Arctic rapidly gained ice throughout October, the rate of ice growth was not the same everywhere. Ice growth in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas averaged about 8,500 square kilometers (3,300 square miles) per day and large areas still remain ice free. In the eastern Arctic there was rapid ice growth in the East Siberian and Laptev seas exceeding, respectively, 28,000 and 18,000 square kilometers per day (11,000 and 7,000 square miles per day). As a result, most of the region is now completely frozen over. The slowest rates of ice growth have occurred in the Kara Sea (less than 3,000 square kilometers, or 1,000 square miles per day). In large part because of extensive open water in the Kara and Barents seas, air temperatures for October in this area at the 925 hPa level (about 3,000 feet above the surface) were 3 to 4 degrees Celsius (5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, with unusual warmth becoming more pronounced near the surface. October air temperatures over the ice-free southern Beaufort Sea were also far above average.
Ice extent and bathymetry: The floor’s the limit
Figure 5. This image provides a snapshot of how ocean depth in the Arctic influences sea ice extent. Sea ice cover for August 28, 2012 is shown in semi-transparent white; ocean depths are indicated in blues, with deeper blues indicating greater depth. Sea ice data are from the Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent (MASIE), which provides more accurate ice edge position.
Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy Jamie Morison/Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington
Research by our colleagues Jamie Morison at the University of Washington Seattle and NASA scientist Son Nghiem suggests that bathymetry (sea floor topography) plays an important role in Arctic sea ice formation and extent by controlling the distribution and mixing of warm and cold waters. At its seasonal minimum extent, the ice edge mainly corresponds to the deep-water/shallow-water boundary (approximately 500-meter depth), suggesting that the ocean floor exerts a dominant control on the ice edge position. However, in some cases, ice survives in the shallower continental shelf regions due to water circulation patterns. For example, the shelf area of the East Greenland Sea is almost always covered with sea ice because the southward-flowing cold Arctic surface water helps to limit melt.
In contrast, ice disappears in shallow areas like the Barents and Chukchi seas that are subject to warm ocean waters and river runoff. River runoff and ice melting have also contributed to changes in the amount and distribution of fresh water in the Arctic.
Morison, J., R. Kwok, C. Peralta-Ferriz, M. Alkire, I. Rigor, R. Andersen, and M. Steele. 2012. Changing Arctic Ocean freshwater pathways. Nature 481, 66–70 (05 January 2012), doi:10.1038/nature10705.
Nghiem, S.V., P. Clemente-Colón, I.G. Rigor, D.K. Hall, and G. Neumann. 2012. Seafloor control on sea ice. Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography, Volumes 77–80, 15 November 2012, pp. 52-61, ISSN 0967-0645, doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2012.04.004.
Posted in Analysis | Tagged arctic sea ice, bathymetry, ice extent, october
Arctic sea ice falls below 4 million square kilometers
Following the new record low recorded on August 26, Arctic sea ice extent continued to drop and is now below 4.00 million square kilometers (1.54 million square miles). Compared to September conditions in the 1980s and 1990s, this represents a 45% reduction in the area of the Arctic covered by sea ice. At least one more week likely remains in the melt season.
Figure 1. Arctic sea ice extent for August 2012 was 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 million square miles). The magenta line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that month. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data
Throughout the month of August, Arctic sea ice extent tracked below levels observed in 2007, leading to a new record low for the month of 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 million square miles), as assessed over the period of satellite observations,1979 to present. Extent was unusually low for all sectors of the Arctic, except the East Greenland Sea where the ice edge remained near its normal position. On August 26, the 5-day running average for ice extent dropped below the previous record low daily extent, observed on September 18, 2007, of 4.17 million square kilometers (1.61 million square miles). By the end of the month, daily extent had dropped below 4.00 million square kilometers (1.54 million square miles). Typically, the melt season ends around the second week in September.
Figure 2. The graph above shows Arctic sea ice extent as of September 3, 2012, along with daily ice extent data for the previous five years. 2012 is shown in blue, 2011 in orange, 2010 in pink, 2009 in navy, 2008 in purple, and 2007 in green. The 1979 to 2000 average is in dark gray. The gray area around this average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
In 2012, the rate of ice loss for August was 91,700 square kilometers (35,400 square miles) per day, the fastest observed for the month of August over the period of satellite observations. In August 2007, ice was lost at a rate of 66,000 square kilometers (25,400 square miles) per day, and in 2008, the year with the previous highest August ice loss, the rate was 80,600 square kilometers (31,100 square miles) per day. The average ice loss for August is 55,100 square kilometers (21,300 square miles) per day. This rapid pace of ice loss in 2012 was dominated by large losses in the East Siberian and the Chukchi seas, likely caused in part by the strong cyclone that entered the region earlier in the month and helped to break up the ice. However, even after the cyclone had dissipated, ice loss continued at a rate of 77,800 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) per day.
August air temperatures at the 925 hPa level (approximately 3,000 feet above the surface) remained slightly above average (1 to 3 degrees Celsius, or 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the much of the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean as well as at its central sector, with slightly higher temperatures in the Beaufort Sea (approximately 4 degrees Celsius, or 7 degrees Fahrenheit above average). On the Atlantic side, the Kara and Barents seas continued to have air temperatures around 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) below average.
At the end of August, ice remained in the Western Parry Channel, and neither the northern or southern routes of the Northwest Passage were open. While much of the ice has cleared out, ice still remains, as confirmed by our colleague Steve Howell at the Canadian Ice Service. In the latter half of August, more ice actually moved into the passage routes when ice was pushed down into the channels from the north. Whether that ice will clear out remains to be seen.
August 2012 compared to previous years
Figure 3. Monthly August ice extent for 1979 to 2012 shows a decline of 10.2% per decade.
The monthly averaged ice extent for August was 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 square miles). This is 2.94 million square kilometers (1.14 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average extent, and 640,000 square kilometers (247,000 square miles) below the previous record low for August set in 2007. Including 2012, the August trend is -78,100 square kilometers (-30,200 square miles) per year, or -10.2 % per decade relative to the 1979 to 2000 average.
Evolution of sea surface temperatures in August
Figure 4. A buoy deployed on August 8, 2012 in open water during the storm initially shows a very warm 10-meter (33-foot) thick surface mixed layer (upper left image). On August 12 (upper right image), the buoy enters a relatively cooler patch, gradually warms, enters another cool patch 12 days later (bottom left image), and then starts to warm again through August 26 (bottom right image). Red, orange, and yellow indicate higher temperatures, while blues and purples indicate lower temperatures.
Credit: University of Washington Polar Science Center
In recent summers, Arctic Ocean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have been anomalously high (see our 2010 and 2011 end-of-summer posts), in part linked to loss of the reflective ice cover that allows darker open water areas to readily absorb solar radiation and warm the mixed layer of the ocean. According to Mike Steele, Wendy Ermold and Ignatius Rigor of the University of Washington, SSTs in the Beaufort, Chukchi, and Laptev seas were once again anomalously high before the strong cyclone (mentioned earlier and discussed in our previous post) entered the East Siberian and Chukchi seas on August 5, 2012. SSTs were as much as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal along the coastal areas in those seas. After the storm, the warm water that developed through summer was interspersed with large areas of cold water created by ice melt. By the third week of August, sea surface temperatures were mostly back to levels observed before the storm, but with a few more patches of colder water interspersed from additional ice melt.
A closer view of the variation in SSTs before and after the storm is recorded in the University of Washington Polar Science Center UpTempO buoy data. A buoy deployed on August 8, 2012 in open water during the storm initially shows a very warm 10-meter (33-foot) thick surface mixed layer, likely the result of solar heating. On August 12, the buoy enters a relatively cooler patch, gradually warms, enters another cool patch 12 days later and then starts to warm again through August 26. These patches of cooler water may be a result of ice melt and/or the impact of advection from the storm.
Old ice continues to decline
Figure 5. These images from March 2012 (left) and August 2012 (right) show the age of the ice cover in spring and at the end of summer. Much of the Arctic ice cover now consists of first-year ice (shown in purple), which tends to melt rapidly in summer’s warmth. However, the oldest ice, that had survived five or more summers (shown in white), declined by 51%.
Credit: M. Tschudi and J. Maslanik, University of Colorado Boulder
Ice age is an important indicator of the health of the ice cover. Old ice, also called multiyear ice, tends to be thicker ice and less prone to melting out in summer. The last few summers have seen increased losses of multiyear ice in the Pacific sector of the Arctic; multiyear ice that is transported into the Beaufort and Chukchi seas tends to melt out in summer before being transported back to the central Arctic Ocean through the clockwise Beaufort Gyre circulation. This summer, the tongue of multiyear ice along the Alaska coast mostly melted out by the end of August, with a small remnant left in the Chukchi Sea. The ice on the Pacific side of the Arctic has melted back to the edge of the multiyear ice cover, which should help to slow further ice loss in the region. In the Laptev Sea, by contrast, a large amount of first-year ice remains. In the last two weeks, open water areas have developed within the first-year ice in the Laptev Sea, helping to further foster melt in that region.
Between mid-March and the third week of August, the total amount of multiyear ice within the Arctic Ocean declined by 33%, and the oldest ice, ice older than five years, declined by 51%.
Kwok, R., and G. F. Cunningham. 2010. Contribution of melt in the Beaufort Sea to the decline in Arctic multiyear sea ice coverage: 1993–2009. Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L20501, doi:10.1029/2010GL044678.
Maslanik, J.A., C. Fowler, J. Stroeve, and W. Emery. 2011. Distribution and trends in Arctic sea ice age through spring 2011. Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L13502, doi:10.1029/2011GL047735.
Posted in Analysis | Tagged arctic sea ice, august, ice extent, sea ice
Sea ice tracking at record low levels
After a period of rapid ice loss through the first half of June, sea ice extent is now slightly below 2010 levels, the previous record low at this time of year. Sea level pressure patterns have been favorable for the retreat of sea ice for much of the past month.
Figure 1. Arctic sea ice extent for 18 June 2012 (left) was 10.62 million square kilometers (4.10 million square miles), 31,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles) below the same day in 2010 (right). The orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data
High-resolution images: Figure 1a, Figure 1b
On June 18, the five-day average sea ice extent was 10.62 million square kilometers (4.10 million square miles). This was 31,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles) below the same day in 2010, the record low for the day and 824,000 square kilometers (318,000 square miles) below the same day in 2007, the year of record low September extent.
Figure 2. The graph above shows Arctic sea ice extent as of June 18, 2012, along with daily ice extent data for the previous five years. 2012 is shown in blue, 2011 in orange, 2010 in pink, 2009 in navy, 2008 in purple, and 2007 in green. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
The main contributors to the unusually rapid ice loss to this point in June are the disappearance of most of the winter sea ice in the Bering Sea, rapid ice loss in the Barents and Kara Seas, and early development of open water areas in the Beaufort and Laptev Seas north of Alaska and Siberia. Recent ice loss rates have been 100,000 to 150,000 square kilometers (38,600 to 57,900 square miles) per day, which is more than double the climatological rate.
Figure 3: This map of mean sea level pressure from 15 May 2012 to 15 June 2012 shows a pattern of high pressure over the Beaufort Sea and a pattern of low pressure over the Laptev Sea, conditions favorable to summer ice loss.
Credit: NSIDC courtesy NOAA/ESRL PSD
Sea level pressure favors the advection of ice
A pattern of high pressure over the Beaufort Sea and low pressure over the Laptev Sea has been present for the past few weeks. This pattern is favorable for summer ice loss, by advecting warm winds from the south (in eastern Asia) to melt the ice and transport it away from the coastlines in Siberia and Alaska. The high pressure over the Beaufort leads to generally clear skies, and temperatures are now above freezing over much of the Arctic pack. Snow cover in the far north is nearly gone, earlier than normal, allowing the coastal land to warm faster.
Early melt onset, and clear skies near the solstice are favorable conditions for more rapid melting, and warming of the ocean in open-water areas. The persistence of this type of pressure pattern throughout summer 2007 was a major factor toward causing the record low September extent that year. Conversely, in 2010, the patterns were not as favorable for loss of ice and the seasonal decline slowed later in the summer, and the extent did not approach the record low levels of 2007.
While these patterns and conditions have looked similar to 2007, over the last couple days the high pressure pattern over the Beaufort Sea has broken down. And while the extent is at a record low for the date, it is still early in the melt season. Changing weather patterns throughout the summer will affect the exact trajectory of the sea ice extent through the rest of the melt season.
Posted in Analysis | Tagged arctic sea ice, data, ice extent
Arctic sea ice variable, ends May below average
After reaching near-average levels in late April, sea ice extent declined rapidly during the early part of May. The rest of the month saw a slower rate of decline. Ice extent in the Bering Sea remained above average throughout the month.
Figure 1. Arctic sea ice extent for May 2012 was 13.13 million square kilometers (5.07 million square miles). The magenta line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that month. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data
Arctic sea ice extent for May 2012 averaged 13.13 million square kilometers (5.07 million square miles). This was 480,000 square kilometers (185,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average extent. This May’s extent was similar to the May 2008 – 2010 extent, but it was higher than May 2011. May ice extent was 550,000 square kilometers (212,000 square miles) above the record low for the month, which happened in the year 2004.
Ice cover remained extensive in the Bering Sea, continuing the pattern observed this past winter and spring. The anomalously heavy ice conditions were countered by unusually low extents in the Barents and Kara Seas, resulting in Arctic-wide ice conditions that remained below normal. By the end of the month, open water areas had begun to form along some parts of Arctic Ocean coast.
While the ice extent for May is not especially low this year, there is little correlation between the extent of the ice cover in May and that at the end of the melt season in September.
Figure 2. The graph above shows Arctic sea ice extent as of June 4, 2012, along with daily ice extent data for the previous five years. 2012 is shown in blue, 2011 in orange, 2010 in pink, 2009 in navy, 2008 in purple, and 2007 in green. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
For May, the Arctic as a whole lost 1.62 million square kilometers (625,000 square miles) of ice, which was 180,000 square kilometers (69,500 square miles) more than the 1979 to 2000 average. The average daily rate of ice loss was 52,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles) per day, which was slightly faster than the long-term average of 46,000 square kilometers (18,000 square miles) per day. However, the rate of ice loss for the month was composed of two distinct periods: a rapid loss of ice during the first part of the month, followed by near-average rates during the latter part of the month.
Air temperatures for May were higher than usual over the central Arctic Ocean and the Canadian Archipelago. Over the Bering Sea, Hudson Bay, and parts of the East Greenland and Norwegian seas, temperatures were slightly below average.
Figure 3. Monthly May ice extent for 1979 to 2012 shows a decline of 2.3% per decade.
May 2012 compared to past years
Arctic sea ice extent for May 2012 was below average for the month, compared to the satellite record from 1979 to 2000. However, the ice extent this May was not as low as it has been in some recent years. Including the year 2012, the linear rate of decline for May ice extent over the satellite record is 2.3% per decade.
May and April have the smallest trends of the year, indicating that spring is a period during the year when there is less variability and conditions tend to converge. It also demonstrates that spring extents are not necessarily indicative of conditions later in the summer.
Figure 4. This map of sea level pressure anomalies for May 2012 shows that low pressure continued to dominate off of southern Alaska, resulting in northerly winds in the Bering Sea.
A persistent pattern of extensive ice in the Bering Sea
Continuing the pattern of the past six months, ice cover remained unusually extensive in the Bering Sea. Normally by the end of May, the Bering is largely ice-free, but this year, 350,000 square kilometers (135,000 square miles) of ice remained. As was also the case for February through April, May 2012 had the highest average Bering Sea ice extent for the month in the satellite record.
The higher than normal extent and late spring break up of the ice cover in the Bering Sea are mainly due to unusually low air temperatures and persistent winds from the north, related to a region of low atmospheric pressure centered over Kodiak, Alaska. As these cold winds slowed ice melt, they also pushed the ice edge to the south. The heavy ice in the region may delay the start of Shell Alaska’s Arctic drilling this summer, which will be the first exploratory drilling in the Arctic Ocean in 20 years.
With the overall springtime warming of the Arctic, the ice has nevertheless started to break up and large areas of open water are now present in the northern part of the Bering Sea.
Figure 5. In this Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Arctic Mosaic image for the Beaufort Sea on May 29, 2012, open water is apparent between fast ice along the coast and the broken-up floes off-shore. Toward the bottom of the image, thin clouds can be seen over the open water.
Credit: NASA/GSFC, Rapid Response
Open water areas within the Arctic Ocean
Although ice extent has remained high in the Bering Sea, open water areas have developed in parts of the Arctic Ocean, notably along the coasts of the Beaufort and Laptev seas. These openings are largely driven by winds pushing the ice away from fast ice, ice that is attached to the coast and that does not move with the winds. That the open water areas have not refrozen points to the relatively warm conditions over the Arctic, particularly in the Beaufort Sea.
The ice cover in the southern Beaufort Sea is also substantially broken up, with many individual ice floes instead of a consolidated pack. This makes the ice in this region vulnerable to enhanced melt during summer, as the sun rises higher in the sky and the dark open water areas between the floes readily absorb solar energy.
Quicker thickness data from NASA IceBridge
As we discussed last month, thickness information is extremely important for understanding the state of the ice cover. It is particularly important to seasonal forecasts (such as the SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook that will be released later this month), because thinner ice is more likely to melt completely during summer.
Sea ice age can be inferred from satellite data, and can help indicate the locations of relatively thin versus relatively thick ice. But direct measurements of ice thickness have been limited. Satellite missions such as ICESat and CryoSat, which measure ice thickness with altimeters, have been extremely valuable in better understanding overall changes in Arctic sea ice volume.
Currently, the NASA IceBridge mission supplies both sea ice thickness and snow depth measurements in spring, providing timely information on the state of the ice cover as the melt season begins. IceBridge data are collected from aircraft that fly over the ice cover carrying a suite of instruments, including altimeters that can directly measure ice thickness above the surface. These measurements are at high spatial resolution that can also be used to validate satellite data.
This year, the IceBridge Arctic sea ice campaign collected data in late March and early April, and provided data to NSIDC for distribution shortly thereafter. The data, collected from the North American side of the Arctic, indicate thick ice north of Greenland due to wind and ocean current patterns piling ice into thick ridges. In the Beaufort Sea, the offshore ice is fairly thin (1 to 2 meters, or 3 to 6 feet), indicative of first-year ice. Such thin ice will be prone to melt out completely this summer.
Ice along the Alaskan coast is thicker. Thicker ice tends to have a deeper overlying snow cover. The amount of snow is an important factor in the summer melt, because the snow reflects solar energy. The snow must melt away before surface melting of the ice can begin in earnest.
Posted in Analysis | Tagged arctic sea ice, data, ice extent, may
Arctic sea ice reaches near-average extent in April
Arctic sea ice extent declined slowly through the first three weeks of April, compared to recent years. The slow decline through March and the first few weeks of April meant that by mid-April, ice extent was at near-average levels. However, much of the extensive ice cover is thin ice that will melt quickly once temperatures rise in the Arctic. Over the past week, extent has started to fall sharply.
Figure 1. Arctic sea ice extent for April 2012 was 14.73 million square kilometers (5.69 million square miles). The magenta line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that month. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole.Sea Ice Index data. About the data
Arctic sea ice extent in April 2012 averaged 14.73 million square kilometers (5.69 million square miles). Because of the very slow rate of ice loss through the last half of March and the first three weeks of April, ice extent averaged for April ranked close to average out of 34 years of satellite data. It was the highest average ice extent for the month since 2001, only 270,000 square kilometers (104,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average extent. April ice extent was 860,000 square kilometers (330,000 square miles) above the record low for the month, which happened in 2007.
In April, ice cover remained unusually extensive in the Bering Sea, continuing a pattern that persisted over the winter. Ice extent was also slightly higher than average in Baffin Bay and part of the Sea of Okhotsk. As in recent winters, ice extent was well below normal in the Barents Sea, compensating for the extensive ice in the Bering Sea.
As discussed in previous posts, the high Bering Sea ice extent this winter stemmed from unusually low air temperatures and persistent winds that helped to push ice southwards. During April, atmospheric conditions changed, warming the air to near-average temperatures for this time of year and slowing the strong southerly winds.
During April, air temperatures over most of the Arctic were higher than usual, particularly over the central Arctic Ocean. Over the Bering Sea and parts of the East Greenland and Norwegian seas, temperatures ranged from average to slightly below average.
Figure 2. The graph above shows Arctic sea ice extent as of May 1, 2012, along with daily ice extent data for the previous five years. 2012 is shown in blue, 2011 in orange, 2010 in pink, 2009 in navy, 2008 in purple, and 2007 in green. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
Note: That image originally published on May 3 contained an error in the climatology. The image has been replaced with the correct image. About the data
Overall, the Arctic lost 1.07 million square kilometers (413,000 square miles) of ice during April, somewhat less than the 1979 to 2000 average April loss of 1.21 million square kilometers (467,000 square miles). The average daily rate of ice loss was 35,600 square kilometers (13,700 square miles) per day. On April 24, ice extent was only 118,000 square kilometers (45,6000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average for that day, although the difference has increased since then.
While ice conditions approached the 1979 to 2000 average levels for this time of year, the high ice extent will have little influence on how much ice melts this summer. Much of the ice cover is recently formed thin ice that will melt out quickly. Research has shown that sea ice extent in spring does not tell us much about ice extent the following summer. More important to the summer melt is the thickness of the ice cover, and summer weather.
Figure 3. Monthly April ice extent for 1979 to 2012 shows a decline of 2.6% per decade.
April 2012 compared to past years
Arctic sea ice extent for April 2012 was near average for the month in the satellite record, but was the highest since 2001. Including the year 2012, the linear rate of decline for April ice extent over the satellite record is 2.6% per decade.
Figure 4. This graph shows Antarctic sea ice extent as of May 1, 2012 (light blue line), along with the average ice extent and the ice extent from last year (dark blue). The average Southern Annular Mode (SAM) index number for each month is overlaid on the image. A stronger SAM correlates to stronger winds, which help to spread the sea ice and increase ice extent.
Antarctic sea ice spread by strong winds
The sea ice cover that surrounds the continent of Antarctica has been higher than average through most of the Southern Hemisphere summer (December to March). Ice extent declined much more slowly than usual in late November and remained above average through December and January, although it did not reach record highs for those months. At its minimum extent in March, Antarctic sea ice remained above average. Ice extent was the highest in the Weddell Sea and the northwestern Ross Sea.
The high ice extent likely stemmed from unusually strong winds that circled the continent of Antarctica during most the southern summer. These circumpolar winds tend to push the ice out from the continent, increasing the extent of the ice, although not necessarily the volume. Air temperatures in December and January were close to average over most of the sea ice-covered water. Researchers approximate the circumpolar wind intensity by an index called the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). A positive value for SAM indicates strong circumpolar winds around the continent; negative values indicate weaker winds. This index was at a record high for the two months of December 2011 and January 2012, at the same period of the higher-than-normal seasonal extents. For more information on Antarctic sea ice, see the NSIDC Icelights article: Sea ice down under: Antarctic sea ice and climate.
Figure 5. This map shows Arctic sea ice thickness, as well as the elevation of the Greenland Ice Sheet, for March 2011. The data come from the European Space Agency CryoSat-2 satellite. For the sea ice, green shades indicate thinner ice, while the yellows and oranges indicate thicker ice.
Credit: NSIDC courtesy CPOM/UCL/Leeds/ESA/PVL
Cryosat provides new ice thickness data
NSIDC data provide a long-term record of the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice cover. But researchers also want to know how thick the ice cover is, since thinner ice melts faster than thicker ice. Ice thickness measurements are more limited than ice extent, because researchers can only sample small regions in person, and there have only been a few satellite sensors that can measure ice thickness. For example, the NASA ICESat satellite recorded Arctic sea ice thickness between 2003 and 2008, but the mission ended in 2009, and the follow-on mission is not expected to begin until 2016. In the meantime, NASA is filling some of the data gap with airplane-borne instruments as part of Operation IceBridge.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has released initial data from the radar altimeter on their CryoSat-2 satellite. Last week, ESA released the first calibrated maps of Arctic sea ice thickness capturing thickness changes through the winter from October 2010 through March 2011. In the coming years, CryoSat-2 will provide monthly fields of thickness that will allow scientists to track the evolution of the ice cover. For more information on CryoSat-2 and an animation of the thickness maps, see: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cryosat/SEMU55NW91H_0.html.
Kwok, R., G. F. Cunningham, M. Wensnahan, I. Rigor, H. J. Zwally, and D. Yi. 2009. Thinning and volume loss of the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover: 2003–2008, J. Geophys. Res., 114, C07005, doi:10.1029/2009JC005312.
Kwok, R., G. F. Cunningham, S. S. Manizade, and W. B. Krabill. 2012. Arctic sea ice freeboard from IceBridge acquisitions in 2009: Estimates and comparisons with ICESat, J. Geophys. Res., 117, C02018, doi:10.1029/2011JC007654.
Kwok, R., and G. F. Cunningham. 2008. ICESat over Arctic sea ice: Estimation of snow depth and ice thickness, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C08010, doi:10.1029/2008JC004753.
Laxon, S., N. Peacock, and D. Smith. 2003. High interannual variability of sea ice thickness in the Arctic region, Nature, 424, 947-950, October, doi:10.1038/nature02063.
Posted in Analysis | Tagged april, average, ice extent
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OlympStats
Hana Bobková
February 24, 2019 Paul Tchir 2 Comments
Today on Oldest Olympians we are keeping our blog entry fairly simple. In the past, we have compiled lists of Olympic medal-winning athletes who are not known to be either alive or deceased. Today we have one more name to add to those lists: Hana Bobková.
Bobková, born February 19, 1929, represented Czechoslovakia in gymnastics at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, where she earned a bronze medal in the team all-around. She also placed joint-sixth in the team portable apparatus, while her best individual finish was 27th in the individual bars. While this was her only Olympic appearance as a competitor, she later served as a referee at the 1960, 1968, 1972, and 1980 Games. By career, she coached gymnastics. We suspect that Bobkova is still alive, given her notability, but a combination of the language barrier, as well as the fact that her married name, Vláčilová, matches that of a famous dancer, means that we have been unable to confirm this for certain. If anyone has any additional information, it would be appreciated greatly.
http://www.canottaggio.org/1_news/2018_1news/foto/varie/1017_negrini/Luciano%20Negrini.PDF
In the meantime, thanks to a contribution from a user on Wikipedia, we have been able to solve one of our previous Olympic silver medal mysteries. Luciano Negrini, born June 22, 1920, who won a silver medal for Italy in the coxed pairs at the 1936 Berlin Games, died December 12, 2012 at the age of 92, according to a biography of his life that was published in a magazine recently. Negrini was the oldest Italian Olympic medalist about whom we had no information, and would have been the oldest living Italian Olympic medalist, ahead of fencer Roberto Ferrari, had he still been alive.
Last Verified Living in 2008
February 18, 2019 Paul Tchir Leave a comment
With the new year well underway, we here at Oldest Olympians felt that it was time to review those Olympians whom we believe to be still alive, but may have died unnoticed over the past year. As always, we begin with those whose last confirmation of being alive is the furthest away; in this case, three individuals who were last verified living in 2008, or over 10 years ago. Should no updated confirmation be forthcoming, we would have to remove them from our main table, and thus we decided it was best to dedicate a blog entry to them in the hopes of uncovering whether or not they are still with us.
(Pictured on the left at the archives of Canada.com)
Edna Maskell – Member of South Africa’s track and field delegation to the 1952 Helsinki Olympics
Edna Maskell, born April 13, 1928, represented South Africa in the 100 metres sprint and the 80 metres hurdles at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, and was eliminated in the second round of both events, as she was recovering from an appendix operation. She had far more success representing Northern Rhodesia at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, however, winning the 80 metres hurdles and coming in third in the 100 yards dash. She retired from active competition shortly thereafter to live a quiet life on a farm and, although a magazine did a feature on her for her 80th birthday, we have not heard anything about her since.
https://issuu.com/estatepress/docs/fc_issuu
(Pictured at nostal.co.il)
Yoav Ra’anan – Israel’s lone Olympic diver
Yoav Ra’anan, born January 15, 1928, is the only diver to have represented Israel at the Olympics as of 2016. At the 1952 Helsinki Games he was 9th in the springboard and 30th in the platform, while in 1956 in Melbourne he was 22nd in the springboard and carried the national flag in the opening ceremony. He was most successful internationally in-between these two editions, as he won gold in the springboard and silver in the platform at the 1954 Asian Games. There are many hints and suggestions on the internet that he is still alive, but the last definite confirmation that we received comes from 2008.
(The 2008 award ceremony)
Léon Roth – Member of Luxembourg’s canoe/kayak delegation to the 1952 Helsinki Olympics
Léon Roth, born September 10, 1926, represented Luxembourg in two kayak events at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, finishing 17th in the K-1 10,000 and being eliminated in round one of the K-2 1000. In June 2008, all surviving Luxembourgish athletes who attended the 1936, 1948, 1952, and 1956 Games were awarded the Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which was the last time we were able to confirm that Roth was still alive.
That is it for this week, but we hope that you will join us next time as we continue to blog about Olympic mysteries and explore the caveats and questions that are raised when building the most definitive list possible of the world’s oldest Olympians!
Olympic Missing Links, Part 14
Today we are concluding our look into Olympians for whom we believe to have identified their date of death but, for whatever reason, we are unable to connect the information, such as obituary or public record, conclusively to the athlete. This week, we are looking into all the cases that remain that did not quite fit into another one of our posts.
Robert Guillin – Member of France’s basketball delegation to the 1952 Helsinki Olympics
Robert Guillin, born February 15, 1926, represented France in the basketball tournament at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, where the nation finished eighth. He had more success at Eurobasket, winning bronze medals with the team in 1951 and 1953. We uncovered a notice for a Robert Guillin who died November 11, 2013 at the age of 87, which would match up to the age of the Olympian. Unfortunately, the obituary provided no details that would help us confirm if the listed individual was indeed the basketball player.
http://www.pechbleu.com/avis-deces/monsieur-robert-guillin
(Roy Congreve’s obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald, May 28, 1994, pg. 99)
Roy Congreve – Member of Kenya’s shooting delegation to the 1956 Melbourne Olympics
Roy Congreve, born April 16, 1913, represented Kenya in its inaugural appearance at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, where he was 39th and 40th in sport shooting’s rifle, three positions, 50 metres and rifle, prone, 50 metres events respectively. We are familiar with a Roy Congreve, born May 3, 1913 in Wellington, New Zealand, who had a lengthy career as a surveyor in Kenya through 1938 through at least 1956 and died May 26, 1994 in Sydney, Australia. Given his service during World War II, we are almost certain that this Roy Congreve is the Olympian, but we lack the smoking gun to make the definitive connection.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/expatriates-biographies/page-16
Ghislain Delaunois – Member of Belgium’s fencing delegations to the 1952 and 1956 Summer Olympics
Ghislain Delaunois, born December 20, 1923, represented Belgium in six épée and foil events between the 1952 Helsinki and 1956 Melbourne Olympics, with a best finish of joint-fifth in the team épée in 1956. He never won an international medal, and the only hints to his later life that we could uncover came from an anonymous Wikipedia edit, which claimed that he died on December 12, 1992. We have not, however, been able to confirm this as a fact.
And that’s a wrap for this topic! We are deeply grateful to those who took the time out to resolve some of the mysteries we posted and who uncovered new information. Not only did we solve cases thanks to their contributions, but the research we put into deciding who would be posted helped us answer other questions that never made it to the blog. Moreover, since nothing on the internet ever disappears, we hope that for those cases that remain mysterious, our blogging will help spread our research and help new information come to the light in the near future. For next week, however, we will have to come up with a new topic for the first time in a long time, and although we are not sure yet what it will be, we hope that you will join us!
February 2, 2019 Paul Tchir Leave a comment
Today we are continuing our look into Olympians for whom we believe to have identified their date of death but, for whatever reason, we are unable to connect the information, such as obituary or public record, conclusively to the athlete. This week, we are looking into Switzerland, a nation that, like Austria last week, happens to have three mysteries left for us to discuss, and is a country that we have mentioned in the past as having Olympians about whom it can be surprisingly difficult to locate information.
Roger Rubini – Member of Switzerland’s weightlifting delegation to the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics
Roger Rubini, born January 25, 1920, represented Switzerland in middleweight and lightweight weightlifting at the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics, finishing well off the podium both times. He had more luck as a lightweight at the 1951 European Championships, where he earned a bronze medal. Years ago, we came across an obituary for a Roger Rubini who died in Switzerland in August 2007 but, without further collaborating information, we have only been able to speculate as to whether this was the Olympian.
(Pictured at waffenlauf.ch)
Hans Frischknecht – Member of Switzerland’s marathon team at the 1948 London Olympics
Hans Frischknecht, born December 31, 1922, was one of Switzerland’s top marathon runners during the 1950s, but his only Olympic appearance came at the 1948 London Games, where he failed to complete the race. He was also selected for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, but did not actually participate. At home, he won eight national championships between the marathon and the 10,000 metres, set several national records, and was elected Swiss Sportsman of the Year in 1955. He did not retire fully until 1975. Despite how well-known he was, we have found no definite indication of his death, just a brief notice that someone with his name and of the correct age died in 2001.
(Obituary at todesanzeigenportal.ch)
René Wohler – Member of Switzerland’s basketball squad at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics
René Wohler, born September 4, 1922, represented Switzerland at the basketball tournament at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, where the nation was eliminated in the qualifying round. He also took part in the 1946 and 1951 editions of EuroBasket, while domestically he suited up for Servette FC. Outside of basketball, we came across an obituary for a man of the same name, born in 1922, who died in January 2017, but with no corroborating details that would help us identify him definitively as the Olympian.
In terms of updates on Olympians that we have already discussed on this blog, we have learned, thanks to submissions from Connor Mah, that Canadian track and field bronze medalist Viola Myers died November 15, 1993 and Canadian equestrian Larry McGuinness was the same individual as the one who died December 27, 2017. He also suggested that the obituary we uncovered for Johnny Keller was likely not the Olympian of the same name, and that the Olympic Keller likely died in British Columbia in 1980, a lead that we will be following up. We also contacted the son of swimmer Dick Wyndham, who confirmed that the individual mentioned in the obituary we discussed was indeed in the Olympian.
That is our post for today, but we hope that you will join us next week, when we will be concluding this lengthy series by looking at the remaining Olympic mysteries that fall in this category. We hope that you will join us!
All the Olympic Stats You'll Ever Need
1930 Olympic Missing Links, Part 2
1930 Olympic Missing Links
Oldest Olympians End of Year Fast Facts
Leo Sylvestre, Part II
Ian Taylor on 1930 Olympic Missing Links
Sven Buren on The OlyMADMen and OlympStats and Sports-Reference
GEORGE HIRTHLER on Oldest Olympians End of Year Fast Facts
Marc Durand on Leo Sylvestre, Part II
Paul Tchir on Bronze Medal Mysteries, Part 2
Event Factsheets
Medal statistics
Military ski patrol
National Factsheets
Special Lists
Sport factsheets
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Salad Plate Vs. Bread & Butter Plate
By: James Holloway
Proper Place Settings for Eating Utensils
Basic Table Settings
How to Set an Informal Dinner Table
How to Set Up Cutlery
How to Arrange a Casual Dinner Buffet Table
Jupiterimages /Polka Dot/Getty Images
The number of dishes involved in a place setting can sometimes seem a little bewildering. The main dinner plate, or place plate, is obvious enough, and it's easy to identify the soup bowl, but smaller plates such as the salad plate or the bread and butter plate can be easy to confuse. Not every formal meal will have both of these plates, but when faced with them, it's important to know the difference.
The Salad Plate
If the salad plate is on the table at the beginning of the meal, it will be at the left of the place setting, just to the left of the forks. Salad plates are smaller than the dinner plate, but still relatively large at around seven to eight and a half inches in diameter. A salad plate on the left of the forks is characteristic of an informal dinner; at a formal dinner, it will be brought to the table when the salad course is served.
The Bread and Butter Plate
The bread and butter plate is smaller than the dinner plate, typically about the size of a large saucer. It sits to the left of the place setting, above the tips of the forks, and keeps the bread out of dishes where it may be soaked by gravy or sauce. A butter knife typically rests on this plate, indicating its purpose. Bread and butter plates are more common in Europe than in America, but not always present in either case.
Telling the Plates Apart
Both the salad plate and the bread and butter plate are smaller plates that sit to the left of the main place setting. It's simple to distinguish them, however, because of their slightly different locations. The bread and butter plate should be above the main plate and to the left, while the salad plate will be directly to the left. If the bread and butter plate is directly to the left, this means that there won't be a salad course, or that the salad will be served as part of the main course. Be careful not to confuse the bread plate with the dessert plate, which sits directly above the dinner plate.
Although the salad plate is typically on the left, with the bread plate above the forks, there are some variations in serving. For instance, both may sometimes be above the dinner plate and on the left. Alternatively, the salad plate may begin the meal on top of the dinner plate.
Emily Post Institute: Informal Place Setting
Etiquette Scholar: Plates
Virginia Tech Division of Student Affairs: Dining Etiquette Q&A
Etiquette for Dummies; Sue Fox
Dr James Holloway has been writing about games, geek culture and whisky since 1995. A former editor of "Archaeological Review from Cambridge," he has also written for Fortean Times, Fantasy Flight Games and The Unspeakable Oath. A graduate of Cambridge University, Holloway runs the blog Gonzo History Gaming.
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UTM Student Residential Complex offers complete self-contained accommodation
September 16, 2017 by shamsulhadi
KUALA LUMPUR, May 11, 2017 – Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) is offering self-contained accommodations that are complete, comfortable, modern and comply to international standards.
The complex, built on an area of 26.4 acres in the campus near Jalan Maktab, near here named Residensi UTMKL comprises four towers for between 11 and 22 floors.
The complex contains 500 rooms and will be professionally managed by Royal Widad Hotel, The Regency and Dormani Halmark, all of whom have extensive experience in the hospitality industry in the country.
Rooms will be managed as a hotel and three-star service appartments to provide comfort and convenience of fully equipped accommodations for tenants.
Residensi UTMKL contains a seven-storey podium and four towers for accommodation. Tower 1 is the highest tower with 22 floors containing 150 units of two-bedroom accommodations.
Meanwhile, the 13-storey Tower 2 consists of 50 units of three-bedroom accommodation units, followed by Tower 3, an 11-storey tower containing 118 studio units, and Tower 4, a 14-storey tower containing 182 studio units.
In addition, Residensi UTMKL features a 10-lane bowling hall, a multipurpose hall that can accommodate up to 500 guests, a swimming pool, 60 business lots of retail space taking up 39,860 square meters, and features 719 parking lots.
Construction of the complex is in line with the Ministry of Higher Education’s intent to promote the Public Universities (UA) to generate their own income to reduce dependence on the government.
Construction of the complex and its location near the centre of the city is expected to attract more students from home and abroad to study in various fields in UTM.
Residensi UTMKL’s construction costs amounted to RM171.5 million obtained through a loan from the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), which amounted to RM180 million.
The idea of its construction was sparked by former UTM Vice-Chancellor, Dato ‘Seri. Ir. Dr. Zaini Ujang in 2009 and received the support of the Board of Directors and the Ministry of Higher Education and Ministry of Finance.
Residensi UTMKL’s construction was managed “in-house” in its entirety – contract documents, procurement, contract deals, appointment of contractors, financial management, project management administration; all using UTM’s own expertise.
This move allowed UTM to save RM4 million in consultation fees alone.
To date, as much as 85 percent of the retail space has already been booked by confirmed tenants, among them UTMSPACE, EliteBowl, fast food outlets Burger King, Pizza Hut and Subway, 99Speedmart retailers, department stores my.News.com and Gloria Jean’s Coffee.
Residensi UTMKL was built by contractors Ahmad Zaki Sdn Bhd (AZSB) beginning in July 2013 and was completed on May 7, 2017 and presented by its Chairman Datuk Prof. A Rahman @ Omar Abdullah to UTM Vice-Chancellor Prof. Datuk Ir. Dr. Wahid Omar in the presentation ceremony today.
Also present were Chairman of the Board of Directors of UTM, Tan Sri Abdul Halim Ali and AZRB Group Managing Director Dato ‘Sri Haji Wan Zaki Haji Wan Muda.
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Facebook Loses Nearly $120 Billion In Single Day
Posted by Toi Williams on Jul 28th, 2018
In its biggest loss of its history, Facebook shares have tumbled nearly 20 percent, wiping out about $120 billion in market value. The company’s previous worst single-day performance was on July 27, 2012, when the stock fell 11.7 percent. According to Forbes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth declined by more than $18.8 billion with the drop. When Facebook stock traded at its all-time high earlier this month, the 34-year-old billionaire had a net worth as high as $86.5 billion.
Facebook’s loss was the largest single-day loss in the history of the American stock market. The next highest was when Intel Corp. lost about $91 billion on one September day in 2000. Coming in third was when Apple Inc. lost almost $60 billion on January 24, 2013. Exxon Mobil Corp. also lost $53 billion on one Wednesday in October 2008.
The steep decline in stock value comes after the company announced that it expects revenue growth to slow in the coming quarters. The company also announced that it would be investing billions of dollars annually to improve the safety and security of users on its platform. Those revelations, coupled with a steep drop in active users, sent investors fleeing in droves.
Facebook has become enmeshed in a number of scandals over the past two years. The biggest was when revelations emerged about the platform’s role in spreading Russian disinformation during the 2016 presidential election. Zuckerberg initially dismissed the possibility that the platform affected the vote, calling the notion “a pretty crazy idea.” He later had to backtrack and apologized for the comment.
In March, reports revealed political consultancy Cambridge Analytica had used the data of nearly 87 million Facebook users for campaign targeting. Reports of the mishandled data led to multiple inquiries by U.S. officials. The company is currently under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice.
Qualcomm Ends Quest To Acquire NXP
Justice Department Launches Religious Liberty Task Force
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Home » Disorders » Sleep Terror Symptoms
Sleep Terror Symptoms
By John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
~ Less than a minute read
Sleep terror disorder is also known as night terrors. Sleep terror is characterized by the following symptoms that a professional looks for when making a diagnosis for this condition:
Recurrent episodes of abrupt awakening from sleep, usually occurring during the first third of the major sleep episode and beginning with a panicky scream.
Intense fear and signs of autonomic arousal, such as tachycardia, rapid breathing, and sweating, during each episode.
Relative unresponsiveness to efforts of others to comfort the person during the episode.
No detailed dream is recalled and there is amnesia for the episode.
The episodes cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition.
More about Night Terrors
Note: this disorder has been subsumed under Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Arousal Disorders in the updated DSM-5. See updated sleepwalking (non-REM sleep arousal) disorder symptoms criteria.
John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
Dr. John Grohol is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher, and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues since 1995. Dr. Grohol has a Master's degree and doctorate in clinical psychology from Nova Southeastern University. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Computers in Human Behavior and is a founding board member of the Society for Participatory Medicine. You can learn more about Dr. John Grohol here.
Grohol, J. (2019). Sleep Terror Symptoms. Psych Central. Retrieved on January 19, 2020, from https://psychcentral.com/disorders/sleep-terror-symptoms/
Last updated: 11 Oct 2019 (Originally: 17 May 2016)
Last reviewed: By a member of our scientific advisory board on 11 Oct 2019
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Implementing GFCS: Swiss and German national showcases
Theme: Climate
Publish Date: 13 October 2017
Climate services are fundamental for enabling national and local decision-makers to maintain and boost resilience in view of the increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather and climate events due to climate change. Better availability of, access to and use of climate services is indispensable for addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Priorities for Action in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Paris agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and other international frameworks. Climate services are also vital...
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Participation of the Director of the Chilean Meteorological Service at COP 22, Marrakesh, Morocco
In recent years, climate variability and change have had a global impact and a great number of States from around the world participated in COP 21 (Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention held in Paris, France between 30 November and 15 December 2016), the agreements reached there are the proof of the relevance of this issue.
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Climate Services to Reduce Vulnerability in Haiti
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is extremely vulnerable to natural disasters. Situated on the western third of the island of Hispaniola, the country regularly experiences major earthquakes, hurricanes, tropical storms, droughts and flooding events. The impact of these has been further aggravated by deforestation that has left the urban and rural areas where the poorest segment of the population live exposed to landslides following heavy rainfall. Each successive disaster takes a toll on the Haitian economy and further hinders its sustainable development. The development...
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Climate services for affordable wind energy
Renewable energy is central to the global effort to move to less carbon-intensive economies that support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The energy sector currently accounts for more than two thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions (Global Wind Energy Council 2016). Consequently, the global transition to a low-carbon future portends a fundamental and comprehensive change for the entire energy sector (Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OECD) and Development and International Energy Agency 2016).
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HIWeather: A 10-year research project
Theme: Weather
Despite substantial advances in forecasting and emergency preparedness, weather-related disasters continue to kill, to displace populations, and to damage property and infrastructure. Even less severe weather events place an increasing strain on society. This is especially the case in countries with fragile economies and infrastructure. Such events challenge the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals, by pushing people back into poverty, destroying food crops, contaminating water supplies, disrupting education, undermining health and destroying businesses. The potential of advanced...
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Using indicators to explain our changing climate to policymakers and the public
Despite the great complexity of climate change, scientists must accept the challenge of communicating their findings to policymakers and the general public. They must do this in a way that is simple enough for non-specialists to understand, but not so simple that it distorts the science. Climate science is often communicated through well-written technical reports, but it can also be effectively explained through graphics, animations, oral presentations, compelling narratives, trusted messengers, and popular books and films.
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Present and future leaders in weather, water and climate science: An intergenerational perspective
As a specialized agency of the United Nations and on behalf of its 191 Members, WMO is committed to achieving the goals and targets laid out in global development frameworks, above all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. On SDG number 5 "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls," WMO is mainstreaming gender issues in its governance, working structures, programmes and service delivery by attracting more women into scientific fields and improving their access to technology, information, science education and technical training...
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Reducing disaster risk through gender parity and women’s leadership
Theme: Disaster risk reduction
The Sustainable Development Goals will shape the international development agenda and transform the course of the 21 st century through action to end poverty, inequality and violence, particularly against women...
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Innovative and community-based sustainable water management
The Global Programme Water (GPW) of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and its partners strives to meet the global challenges associated with the management of water resources...
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How climate forecasts strengthen food security
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) is a decision-support activity that produces timely, evidence-based information on food insecurity. It supports humanitarian-response programming while helping to reveal the root causes of food insecurity around the world.
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by Michelle Kim, Amanda Wicks, and Evan Minsker
7 Albums Out Today You Should Listen to Now: The National, Zola Jesus, Alvvays, More
Also stream new releases from Mount Kimbie, Death From Above, Tori Amos, and Ted Leo
Zola Jesus (Frank Hoensch/Redferns), Matt Berninger (Ian Gavan/Getty Images), Molly Rankin (Rick Kern/WireImage)
With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums by The National, Zola Jesus, Alvvays, Mount Kimbie, Death From Above, Tori Amos, and Ted Leo. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week.
The National: Sleep Well Beast [4AD]
The National’s seventh studio album is Sleep Well Beast, the follow-up to 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me. The LP was recorded in Aaron Dessner’s Long Pond studio in Hudson Valley, N.Y., as well as in Los Angeles, Paris, and Berlin. Prior to its release, the band shared “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,” “Guilty Party,” “Carin at the Liquor Store,” and “Day I Die.” Read Pitchfork’s interview, “The National on the ‘Anything Goes Spirit’ of New Album Sleep Well Beast.”
Listen on Tidal
Zola Jesus: Okovi [Sacred Bones]
Nika Danilova’s sixth Zola Jesus record is titled Okovi. The follow-up to 2014’s Taiga includes “Exhumed,“ “Siphon,” and “Soak.” According to Danilova, “Okovi is a Slavic word for shackles.... This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature.” Read Pitchfork’s interview, “Zola Jesus Turns Tragedy into a Torrential Sound on Her New Album.”
Alvvays: Antisocialites [Polyvinyl/Transgressive]
The Toronto band are back with their sophomore album. Of the record, frontwoman Molly Rankin says, “This record is a fantasy breakup arc and my life nearly imitated art.” Read our track reviews for “In Undertow” and “Dream Tonite.” In 2014, Alvvays released their self-titled debut LP.
Mount Kimbie: Love What Survives [Warp]
The duo of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos are back with their follow-up to 2013’s Cold Spring Fault Less Youth. Love What Survives features contributions from James Blake, King Krule, Micachu, and Andrea Balency. Read our track reviews on the James Blake-featuring “We Go Home Together,” “Marilyn” with Micachu, and the King Krule collaboration “Blue Train Lines.” Watch the video for “Blue Train Lines” here.
Death From Above: Outrage! Is Now [Warner Bros./Last Gang]
The band formerly known as Death From Above 1979 have released the follow-up to 2014’s The Physical World. Outrage! Is Now features the previously released songs “Holy Books,” “Never Swim Alone,” and “Freeze Me.” For the latter, they shared a music video stacked with bodybuilders. Watch it here.
Tori Amos: Native Invader [Decca]
The fifteenth album from Tori Amos follows 2014’s Unrepentant Geraldines. Ahead of its release, Amos shared several tracks, including “Reindeer King,” “Up the Creek,” and “Cloud Riders.” Amos is currently on tour across the UK and Europe. Find her full schedule here. She has recently reissued several of her albums, including Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink.
Ted Leo: The Hanged Man [self-released]
With The Hanged Man, an album funded by a Kickstarter campaign, Ted Leo makes his return following records with the Both (his group with Aimee Mann) and the Pharmacists (whose last album The Brutalist Bricks came out seven years ago). Leo recorded the album at a “home-studio-in-transition” in Wakefield, Rhode Island, and he described the album’s creation as “personal desolation that felt fallow but was actually very fertile.” It features the lead single “You’re Like Me.” Watch the cornball video for “Can’t Go Back.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story included Hundred Waters’ Communicating, which is due out September 14.
Artists In This Story
Death From Above 1979
Out This Week
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News from the world of maths: Happy Pi Day to you! (14/3/2006)
Happy Pi Day to you! (14/3/2006)
Write the date March 14th in the date format used in the US and you get 3.14 — which makes it Pi Day! Plus is celebrating by reflecting on the ubiquitous usefulness of this number to mathematics, pondering its many unsolved mysteries, and of course eating an appropriately shaped pi pie (pie are squared you know). How will you be celebrating? If reciting digits of pi is to be your pi party trick, then make sure you read Remembrance of numbers past from issue 31.
"If a billion decimals of pi were printed in ordinary type, they would stretch from New York City to the middle of Kansas. Only fortyseven decimal places of pi would be sufficiently precise to inscribe a circle around the visible universe that didn't deviate from perfect circularity by more than the distance across a single proton."
- from The Riciculously Enhanced Pi Page
posted by Plus @ 2:13 PM
News from the world of maths: Gravity kills dark energy? (16/02/2006)
Gravity kills dark energy? (16/02/2006)
In 1998, scientists found that the rate at which the universe expands is accelerating. This was extremely puzzling, as none of the standard theories could account for the acceleration. So scientists decided that something unknown and mysterious must be responsible, and they called it dark energy. But now three scientists claim that we may not need dark energy after all, but that the acceleration can be explained by a modified model of gravity. They altered the equations from the theory of general relativity in a way prescribed by cosmological theories based on a universe with more than four dimensions. When applied to short distances (on the cosmological scale), the differences between the old and new models are not noticeable, however, on ultra large distances the new equations predict the accelerated expansion. Moreover, the researchers say, the predictions match observations extremely well and don't conflict with other observations.
You can find out more about the new model for gravity on Physicsweb, and more about dark energy in Plus article New light shed on dark energy.
News from the world of maths: Small, cool planet found (27/01/2006)
Small, cool planet found (27/01/2006)
Scientists have found the smallest extrasolar planet yet. The inspiringly named OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb orbits a red dwarf about 22,000 light years away, close to the centre of the Milky Way. Its mass is between 2.8 and 11 times that of the Earth's mass, possibly making it the least massive planet that has ever been found outside our own solar system. It's about 2.6 times as far away from its star than the Earth is from the Sun. This distance, together with the fact that the star is a lot smaller and less bright than our Sun, means that temperatures on this icy, rocky planet are somewhere around -220° — too cold for life as we know it.
The planet was discovered using a new technique called gravitational microlensing. Until now, planets were spotted by the way their gravitational pull makes their host star wobble, a technique which uses the Doppler effect (see Plus article Brave young worlds). But for this to work, the planet has to be massive enough or close enough to its star to exert the necessary pull. Consequently, all planets found so far are much more massive than OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb.
Gravitational microlensing uses a different approach: as a star passes in front of a more distant reference object, its gravity acts like a lense and increases the object's brightness for a period of a few weeks. If the moving star has a companion planet, then this gives the brightness an extra spark. Although this is the third exoplanet discovered using gravitational microlensing, it's the first one of such low mass. Scientists think that these small worlds are much more common in the universe than was previously assumed. To find out more and see some pictures read this article from the European Southern Observatory.
News from the world of maths: Football physics (25/01/2006)
Football physics (25/01/2006)
Nicholas Linthorne and David Everett from the University of Brunel, UK, have worked out the optimum angle for a footballer to launch a throw-in — it's 30 degrees to the horizontal, 15 degrees less than textbooks normally state. The two filmed a player throwing the ball at angles between 10 and 60 degrees and then used biomechanical software to measure velocity and angle in each case. Using the equations that describe the flight of a spherical object, they calculated the optimum launch angle to be 30 degrees. Thrown at this angle, the ball has the best chance to fly all the way to the penalty area, giving other players a great opportunity to score. And it goes even further if it's launched with a backspin at an even lower angle.
The same methods can be used for any other sport involving the throwing of a ball. Next, Linthorne will calculate the optimum angle at which to take a goal kick. To find out more, read their paper Release angle for attaining maximum distance in the soccer throw-in, or look at Nicholas Linthorne's homepage.
News from the world of maths: US law is Euclidean (16/01/2006)
US law is Euclidean (16/01/2006)
This is what one James Robbins found out when he stood trial for drug dealing in New York last year. US law decrees that selling drugs within 1000 feet of a school carries extra penalties. Unfortunately, Robbins had been caught within that radius, so his lawyer decided simply to change the metric. He argued that the Euclidean metric, which measures distances along straight lines between points, should be replaced by a "Taxicab metric", which measures distances along the roads a taxi, or a pedestrian, has to take to get from point to point. After all, students from the school in question are unlikely to walk through brick walls. According to this new metric, Robbins was 1254 feet away from the school: 764 feet north along Eighth Avenue and 490 feet west along 43rd Street. Alas, judge and jury were unimpressed by this mathematical trickery and Robbins lost.
News from the world of maths: Einstein is proved right (16/01/2006)
Einstein is proved right (16/01/2006)
Unlike human celebrities, equations have to prove their merit to be famous. Now Einstein's e=mc2 has done just that. An experiment conducted by US researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, showed that e differs from mc2 by at most 0.0000004, proving beyond doubt that the equation is indeed correct.
The equation, which just celebrated its 100th birthday, is part of Einstein's special theory of relativity and relates energy (e) to mass (m) and the speed of light (c). The recent experiment is the most precise and direct test of the equation ever conducted. Its results were published in the journal Nature. You can find out more about the experiment in this news release. To see special relativity in action, read Plus article What's so special about special relativity?. Another Plus article, Spinning in space, describes how the general theory of relativity is put to the test.
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About Park Circus
Stunning 4K restoration of The Apartment currently screening in selected international cinemas
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Established in 2003 by John Letham and Nick Varley, Park Circus is a world leading distributor and sales agent.
Coming from a cinema exhibition background, Nick and John had a dream of making it easier for exhibitors to access - and audiences to see - classic cinema. Armed only with a business plan created at the kitchen table, Park Circus was born. Fast-forward fifteen years and Park Circus Group now has a team of dedicated film devotees and offices in Glasgow, London, Los Angeles and Paris.
We license over 20,500 theatrical screenings per year in 113 countries around the world. From outdoor screenings in remote locations, to retrospectives in major cinematheques; from festival premieres of new titles, to pop-up screenings on city rooftops; we love making incredible cinema events happen. Park Circus represents over 25,000 titles from all the major Hollywood and British studios, along with many specialist libraries and catalogues. Park Circus was one of the earliest adopters and supporters of digital cinema (our first digital release was Brief Encounter in 2005). We now have over 2,000 titles available for digital exhibition. In addition, our extensive library of 35mm and 70mm prints is available for booking worldwide.
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PoOPlist
POmpous and Opinionated Persons - Being the collected musings on music and pop culture of a few wizened observers ready to bloviate...
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Matt Nerney Poop 2014
Posted By: MattN January 17, 2015
It was a year of continuous change, but also of hopeful permanence. We started the year in a small rental in Reading, Vermont and ended it in our rambling new home in Grafton, New Hampshire. In between, moving and madness. At journey’s end, we found the home of our dreams, a historic colonial, with barns, land, and forest. We’ve just ordered our seeds and are planning the vegetable garden. The cycle of life continues. Of course, one needs a soundtrack for all this change, and 2014 certainly provided it.
Tops of the Pops
Buy New or Used via Amazon Rent via iTunes [?]
1. The New Pornographers > > Brill Bruisers : At first, this album sounded a little too lush, a little too New Wave. But as I listened to it more and more, the sound seemed to warm and gel, and I came to love it. Everything here works symbiotically, and Dan Behar’s songs really shine on this album. Of course, A.C. Newman’s songs are impeccable, and Neko Case sparkles to illuminate the bright neon brilliance of Brill Bruisers.
2. St. Vincent > > St. Vincent : An artist who I’ve been aware of for years, but never found the time to investigate. Well, it was hard to ignore Annie Clark this year and rightfully so. St. Vincent is a revelation. While she’s obviously got the skills, it appears her time with David Byrne has really paid off also, as Digital Witness is absolutely brilliant.
3. Spoon > > They Want My Soul : What to say? Another Spoon album, another masterpiece? Yup. They Want My Soul is another minor progression, with a few new tricks sparingly revealed. The biggest pay-off, though, comes from the biggest risk, as Inside Out is unlike any other Spoon song yet, but definitely among the best.
4. Beck > > Morning Phase : Mellow gold, I say. I love the folky, melancholy Beck. As noted in the press, a companion piece to Sea Change, and a worthy one, at that. Expansive and transformative, while humble at the same time. Neat trick.
5. Gravenhurst > > Offerings – Lost Songs : Sadly, a final offering from Gravenhurst, as Nick Talbot (who was Gravenhurst) passed on this year, far too young. Collected for the ten year re-issue of his first album for Warp, Offerings – Lost Songs is just that, unreleased tracks and demos that had been buried in Talbot’s archives. Of a piece with all of Talbot’s work, these songs are haunting, spare, and stay with you for a long time.
6. Damon Albarn > > Everyday Robots : Albarn’s take on the modern world, with its concrete, motorways, and wires. It’s a bit of a downer, but beautiful and almost meditative in the hands and heart of the former Blur and Gorillaz front man.
Buy Vinyl LP New or Used via Amazon Download via BitTorrent [?]
7. Thom Yorke > > Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes : A minor masterpiece. My favorite of his solo work. Still minimalist and modernist, but warmer somehow than his other solo material. I am a little cheeved that this is download and vinyl only, I just don’t get it.
8. the Twilight Sad > > Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave : I always look forward to hearing new material from the Twilight Sad. While I’m still partial to their debut Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters, this is almost as good. Brooding, bristling, and with that thick brogue still center stage, this album draws you in and transports you to that grim, windswept cityscape that I imagine Glasgow to be.
9. Daniel Lanois > > Flesh and Machine : I love albums that tell a story or narrative, and Daniel Lanois is able to do that without words. Flesh and Machine is his story of sound.
10. Bing & Ruth > > Tomorrow Was the Golden Age : Majestic, meditative minimalism. Like the sound of a thousand monks chanting, or a million cicadas humming. If you like the early work of Brian Eno or Gavin Bryars, you’ll probably like this.
11. Grouper > > Ruins : Found sounds, piano, and a shadow of a voice. Sad and beautiful.
12. Joan Shelley > > Electric Ursa : There’s a line from one of these songs, “It’s a small town, it doesn’t ask for much”, that truly speaks of this album. Small, humble & restrained, it gives back much more than it asks for, which is true of all great art, I believe.
13. Bonnie “Prince” Billy > > Singer’s Grave/A Sea of Tongues : I fell out with the Bonnie Prince for awhile, but we’ve found our way back to each other again. I’m glad of it, because he brings truth and wisdom to the world, and we always need more of that.
14. Robert Plant > > lullaby and … the Ceaseless Roar : While this is not as warm and enveloping as his American albums, it still satisfies. There are many highs, a few lows, but I keep finding myself drawn back to lullaby … and I like that this old timer is still taking some risks. There are some other oldies that could (and should) follow his lead.
15. The Flaming Lips > > 7 Skies H3 : Electric Wurms > > Music, Die Schwer Zu Twerk : While Wayne and the Lips have taken many strange turns in their long journey, the recent tryst with Miley Cyrus must certainly be amongst the strangest. Regardless, these two offerings are classic Flaming Lips … weird, wondrous, and wild. Unpredictable as ever, the condensed 24 hour song 7 Skies H3 and the aka Electric Wurms keep the faithful tuned in and able to overlook Wayne’s mid-life crisis.
Other Notable News
Richard Thompson > > Acoustic Classics : as advertised.
Brian Eno & Karl Hyde > > High Life Someday World : weird, 80’s inspired afro-pop.
Ricky Eat Acid > > Three Love Songs : found sound ambience with some baffled beats.
Reigning Sound > > Shattered : more 60’s inspired garage pop.
Vashti Bunyan > > Heartleap : if you know her, you love her.
Chuck Prophet > > Night Surfer : good old American rock ‘n’ roll.
School of Language > > Old Fears : old fears, same as the new. New sounds, same as the old.
James Yorkston > > the Cellardyke Recording & Wassailing Society : quirky Scottish folk.
Camper van Beethoven > > El Camino Real : keep on keeping on.
the Coral > > the Curse of Love : always under the radar.
Pink Floyd > > the Endless River : yeah, I like Pink Floyd.
Stardeath & the White Dwarf > > Wastoid : Wayne’s cousin? You’d never know.
the Black Keys > > Turn Blue : black and blue. Where have I heard this before?
Thompson > > Family : not bad, just hoping for a whole lot more.
Anders Parker > > There’s a Bluebird in My Heart : always nice to hear a friend.
Nick Talbot (aka Gravenhurst), Jack Bruce, U. Srinivas, Pete Seeger, Horace Silver,
Phil Everly, Jean Redpath, Joe Cocker, Charlie Haden, Johnny Winter
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Live execs on the future of the Spice Girls
by James Hanley
January 7th 2020 at 7:03AM
Future live dates by the Spice Girls are an "ongoing conversation", according to execs involved in the group's hugely successful reunion.
The legendary girl group invited speculation about additional activity by re-signing with CAA for representation in all areas worldwide.
However, Modest! Management’s Richard Griffiths and Harry Magee, who were drafted in to represent the band alongside original Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller of XIX Entertainment, told Music Week nothing was set in stone.
“Our deal with them was just to do one tour," said Griffiths. "There’s been a huge amount of interest from absolutely everywhere. But getting the timing right for them to do something again, that will take some juggling around to make that happen because they all have their ongoing things that they were doing before, and young families. Going away to America for two months doesn’t necessarily work for everybody.
“But as we sit here now, whether we’d be working with them again, whether they themselves would be working again, none of us know.”
Whether it will happen again, I don't know. But it was a magic moment
John Giddings
Despite the absence of founder member Victoria Beckham, the on-sale for the 2019 UK stadium tour shattered previous records to become Ticketmaster's busiest ever. Pollstar reported that a total of 695,660 tickets were sold for the tour, promoted by SJM Concerts, Live Nation and Solo, which grossed $78.2 million (£59.5m) from 13 shows.
“Whether it will happen again, I don’t know,” said Solo MD John Giddings, speaking in Music Week's special end of year issue. “But it was a magic moment.”
The final three nights at London’s Wembley Stadium generated $27.5 million (£21m) from 221,971 ticket sales.
"I’m not sure we have ever seen demand backed up so high on the ticket platforms for an event here before," said James Taylor, the national stadium’s senior commercial manager. "Demand was there for more shows if they wanted it. The girl power message still remains current and relevant to many and you could see on the show days fans reliving their youth – and many bringing along their own kids to give them a taste of their parents’ youth!
"The production looked amazing, the sound was great and by the time the girls got to Wembley they had obviously done multiple shows so had time to perfect the show before they got to us. They all still sound great live so there was nothing but positive memories from the shows here.
"The final night was particularly emotional as the girls clearly didn’t want to leave the stage. They certainly didn’t leave the stadium until the early hours on the final night! It seemed like the Wembley shows were important for their family and friends and I could see some getting quite emotional in the area they were seated in. I hope the girls and their families left with lasting memories."
touring,
spice girls,
Modest Management,
Spice Girls reunion
Can LadBaby claim the Christmas No.1 for the second year running?
'Their legacy has got even bigger': Inside the Spice Girls' live comeback
New edition of Music Week out now
Music Week 60th anniversary special: The story of the '90s
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Tag Archives: ANZAC Day
Christchurch attack strains Australian-Turkish relations ahead of ANZAC day
Weeks ahead of the ANZAC commemoration at Gallipoli, serious tensions erupted between Australia and Turkey, after threatening comments by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the wake of the Christchurch massacre.
Scott Morrison on Wednesday called in the Turkish ambassador to give him a tongue lashing. He demanded a withdrawal of the remarks and the taking down of a nationalist video featuring footage of the Australian gunman’s live stream.
The strength of the Prime Minister’s response has an eye to the emotional place of Gallipoli in the Australian narrative. But he also has to be careful not to cause the Turkish government to respond by hampering next month’s ANZAC commemoration.
President Erdoğan, electioneering at Çanakkale, just across from the Gallipoli peninsula, referred to the massacre, saying: “They test us with the messages they give in New Zealand […] We understood that your hatred is alive […] We understood that you begrudge our lives.”
He said: “Your ancestors came. […] Later on, some of them returned back on their feet, some of them in coffins.
“If you will come here with the same intentions, we will be waiting for you. You should have no doubt that we will farewell you just like your grandfathers”.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, visiting Indonesia, on Wednesday highlighted that the gunman was “a non-New Zealander, an outsider”.
Peters also said he thought Erdoğan had not known the full facts but “since he’s been apprised, or informed of the facts, he’s made a very conciliatory statement today […] which would stand in stark contrast to what he said the other day.”
In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post Erdoğan has written “all Western leaders must learn from the courage, leadership and sincerity of New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, to embrace Muslims living in their respective countries”.
Peters, who is going to Turkey this week, said when there he would “set any record straight that needs to be set straight as to what went on”.
Attacking Erdoğan’s original comments, Morrison told a news conference they were “highly offensive to Australians and highly reckless in this very sensitive environment”.
Morrison said he had asked for the remarks to be clarified and withdrawn. “I’ve asked for these comments, particularly their reporting of the misrepresented position of Australia on Turkish television, the state-sponsored broadcaster, to be taken down,” he said.
He would wait for the Turkish government’s response – beyond that “all options are on the table”. Asked what these options were, the Prime Minister would not elaborate.
Morrison said he did not accept as an excuse that “things are said in an electoral context”.
The travel advisory for Turkey is under review. People planning to go to Gallipoli should exercise common sense and await further advice, Morrison said. The present advice is for people to exercise a “high degree of caution”.
Morrison said Erdoğan’s remarks were “offensive, because they insult the memory of our ANZACs and they violate the pledge that is etched in the stone at Gallipoli, of the promise of Atatürk to the mothers of our ANZACs. So I understand the deep offence Australians would be feeling about this.
“The comments completely misrepresented the Australian and New Zealand governments’ very strong response to the extremist attack, he said. All Australians had condemned it.
“We have reached out to embrace our Muslim brothers and sisters in New Zealand and in Australia, quite to the contrary of the vile assertion that has been made about our response,” Morrison said.
He said he had spoken with Turkish Australian leaders on Wednesday morning. “They have expressed to me their deep disappointment about these comments. They don’t represent the views of Turkish Australians.
“I am not going to single out the comments of one person and ascribe it to a people, whether in Turkey or across Australia. I don’t think it does reflect the views of the Turkish people, or certainly of Turkish Australians,” Morrison said.
He said Foreign Minister Marise Payne would be speaking to her Turkish counterpart.
The Australian ambassador to Turkey was due to speak with Erdoğan’s advisers.
Posted in Australia, Islam, news, Politics, Turkey | Tagged ANZAC Day, article, attack, Australia, Christchurch, extremism, Islam, Muslim, muslims, New Zealand, news, Politics, relations, right-wing, terrorism, terrorist, Turkey | Leave a comment
Clarrie Combo, Mrs Brown and Aboriginal soldiers in WW2
Yorta Yorta women and girls at the Cummeragunja Reserve in NSW with their knitting for soldiers serving in the second world war.
Australian War Memorial: P01562.001
Kristyn Harman, University of Tasmania
During the second world war, a young Aboriginal soldier, Private Clarrie Combo from New South Wales, exchanged mail with Mrs F. C. Brown from Loxton, South Australia — a white woman whom he had never met.
Very few letters penned by Aboriginal soldiers who served in either of the two world wars survive, yet one of Clarrie’s letters has endured in what might seem a surprising context. Mrs Brown contacted the young soldier after seeing an advertisement calling for volunteers to “adopt” Aboriginal soldiers. His reply was printed in her local newspaper, and its survival provides us with a rare opportunity to learn about military service from an Aboriginal soldier’s perspective.
Private Clarence Combo.
NAA: B883, NX30580
Clarence Combo was born in Wardell, New South Wales, on 14 September 1919. Young Clarrie grew up in a harsh environment — Kinchela Aboriginal Boys’ Training Home near Kempsey. Consistent with government plans to assimilate Aboriginal people into white Australian society, children like Clarrie were forcibly removed from their families. At Kinchela, boys were called by their allocated numbers rather than names. Identities and cultures were stripped away.
In a country where discriminatory legislation and practices precluded Aboriginal people from earning a fair wage, voting, marrying non-Aboriginal partners, buying property or entering a public bar, it is not too difficult to imagine why some young Aboriginal men signed up for the military when war broke out. An estimated 1,000 Aboriginal soldiers served in the Australian Imperial Force as black diggers during the first world war. By the mid-20th century it was easier for Aboriginal men to sign up, so around 3,000 served Australia during WWII.
Comfort funds
Shortly after WWII began, the Melbourne-based Aborigines Uplift Society, founded by non-Aboriginal activist Arthur Burdeu, created a comforts auxiliary for Aboriginal soldiers. The idea was that women could “adopt” an Aboriginal soldier. They would correspond with him and arrange comfort parcels to be sent to him at the front.
In the Society’s August 1940 Uplift newsletter, Burdeu explained how “native women have not the resources to do as their white sisters, though they are already at work”. In Queensland, for example, children at the Purga Aboriginal Mission sewed underpants, toilet tidies, calico bags and hussifs (sewing kits), and knitted socks, mittens and balaclavas. Yorta Yorta women and children at the Cummeragunja Reserve (located in New South Wales) were also involved in knitting for the war effort.
Newspaper advertisements ran across Australia inviting women to contact Burdeu about “adopting” an Aboriginal soldier. With at least one son-in-law serving Australia, Mrs Brown may have felt compassion for those men whose families could not afford to send them parcels.
Corresponding with Mrs Brown
On September 25, 1941 the Murray Pioneer and Australian River Record published one of Clarrie’s letters to Mrs Brown under the headline “Aboriginal’s Appreciative Letter”. Clarrie opened his correspondence with Mrs Brown by thanking her for writing to him. He wrote: “it is very nice of you to write to someone you do not know”. At a practical level, Clarrie advised Mrs Brown that he wore size seven boots, as she had offered to knit socks for him.
Aboriginal’s Appreciative Letter extract.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/109261185
The young private’s letter provides a unique perspective on his experiences serving abroad. “I was in action for the first time in Greece,” he told his correspondent. He described Greece as “the nicest country that I have been in since leaving Australia”, then marvelled at having seen snow for the first time.
However the horrors of war included being “attacked practically every day by the German planes”. He told Mrs Brown how “a few of my pals were killed over there … There were German planes in the sky all day long and they were always bombing”.
What’s left out of correspondence can also be telling. In War Dance: A Story of the 2/3 Aust. Inf. Battalion A.I.F., Ken Clift provides an insight into racial attitudes amongst some of the men, telling of an altercation between two Australian soldiers, an Aboriginal one named Clarrie and an Indian or Afghan soldier, Tom. As the men argued heatedly, Tom allegedly called Clarrie: “You black bastard”. Clarrie was said to have retorted, “Well Tom, you’re no bloody glass of milk yourself.” Clarrie’s correspondence with Mrs Brown omits any mention of such tensions.
Over five years’ service, Clarrie’s tours of duty included Egypt, Libya, Greece, Crete, Syria, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) and New Guinea. He suffered illness and injuries. In 1941 he caught sandfly fever, an ailment commonly suffered by soldiers fighting in North Africa. His “Proceedings for Discharge” notes that Clarrie received two war injuries, one to his right forearm and the other, a gunshot wound inflicted in New Guinea in June 1945, to his left forearm.
Clarrie’s war experiences included seeing some of his mates injured or killed. He would also have been expected to fire on enemy combatants. However, his correspondence with Mrs Brown, replete with anecdotes about foreign lands and peoples, highlights how being part of Australia’s war effort in the mid-20th century also gave him insights into other places and cultures.
Fortunately, Clarrie survived the war. He was one of five Aboriginal soldiers welcomed home to Wardell by the Cabbage Tree Island Women’s Guild just before Christmas 1945. By the mid-1960s Clarrie was chairing the Aboriginal Cooperative at Cabbage Tree Island and participating in national conferences advocating equal rights for Aboriginal people.
Kristyn Harman, Senior Lecturer in History; Graduate Research Coordinator, School of Humanities; Course Coordinator, Diploma of History, University of Tasmania
Posted in Aborigines, Australia, news, Special Days, War, World War 2 | Tagged Aborigine, Aborigines, ANZAC Day, article, Clarrie Combo, F. C. Brown, letters, Mrs Brown, news, soldiers, War, World War II, WWII | Leave a comment
Women have been neglected by the Anzac tradition, and it’s time that changed
Australian nurses and patients at the Auxiliary Hospital Unit in Antwerp during the first world war.
Robyn Mayes, Queensland University of Technology
The Anzac legend remains firmly centred on the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of 1915, and the sacrifice of “sons and fathers” in frontline combat. The place of women in this foundational story is also made clear – that of onlookers and supporters.
In concluding her 2017 dawn service address at Gallipoli, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told a story about Len Hall, one of the original “diggers” who fought at Gallipoli. He is said to have noticed a girl in the crowd who had gathered to farewell departing soldiers, and given her an emu feather that he plucked from his slouch hat. When he returned to Australia at the close of the war, this girl — who later became his wife — was waiting in the crowd to return the feather.
This is a story of hope, and of an ongoing fascination with and idealisation of the “digger”. It is also a story about the passive role of women as waiting mothers, wives and sisters. But women’s contributions are more complicated, varied and controversial than these stories allow.
Why China will be watching how we commemorate Anzac Day
Undervalued women’s work
Women were entirely absent from the Gallipoli landings; the only women in the vicinity were nurses serving on hospital ships and in the field hospital in Lemnos. These crucial and dangerous roles as nurses and ambulance drivers were publicly acknowledged in the early Anzac commemorations.
However, as Anzac Day rituals evolved into the current dawn service, veterans’ march, and afternoon celebrations and sporting events, public recognition of this service declined.
Ex-service women are often involved in the Anzac Day March.
For many years, ex-service women attended Anzac Day marches as spectators or walked in marches without service identification and without mention in the official program. While some were satisfied with this, others were not.
In a 1963 newspaper article the President of the Australian Women’s Army Service shared the group’s experience of “being ignored”. She pointed out they had until then received “less recognition than the boy scouts” (who were officially included in the march).
The Australian Women’s Army Service was actually formed in 1941 to free up men for combat roles. Women performed a wide range of (largely uncelebrated) work, ranging from intelligence analysis to operating fixed gun emplacements in Australia, to working as canteen staff.
In 2002, Annie Leach headed the Perth Anzac Day march on the 100th anniversary of the army’s nursing corps, noting that WA nurses returning from the second world war were largely “a forgotten race”.
Mary Beard and the long tradition of women being told to shut up
Challenging core Anzac beliefs
Women have not only had to fight to be recognised for their noncombatant war service, but are also credited with presenting the most serious of all challenges to Anzac core beliefs and rituals. This took the form of non-violent Anzac Day protests seeking to draw public attention to the issue of rape in war, and to oppose the system supporting wars and rape.
In the 1970s and 80s, groups such as the Women Against Rape in War collective bravely staged several such protests around Australia. These protests included the attempted laying of “rape wreaths” during dawn services as a way to mourn women raped in war. This stands in stark contrast to the comforting notion of wartime women waiting safely at home.
Such activity was vilified and indeed punished. In Sydney, 160 women protesters were charged with participating in the Anzac Day march without permission, which they had sought and been refused. As sociologist Catriona Elder has documented in her 2007 book Being Australian: Narratives of National Identity three women were jailed for one month for failing to keep a minimum distance of 400 metres from the end of the Anzac Day parade.
Keepers of the tradition
ABC coverage of the 2017 Gallipoli dawn service reported many people were moved to tears, as evidenced by inclusion of a photograph of a young woman wearing an “Anzac Day” beanie wiping her tears away. Other coverage of Anzac Day 2017 features an image of a woman “watching as people sleep overnight”.
An examination of media coverage of Anzac Day in Perth since the 1980s shows a growing expectation around women’s emotional engagement with, and support for, Anzac Day rituals. It also shows the emergence of an explicit contemporary role for women as guardians of the ongoing relevance and importance of the Day. This includes making sure that the family attends Anzac Day marches.
Flies, filth and bully beef: life at Gallipoli in 1915
The ‘modern’ digger
In a contentious move, since the first of January 2013 women currently serving in the ADF have been entitled to take up front line and combat roles while direct entry to these roles has been permitted from January 2016. In 2015, women constituted close to 15% of the deployed force. In 2017 the official definition of “veteran” was revised so that many older service-women will for the first time be officially recognised on Anzac Day 2018 as veterans.
Word is that in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne this year the march will be led by service women.
Even though it is mooted as a “one-off” occurrence, is this a turning point after which women will be more equally recognised for their military service to the nation? Will women veterans be accorded the revered title of “digger”?
The role of women in the Anzac tradition is not just about the “one day” and fair recognition of women’s sacrifice and service; it’s also about how we understand quintessential “Australian” characteristics and the formation of the nation as the preserve of not just men but also women, and not just those who support but also those who challenge.
Robyn Mayes, Senior Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology
Posted in Australia, news, Special Days, Women | Tagged ANZAC Day, article, Australia, change, neglected, news, tradition, women | Leave a comment
Gallipoli commemorations of Turkish youth tell us much about politics in Turkey
Turkish soldiers in a trench at Gallipoli. The way Turkish youth commemorate the battle tells us much about the country’s politics.
Ausstralian Dept of Veterans Affairs
Brad West, University of South Australia and Ayhan Aktar, Istanbul Bilgi University
With ongoing political instability and security concerns in Turkey, we are again likely to see a smaller turnout of Australians and New Zealanders for Anzac Day ceremonies at Gallipoli this year.
But thousands of Turkish youth will be on the battlefields at dawn. They will be re-enacting the march by the 57th Regiment to the highlands, where Ottoman troops halted the Anzac advance in 1915.
How a more divided Turkey could change the way we think about Gallipoli
We undertook fieldwork last Anzac Day on this ritual as part of a proposed larger research project examining how the memory of Gallipoli has become central to tension between Turkish republicans and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The republicans want to protect and restore the secular pro-Western origins of the republic, while the AKP wants to integrate Islam into the nation’s civil institutions and national imagination.
Nowhere is this memory politics more significant than in this re-enactment ritual, which under AKP rule has been renamed the Loyalty March for the 57th Regiment.
While Islamic influence on remembrance rites at Gallipoli has been growing for more than a decade, its political significance has increased dramatically since the July 2016 attempted coup. This has proved to be a transformative event for Turkish politics and society.
The 57th Regiment re-enactment
In the last two decades, Turkish interest in the history of the Gallipoli campaign has grown significantly. It was here that the 57th Regiment came to prominence in Turkish collective memory as the military unit led by Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal, later Atatürk.
As founding father of modern Turkey and hero of the war of independence, Mustafa Kemal pushed the 57th Regiment to the highlands, preventing defeat in the campaign.
The origins of the re-enactment are closely tied to this mythology – it was originally known as the 57th Regiment March in the Track of Atatürk. Local university students first organised the commemoration in 2006, partly in response to the increasing number of Australian and New Zealand youth on the battlefields for Anzac Day. For the 90th anniversary the year before, the Anzac Day pilgrimage reached its zenith, with about 17,000 participants.
Turkish view remains neglected in our understanding of Gallipoli
The structure adopted for the first 57th Regiment re-enactment largely remains today. It involves an eight-kilometre hike from the regiment’s original base at Bigali village to the highlands of the battlefield. The ritual grew rapidly, with 6,000 participants three years after the first march.
Unsurprisingly, given the march’s popularity, the AKP assumed some control of the re-enactment through the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The government began funding the cost of travel and living expenses for young participants. It also oversees official registration and program co-ordination to cap attendance.
Such oversight allowed for representation of youth from around the country, including a greater percentage of participants from AKP stronghold areas who would otherwise struggle to fund the travel. It is this “pious generation” that the AKP and its leader, Recep Erdoğan, have emphasised as central to AKP’s vision of a new Turkey.
Turkish youth march in a Gallipoli re-enactment.
Ayhan Aktar
Cultural contradictions
Historical re-enactment is about comprehending and experiencing the past as it relates to the ordinary citizen. This commemorative form has proved particularly significant for AKP memory politics by allowing a focus on the martyrdom of 57th Regiment, which suffered heavy casualties.
By providing competition to the traditional heroic saviour narrative of Atatürk at Gallipoli, the AKP has been able to counter the secular pro-Western principles around which he founded the republic. Mandatory prayer sessions have been added at the beginning and end of the march. This has been justified as simulating the actions of the ordinary men who constituted the unit.
This more egalitarian historical focus, which cultural scholars refer to as memory “from below”, gives religion a place in commemorations of Gallipoli. This can also be seen in the increased recognition of individual martyrs through a focus on firsthand accounts of the religious zeal of Turkish soldiers against an infidel invader of their homeland.
Turkey, the Armenian genocide and the politics of memory
Changes to the memorial landscape on the battlefields have aided this way of telling history while also promoting religious observance at the site. Fallen Turkish soldiers remained in mass graves after the war, a reflection of the stigma of Ottoman history in republican Turkey.
But, since 2005, Turkish authorities have built 11 cemeteries for the fallen soldiers. These have become popular sites for prayer by the 1 million-plus Turkish visitors to the battlefields per year, in large part funded as social tourism by municipalities. Another 15 cemeteries are proposed, with plans for accompanying outdoor mosques.
The AKP has a vested interest in advancing re-enactment as a commemorative form at Gallipoli, as it provides an opportunity for increased religious references and contexts. To ensure the re-enactment remains popular, though, the AKP has retained much of its original carnival-like character. Participants still take “selfies” and engage in jokes, laughter and joyful conversations while walking.
Political opposition
The recreational character of the re-enactment means participants have a range of motivations for their involvement.
Political chants and song, for example, are often recited by small groups. Some of the most common are the songs of the AKP’s political opponents, the Nationalistic Movement Party.
Other participants engage in religious chants such as Allahu akbar (Allah is the greatest) and Tek yol İslam, tek yol şehadet (Only path is Islam, only path is martyrdom).
Arguably the populist nature of the re-enactment legitimises other tourist and unofficial remembrance forms at Gallipoli that work to cap the state’s control over historical interpretation.
The 57th Regiment re-enactment is becoming a popular pilgrimage activity throughout the year. The Republican People’s Party (CHP), for example, had a re-enactment as part of its four-day Justice Congress at Gallipoli in August 2017. The congress was held to highlight violations of the justice system by Erdoğan following the attempted coup.
Like the main April 25 re-enactment, the success and political outcomes of such ritual displays are highly contingent. In the case of the CHP congress, its ability to challenge the AKP’s symbolic alignment with Gallipoli was hampered by photos appearing on social media of congress members drinking alcohol on the battlefields. The images caused a public scandal. A CHP spokesperson admitted:
Such impertinent behavior is completely against the glorious memory of our Gallipoli martyrs.
Whether Australians and New Zealanders will return to Gallipoli en masse for future Anzac Days, and how they will be received if they do, is uncertain. But ritual performances on the battlefields on April 25 are almost certain to remain politically significant in Turkey.
Brad West, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, School of Creative Industries, University of South Australia and Ayhan Aktar, Chair Professor, Istanbul Bilgi University
Posted in Australia, New Zealand, news, Special Days, Turkey | Tagged ANZAC Day, article, Australia, commemorations, Gallipoli, New Zealand, news, Politics, Turkey | Leave a comment
The Sons That I Lost
Posted in Australia, Special Days, video | Tagged ANZAC Day, short film, The Sons That I Lost, video | Leave a comment
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been a central figure in linking the Gallipoli campaign with Islamic conceptualisations of the Turkish nation.
The win for the “yes” side in Turkey’s recent referendum on the powers of the president has fundamental implications for parliamentary democracy in the country, and for relations between Turkey and the west.
For Australia, the referendum has an additional significance: by entrenching the power of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it will influence the future of Australian commemoration activities at Gallipoli.
The numbers of Australians, along with other westerners, visiting Turkey has recently declined dramatically. This is a consequence of ongoing political instability in the country following last year’s attempted coup d’état and a series of terror attacks. The Australian government also recently warned of potential attacks targeting the Gallipoli battlefields on Anzac Day.
A significant decline in this pilgrimage activity will likely have a wider impact on the way Australia understands Gallipoli. This is particularly the case given the continued resonance of an Anzac narrative characterised by a historical empathy for Turkey’s perspective on the war.
Links with political Islam
The Gallipoli campaign has, in recent years, become part of the culture wars in Turkey associated with the rise of political Islam. This has seen Gallipoli increasingly referred to in relation to an Islamic jihad, and as an invasion of crusaders into the house of Islam.
Approximately 1 million Turks visit the battlefields each year. And an estimated 10% of the Turkish population have at some stage engaged in some kind of martyr tourism at Gallipoli.
Erdoğan has been a central figure in linking the Gallipoli campaign with Islamic conceptualisations of the Turkish nation. He has said:
[The] crusades were not [finished] nine centuries ago in the past! Do not forget, [the] Gallipoli [campaign] was a crusade.
Following the failed coup, Erdoğan also evoked the memory of Gallipoli. Recreated scenes of the Ottoman victory in the land battles against Anzac soldiers played on large screens in Taksim Square as he addressed cheering pro-government crowds.
The vision was taken from a controversial TV commercial originally produced for the centennial commemorations of the Gallipoli battle. Its use of various Islamic symbols was widely interpreted as breaking with traditional secular ways of remembering the campaign.
A Centennial Epic: Çanakkale.
How the shift is taking place
Significant shifts in Turkish memory of Gallipoli are not unprecedented. Since the 1930s there has been a few turning points in how the campaign is understood.
First, and most significant, was the victory of the Ottoman Imperial Army in being “Turkified”. Arab, Kurdish, Greek, Armenian and Jewish soldiers and officers were cleansed from the official narrative. This also involved de-emphasising Germany’s role as the Ottomans’ allies in the first world war.
The official nationalist narrative has glorified the military leadership of Colonel Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) in the battles against British and Anzac forces. This has linked the collective memory of Gallipoli with the independence movement that led to the formation of the secularist Turkish nation-state in 1923.
The historiography of Gallipoli is now potentially undergoing another major change. The classical Turkish view of Gallipoli may be being replaced by an Islamic-oriented narrative.
Turkish pilgrims once were told the same historical tales by the guides that also took Australian and New Zealand visitors around the battlefields. But now, the vast majority of locals visit through bus tours that are arranged by Islamist municipal administrations for their residents, free of charge.
In contrast to local guides embedded in the tourism industry, those who lead the bus tours are more likely to express an Islamic narrative of Gallipoli.
This trend is apparent in an increasing popular march that re-enacts the mobilisation of the legendary 57th Regiment to defend the highlands from Anzac troops. This involves approximately 20,000 young boys and girls from scouts and other paramilitary organisations. And it is common for participants to wear t-shirts remembering their ancestors who fought at Gallipoli.
It’s hard to know precisely what the consequences of these new commemorative rituals will be for the collective memory of Gallipoli. From fieldwork research on the Anzac pilgrimage, the motivations and meanings taken away from the battlefields are often different from that which politicians and social commentators have often assumed.
Brad West, Associate Professor, School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, University of South Australia and Ayhan Aktar, Chair Professor, Istanbul Bilgi University
Posted in Australia, news, Turkey | Tagged ANZAC Day, article, Australia, divided, Gallipoli, news, Turkey | Leave a comment
In remembering Anzac Day, what do we forget?
Danielle Drozdzewski, UNSW Australia and Emma Waterton, Western Sydney University
In the weeks before Anzac Day, a flurry of news stories emerge mobilising Australians to remember the Anzacs. We see in them familiar references to “The Diggers”, with their virtues of mateship, sacrifice and courage, and the “birth” of the nation at Gallipoli. As Kevin Rudd said in 2010,
All nations are shaped by their histories, their memories and their stories.
When we retell a story, we actively choose which parts to retell. Our present day positions, our politics, our families and our environments all have considerable bearing on these choices.
Such choices of representation also apply to nation-building narratives, which are then used for the political purposes of the day – such as John Howard’s use of the “Anzac myth” to support military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
We call this process of choice the “politics of memory”. Generally, it supports a resoundingly masculine dominant Australian folklore – encompassing bush mythology, a pioneering spirit, sportsmanship, larrikinism, and mateship. It’s populated by characters such as Ned Kelly, the “jolly swagman” of Waltzing Matilda or Crocodile Dundee.
When “we” as a nation remember Anzac, we simultaneously forget significant parts of the story not commonly represented. Influencing this (selective) forgetting is an implicit whiteness.
As anthropologist Ghassan Hage argued in his book White Nation, despite the emphasis placed on multiculturalism in Australia,
the visible and public side of power remains essentially Anglo-White.
Our recent ethnographic and archival research shows that little investment has gone into thinking through what might happen to the Anzac identity in a more culturally diverse Australia.
Our critical analysis of Anzac-related literature, news media and popular symbols revealed that cultural diversity and multiculturalism receive only tangential attention.
This is not merely chance. Reports commissioned for the Department of Veteran Affairs preceding the centenary of Anzac identify “multiculturalism” as a risk and issue to consider in planning for the centenary, and as a “potential area of divisiveness”.
Disparaging non-conformance
Significant events, like Anzac Day, are opportunities to reiterate an approved narrative of war-centred nationalism – and vigorously disparage any form of critique that might arise.
Examples of non-conformance to collective Anzac narratives are rare, but they do occur. A particularly visible debate arose out of the film The Water Diviner (2014), directed by and starring Russell Crowe. While focusing on Gallipoli, the film offers an account that foregrounds a Turkish perspective on the campaign.
The film triggered the ABC’s Radio National History Podcast, released in 2015, to ask the question: “Is The Water Diviner … redefining our ANZAC legend?”
Another prominent example is former SBS reporter Scott McIntyre, who was stood down for tweeting controversial views about Anzac Day:
McIntyre’s dismissal shows that, in the midst of the well-supported and popular Anzac narrative, contested and not-so-salubrious parts of the story aren’t tolerated and get little public airtime. Indeed those who deviate from the narrative line are vilified.
The Australian government ensures that the nation remembers Anzac each year by marking the event with a collective commemoration. As a settler society, collective remembrance is an important government function. But how, what, where and why we remember should be relevant to our geographically disparate and culturally diverse populace.
Slowly creeping change
For many years the hard lines drawn around Anzac memory excluded recognition of Indigenous involvement in WWI, even in official commemorations.
Returned Indigenous soldiers encountered considerable discrimination. They were excluded from early attempts to commemorate military service and the war dead; forgotten in the war memorials; denied the right to participate in Anzac Day marches, and refused access to veterans’ benefits and entry into RSLs.
Since the 1990s, a number of attempts to commemorate Indigenous war service have occurred, contributing to what historian Peter Cochrane calls a “new inclusiveness”.
These early efforts tended to materialise on the margins: a plaque to Indigenous war service erected on public land behind the Australian War Memorial by a private citizen in 1993; a commemoration in Burleigh Head National Park inscribed in 1991; and an Australian War Memorial travelling exhibition, Too Dark for the Light Horse, that toured Australia in 1999 and 2000/1.
More recent demands have more successfully permeated the politics of Anzac memory, resulting in Indigenous memorials in shared spaces. These include the Torrens Parade Ground memorial in Adelaide, completed in 2013 and commonly referred to as Australia’s first memorial to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicemen and servicewomen.
A memorial honouring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service men and women at Torrens Parade Ground in Adelaide.
Margaret Scheikowski
Another is the sculpture Yininmadyemi – Thou didst let fall, created by Indigenous artist Tony Albert for the City of Sydney and installed in Hyde Park in 2015.
Shifting political agendas have also facilitated greater inclusion of Turkey into dominant Anzac memories.
Historical media research by Catherine Simpson details this movement from “foe” to “noble Turk”, culminating in a nationally celebrated, government-constructed, friendship.
Similar questions can be raised about the inclusion of other national groups. We’ve seen a rising interest in researching, for example, German, Irish, Russian or Chinese “Anzacs” who were fighting on the Gallipoli peninsula. Soldiers of many nationalities have been present with Australian troops in numerous conflicts, including Gallipoli, Kokoda and Vietnam.
What is Anzac’s future in multicultural Australia?
Research has shown that Australians born here are more likely to prioritise Anzac as a key marker of national identity than other Australians.
This finding is not surprising. Indeed, much cultural and political work is invested in positioning Anzac as tantamount to Australian identity.
While the Anzac story was produced in colonial White Australia, Australia today is vastly different in demographic terms and is made up of people whose histories increasingly lie elsewhere. Australia has invested significantly in multicultural policy and committed to creating an inclusive nation.
What happens when Australians do not, or cannot, identify with the Anzac narrative genealogically or nationally? What happens if we simply do not want to participate?
Should Australians not born here be expected to “inherit” the Anzac narrative unequivocally, and exactly how would that happen? And does not identifying with Anzac really equate to being un-Australian?
Like others who have also questioned Anzac’s centrality, we think that there is much to celebrate in Australia’s diversity.
Despite discordance, we live in a nation that has a mandated political commitment to diversity.
In the current global climate of fear of difference, isn’t that commitment – to being a country of people from diverse countries – worth commemorating?
Danielle Drozdzewski, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, UNSW Australia and Emma Waterton, Associate Professor in the Geographies of Heritage, Western Sydney University
Posted in Australia, Special Days | Tagged ANZAC Day, article, Australia, forget, remembering | Leave a comment
ANZAC DAY: We Will Remember Them – Lest We Forget
Posted in Australia, news, Turkey, video | Tagged ANZAC Day, Australia, Gallipoli, news, Turkey, video | 2 Comments
Australia: ANZAC Day
Posted in Australia, Special Days, video, War | Tagged ANZAC Day, Australia, video | Leave a comment
ANZAC Day Through the Years
Posted in Australia, Special Days, video, War | Tagged ANZAC Day, Australia, video | 1 Comment
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Tag Archives: Balikpazari
Lawyer Calls Turkish Christians’ Trial a ‘Scandal’
Posted on October 17, 2009 by particularkev
Evidence still absent in case for ‘insulting Turkishness and Islam.’
SILIVRI, Turkey, October 16 (CDN) — After three prosecution witnesses testified yesterday that they didn’t even know two Christians on trial for “insulting Turkishness and Islam,” a defense lawyer called the trial a “scandal.”
Speaking after yesterday’s hearing in the drawn-out trial, defense attorney Haydar Polat said the case’s initial acceptance by a state prosecutor in northwestern Turkey was based only on a written accusation from the local gendarmerie headquarters unaccompanied by any documentation.
“It’s a scandal,” Polat said. “It was a plot, a planned one, but a very unsuccessful plot, as there is no evidence.”
Turkish Christians Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal were arrested in October 2006; after a two-day investigation they were charged with allegedly slandering Turkishness and Islam while talking about their faith with three young men in Silivri, an hour’s drive west of Istanbul.
Even the three prosecution witnesses who appeared to testify at Thursday’s (Oct. 15) hearing failed to produce any evidence whatsoever against Tastan and Topal, who could be jailed for up to two years if convicted on three separate charges.
Yesterday’s three witnesses, all employed as office personnel for various court departments in Istanbul, testified that they had never met or heard of the two Christians on trial. The two court employees who had requested New Testaments testified that they had initiated the request themselves.
The first witness, a bailiff in a Petty Offenses Court in Istanbul for the past 28 years, declared he did not know the defendants or anyone else in the courtroom.
But he admitted that he had responded to a newspaper ad about 10 years ago to request a free New Testament. After telephoning the number to give his address, he said, the book arrived in the mail and is still in his home.
He also said he had never heard of the church mentioned in the indictment, although he had once gone to a wedding in a church in Istanbul’s Balikpazari district, where a large Armenian Orthodox church is located.
“This is the extent of what I know about this subject,” he concluded.
Fidgeting nervously, a second witness stated, “I am not at all acquainted with the defendants, nor do I know any of these participants. I was not a witness to any one of the matters in the indictment. I just go back and forth to my work at the Istanbul State Prosecutors’ office.”
The third person to testify reiterated that he also had no acquaintance with the defendants or anyone in the courtroom. But he stated under questioning that he had entered a website on the Internet some five or six years ago that offered a free New Testament.
“I don’t know or remember the website’s name or contents,” the witness said, “but after checking the box I was asked for some of my identity details, birth date, job, cell phone – I don’t remember exactly what.”
Noting that many shops and markets asked for the same kind of information, the witness said, “I don’t see any harm in that,” adding that he would not be an open person if he tried to hide all his personal details.
For the next hearing set for Jan. 28, 2010, the court has repeated its summons to three more prosecution witnesses who failed to appear yesterday: a woman employed in Istanbul’s security police headquarters and two armed forces personnel whose whereabouts had not yet been confirmed by the population bureau.
Case ‘Demands Acquittal’
Polat said after the hearing that even though the Justice Ministry gave permission in February for the case to continue under Turkey’s controversial Article 301, a loosely-defined law that criminalizes insulting the Turkish nation, “in my opinion the documents gathered in the file demand an acquittal.”
“There is no information, no document, no details, nothing,” Polat said. “There is just a video, showing the named people together, but what they are saying cannot be heard. It was shot in an open area, not a secret place, and there is no indication it was under any pressure.”
But prosecution lawyer Murat Inan told Compass, “Of course there is evidence. That’s why the Justice Ministry continued the case. This is a large ‘orgut’ [a term connoting an illegal and armed organization], and they need to be stopped from doing this propaganda here.”
At the close of the hearing, Inan told the court that there were missing issues concerning the judicial legality and activities of the “Bible research center” linked with the defendants that needed to be examined and exposed.
Turkish press were conspicuously absent at yesterday’s hearing, and except for one representative of the Turkish Protestant churches, there were no observers present.
The first seven hearings in the trial had been mobbed by dozens of TV and print journalists, focused on ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, who led a seven-member legal team for the prosecution.
But since the January 2008 jailing of Kerincsiz and Sevgi Erenerol, who had accompanied him to all the Silivri trials, Turkish media interest in the case has dwindled. The two are alleged co-conspirators in the massive Ergenekon cabal accused of planning to overthrow the Turkish government.
This week the European Commission’s new “Turkey 2009 Progress Report” spelled out concerns about the problems of Turkey’s non-Muslim communities.
“Missionaries are widely perceived as a threat to the integrity of the country and to the Muslim religion,” the Oct. 14 report stated. “Further efforts are needed to create an environment conducive to full respect of freedom of religion in particular.”
In specific reference to Tastan and Topal’s case, the report noted: “A court case against two missionaries in Silivri continued; it was also expanded after the Ministry of Justice allowed judicial proceedings under Article 301 of the Criminal Code.”
The Turkish constitution guarantees freedom of religion to all its citizens, and the nation’s legal codes specifically protect missionary activities.
“I trust our laws on this. But psychologically, our judges and prosecutors are not ready to implement this yet,” Polat said. “They look at Christian missionaries from their own viewpoint; they aren’t able to look at them in a balanced way.”
Posted in Christianity, Islam, Turkey | Tagged 2006, 2010, absent, acceptance, accompanied, accusation, acquainted, acquittal, activities, ad, address, admitted, allegedly, appeared, armed, Armenian Orthodox Church, arrested, arrived, article 301, bailiff, balanced, Balikpazari, based, birth, book, box, bureau, cabal, calls, case, cell phone, center, charged, charges, checking, Christian, Christianity, Christians, church, churches, citizens, close, co-conspirators, codes, communities, concerns, concluded, conducive, confirmed, connoting, consititution, conspicuously, contents, continue, controversial, convicted, country, courtroom, create, criminal code, criminalizes, date, declared, defendants, defense, defined, demands, departments, details, district, Documentation, drawn-out, drive, dwindled, efforts, employed, entered, Environment, Ergenekon, European Commission, evidence, examined, exposed, extent, failed, faith, fidgeting, file, focused, forces, free, freedom of religion, full, gendarmerie, government, guarantees, Hakan Tastan, harm, Haydar Polat, headquarters, heard, hearing, hide, home, identity, implement, indication, indictment, information, initial, insulting, integrity, interest, Internet, investigation, Islam, issues, Istanbul, Istanbul State Prosecutor, jailed, job, journalists, judges, judicial, Justice Ministry, Kemal Kerincsiz, large, law, lawyer, legal, legality, linked, local, located, mail, markets, massive, matters, men, mentioned, met, missing, missionaries, missionary, mobbed, Murat Inan, Muslim, muslims, name, nation, need, needed, nervously, never, New Testaments, newspaper, non_muslim, northwestern, number, observors, offered, office, open, opinion, organization, orgut, overthrow, participants, Particular, people, perceived, permission, Persecution, person, personal, personnel, Petty Offenses Court, planned, planning, plot, police, population, present, press, pressure, print, problems, produce, propaganda, prosecution, protect, Protestant, questioning, reference, reiterated, religion, remember, representative, request, requested, research, respect, responded, scandal, secret, security, separate, Sevgi Erenerol, shops, shot, showing, Silivri, slandering, speaking, specific, spelled, State Prosecutor, stopped, subject, summons, talking, telephoning, term, testified, testify, threat, trial, trust, Turan Topal, Turkey, Turkey 2009 Progress Report, Turkish, Turkishness, TV, ultranationalist, unaccompanied, unsuccessful, various, video, viewpoint, Website, wedding, West, whereabouts, witness, witnesses, woman, work, written | Leave a comment
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Antibiotic resistance represents the highest likelihood threat towards human civilisation as we know it. The mechanism by which antibacterial resistance arises is through natural section and evolution of bacterial strains that have acquired a suite of advantageous mutations, allowing them to circumvent the action of antibacterial drugs. However, these mutations typically have pleiotropic effects – genetic correlation such that one gene has an effect on multiple traits – which hinder the activity of alternative fitness components, such as growth rate. This phenomenon has been thought to maintain a low frequency of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria within the population, but recent evidence has suggested the possibility of beneficial pleiotropy, which would alarmingly encourage the spread of these strains. This article highlights the dire need for us to form a resistance against antibacterial resistant ‘Superbugs’.
Main Text:
Stop and take a moment to quickly sweep your mind over the history of life on Earth; all 3.8 billion years. Now zoom in on the current human civilisation. We live in a rapidly changing time that strongly contrasts the gradual evolutionary establishment of the Earth’s vast biodiversity. Every day, we are irrevocably shaping the future course of history.
“Humans must populate a new planet within 100 years if we are to survive”[1].
It sounds drastic, but when the dire prediction comes from none other than Steven Hawkins, the world must listen. However, the question remains, what imminent threats are contributing to these bold claims? The Doomsday Clock currently stands at 2 minutes to midnight[2], citing the growing tensions of a global nuclear catastrophe and the nigh inexorable effects of climate change. Despite these threats, Darling and Schulze-Makuch write in Megacatastrophes that nothing is as likely as the emergence of a global pandemic reminiscent of the plague, qualitatively estimated at a probability of 7.5/10[3]. But haven’t we vastly improved our medical weaponry since the bubonic plague of the 14th Century? Shouldn’t we be moving towards an increase in life expectancy, rather than in the opposite direction with a severe magnitude? Counterintuitively, the advancement of modern medicine has produced an unforeseen threat for human health; the emergence of multiple drug resistant (MDR) microbes[4].
The use of antibiotics for the treatment of bacterial infections applies a strong selective pressure on the population, typically wiping them out but offering an extremely advantageous benefit for strains that generate a mutational safeguard against the drug’s effect. The extent of the threat is due to:
The dwindling number of antibacterial agents that effectively perform their intended action
The increasingly interconnected global community that elevates the potential rate of transmission of a future pandemic
The lack of novel antibacterial agents currently being developed in the pharmaceutical pipeline due to the lack of economic incentive[5].
An exhibition of the rate at which bacteria are able to evolve, spurring on potentially lethal antibacterial resistance, was shown during a ‘Natural Selection’ practical for the undergraduate evolution course Biol2201. The bacteria B. thuringiensis was initially plated on multiple agar plates: A regular plate, a plate gradated with the antibiotic streptomycin from high to low concentration, and a plate with a uniformly high streptomycin concentration. Bacteria that grew at the highest point along the streptomycin concentration gradient were selected as having developed the highest partial antibiotic resistance. After 1 week, this colony was re-streaked on a standard agar plate to assess their relative growth under antibacterial-free conditions.
The most striking result, besides the fast rate that bacteria are capable of evolving, was a consistently lower capacity for growth for the partial antibacterial resistant strains in the absence of streptomycin, as shown in Figure 1. This phenomenon can be explained by antagonistic pleiotropy. When gaining antibiotic resistance, an associated fitness cost involving growth rate is incurred.
Figure 1: Results of antibiotic resistance selection experiment. Growth was assessed qualitatively on a scale of 1-4, relative to the growth of the bacteria in the absence of Streptomycin (4). Initial conditions display the growth of non-resistant strains of B. thuringiensis on agar plate without streptomycin (control) and with streptomycin (strep). Final conditions show the growth of the selected partially-resistant strains on ‘control’ and ‘strep’ plates.
Mutations that confer antibiotic resistance are typically concentrated highly conserved regions known as ‘housekeeping genes’[6]. These mutations usually result in a decrease in fitness associated with fundamental cellular activities such as growth and metabolism. However, a recent study has shown that while mutations within housekeeping genes typically have antagonistic effects on fitness, there is evidence for additional beneficial adaptive effects outside of antibacterial resistance. This is important, because previous beliefs were that decreased fitness effects associated with antagonistic pleiotropy would lead to diminishing numbers of these strains once the antimicrobial pressure was lifted. However, these results would indicate that resistant strains could accumulate in the population[7].
Removing a layer of abstraction from this study, an analogous example for the phenomenon of antagonistic pleiotropy within human evolution comes in the form of Crohn’s Disease. Just as bacteria need to evolve resistance to antimicrobial drugs, Eukaryotic organisms need to evolve against the attack of bacteria themselves. A suite of alleles (specific point within a gene where there are differences in the DNA code throughout the population) in humans have combined to individually confer a slight immunological-related fitness advantage against a host of bacterial threats, leading to their increase in frequency in the population. However, said alleles have also antagonistically been implicated in the pathophysiology of Crohn’s disease, which is a immune system disease contributed towards by many alleles of small effects. The lack of the removal of these alleles is due to the fact that the reduction in relative reproductive fitness of Crohn’s disease sufferers is insignificant compared to the benefits obtained against infectious agents.
These finding highlight the dire need for research into limiting and combating antibiotic resistance. This includes the development of antibiotic agents that have low selective pressure on microbes, which inhibit the effect of infection but still allow for reproduction, so as to prevent adaption. In addition, we need to develop ‘smart’ antibiotics that selectively target pathogenic bacteria, but leave beneficial host microflora unaffected[7].
The future is in, and on, our hands!
BBC. BBC and partners launch year of science and technology. 2017; Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/tomorrows-world/television.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist. Doomsday Clock Timeline. 2017; Available from: http://thebulletin.org/timeline.
Darling, D. and D. Schulze-Makuch, Megacatastrophes! : Nine Strange Ways the World Could End. 2012: Oneworld Publications.
Levy, S.B., The Challenge of Antibiotic Resistance. Scientific American, 1998. 278(3): p. 46-53.
Sukkar, E., Why are there so few antibiotics in the research and development pipeline? The Pharmaceutical Journal, 2013. 291: p. 250.
Scholar, E.M. and W.B. Pratt, The Antimicrobial Drugs. Vol. 2. 2000: Oxford University Press.
Hershberg, R., Antibiotic-Independent Adaptive Effects of Antibiotic Resistance Mutations. Trends in Genetics, 2017. 33(8): p. 521-528.
Resisting ‘Superbugs’ in the Post-antibiotic Era
September 15, 2017 December 6, 2018 / piquemyinterestblog / Leave a comment
Biotechnology, Evolution, Genetics, Science, Sciencey Pieces
← Time to trash ‘junk DNA’
History & Origins of Evolution →
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Pre-apprenticeship scheme welcomes second intake
Engineering solutions company, adi Group, reports it has selected its latest round of students for its pre-apprenticeship scheme for 14-16-year olds, taking the total number of students on the scheme to 24.
Launched in 2016, the adi pre-apprenticeship programme is said to be the first of its kind in the UK, providing 14-16-year olds in the local area with practical training in a real-world environment.
Twelve Year 10 pupils from North Bromsgrove High School are set to join the scheme in September, spending half a day per week in a live workshop at adi’s headquarters in Birmingham as part of their EAL Level 1 Engineering and Manufacturing qualification.
Having completed an application, the students were then shortlisted before being interviewed for the twelve places. The successful candidates will learn the practical, hands-on skills needed to carve a career in either mechanical or electrical engineering. These are taught by the Group’s highly-qualified engineers and include welding, basic wiring, health and safety and reading technical drawings.
The Group established the scheme in September 2016, with the aim of introducing young people to the world of engineering at an early age, to give them a head start toward a hands-on career. Earlier this year, adi Group made the pre-apprenticeship model available free of charge for any employer or school that wishes to replicate an existing scheme, in a bid to combat the widening skills gap.
Alan Lusty comments: “I myself started out as an engineering apprentice, so I have experienced first-hand the benefits of such schemes. The UK is known for its world-class engineering, and we as a company are committed to inspiring the next generation of hands-on engineers in order to help address the skills gap.
“Recent figures from the Industry Apprentice Council (IAC) highlighting the lack of apprenticeships have raised an important issue, and one that both employers and educators need to tackle head on in order to bring about positive change.”
For those interested in adopting the pre-apprenticeship model within their own business, an information pack – Inspiring the Workforce of Tomorrow - is available to download for free. For more information on adi Group, please visit www.adiltd.co.uk.
ET-Link certification software
MARTINDALE says with the 18th Edition now fully in force, using its ET-Link certification software is a great way to stay up to date with the latest certificate changes.
Expanded product portfolio
BSRIA INSTRUMENT SOLUTIONS reports it has recently added the new TSI PortaCount respirator fit tester to its hire and sales portfolio, providing users with the ability to easily undertake the testing of full and half face masks, SCBAs, and disposables. Designed to be run from a tablet or PC these fit testers provide a consistent and objective testing experience across all respirator types.
With needs growing exponentially along with population, SANDVIK says it believes it’s vital to find smarter, safer ways forward and says with the launch of its new Open Innovation portal the company seeks to collaborate with like-minded innovators to deliver the next generation of products and solutions that will make a true difference.
Exciting partnership born
HAMERSHAM, a leading UK provider of world class machine software control solutions, has announced it has just signed an agreement to become the UK and European distributor for Twin Oaks Computing, the U.S. based providers of CoreDX DDS and quality software solutions worldwide.
All round performer
WEGER AIR SOLUTIONS UK says its ‘RFM’ range of ventilation heat recovery units with integral heat pumps offers designers a unique solution to an age old problem. There are six sizes in the range with air flow rates of 0.25 mᶟ/s to 1.11 mᶟ/s . Each unit consists of supply and exhaust air fans, a plate recuperator for air to air heat recovery and a heat pump refrigeration system, using a scroll hermetic compressor (R410A) with evaporator and condenser coils.
What causes variable-speed drive trips a...
Southern Manufacturing returns
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Pertinent Books
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Bruyere, Rosalyn, Wheels of Light: A Study of the Chakras, Vol 1, Bon Productions, Sierra Madre, CA, 1989.
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Chopra, Deepak. Perfect Health. NY., NY.: Harmony Books, 1991.
Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,
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Cleary, Thomas, ed. and trans., Vitality, Energy, Spirit: A Taoist Sourcebook. Shambhala, Boston, MA, 1991.
Cleary, Thomas, trans., The Secret of the Golden Flower. HarperCollins, San Francisco, CA, 1991.
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Covey, Stephen R. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. NY., NY.: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1989.
Diamond, John. You’re Body Doesn’t Lie. NY., NY.: Warner Books, 1979.
Dinshah, Darius, Let There Be Light. Dinshah Health Society, Malaga, NJ. Rev 1990.
Dyer, The Power of Intention
Edwards, Betty, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, 1989.
Eisenberg, David, Encounters with Qi, Viking Penguin, New York, NY, 1987.
Feinstein, David, Ph.D., and Krippner, Stanley, Ph.D., Personal Mythology, The Psychology of Your Evolving Self, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, NY, 1988.
Frissell, Bob, Nothing In This Book Is True, But It’s Exactly How Things Are. Frog, Ltd, Berkely, CA, 1994.
Foundation for Inner Peace, A Course in Miracles. Foundation for Inner Peace, Tiburon, CA, 1985.
Gordon, Richard, Your Healing Hands, The Polarity Experience. Wingbow Press, Berkeley, CA, Fourth Printing 1989.
Grov, Stanislav, M.D., The Holotropic Mind. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 1993.
Guinness, Alma E. Ed., Family Guide to Natural Medicine. Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., Pleasantville, NY, 1993.
Hay, Louise L. Heal Your Body. Carson, CA.: Hay House, Inc., 1988.
Heller, Ann Williams, Kabbalah, Your Path to Inner Freedom. Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, IL, 1990.
Hunt, Valerie, V., Infinite Mind – The Science of Human Vibrations. Malibu Publishing Co., Malibu, CA, 1995.
Johnson, Ranae, Reclaim Your Light Through the Miracle of Rapid Eye Technology; Salem OR: Raintree Press 1994.
Kent, Amanda and Ward, Alan, Introduction to Physics. Usborne Publishing, Ltd, Belgium, 1993.
King, Serge Kahili, Ph.D., Urban Shaman. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 1990.
Kunz, Dora van Gelder, The Personal Aura. Quest Books, Wheaton, IL, 1991.
Kushi, Michio, The Book of Macrobiotics – The Universal Way of Health and Happiness. Japan Publications, Inc., Tokyo, Japan, 11th ed, 1984.
Lawlor, Robert, Sacred Geometries. Thames and Hudson, New York, NY, 1994.
Leadbeter, C.W., Man – Visible and Invisible. Theosophical Publishing, London, UK, 1981.
Lieberman, Jacob, Light – Medicine of the Future: How We Can Use It to Heal Ourselves Now. Bear & Co., Santa Fe, NM, 1991.
Lubeck, Walter, The Complete Reiki Handbook. Lotus Light Shangri-La, Twin Lakes, WI, 1994.
Maxfield, Melinda C., Ph.D., Effects of Rhythmic Drumming on EEG and Subjective Experience. doctoral dissertation,1984.
McKeever, Susan. Sr. Ed., Science Encyclopedia. Dorling-Kindersley, Inc., New York, NY, 1994.
McLean, Michael. Distant Serenade. Salt Lake City, UT.: Deseret Book Co., 1993.
McWilliams, John-Roger & Peter. You Can’t Afford The Luxury of a Negative Thought. Los Angeles, CA: Prelude Press, Inc., 1991.
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Mookerjee, Ajit, Kundalini, The Arousal of the Inner Energy. Destiny Books, Rochester, VT, 1991.
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Powell, A.E., The Etheric Double. Theosophical Publishing, Wheaton, IL, 1983.
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Schwarz, Jack, Human Energy Systems. E.P. Dutton, New York, NY, 1980.
Sears, Barry, The Zone.
Siegel, Bernie S., M.D., Love, Medicine & Miracles. Harper & Row, New York, NY, 2nd ed. 1990.
Smith, Fritz Frederick, M.D., Inner Bridges – A Guide to Energy Movement and Body Structure. Humanics New Age, Atlanta, GA, 2nd Ed, 1994.
Talbot, Michael, The Holographic Universe. Harper Perennial, New York, NY, 1992.
Truman, Karol Kuhn. Feelings Buried Alive Never Die. Las Vegas, NV.: Olympus Distributing, 1991.
Von Franz, Marie-Louise, Time – Rhythm and Repose. Thames and Hudson, Lancashire, Great Britain, 1978.
Wilbur, Ken, Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists. Shambhala, Boston, MA, 1984.
Wilbur, Ken, Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm, Anchor Press, New York, NY, 1983.
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Wilson, Annie and Bek, Lilla, What Color Are You? Turnstone Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, UK, 1981
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Justia Regulation Tracker Department Of Health And Human Services Children And Families Administration Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request, 71447-71448 [2010-29479]
Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request, 71447-71448 [2010-29479]
Download as PDF 71447 Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 225 / Tuesday, November 23, 2010 / Notices FDA estimates the burden of this collection of information as follows: TABLE 1—ESTIMATED ANNUAL REPORTING BURDEN1 21 CFR section Number of respondents Annual frequency per response Total annual responses Hours per response Total hours 806.10 .................................................................................. 666 1 666 10 6,660 1 There are no capital costs or operating and maintenance costs associated with this collection of information. TABLE 2—ESTIMATED AVERAGE ANNUAL RECORDKEEPING BURDEN 1 21 CFR Section Number of recordkeepers Annual frequency per recordkeeping Total annual records Hours per record Total hours 806.20 .................................................................................. 90 1 90 10 900 1 There are no capital costs or operating and maintenance costs associated with this collection of information. Respondents to this collection of information are manufacturers and importers of medical devices. FDA reviewed reports of device corrections and removals submitted to the Agency for the previous 3 years as part of responding to the current request for approval of the information collection requirements for §§ 806.10 and 806.20. This information was obtained through the Agency’s voluntary recall provisions (i.e., 21 CFR part 7). The specific information requested was the total number of class I, II, and III recalls for the last 3 years. This information was obtained from the Agency’s Recall Enterprise System—a database of all recalls submitted to the Agency. This information is relevant since a § 806.10 report is required for all class I and II recalls. Although class III recalls are not required to be submitted to FDA (by § 806.10) a record must be kept in the firm’s § 806.20 file. Therefore, the number of class I and II recalls can be used to estimate the maximum number of reports that are required to be submitted under § 806.10. Also, the recordkeeping burden can be estimated based upon the number of class III recalls, which are not required to be reported but must be retained in a § 806.20 file. FDA has determined that estimates of the reporting burden for § 806.10 should be revised to reflect a projected 7.3 percent increase (from the last PRA numbers) in reports submitted to FDA as class I and II. FDA also estimates the recordkeeping burden in § 806.20 should be revised to reflect a reduction of 6.8 percent (from the last PRA numbers) in records filed and maintained under this section. The estimates of time needed to collect part 806 information have not changed. Dated: November 16, 2010. Leslie Kux, Acting Assistant Commissioner for Policy. [FR Doc. 2010–29520 Filed 11–22–10; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4160–01–P DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Assistance Program (LIHEAP) Model Plan. OMB No.: 0970–0075. Description: States, including the District of Columbia, Tribes, Tribal Organizations and Territories applying for LIHEAP block grant funds must submit an annual application (Model Plan) that meets the LIHEAP statutory and regulatory requirements prior to receiving Federal funds. A detailed application must be submitted every three years. Abbreviated applications may be submitted in alternate years. There have been no changes in the Model Plan since the approval of the addition of the LIHEAP Program Integrity Assessment Supplement by the Office of Management and Budget earlier this year. Respondents: State, Local or Tribal Governments. Administration for Children and Families Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request Title: Application Requirements for the Low Income Home Energy ANNUAL BURDEN ESTIMATES Number of respondents mstockstill on DSKH9S0YB1PROD with NOTICES Instrument Number of responses per respondent Average burden hours per response Total burden hours LIHEAP Program Integrity Assessment and Plan ........................................... Detailed Model Plan ........................................................................................ Abbreviated Model Plan .................................................................................. 216 72 144 1 1 1 1 1 .33 216 72 47.5 Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours ..................................................... ........................ ........................ ........................ 335.5 VerDate Mar<15>2010 18:02 Nov 22, 2010 Jkt 223001 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 4703 Sfmt 4703 E:\FR\FM\23NON1.SGM 23NON1 71448 Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 225 / Tuesday, November 23, 2010 / Notices Additional Information Copies of the proposed collection may be obtained by writing to the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Administration, Office of Information Services, 370 L’Enfant Promenade, SW., Washington, DC 20447, Attn: ACF Reports Clearance Officer. All requests should be identified by the title of the information collection. E-mail address: infocollection@acf.hhs.gov. OMB Comment OMB is required to make a decision concerning the collection of information between 30 and 60 days after publication of this document in the Federal Register. Therefore, a comment is best assured of having its full effect if OMB receives it within 30 days of publication. Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent directly to the following: Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project, Fax: 202–395–7285, E-mail: OIRA_SUBMISSION@OMB.EOP.GOV, Attn: Desk Officer for the Administration for Children and Families. Dated: November 18, 2010. Robert Sargis, Reports Clearance Officer. [FR Doc. 2010–29479 Filed 11–22–10; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4184–01–P DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Administration on Aging Notice of Intent To Provide Supplemental Funding Notice of intent to provide supplemental funding to the existing cooperative agreement (90AM3204) with the Administration on Aging and a request for a supplemental application. ACTION: The Administration on Aging is announcing the availability of supplemental grant funds for the support of the Senior Medicare Program (SMP). The goal of this supplemental is a program expansion for one award to include direct Medicare fraud prevention intervention activities in high risk areas. Funding Opportunity Title/Program Name: National Hispanic SMP (NHSMP). Announcement Type: Proposed program expansion. mstockstill on DSKH9S0YB1PROD with NOTICES SUMMARY: VerDate Mar<15>2010 18:02 Nov 22, 2010 Jkt 223001 Funding Opportunity Number: Program Announcement No. HHS– 2011–AoA–MP–1102. Statutory Authority: HIPAA of 1996 (Pub. L. 104–191). Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number: 93.048 Discretionary Projects. Key Dates: The deadline date for comments under this Program Announcement is December 23, 2010. Other Important dates: 1. The supplemental application due date is November 29, 2010. 2. The anticipated start date is December 2010. 3. The opening date begins on the first day of publication of this notice. 4. The expiration date is December 5, 2010. DATES: I. Funding Opportunity Description Since September 2008 NHCOA has operated the NHSMP providing technical assistance to all SMP projects nation-wide pertaining to Hispanic community issues. The goal of the SMP program is to prevent or reduce the billions of dollars loss annually due to Medicare/Medicaid fraud, error and abuse. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data has revealed that Medicare fraud is rampant in the Hispanic community. Hispanic older adults are especially vulnerable to Medicare fraud due to social isolation from the general population due to a combination of linguistic and cultural factors. This goal of this program expansion is to target direct intervention activities in South Florida, especially Miami and Dade counties. Intervention activities must be relevant to the unique characteristics of the older Hispanic community designed to increase awareness of the SMP program and fraud prevention. II. Award Information A. Purpose of the Award: Health Care Fraud Prevention Program Expansion. B. Amount of the Award: $335,000. C. Project Period: December 1, 2010– May 31, 2011. III. Eligible Applicant The National Hispanic Council on Aging. IV. Evaluation Criteria A. Purpose and Need for Assistance— Weight: 20 Points Does the proposed project clearly and adequately describe the targeted population and document the need for intervention? PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 4703 Sfmt 4703 B. Approach, Work Plan and Activities—Weight: 30 Points Does the proposal reflect a coherent and feasible approach for successfully addressing the identified problems? (10) Is the project work plan clear and comprehensive? (10) Does the applicant demonstrate experience in working with targeted population? (10) C. Project Outcomes, Evaluation and Dissemination—Weight: 20 Points Are the expected expansion benefits/ results clear and realistic? (10) Does the project expansion contain an evaluation component? (5) Will results be disseminated to AoA and other interested parties? (5) D. Level of Effort—Weight: 30 Points Does key staff have the background, experience to carry out their designated roles? (10) Are budget line items clearly delineated and consistent with work plan objectives? (10) Has the applicant demonstrated the organization’s capacity to implement the work plan? (10) V. Application and Submission Requirements A. SF 424—Application for Federal Assistance. B. SF 424A—Budget Information. C. Separate Budget Narrative/ Justification. D. SF 424B—Assurances. Note: Be sure to complete this form according to instructions and have it signed and date by the authorized representative (see item 18d on the SF 424). E. Lobbying Certification. F. Program narrative no more than five pages including the following items: • Summary/Abstract summary page • Expansion Proposal • Anticipated outcome(s) G. Work Plan. H. The application should be submitted through grants.gov using the funding opportunity #HHS–2011–AoA– MP–1102. VI. Application Review Information Three Federal Reviewers external to the Office of Elder Rights will score the application. VII. Agency Contact Direct inquiries regarding programmatic issues to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Aging, Office of Elder Rights, Washington, DC 20201, telephone: Barbara Dieker, (202) 357– 0139; e-mail Barbara.Dieker@aoa.hhs.gov. E:\FR\FM\23NON1.SGM 23NON1
Administration for Children and Families
Children and Families Administration
[Federal Register Volume 75, Number 225 (Tuesday, November 23, 2010)]
Title: Application Requirements for the Low Income Home Energy
Assistance Program (LIHEAP) Model Plan.
OMB No.: 0970-0075.
Description: States, including the District of Columbia, Tribes,
Tribal Organizations and Territories applying for LIHEAP block grant
funds must submit an annual application (Model Plan) that meets the
LIHEAP statutory and regulatory requirements prior to receiving Federal
funds. A detailed application must be submitted every three years.
Abbreviated applications may be submitted in alternate years. There
have been no changes in the Model Plan since the approval of the
addition of the LIHEAP Program Integrity Assessment Supplement by the
Office of Management and Budget earlier this year.
Respondents: State, Local or Tribal Governments.
Annual Burden Estimates
Number of Average
Instrument Number of responses per burden hours Total burden
respondents respondent per response hours
LIHEAP Program Integrity Assessment and Plan.... 216 1 1 216
Detailed Model Plan............................. 72 1 1 72
Abbreviated Model Plan.......................... 144 1 .33 47.5
Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours......... .............. .............. .............. 335.5
Copies of the proposed collection may be obtained by writing to the
Administration for Children and Families, Office of Administration,
Office of Information Services, 370 L'Enfant Promenade, SW.,
Washington, DC 20447, Attn: ACF Reports Clearance Officer. All requests
should be identified by the title of the information collection. E-mail
address: infocollection@acf.hhs.gov.
OMB Comment
OMB is required to make a decision concerning the collection of
information between 30 and 60 days after publication of this document
in the Federal Register. Therefore, a comment is best assured of having
its full effect if OMB receives it within 30 days of publication.
Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information
collection should be sent directly to the following: Office of
Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project, Fax: 202-395-7285,
E-mail: OIRA_SUBMISSION@OMB.EOP.GOV, Attn: Desk Officer for the
Administration for Children and Families.
Dated: November 18, 2010.
Robert Sargis,
Reports Clearance Officer.
[FR Doc. 2010-29479 Filed 11-22-10; 8:45 am]
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Justia Regulation Tracker Department of Homeland Security 2013 July
Department of Homeland Security - Browse by Department
Department of Homeland Security July 2013 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents
Drawbridge Operation Regulations; The Gut, South Bristol, ME
Type: Rule
Agency: Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security
The Commander, First Coast Guard District, has issued a temporary deviation from the regulation governing the operation of the SR129 Bridge across The Gut, mile 0.2, between Rutherford Island and South Bristol, Maine. The bridge owner, Maine Department of Transportation will be performing test borings at the bridge. This deviation allows the bridge to delay bridge openings by ten minutes for a four hour period to facilitate scheduled test borings at the bridge.
Safety Zone; Discovery World Fireworks, Milwaukee Harbor, Milwaukee, WI
The Coast Guard is establishing a temporary safety zone within Milwaukee Harbor, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This zone is intended to restrict vessels from a portion of Milwaukee Harbor due to 4 fireworks displays at Discovery World Pier. This safety zone is necessary to protect the surrounding public and vessels from the hazards associated with these fireworks displays.
Safety Zone; San Diego Bayfair; Mission Bay, San Diego, CA
Type: Proposed Rule
The Coast Guard is proposing a temporary safety zone on the navigable waters of Mission Bay in San Diego, CA for the San Diego Bayfair power boat races from September 13, 2013, until September 15, 2013. The safety zone as proposed would be in effect from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily during this timeframe. This temporary safety zone is necessary to provide for the safety of the participants, crew, spectators, participating vessels, and other vessels and users of the waterway. Persons and vessels would be prohibited from entering into, transiting through or anchoring within this safety zone unless authorized by the Captain of the Port or his designated representative.
Safety Zone and Regulated Navigation Area; Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, Romeoville, IL
The Coast Guard is issuing this Interim Rule to address two omissions from the regulatory text of the Safety zone and Regulated Navigation Area in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, Romeoville, IL. These omissions include requirements for the regulated navigation area that vessels must be greater than twenty feet in length and must not be a personal or human powered watercraft of any kind (e.g. jet skis, wave runners, kayaks, row boats, etc.). This revision is intended to make the regulatory text consistent with the discussion of the rule as originally published in the Federal Register on December 12, 2011.
Boston Area Maritime Security Advisory Committee; Vacancies
This notice requests individuals interested in serving on the Boston Area Maritime Security Committee to submit their applications for membership, to the Captain of the Port, Boston, MA.
Termination of Radiotelephone Medium Frequency 2182 kHz Watchkeeping, 2187.5 kHz Digital Selective Calling Channel Guard, and 2670 kHz Broadcasts
The United States Coast Guard is announcing that it will no longer maintain a watch on 2182 kHz, will no longer guard the Digital Selective Calling (DSC) channel 2187.5 kHz, and will no longer transmit Marine Information Broadcasts on 2670 kHz. The minimal use of these channels by mariners for distress and safety coupled with antenna site deterioration, costly upkeep, and extensive maintenance required to support the medium frequency (MF) system have led to a Coast Guard decision to terminate the MF services and direct the public mariner to use more modern safety and distress services which can be more reliably received by the Coast Guard.
Safety Zones; Annual Fireworks Events in the Captain of the Port Buffalo Zone
At various times throughout the month of July, the Coast Guard will enforce certain safety zones for annual fireworks events in the Captain of the Port Buffalo Zone. This action is necessary and intended for the safety of life and property on navigable waters during this event. During each enforcement period, no person or vessel may enter the respective safety zone without the permission of the Captain of the Port Buffalo.
Agency Information Collection Activities; Trusted Traveler Programs
Agency: Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will be submitting the following information collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act: Trusted Traveler Programs. This is a proposed extension of an information collection that was previously approved. CBP is proposing that this information collection be extended with a change to the burden hours. This document is published to obtain comments from the public and affected agencies. This information collection was previously published in the Federal Register (78 FR 26649) on May 7, 2013, allowing for a 60-day comment period. This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments. This process is conducted in accordance with 5 CFR 1320.10.
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; Major Disaster and Related Determinations
Agency: Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security
This is a notice of the Presidential declaration of a major disaster for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (FEMA-4123-DR), dated June 25, 2013, and related determinations.
Arkansas; Major Disaster and Related Determinations
This is a notice of the Presidential declaration of a major disaster for the State of Arkansas (FEMA-4124-DR), dated June 25, 2013, and related determinations.
Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will submit the information collection abstracted below to the Office of Management and Budget for review and clearance in accordance with the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. The submission will describe the nature of the information collection, the categories of respondents, the estimated burden (i.e., the time, effort and resources used by respondents to respond) and cost, and the actual data collection instruments FEMA will use.
Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Trent River, New Bern, NC
The Commander, Fifth Coast Guard District, has issued a temporary deviation from the operating schedule that governs the US 70/ Alfred C. Cunningham Bridge across the Trent River, mile 0.0, at New Bern, NC. The deviation allows the bridge draw span to remain in the closed to navigation position to accommodate the free movement of pedestrians and vehicles during the annual Mumfest celebration.
Safety Zone; Fairfield Estates Fireworks Display, Atlantic Ocean, Sagaponack, NY
The Coast Guard is establishing a temporary safety zone on the navigable waters of the Atlantic Ocean, in Sagaponack, NY for the Fairfield Estates fireworks display. This action is necessary to provide for the safety of life on navigable waters during the event. Entering into, transiting through, remaining, anchoring or mooring within this regulated area would be prohibited unless authorized by the Captain of the Port Sector Long Island Sound.
Accreditation and Approval of Camin Cargo Control, Inc., as a Commercial Gauger and Laboratory
Notice is hereby given, pursuant to CBP regulations, that Camin Cargo Control, Inc., has been approved to gauge and accredited to test petroleum and petroleum products, organic chemicals and vegetable oils for customs purposes for the next three years as of November 29, 2012.
Notice is hereby given, pursuant to CBP regulations, that Camin Cargo Control, Inc., has been approved to gauge and accredited to test petroleum and petroleum products, organic chemicals and vegetable oils for customs purposes for the next three years as of March 26, 2013.
Alaska; Major Disaster and Related Determinations
This is a notice of the Presidential declaration of a major disaster for the State of Alaska (FEMA-4122-DR), dated June 25, 2013, and related determinations.
Safety Zone; Fireworks Display, Baltimore Harbor; Baltimore, MD
The Coast Guard proposes to establish a temporary safety zone encompassing certain waters of Baltimore Harbor. This action is necessary to provide for the safety of life on navigable waters during a fireworks display launched from barges located within Baltimore Harbor at Baltimore, MD on September 5, 2013. This safety zone is intended to protect the maritime public in a portion of Baltimore Harbor.
Safety Zone; Fireworks Events in Captain of the Port New York Zone
The Coast Guard will enforce safety zones in the Captain of the Port New York Zone on the specified dates and times. This action is necessary to ensure the safety of vessels and spectators from hazards associated with fireworks displays. During the enforcement period, no person or vessel may enter the safety zones without permission of the Captain of the Port (COTP).
Safety Zone; Skagit River Bridge, Skagit River, Mount Vernon, WA
The Coast Guard is establishing a safety zone around the Skagit River Bridge located in Mount Vernon, WA. This action is necessary to protect vessels and persons from dangers associated with the collapse of the Interstate 5 Skagit River Bridge and to ensure the safety of the emergency response, salvage, and construction crews on scene. The safety zone will prohibit any person or vessel from entering or remaining in the safety zone unless authorized by the Captain of the Port or his Designated Representative.
Safety Zone; Pamlico River and Tar River; Washington, NC
The Coast Guard is establishing a safety zone on the navigable waters of the Pamlico and Tar Rivers in Washington, NC in support of a fireworks display that was delayed due to Tropical Storm Andrea. This action is necessary to protect the life and property of the maritime public and spectators from the hazards posed by aerial fireworks displays. Entry into or movement within this safety zone during the enforcement period is prohibited without approval of the Captain of the Port.
Safety zone; Ohio River, Mile 469.4-470.0; Bellevue, KY
The Coast Guard is establishing a temporary safety zone for all waters of the Ohio River, surface to bottom, extending from Ohio River mile 469.4 to mile 470.0. This temporary safety zone is necessary to protect commercial and recreational vessels from fireworks fallout associated with the City of Bellevue Beach Park Concert fireworks display. During the period of enforcement, no vessels may be located within this Coast Guard regulated area and entry into this Coast Guard regulated area is prohibited unless specifically authorized by the Captain of the Port Ohio Valley or other designated representative.
Agency: Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of the Treasury
Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC) Meeting
Agency: Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will hold a meeting of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC) on Monday, July 22, to discuss the recommendations of its subcommittees. This meeting will be open to the public.
Special Local Regulations and Safety Zones; Marine Events in Captain of the Port Long Island Sound Zone
The Coast Guard is establishing one special local regulation for a regatta and four safety zones for two fireworks displays and two swim events within the Captain of the Port (COTP) Long Island Sound (LIS) Zone. This action is necessary to provide for the safety of life on navigable waters during these events. The special local regulation and safety zones will facilitate public notification of the event and provide protective measures for the maritime public and event participants from the hazards associated with these events. Entry into, transit through, mooring or anchoring within these zones is prohibited unless authorized by COTP Sector Long Island Sound.
Regattas and Marine Parades; Great Lakes Annual Marine Events
The Coast Guard will enforce various special local regulations for annual regattas and marine parades in the Captain of the Port Detroit zone from 9:00 a.m. on June 21, 2013 through 7:00 p.m. on July 28, 2013. This action is necessary and intended to ensure safety of life on the navigable waters immediately prior to, during, and immediately after regattas or marine parades. Enforcement of these special local regulations rule will establish restrictions upon, and control movement of, vessels in specified areas immediately prior to, during, and immediately after regattas or marine parades. During the enforcement periods, no person or vessel may enter the regulated areas without permission of the Captain of the Port.
Navigation and Navigable Waters; Technical, Organizational, and Conforming Amendments; Correction
The Coast Guard published a final rule in the Federal Register on July 1, 2013, making non-substantive corrections throughout Title 33 of the Code of Federal Regulations. In fixing a non-substantive typographical error, that document inadvertently replaced two words. This rule corrects that action and reverts the inadvertently replaced language to its original wording.
New York; Amendment No. 10 to Notice of a Disaster Declaration
This notice amends the notice of a major disaster declaration for State of New York (FEMA-4085-DR), dated October 30, 2012, and related determinations.
Oklahoma; Amendment No. 7 to Notice of a Major Disaster Declaration
This notice amends the notice of a major disaster declaration for the State of Oklahoma (FEMA-4117-DR), dated May 20, 2013, and related determinations.
New Jersey; Amendment No. 9 to Notice of a Major Disaster Declaration
This notice amends the notice of a major disaster for the State of New Jersey (FEMA-4086-DR), dated October 30, 2012, and related determinations.
Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collection; Comment Request.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on a new information collection. In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice seeks comments concerning applications for the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grants program. The SAFER program provides funding for the hiring of new firefighters and the recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters.
New York; Amendment No. 3 to Notice of an Emergency Declaration
This notice amends the notice of an emergency declaration for State of New York (FEMA-3351-EM), dated October 28, 2012, and related determinations.
New York; Amendment No. 1 to Notice of a Disaster Declaration
This notice amends the notice of a major disaster declaration for State of New York (FEMA-4111-DR), dated April 23, 2013, and related determinations.
Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Lake Washington Ship Canal at Seattle, WA
The Coast Guard has issued a temporary deviation from the operating schedule that governs two Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) bridges: The Fremont Bridge, mile 2.6, and the University Bridge, mile 4.3, all crossing the Lake Washington Ship Canal at Seattle, WA. The deviation is necessary to accommodate the ``See Jane Run Women's Half Marathon.'' This deviation allows the bridges to remain in the closed position to accommodate the safe movement of event participants.
Safety Zone; National Governors Association, Milwaukee, WI
The Coast Guard proposes to establish two safety zones in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the 2013 National Governors Association summer meeting. The first zone is intended to restrict vessels from a portion of Milwaukee Harbor; the second zone is intended to restrict vessels from a portion of the Menomonee River. These two proposed safety zones are necessary to protect the public and transiting vessels from the hazards associated with the anticipated congregation of spectator, volunteer, and government vessels in these areas. The proposed safety zones are also necessary to protect the public from the hazards associated with a fireworks display.
Safety Zones; Annual Events in the Captain of the Port Detroit Zone
The Coast Guard will enforce various safety zones for annual marine events in the Captain of the Port Detroit zone from 9:30 p.m. on June 20, 2013 through 11:59 p.m. on August 31, 2013. Enforcement of these zones is necessary and intended to ensure safety of life on the navigable waters immediately prior to, during, and immediately after associated marine events. During the aforementioned period, the Coast Guard will enforce restrictions upon, and control movement of, vessels in a specified area immediately prior to, during, and immediately after fireworks events. During each enforcement period, no person or vessel may enter the respective safety zone without permission of the Captain of the Port.
Regulated Navigation Areas; Bars Along the Coasts of Oregon and Washington
The Coast Guard is amending its regulations by removing the wave height and surface current provisions and regulated boating areas for bar crossing locations along the coasts of Oregon and Washington because they conflict with more recently promulgated wave height provisions and regulated boating areas for the same bar crossings. This amendment is necessary in order to remove confusion as to which safety requirements apply to recreational vessels, uninspected passenger vessels, small passenger vessels, and commercial fishing vessels when operating within the regulated navigation areas.
Agency Information Collection Activities: Application for Temporary Protected Status, Form I-821; Revision of a Currently Approved Collection
Agency: Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) invites the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on the proposed revision of a currently approved collection of information. In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995, the information collection notice is published in the Federal Register to obtain comments regarding the nature of the information collection, the categories of respondents, the estimated burden (i.e. the time, effort, and resources used by the respondents to respond), the estimated cost to the respondent, and the actual information collection instruments.
Merchant Marine Personnel Advisory Committee: Intercessional Meeting
A working group of the Merchant Marine Personnel Advisory Committee (MERPAC) will meet to work on Task Statement 82, entitled ``The review and submittal of recommendations for proposed revisions to forms CG-719K, Merchant Mariner Credential Medical Evaluation Report and CG-719K/E, Merchant Mariner Evaluation of Fitness for Entry Level Ratings.'' This meeting will be open to the public.
Regulated Navigation Area; Special Buzzards Bay Vessel Regulation, Buzzards Bay, MA
The Coast Guard is seeking comments and feedback on how best to enhance environmental protections and navigation safety outlined in the Special Buzzards Bay regulations. Specifically, the Coast Guard is seeking comments related to potential modifications of the current mandatory pilotage, escort tug, and Vessel Movement Reporting System (VMRS) Buzzards Bay requirements. The Coast Guard intends to use this input to propose new requirements on barges carrying 5,000 or more barrels of oil or other hazardous material.
Safety Zone; Brandon Road Lock and Dam to Lake Michigan Including Des Plaines River, Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, Chicago River, and Calumet-Saganashkee Channel, Chicago, IL
The Coast Guard will enforce a segment of the Safety Zone; Brandon Road Lock and Dam to Lake Michigan including Des Plaines River, Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, Chicago River, Calumet-Saganashkee Channel on all waters of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal from Mile Marker 296.1 to Mile Marker 296.7 at specified times on July 15 through July 19, 2013. This action is necessary to protect the waterways, waterway users, and vessels from hazards associated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) dispersal barriers performance testing. During the enforcement periods listed below, entry into, transiting, mooring, laying-up or anchoring within the enforced area of this safety zone by any person or vessel is prohibited unless authorized by the Captain of the Port, Lake Michigan, or his designated representative.
The Commander, Fifth Coast Guard District, has issued a temporary deviation from the operating schedule that governs the US 70/ Alfred C. Cunningham Bridge across the Trent River, mile 0.0, at New Bern, NC. The deviation allows the bridge draw span to remain in the closed to navigation position for one hour on two consecutive days to accommodate the annual Bike Multiple Sclerosis: Historic New Bern Bike Ride.
Safety Zone; Venetian Fireworks; Kalamazoo Lake, Saugatuck, MI
The Coast Guard is establishing a temporary safety zone on Kalamazoo Lake in Saugatuck, MI. This safety zone is intended to restrict vessels from a portion of Kalamazoo Lake due to a fireworks display. This temporary safety zone is necessary to protect the surrounding public and vessels from the hazards associated with the fireworks display.
Prohibitions and Conditions on the Importation and Exportation of Rough Diamonds
This document amends the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regulations to set forth the prohibitions and conditions that are applicable to the importation and exportation of rough diamonds pursuant to the Clean Diamond Trade Act, as implemented by the President in Executive Order 13312 dated July 29, 2003, and the Rough Diamonds Control Regulations (RDCR) issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In addition to restating pertinent provisions of the RDCR, the amendments clarify that any U.S. person exporting from, or importing to, the United States a shipment of rough diamonds must retain for a period of at least five years a copy of the Kimberley Process Certificate that currently must accompany such shipments and make the copy available for inspection when requested by CBP. The document also requires formal entry for shipments of rough diamonds.
Inadmissibility of Consumer Products and Industrial Equipment Noncompliant With Applicable Energy Conservation or Labeling Standards
This document adopts as a final rule, with changes, proposed amendments to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regulations that provide that CBP will refuse admission into the customs territory of the United States to consumer products and industrial equipment found to be noncompliant with energy conservation and labeling standards pursuant to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (EPCA) and its implementing regulations. The final rule further provides that, upon written or electronic notice from the Department of Energy (DOE) or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), CBP may conditionally release under bond to the importer such noncompliant products or equipment for purposes of reconditioning, re-labeling, or other action so as to bring the subject product or equipment into compliance. This regulation implements the mandate of the EPCA, as amended.
Agency Information Collection Activities: Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, Form I-129; Revision of a Currently Approved Collection
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) invites the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on this proposed revision of a currently approved collection of information. In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995, the information collection notice is published in the Federal Register to obtain comments regarding the nature of the information collection, the categories of respondents, the estimated burden (i.e. the time, effort, and resources used by the respondents to respond), the estimated cost to the respondent, and the actual information collection instruments.
Safety Zone; America's Cup Safety Zone and No Loitering Area, San Francisco, CA
The Coast Guard is establishing a safety zone and no loitering area in the navigable waters of the San Francisco Bay near Treasure Island, CA in support of 2013 America's Cup races. This safety zone and no loitering area are established to enhance the safety of spectators and mariners near the north east corner of the America's Cup regulated area. All persons or vessels are prohibited from entering the safety zone and all persons or vessels are prohibited from anchoring or otherwise loitering in the no loitering area during the scheduled races without the permission of the Captain of the Port or their designated representative.
National Infrastructure Advisory Council
Agency: Department of Homeland Security
The National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) will meet Monday, July 29, 2013, at the United States Access Board, 1331 F Street NW., Suite 800, Washington, DC 20004. The meeting will be open to the public.
Safety Zone; Outer Banks Bluegrass Festival; Shallowbag Bay, Manteo, NC
The Coast Guard is establishing of a temporary safety zone on Shallowbag Bay, Manteo, NC on October 4, 2013, for a fireworks display as part of the Outer Banks Bluegrass Festival. This action is necessary to protect the life and property of the maritime public from the hazards posed by fireworks displays. This safety zone is intended to restrict vessels from a portion of Shallowbag Bay River during the Outer Banks Bluegrass Festival Fireworks display.
Drawbridge Operation Regulations; Piscataqua River, Portsmouth, NH and Kittery, ME
The Coast Guard is issuing a temporary deviation from the regulations governing the operation of the new US-1 Memorial Bridge across the Piscataqua River, mile 1.9, between Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Kittery, Maine. Under this temporary deviation the bridge may operate on a special opening schedule to facilitate mechanical and structural alignment of the lift span. This deviation is necessary to allow New Hampshire Department of Transportation's contractor sufficient time make final adjustments at the bridge.
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Joel Cutler
Co-Founder at General Catalyst LLC
Cruise Line Holdings Co.
General Catalyst LLC
General Catalyst Partners LLC
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David Fialkow
Chris McCain
General Counsel at General Catalyst LLC
Mark Joseph Allen
Chief Financial Officer at General Catalyst LLC
David Orfao
Managing Partner at General Catalyst LLC
Larry Bohn
Executive Officer at General Catalyst Group VIII LP
Benjamin D. Fischman
Founder & Chief Executive Officer at RCW, Inc.
Bill Fitzgerald
Managing Director & Chief Operating Officer at General Catalyst LLC
Hemant Taneja
Managing Director at General Catalyst LLC
Phil Libin
Co-Founder at Warby Parker
Lola.com Adds Hundreds of Customers in H1 2019 as Partner Strategy and SMB Focus Gain Traction
25th Annual Venture Capital Private Equity Conference at Harvard Business School Announces Speakers and Agenda
Freebird Raises $8 Million Series A Investment to Support Growth
peHUB
General Catalyst raises $1.4 bln for ninth venture fund
For his next act, former Amex CEO Ken Chenault turns his focus on Silicon Valley
Paths to Joel Cutler
BA in Government & Economics
Colby College is a private liberal arts college located on Mayflower Hill in Waterville, Maine, USA. Founded in 1813, it is the 12th-oldest independent liberal arts college in the United States. Colby was the first all-male college in New England to accept female students in 1875.
Boston College - School of Law
Boston College Law School was founded in 1929 at 11 Beacon Street in downtown Boston, the first dean, Dennis Dooley, envisioned a law school with a social conscience as well as an analytical mind. From its earliest days, Boston College Law School had a reputation for toughness and high standards. It won accreditation from the American Bar Association in 1932, just three years after its founding, joining the Harvard, Yale, and Boston University law schools as the only ones in New England to attain such a distinction.
General Catalyst focuses on investments across the globe. The firm targets technology & market leading businesses. They provide financing for early stage transactions.
General Catalyst Partners LLC provides venture capital services. The company was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Cambridge, MA.
Director-BIDMC
Harvard University - Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) is one of the nation's preeminent academic medical centers. We are committed to excellence in clinical care, biomedical research and education and to the health and wellness of our patients and our communities. Excellence In Clinical Care Beth Israel Deaconess, a major teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, is a fully integrated medical center providing adult services from cardiology to obstetrics, gastrointestinal disorders to cancer care. Each year U.S. News & World Report ranks BIDMC as a "Best Hospital" in multiple specialties. As national leaders in patient care quality, safety and transparency, we are setting standards in the way health data can be used to improve care and services. We were the first hospital in the country to achieve meaningful use of electronic medical records, meeting a key set of new federal government standards. BIDMC attracts leading clinicians in all medical fields. Our experts not only provide gold standard treatments to help a patient get better, they also help educate the public on disease prevention. BIDMC clinicians feel a responsibility to do more than make patients better when they are sick-they want to help the community stay healthy. Excellence In Research BIDMC is home to a renowned academic research program, where scientific discoveries help to transform medical care. We rank third in the country for National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals. With revolutionary advances and therapies happening within our walls, we are a national and international leader in "bench-to-bedside" research. Our patients benefit directly from our dedication to research. At any given moment, more than 300 clinical trials are offered throughout the medical center for those difficult to treat cases, in areas such as cancer, neurology, cardiology and other medical specialties. Excellence In Education BIDMCs 1,250 full-time physicians constitute almost a quarter of Harvard Medical School's faculty. Because of our roots, we are committed to training the next generation of doctors, and have raised medical education to a higher level with a uniquely strong and deep program that enhances our ability to attract top faculty and residents. Learning flourishes within our hallways, as students learn from the best of the best in an open environment that produces leaders of tomorrow. Advancing Care in Communities In pursuit of clinical and research excellence, we have formed partnerships with outstanding community hospitals, specialty care centers and physician practice groups in eastern Massachusetts to give you and your family the convenience of high quality care, close to home. With BIDMC at the core of this network, access to specialty care downtown is always available when appropriate. We are dedicated to providing the right care, at the right time, in the right place. Blending Warmth and Innovation Compassionate nursing is central to your experience here. Our nurses are highly regarded for superb care, kindness and proficiency. Our quality and safety initiatives, second to none, are often held up as a model for other institutions. As a hospital deemed "Most Wired," and "Most Wireless," we are reengineering how to gather, safeguard and utilize health information. Our systems are state-of-the-art and all BIDMC clinicians use centrally hosted electronic medical records. The Heart of Caring You expect excellence in clinical care, research, education and community outreach from a prominent academic medical center. But we believe what makes BIDMC even more remarkable is our spirit. We treat our patients with the utmost respect and compassion, as we would our own family members and friends.
RCW, Inc.
RCW, Inc. manufactures and sells women's footwear. The firm offers shoes, flats, pumps, loafers, moccasins and boots. It sells products directly to clients as well as online. The company was founded by Cheryl Kaplan, Benjamin D. Fischman and Maria Gangemi in March 2015 and is headquartered in Boston, MA.
CouchSurfing International, Inc.
CouchSurfing International, Inc. provides cultural exchange network services. It allows travelers to connect and stay at the home of a local resident to learn about the culture, similarities and to attend events. The company was founded by Sebastien Le Tuan, Casey Fenton, Daniel M. Hoffer and Leonardo Bassani da Silveira in 2004 and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Trover, Inc.
Trover, Inc. develops and markets online applications that collect and organize user generated travel information. Its community allows users to visually browse through a collection of images created and posted by the community. The company was founded in 2010 by Richard N. Barton, Simon J. Breakwell, Sunil Shah and Gregory E. Slyngstad, Coldham Andrew and Karas Anthony Jason is headquartered in Seattle, WA.
Vice Chairman, Board of Trustees
Children's Hospital Trust
Children's Hospital Trust is the philanthropic resource for Boston Children's Hospital.
Member, Board of Overseers
Buckingham Browne & Nichols School
Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, a coeducational day school in Cambridge, was established in 1974, though its origins date back nearly a century earlier. Buckingham Browne & Nichols is a day school in Cambridge that engages boys and girls in grades pre-K (called Beginners) through 12.
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Learn how non-profit organizations benefit from RelSci
Summer Search
Summer Search is an American private company located in San Francisco, CA. The firm operates as a national youth development organization.
$25K +
Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America
The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America was founded in 1967. Its mission is to find a cure for Crohn's diseasse and ulcerative colitis and to improve the quality of life of children and adults affected by these diseases.
Senator at Office of the Senator from Utah, Mitt Romney
Representative from Massachusetts's 4th Congressional District
General Catalyst Group VIII LP raised money in a private placement transaction
General Catalyst Group VIII Supplemental LP raised money in a private placement transaction
General Catalyst Group VI LP raised money in a private placement transaction
Forbes Magazine - The Midas List
Sponsored by Forbes Media LLC
The PhoCusWright Conference
19th Annual Harvard Business School Venture Capital and Private Equity Conference
Our theme this year, "Navigating Change, Discovering Value," channels our thoughts on uncovering future opportunities in an uncertain economic climate, reflecting both the scale of impact of developed economies, and an increasing focus on emerging opportunities.
Joel Cutler is affiliated with General Catalyst LLC, General Catalyst Partners LLC, Harvard University - Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, General Catalyst Group VIII LP, General Catalyst Group VIII Supplemental LP, General Catalyst Group VI LP, National Leisure Group, Inc., Cruise Line Holdings Co., Kayak Software Corp., Retail Growth ATM Systems, ZenHotels Group, Thrive Capital Management LLC, RCW, Inc., CouchSurfing International, Inc., Trover, Inc., TravelPost.com, Inc., OLX, Inc., ITA Software, Inc., Reveal Imaging Technologies, Inc., Cruise Line Holdings Co., OvaScience, Inc., TotalMove, Inc., Ostrovok.ru LLC, Green Bullion Financial Services LLC, FanSnap, Inc., Children's Hospital Trust, Colby College, Buckingham Browne & Nichols School
This web site is not endorsed by, directly affiliated with, maintained, authorized, or sponsored by Joel Cutler. The use of any trade name or trademark is for identification and reference purposes only and does not imply any association with the trademark holder. The Presence of Joel Cutler's profile does not indicate a business or promotional relationship of any kind between RelSci and Joel Cutler.
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How Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA
By Tom Secker and Matthew Alford
The Arts | Bookmark to dashboard
Tom Secker and Matthew Alford report on their astonishing findings from trawling through thousands of new US military and intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to manipulate scripts or even prevent films too critical of the Pentagon from being made — not to mention influencing some of the most popular film franchises in recent years.
This raises new questions not only about the way censorship works in the modern entertainment industry, but also about Hollywood’s little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus.
Illustration by Rachael Bolton
When we first looked at the relationship between politics, film and television at the turn of the 21st century, we accepted the consensus opinion that a small office at the Pentagon had, on request, assisted the production of around 200 movies throughout the history of modern media, with minimal input on the scripts.
How ignorant we were.
More appropriately, how misled we had been.
We have recently acquired 4,000 new pages of documents from the Pentagon and CIA through the Freedom of Information Act. For us, these documents were the final nail in the coffin.
These documents for the first time demonstrate that the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major movies and more than 1,000 TV titles.
The previous best estimate, in a dry academic book way back in 2005, was that the Pentagon had worked on less than 600 films and an unspecified handful of television shows.
The CIA’s role was assumed to be just a dozen or so productions, until very good books by Tricia Jenkins and Simon Willmetts were published in 2016. But even then, they missed or underplayed important cases, including Charlie Wilson’s War and Meet the Parents.
Jon Voight in Transformers — in this scene, just after American troops have been attacked by a Decepticon robot, Pentagon Hollywood liaison Phil Strub inserted the line ‘Bring em home’, granting the military a protective, paternalistic quality, when in reality the DOD does quite the opposite.
Alongside the massive scale of these operations, our new book National Security Cinema details how US government involvement also includes script rewrites on some of the biggest and most popular films, including James Bond, the Transformers franchise, and movies from the Marvel and DC cinematic universes.
A similar influence is exerted over military-supported TV, which ranges from Hawaii Five-O to America’s Got Talent, Oprah and Jay Leno to Cupcake Wars, along with numerous documentaries by PBS, the History Channel and the BBC.
National Security Cinema also reveals how dozens of films and TV shows have been supported and influenced by the CIA, including the James Bond adventure Thunderball, the Tom Clancy thriller Patriot Games and more recent films, including Meet the Parents and Salt.
The CIA even helped to make an episode of Top Chef that was hosted at Langley, featuring then-CIA director Leon Panetta who was shown as having to skip dessert to attend to vital business. Was this scene real, or was it a dramatic statement for the cameras?
James Bond and Domino are rescued via a plane and skyhook that was loaned to the production by CIA front company Intermountain Aviation — Thunderball
The Military’s Political Censorship of Hollywood
When a writer or producer approaches the Pentagon and asks for access to military assets to help make their film, they have to submit their script to the entertainment liaison offices for vetting. Ultimately, the man with the final say is Phil Strub, the Department of Defense’s (DOD) chief Hollywood liaison.
If there are characters, action or dialogue that the DOD don’t approve of then the film-maker has to make changes to accommodate the military’s demands. If they refuse then the Pentagon packs up its toys and goes home. To obtain full cooperation the producers have to sign contracts — Production Assistance Agreements — which lock them into using a military-approved version of the script.
This can lead to arguments when actors and directors ad lib or improvise outside of this approved screenplay.
On set at Edwards Air Force base during the filming of Iron Man, there was an angry confrontation between Strub and director Jon Favreau.
Favreau wanted a military character to say the line, ‘People would kill themselves for the opportunities I have’, but Strub objected. Favreau argued that the line should remain in the film, and according to Strub:
‘He’s getting redder and redder in the face and I’m getting just as annoyed. It was pretty awkward and then he said, angrily, “Well how about they’d walk over hot coals?” I said “fine.” He was so surprised it was that easy.’
In the end, this compromised line did not appear in the finished film.
One of several scenes for Iron Man filmed at Edwards Air Force Base
It seems that any reference to military suicide — even an off-hand remark in a superhero action-comedy adventure — is something the DOD’s Hollywood office will not allow. It is understandably a sensitive and embarrassing topic for them, when during some periods of the ever-expanding and increasingly futile ‘War on Terror’, more US servicemen have killed themselves than have died in combat. But why shouldn’t a movie about a man who builds his own flying suit of armour not be able to include such jokes?
Another one-line quip that was censored by the DOD came in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.
When Bond is about to HALO jump out of a military transport plane they realise he’s going to land in Vietnamese waters. In the original script Bond’s CIA sidekick jokes ‘You know what will happen. It will be war, and maybe this time we’ll win.’
This line was removed at the request of the DOD.
Strangely, Phil Strub denied that there was any support for Tomorrow Never Dies, while the pre-eminent scholar in the field Lawrence Suid only lists the DOD connection under ‘Unacknowledged Cooperation’.
But the DOD are credited at the end of the film and we obtained a copy of the Production Assistance Agreement between the producers and the Pentagon.
The DOD-approved version of the HALO scene in Tomorrow Never Dies
Vietnam is evidently another sore topic for the US military, which also removed a reference to the war from the screenplay for Hulk (2003). While the military are not credited at the end of the film, on IMDB or in the DOD’s own database of supported movies, we acquired a dossier from the US Marine Corps detailing their ‘radical’ changes to the script.
This included making the laboratory where the Hulk is accidentally created into a non-military facility, making the director of the lab an ex-military character, and changing the code name of the military operation to capture the Hulk from ‘Ranch Hand’ to ‘Angry Man’.
‘Ranch Hand’ is the name of a real military operation that saw the US Air Force dump millions of gallons of pesticides and other poisons onto the Vietnamese countryside, rendering millions of acres of farmland poisoned and infertile.
They also removed dialogue referring to ‘all those boys, guinea pigs, dying from radiation, and germ warfare’, an apparent reference to covert military experiments on human subjects.
The documents we obtained further reveal that the Pentagon has the power to stop a film from being made by refusing or withdrawing support. Some movies such as Top Gun, Transformers and Act of Valor are so dependent on military cooperation that they couldn’t have been made without submitting to this process. Others were not so lucky.
The movie Countermeasures was rejected by the military for several reasons, and consequently never produced. One of the reasons is that the script included references to the Iran-Contra scandal, and as Strub saw it ‘There’s no need for us to… remind the public of the Iran-Contra affair.’
Similarly Fields of Fire and Top Gun 2 were never made because they couldn’t obtain military support, again due to politically controversial aspects of the scripts.
This ‘soft’ censorship also affects TV. For example, a planned Louis Theroux documentary on Marine Corps recruit training was rejected, and as a result was never made.
It is impossible to know exactly how widespread this military censorship of entertainment is because many files are still being withheld. The majority of the documents we obtained are diary-like reports from the entertainment liaison offices, which rarely refer to script changes, and never in an explicit, detailed way. However, the documents do reveal that the DOD requires a preview screening of any project they support and sometimes makes changes even after a production has wrapped.
The documents also record the pro-active nature of the military’s operations in Hollywood and that they are finding ways to get involved during the earliest stages of development, ‘when characters and storylines are most easily shaped to the Army’s benefit.’
The DOD’s influence on popular culture can be found at all stages of production, granting them the same kind of power as major studio executives.
Agencywood: The CIA and NSA’s Influence on Movie Scripts
Despite having far fewer cinematic assets the CIA has also been able to wield considerable influence on some of the projects they have supported (or refused to support).
There is no formal CIA script review process but the Agency’s long-serving entertainment liaison officer Chase Brandon was able to insert himself into the early stages of the writing process on several TV and film productions.
The new recruits arrive at CIA training facility The Farm in The Recruit
Brandon did this most prominently on the spy thriller The Recruit, where a new agent is put through CIA training at The Farm — an obvious vehicle for inducting the audience into that world and giving them a glimpse behind the curtain. The original story treatment and early drafts of the script were written by Brandon, though he is only credited on the film as a technical advisor, covering up his influence on the content.
The Recruit includes lines about the new threats of the post-Soviet world (including that great villainous justification for a $600 billion defense budget, Peru), along with rebuttals of the idea that the CIA failed to prevent 9/11. And it repeats the adage that ‘the CIA’s failures are known, but its successes are not’. All of this helped to propagate the idea that the Agency is a benevolent, rational actor in a chaotic and dangerous world.
The CIA has also managed to censor scripts, removing or changing sequences that they didn’t want the public to see. On Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal ‘verbally shared’ his script with CIA officers, and they removed a scene where a drunk CIA officer fires an AK-47 into the air from a rooftop in Islamabad, and removed the use of dogs from the torture scenes.
In a very different kind of film, the hugely popular romantic comedy Meet the Parents, Brandon requested that they change a scene where Ben Stiller’s character discovers Robert De Niro’s (Stiller’s father-in-law to be) secret hideaway. In the original script Stiller finds CIA torture manuals on a desk, but Brandon changed that to photos of Robert De Niro with various dignitaries.
Ben Stiller discovers that Robert De Niro is working for the CIA — Meet the Parents
Indeed, the CIA’s ability to influence movie scripts goes back to their early years. In the 1940s and 50s they managed to prevent any mention of themselves appearing in film and TV until North by Northwest in 1959. This included rejecting requests for production support, meaning that some films were never made, and censoring all references to the CIA in the script for the Bob Hope comedy My Favourite Spy.
The CIA even sabotaged a planned series of documentaries about their predecessor, the OSS, by having assets at CBS develop a rival production to muscle the smaller studio out of the market. Once this was achieved, the Agency pulled the plug on the CBS series too, ensuring that the activities of the OSS remained safe from public scrutiny.
While very little is known about the NSA’s activities in the entertainment industry we did find indications that they are adopting similar tactics to the CIA and DOD.
Internal NSA emails show that the producers of Enemy of the State were invited on multiple tours of NSA headquarters. When they used a helicopter to film aerial footage of Fort Meade, the NSA did not prevent them from using it in the movie.
According to a 1998 interview with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, they changed the script at the NSA’s request so that the wrongdoings were the actions of one bad apple NSA official, and not the agency in general.
Bruckheimer said:
‘I think the NSA people will be pleased. They certainly won’t come out as bad as they could have. NSA’s not the villain.’
This idea of using cinema to pin the blame for problems on isolated rogue agents or bad apples, thus avoiding any notion of systemic, institutional or criminal responsibility, is right out of the CIA/DOD’s playbook.
NSA headquarters at Fort Meade — Enemy of the State
In all, we are looking at a vast, militarised propaganda apparatus operating throughout the screen entertainment industry in the United States.
It is not quite an official censor, since decisions on scripts are made voluntarily by producers, but it represents a major and scarcely acknowledged pressure on the kind of narratives and images we see on the big and small screens.
In societies already eager to use our hard power overseas, the shaping of our popular culture to promote a pro-war mindset must be taken seriously.
This story was originally published by Insurge Intelligence on Medium and was reproduced with the permission of the authors.
Tom Secker and Matthew Alford
Tom Secker and Matthew Alford are co-authors of the new book, National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood.
Secker is a British-based writer who covers the security services, Hollywood and the history of terrorism. He runs the SpyCulture blog which can be supported via Patreon.com. His work has been covered by The Mirror, The Express, Salon, TechDirt and elsewhere.
Dr Alford is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics, Language and International Studies at the University of Bath. His documentary film based on his research, The Writer with No Hands, was premiered in 2014 at Hot Docs, Toronto and won runner-up at the Ammar Popular Film Festival, Tehran.
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How Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA - July 11, 2017
Posted in The ArtsTagged CIA, Enemy of the State, FBI, Hollywood, Homeland, Intelligence, My Favourite Spy, North by Northwest, Pentagon, US Government
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Origin and distribution: The N'Dama, also known as Boenca, Boyenca, and Faouta Longhorn, is a humpless Longhorn (Bos taurus longifrons). Until recently, Humpless (Bos taurus) Hametic Longhorn cattle breeds are believed to have descended from the first domesticated cattle populations of the Humpless Hamitic Longhorn cattle in the region's so-called the 'Fertile Crescent', possibly 9000 BC (Payne and Hodges 1997). These were said to be the first cattle to be introduced to Africa via the land connection with Asia by nomadic people and have spread to the west and south of Egypt. Archaeological findings, however, have led to the new theory that there was an African centre of domestication in the Sahara from southern Libya and north-western Niger to southern Egypt (MacDonald 2000). Further genetic studies have also suggested that the present-day humpless cattle populations are so divergent from similar cattle populations of Europe that separate domestication could have occurred in Africa (Bradley and Loftus 2000). This is supported by the genetic evidence from Hanotte et al. (2002), which also indicated an exogenous but minor genetic influence of non-African origin from Europe and/or Near East in the breeds of north and northeast of Africa as well as localised areas of southern Africa. These African taurine cattle were also influenced by a slow genetic introgression by the zebu cattle (Bos indicus) of Asian origin. There is now convincing genetic and archaeological evidences for the domestication within Africa of these African taurine cattle breeds. Presently, the Humpless Longhorn cattle are represented by two breeds - the N'Dama and the Kuri, though the two breeds are quite distinct in their morphology (Rege and Tawah, 1999). N'Dama cattle are believed to have originated from the Fouta Djallon plateau in Guinea, and are now found in the whole of coastal West and Central Africa: Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, western Mali, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Gabon, Congo (Brazzaville), and Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), particularly in the regions infested by tsetse fly (DAGRIS 2005).
Physical characteristics: The N'Dama is compact and set on short legs of fine bone; neck is thick and deep; back is fairly broad, well-fleshed and straight from withers to tail head. They have a short and broad head, straight profile and broad muzzle; the average horn size is about 60 cm and the horns typically curve upward and outward or have a lyre-shape, although there are different horn shapes and occasional polled individuals, especially in Sierra Leone and Guinea; the dewlap and umbilical folds are poorly developed; the typical coat colour is fawn with darker extremities, lighter underside; common solid colours are light to dark fawn, grey, dun, light red, chestnut, red with black head; belly and lower part of tail may be white. The breed is of medium size, being 100 cm height at shoulder for cows and 120 cm for bulls, and with a large and strong head.
Peculiarity: The breed is known for its tolerance to trypanosomosis (Ngamuna et al. 1988; Claxton and Leperre 1991; Dwinger et al. 1992; Mattioli et al. 1993) it is also markedly resistant to tick-borne infections (Mattioli et al. 1995), but not to rinderpest. In addition, the breed is well adapted to stressful humid and dry tropical climates.
Breed status: Population estimates by DAD-IS (2005) totals to 6 618 713 head, distributed within the countries of West and Central Africa.. For the last 65 years, large scale herds of this breed have been improved in Zaire by a private Company named as Compagne J. Van Lanckeic which owns over 40 000 head of pure N'Dama and has improved the mature weight of the breed by 30-50 kg without affecting hardiness. Large herds are exclusively kept for beef under ranching condition in Guinea; commercial herds are also kept in Zaire.
The breed has been selected and crossed with Jersey in Côte d'Ivoire since 1955; it has also been crossed with the Sokoto Gudali in Ghana [CS 1.9 by Abogaye]; [CS 1.24 by Dempfle & Jaitner], after its introduction in 1923; it has been crossed with the West African Shorthorn in Togo. Since 1986 some N'Dama has been exported from Senegal to the Virgin Islands-there they have been bred to Red Poll and a new breed, the Senepol has resulted (Maule 1990; Rege and Tawah 1999).
Utility: The N'Dama cattle are known for their beef conformation. Average birth weight of 19 and 22 kg was reported in two high and zero trypanosomosis risk areas, respectively (Feron et al. 1988), while, respective body weight for cows in the two areas were 296 and 331 kg. The average adult weights range from 320 to 360 kg and 250 to 270 kg for males and females, respectively (Payne 1970; Starkey 1982; 1984; Maule 1990; Porter 1991; Mason 1996). The dressing percentage is around 50% and the meat has a very good flavour without much fat (Maule 1990; Rege and Tawah 1999).
The N'Dama is a multipurpose breed with relatively low milk production, although partial milking is frequently carried out in the traditional herds of West Africa [CS 1.9 by Aboagye]. In these circumstances the yield for humans is estimated at 70-100 kg per cow per year in most countries with a higher output of 178 kg/year being reported from Mali (FAO 1980). The full lactation yield is considered to be about 500-600 kg (Payne 1970; Mason 1984; Portar 1991). A dairy herd of N'Dama maintained in Sierra Leone from 1944-1952 averaged 540 kg during lactation period of 283 days in one five-year period, with highest yields around 1 150 kg per lactation (Touchberry 1967).
Oxen are good work animals (Starkey 1982; Spencer and Eckert 1988). Under the traditional system, heifers give birth at about 48 months and the interval between calvings average 20 months. Under ranching conditions involving grazing, salt licking, provision of minerals and dipping, the heifers calve at 35 to 42 months (Starkey 1984; Maule 1990).
Claxton J. and Leperre P. 1991. Parasite burdens and host susceptibility of Zebu and N'Dama cattle in village herds in Gambia. Veterinary Parasitology. 40:293-304.
DAD-IS, 2005: http://dad.fao.org/
DAGRIS, 2005: http://dagris.ilri.cgiar.org
Dwinger R.H. Clifford D.J. Agyemang K. Gettinby G. Grieve A.S. Kora S. and Bojang M.A. 1992. Comparative studies on N'Dama and Zebu cattle following repeated infections with Trypanosoma congolense. Research in Veterinary Science. 52:292-298.
Epstein H. 1971. The origin of the domestic animals of Africa Volume I. Africana Publishing Corporation. New York. London. Munich. pp. 201-204.
FAO (1987). The trypanotolerant cattle populations 1983-1985. Trypanotolemi cattle and livestock development in West and Central Africa (Vol. 1). FAO. Rome.
Mason I.L. 1996. A World Dictionary of Livestock Breeds, Types and Varieties. Fourth Edition. C.A.B. International. 273 pp.
Mattioli R.C. Bah M. Kora S. Cassama M. and Clifford D.J. 1995. Susceptibility to different tick genera in Gambian N'Dama and Gobra Zebu cattle exposed to naturally occurring tick infections. Tropical Animal Health and Production 27:95- 105.
Maule J.P. 1990. The cattle of the tropics. Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Great Britain. 225 pp.
Ngamuna S. d'Ieteren G.D.M. Itty P. Leak S.G.A. Maehl J.H.H. Minengu M Nagda S.M. Paling R.W. Rarieya J.M. Thorpe W. and Trail J.C.M. 1988. Trypanosomiasis in N'Dama cattle under village management in Zaire. In: Livestock Production in Tsetse Affected Areas in Africa. ILCA/ILRAD, Nairobi, Kenya, pp 119-124.
Payne W.J.A 1970. Cattle Production in the Tropics. Volume 1. Longman Group Limited London. 336pp.
Portar V. 1991. Cattle-A handbook to the breeds of the world. Christopher Helm Publishers. pp.
Rege J.E.O. and Tawah C.L. 1999. The state of African cattle genetic resources II. Geographical distributions, characteristics and uses of present-day breeds and strains. FAO/UNEP Animal Genetic Resources Information Bulletin. 26:1-25.
Spencer W.P. and Eckert J.B. 1988. Estimating liveweight and carcass weight in Gambian N'Dama cattle. FAO, World Animal Review. 65:18-23.
Starkey P.H. 1982. N'Dama cattle as draught animals in Sierra Leone. FAO, World Animal Review. 42:19-26.
Starkey P.H. 1984. N'Dama cattle - a productive trypanotolerant breed. FAO, World Animal Review. 50: 2-15.
Touchberry R.W. 1967. A study of the N'Dama cattle at Musaia Animal Husbandry Station in Sierra Leone. Published by University of Illinois, Agricultural Experiment Station, as Bulletin 724. University of Illinois, Urbana (USA). 40 pp.
Related Litrature
http://www.worldbank.org/html/cgiar/25years/live.html
http://www.guinee.net/bibliotheque/general/mBinns/
intro.html
http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle/ndama/
Hanotte O. Tawah C.L. Bradley D.G. Okomo M. Verjee Y. Ochieng J. and Rege J.E.O. 2000. Geographic distribution and frequency of a taurine Bos taurus and an indicine Bos indicus Y specific allele amongst sub-Saharan African cattle breeds. Molecular Ecology. 9(4):387-396.
Rege J.E.O. 1999. The state of African cattle genetic resources I. Classification framework and identification of threatened and extinct breeds. FAO/UNEP Animal Genetic Resources Information Bulletin. 25:1-25.
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/Ndama_Full.htm
http://www.zod.wau.nl/dps/felius/cb11dlst.html
http://www.ruu.nl/tropical.ticks/nwl296d.htm
http://acer.gen.tcd.ie/bovpop/thesis/pdf/chapt-2.pdf
http://www.cattle-today.com/Senepol.htm
http://www.new-agri.co.uk/98-4/focuson/focuson10.html
http://www.isrvma.org/article/55_2_7.htm
http://cattletoday.com/archive/2000/May/Cattle_
Today92.shtml http://www.oie.int/eng/publicat/RT/1701/a_r17111.htm
http://www.healthnet.org/afronets/afronets-hma/afro-nets.200101/msg00094.html
http://benttreefarms.com/SouthPoll/history.html
http://nitro.biosci.arizona.edu/zbook/QTLcourse/abstract.pdf
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Finance & Capital Markets
Government & Public Policy
Health Care & Education
Residential & Mixed Use
RE-NJ Archives
With a niche in reviving shuttered hospitals, CHA is preparing for its biggest project yet
A rendering of the 186,000-square-foot medical arts complex that is slated to come to the former Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center, under a project by CHA Partners. — Courtesy: CHA Partners
By Joshua Burd
Bill Colgan knows the numbers well: When he started his career in health care more than 25 years ago, New Jersey was home to 115 acute care hospitals. Today, there are just under 70.
The opportunity was all too clear by 2008.
“We were realizing that there was really no plan to repurpose these facilities,” said Colgan, a founding member and managing partner of CHA Partners. “And what became apparent is that the inpatient environment was going to continue to consolidate.
Bill Colgan
“That really became what we saw as the opportunity. It was a changing market, and looking around the landscape, there weren’t many players that were out there addressing that transition.”
CHA Partners has spent the past 10 years doing exactly that, having acquired and repurposed three former hospitals in New Jersey. And it’s now poised to begin its largest project to date — the long-awaited conversion of a shuttered hospital in Plainfield.
The $57 million plan, which was approved by city officials last fall, calls for CHA to develop a 186,000-square-foot medical arts complex and 120 apartments at the former Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center. While CHA’s acquisition of the property is still pending final state approval, Colgan is hopeful that construction could begin as soon as midyear.
Such a milestone would be welcome news to city officials and Plainfield residents, who have been grappling with the void left by the hospital since its closure in 2008.
“Muhlenberg Hospital was an integral part of the Plainfield community for decades,” Mayor Adrian O. Mapp said in early January. “The project that emerged and is now set to begin will not only bring much needed medical services back to our community, it also will provide an important boost to the local economy.”
For CHA, the project will build on a track record that includes repurposing the former Barnert Hospital in Paterson, Greenville Hospital in Jersey City and the William B. Kessler Memorial Hospital in Hammonton. The firm also moved into New York City soon after Hurricane Sandy, building a new medical arts complex in the storm-battered Rockaway section of Queens.
The projects have helped preserve or restore services that disappeared as hospitals closed their doors or filed for bankruptcy, having succumbed to the growing number of empty beds. As Colgan noted, health care spending has continued to rise in the U.S., but many procedures and specialties have moved to lower-cost settings outside the hospital.
“I think one of the drivers is (that) the Department of Health doesn’t have the type of funding it needs in order to make a meaningful impact in the transition from inpatient care to outpatient care,” he said. “So as we watched the disorderly closure of hospitals … how do you capitalize on (the fact that) there’s still a need for health care in the community? And that really was the driving force as to why we focused our efforts on that niche.”
The former Barnert Hospital in Paterson was CHA Partners’ first acquisition and the first facility to be repositioned after the fi rm’s launch in 2008. The $25 million project called for renovating the 300,000-square-foot facility into a medical arts complex.
Recognizing that opportunity was decades in the making, dating back to well before the launch of CHA. The firm’s principals include longtime hospital executives and consultants, while Colgan and fellow partner Michael Nudo spent nearly 20 years running the tristate region’s largest health care revenue cycle management firm.
Known as Armanti Financial Services LLC, the business employed more than 600 and had a national client base that included three-quarters of New Jersey’s hospitals. The firm also was an unsecured creditor in several hospital bankruptcy proceedings, all of which gave its principals a firsthand view of the changes in the industry. Colgan and his partners sold the business in 2006, paving the way for the launch of CHA.
Several things became clear since the founding of what was then known as Community Healthcare Associates LLC. Chief among them: The prospects for repurposing a hospital can hinge on when and how quickly the facility is shut down.
“Our preference is always to get in there sooner rather than later, because what happens is that health care services find their way around the community,” Colgan said. “So there are voids that are created and we like, opportunistically, to be able to take advantage when the void gets created, because then we can recruit health care providers back into facilities and we can concentrate them under one roof.”
That was among CHA’s objectives with the former Barnert Hospital in Paterson, a 300,000-square-foot former municipal facility that became its first acquisition. The firm’s effort to convert the property was complicated by a multiyear tax appeal battle with the city, but CHA ultimately prevailed while managing to carry out a $25 million renovation.
Today, the repositioned complex is 97 percent occupied by a host of services, ranging from ambulatory surgical and urgent care centers to dialysis treatment and oncologists.
And while the Plainfield project only received final local approvals last fall, the opportunity dates back to the earliest days of the venture. Colgan said CHA was “just in the midst of starting our game plan to convert Barnert” in 2008 when its principals met with Assemblyman Jerry Green, who was facing the impending closure of Muhlenberg in his home city.
CHA quickly realized that the project was not economically viable on its own.
“He said, ‘What would it take for you to do at Muhlenberg like you’re doing up at Barnert?’ ” Colgan recalled. “And the short answer was, ‘We can’t make the economics work without some sort of incentive program — and no incentive program exists.’ ” The developer worked with Green on legislation for a tax credit incentive program that was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie, further delaying the project for several years.
Colgan said CHA became much more involved in 2014, first as a sort of mediator to help advance what had been thorny discussions between city officials and Muhlenberg’s parent, then known as Solaris Health System, over potential redevelopment plans.
When Plainfield requested proposals by early 2015, CHA was among those that responded and presented local officials with a plan to help fill the void left by the acute care facility. The city then started the process of conducting a study and crafting a plan for the site under the state’s redevelopment law, which later allowed it to negotiate a financial agreement with the developer. The redeveloped site is expected to generate some $10 million in benefits to the city in the form of so-called Community Benefit Payments and a payment in lieu of taxes agreement.
A rendering of the 120-unit apartment complex that is slated to come to the former Muhlenberg Hospital site, following approval by the Plainfield city council — Courtesy: Community Healthcare Associates/KTaylorRenderings.com
CHA’s proposal also went through some changes along the way, including a shift from supportive housing to market-rate apartments and a reduction in the size of the medical component. But Colgan said the finished product was the result of a good faith effort by a long list of stakeholders.
“There was a lot of work on multiple parties’ behalf to ultimately get there,” Colgan said. “The mayor had a really tough battle. The community was not fully supportive, because in their view they should have reopened the hospital. So I give the mayor a lot of credit: He fought an unpopular fight and he realized what the right thing was for the community.
“However, it’s not always politically the right thing to do. So the mayor was willing to take on the challenge of doing the right thing for the community versus the political consequence of doing that.”
With its local approvals in place, CHA now has one final hurdle before it can begin demolition and clear the way for construction. The sale must clear a review under what’s known as the Community Health Care Assets Protection Act, or CHAPA, which considers whether the transaction was open and transparent to ensure that the nonprofit health system received fair value for the facility.
Colgan said the state Attorney General’s Office, which oversees the process, will also be involved in determining what the seller will do with the proceeds. That’s because “the view of the state is that you’ve enjoyed the benefit of not paying property tax, and therefore you’re an asset of the community, so if you sell that asset, you’re obligated to give back to the community.”
It’s just one of the many additional layers of regulation that developers must clear when attempting to reposition a shuttered hospital. Redevelopment in New Jersey is already a complex process that can take several years, but Colgan said introducing health care to the mix can add at least another year to the timeline.
That makes it all the more important that Colgan and his partners have longstanding ties to the state’s health care regulators and hospital systems.
RELATED: $57 million project set to bring apartments, medical complex to hospital site
“We have very deep-rooted relationships in the health care community,” Colgan said. “With that being said, we have a full understanding and knowledge of the licensure process in New Jersey … and what’s required to get drawings through (the Department of Community Affairs).
“We really pride ourselves on being able to compress the timeframe from initial concept to actually opening the facility and to being able to provide a health care service.”
That puts CHA in a position to reposition hospitals and health care facilities as efficiently as anyone else in the industry, Colgan said. He also noted that the firm has a full roster of development professionals, from a partner who is a veteran real estate attorney to a licensed architect on staff and a former longtime municipal government professional.
“Most people don’t understand what makes government tick,” he said. “I think we’ve got a lot of the various moving parts nailed down.”
Those core competencies and the expertise in health care will all come in handy as CHA moves ahead with its newest projects. In Plainfield, Colgan said the 120-unit residential component will take roughly 18 months to complete from the start of construction.
The rehabilitation of the main Muhlenberg building and the creation of the 186,000-square-foot medical arts building will be far more complex. CHA will fit out individual spaces as health care providers sign up, with a mix that could include everything from primary and specialty care to women’s health, a diagnostic laboratory and an ambulatory surgical center.
CHA is prohibited from engaging the site’s current ownership, now part of Hackensack Meridian Health, during the state’s review of the sale. But Colgan was hopeful that JFK Health would have a major presence within the new medical space.
The timeline for the health care complex will also be longer because all of the occupants would be licensed and require Department of Health approval, he said, in addition to reviews by state and city building agencies.
He also noted that the property could have supported a greater concentration of health care had the redevelopment progressed sooner, but that window continued to close as the years passed. It’s why the project is especially fortunate to have a sizable residential component.
“Ten years after the closure of the facility, health care has kind of found its way into the community and other locations,” Colgan said. “So diversity is going to help us here.”
Project diversity
For all of the sweeping changes that have reshaped New Jersey’s hospital landscape, Bill Colgan believes the consolidation of health systems has created a stabilizing force.
That likely means fewer opportunities to convert shuttered hospitals in the way that CHA has done over the past decade. It’s one reason why the firm is filling its pipeline with other projects.
In Totowa, local officials have designated Colgan’s firm as the redeveloper of the sprawling North Jersey Developmental Center campus. The borough has rezoned the 140-acre site to allow for plans that would repurpose around 15 percent of the property, with initial uses including a data center, office space and an assisted living facility, among others.
The 35-building complex, which for decades housed adults with developmental disabilities, was shut down by the state in 2014 as part of a shift toward a more integrated approach to care.
“What we found was that there were a lot of other opportunities that were coming out of the health care space, but they clearly weren’t going to ultimately be health care,” said Colgan, who spent five years early in his career as a developer.
A rendering of a proposed commercial or medical office building in Totowa, where CHA Partners is slated to redevelop part of the 140-acre former North Jersey Developmental Center campus. — Courtesy: CHA Partners
The firm has also completed mixed-use development in its hometown of Bloomfield, including a 476-car parking garage near the Lackawanna Plaza train station. The structure paved the way for new projects near the downtown, including its own 224-unit apartment building and 60,000 square feet of retail.
The developer now has approvals to build another parking structure and an additional 176 apartments, Colgan said.
“We’ve built a lot of good will,” Colgan said. “We invested heavily in acquiring properties and I think we’ve had a very positive experience in working with the government of Bloomfield.”
For CHA Partners, developing medical arts complexes has meant being both a landlord and a seller of condominium space within in its projects.
Bill Colgan says that’s due largely to the fact that, at the start of a project, “you would like to believe everybody will be a rental tenant in the building,” yet that quickly becomes an unrealistic expectation. Tenants who are spending hundreds of dollars per square foot on improvements will want to own their space, he said, meaning the developer must be willing to sell the unit in order to maximize its potential to attract different providers.
That has been CHA’s experience over 10 years as it repurposed the former Barnert Hospital in Paterson, where it still owns more than 50 percent of the space but has sold the rest.
“Over time, because of the desire to own and our desire to maintain competitiveness and recruit health care providers into the space, it’s kind of forced us to be flexible with our approach,” Colgan said. “And so we’ve condominiumized some of the space and sold it over time.”
Tags bloomfield cha partners llc community healthcare associates llc Muhlenberg Hospital paterson Plainfield Totowa
Joshua Burd
Joshua Burd, an award-winning reporter and editor, has been covering New Jersey commercial real estate for eight years. Many industry leaders view him as the go-to real estate reporter in the state, a role he is eager to continue as the editor of Real Estate NJ. He is a lifelong New Jersey resident who has spent a decade covering the great Garden State.
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Home » Immigration Blog » A numbers game: the history of the H-1B work visa program
A numbers game: the history of the H-1B work visa program
January 14, 2016 Jamie Gilpin
Every year around April 1, that number is top of mind for foreign nationals applying for work visas, as well as the employers who sponsor them. While U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received nearly 233,000 petitions for the H-1B Person in Specialty Occupation visa in 2015, only 65,000 were selected and approved in a random lottery, which opened and closed in seven days.
But the H-1B visa didn’t always have a time-sensitive filing process. The visa quota has teetered back and forth throughout the program’s history, each time a response to the wax and wane of demand for skilled labor.
Let’s take a look at cap seasons past and learn how the visa’s availability differed throughout time.
1990: 65,000 available visas
The H-1 temporary worker visa program was originally established in the 1950s to grant foreign individuals with “distinguished merit and ability” an opportunity to find legal employment inside the United States. It was amended by the Immigration Act of 1990 (IMMACT), a measure that added the specialty occupation requirement – which means the job must require a bachelor’s degree or higher, or equivalent work experience, in a specialized field – and the visa’s dual intent status, which allows petitioners to seek legal permanent residency (a green card) while petitioning for and holding their temporary resident status. With recommendations from industry leaders and academics, the act also established the 65,000-visa cap.
1998: 115,000 available visas
In 1997, the H-1B cap was reached for the first time. This helped spark the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998, which was enacted in Oct. 2008. It expanded the cap by 50,000 visas, boosting it to 115,000 for the next three years.
As technology and Internet-related industries comprised an increasing part of the U.S. economy in the early 2000s, a greater need emerged for workers skilled in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Employers had difficulty recruiting for these positions locally, yet found that foreign nationals from China and India could fill their talent gaps. Policymakers pushed for another expansion of the H-1B work program when the visa increase enacted by the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 expired.
The American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act passed in 2000, adding 80,000 petition slots to the quota and giving employers a greater opportunity to land skilled foreign talent. The act also added a cap exemption to H-1B beneficiaries working at an institution of higher education, a government research organization or a related nonprofit entity.
2004-2015: 65,000 available visas
In 2003, when the expansion of the visa program was set to expire, there was a shift in political support for the program. Due to a growing perception that the H-1B program took away jobs from U.S. workers, the Bush administration declined to renew the cap expansion and allowed it to revert to its original 65,000 limit — where the number still stands today. President George W. Bush also signed the L-1 Visa and H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004 into law, a measure requiring employers to pay 100 percent of the prevailing wage, a salary standard set by industry comparisons. This helped ensure companies weren’t seeking to save on wage expenses by hiring foreign workers at a low rate.
What’s next for the H-1B work visa program?
The proponents of the Immigration Innovation Act of 2015 would like the cap set between 115,000 and 195,000 visas to meet market conditions. However, the bill hasn’t been put to a vote since it was introduced early last year. In an effort to assuage public concern about foreign talent encroaching on American jobs, a group of senators introduced bipartisan legislation to refine the program to give greater job priority to high-skilled American workers.
The upcoming presidential election may have an impact on the direction of the H-1B program, as immigration overall is a top issue for many of the candidates.
Subscribe to our immigration blog to stay updated on the latest policy news.
The post A numbers game: the history of the H-1B work visa program appeared first on Envoy.
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seamus dubhghaill
Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
Tag Archives: Oireachtas Éireann
by Jim Doyle Leave a comment
Construction of Royal Hospital Kilmainham Begins
The first stone of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Kilmainham, Dublin, is laid by James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, on April 29, 1680. Completed in 1684, it is one of the finest 17th-century buildings in Ireland.
The hospital is built by Sir William Robinson, official State Surveyor General of Ireland for James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to King Charles II, as a home for retired soldiers of the Irish Army and continues in that use for over 250 years. The style is based on Les Invalides in Paris with a formal facade and a large courtyard. The Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea, London is completed two years later and also has similarities in style. A priory, founded in 1174 by Strongbow, exists on the site until the English close it down in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.
The Richmond Tower at the end of the formal avenue leading to the Royal Hospital is designed by Francis Johnston, one of the leading architects of the day. This gateway originally stands beside the River Liffey at Bloody Bridge (now Rory O’More Bridge), but has to be moved after the arrival of the railway in 1844 increases traffic congestion. Johnston places his personal coat of arms above the arch, concealed by a piece of wood painted to match the stone, his idea being that his arms would be revealed to future generations after the wood becomes rotten. However, his little trick is uncovered when the gateway is taken down for removal. The coat of arms currently on the gateway is that of the Royal Hospital.
The Royal Hospital Kilmainham graveyards, including Bully’s Acre, are 400 metres to the west. A cross-shaft in the former cemetery may be the remains of a boundary cross associated with a ninth-century monastery located at this site.
Following the creation of the Irish Free State the Royal Hospital is considered as a potential home for Oireachtas Éireann, the new Irish national parliament. Eventually it is decided to keep parliament in its temporary home in Leinster House. The Hospital remains the home of a dwindling number of soldiers, before being variously used by the Garda Síochána and as a storage location for property belonging to the National Museum of Ireland. The large statue Queen Victoria which used to stand in the forecourt of Leinster House, before its removal in 1947, is stored in the main courtyard of the Hospital, as are various state carriages, including the famously spectacular State Coach of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. The Royal Hospital Kilmainham is finally restored by the Irish Government in 1984 and controversially opens as the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). Some people working in heritage organisations criticise the decision to demolish the eighteenth-century barrack rooms in one section of the quadrangle to create open spaces for the IMMA.
Every year on the National Day of Commemoration, the Sunday nearest July 11, the anniversary of the Truce that ends the Irish War of Independence, the President of Ireland, in the presence of members of the Government of Ireland, members of Dáil Éireann and of Seanad Éireann, the Council of State, the Defence Forces, the Judiciary and the Diplomatic Corps, lays a wreath in the courtyard in memory of all Irishmen and Irishwomen who have died in past wars and on service with the United Nations.
In recent years, Royal Kilmainham Hospital has become a popular location for concerts during the summer months. Acts such as Blur, Leonard Cohen, The Flaming Lips, Jack White and Public Enemy have played within the grounds in the past.
Categories: Architecture, Early Modern Ireland (1536-1691), Irish History | Tags: 1st Duke of Ormonde, Blur, Bully's Acre, Charles II of England, Chelsea, Council of State, Dáil Éireann, Defence Forces, Diplomatic Corps, Dissolution of the Monasteries, Dublin, Francis Johnston, Garda Síochána, Government of Ireland, Irish Army, Irish Free State, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Irish War of Independence, Jack White, James Butler, Judiciary of the Republic of Ireland, Kilmainham, Leinster House, Leonard Cohen, Les Invalides, London, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, National Day of Commemoration, National Museum of Ireland, Oireachtas Éireann, Paris, President of Ireland, Priory, Public Enemy, Queen Victoria, Richmond Tower, River Liffey, Rory O'More Bridge, Royal Hospital Chelsea, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Seanad Éireann, Strongbow, Surveyor General of Ireland, The Flaming Lips, United Nations, William Robinson | Permalink.
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1916 Easter Rising Abbey Theatre American Civil War Anglo-Irish Anglo-Irish Treaty Australia Belfast British Army Canada Charles Stewart Parnell Church of Ireland Cork County Antrim County Cork County Donegal County Down County Dublin County Galway County Kerry County Limerick County Mayo County Tipperary Dublin Dublin Castle Dáil Éireann England Europe Fianna Fáil France Galway Germany Glasnevin Cemetery Great Britain Irish American Irish Civil War Irish Free State Irish Language Irish Nationalism Irish Rebellion of 1798 Irish Republican Army Irish Republican Brotherhood Irish Republicanism Irish Volunteers Irish War of Independence Limerick London Member of Parliament Michael Collins New York New York City Northern Ireland Paris Patrick Pearse Playwright Poet President of Ireland Protestantism Provisional Irish Republican Army Republic of Ireland Roman Catholic Rome Royal Irish Constabulary Scotland Sinn Féin Taoiseach Teachta Dála The Troubles Trinity College Dublin Ulster United Kingdom United States University College Dublin World War I World War II Éamon De Valera
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Why Male Feminism Is Important
Fem Things
By Charlotte Alter, April 29th
Matt McGorry has a message for all the other nice guys out there: “Being nice is not enough to stop sexism or racism or any kind of -ism.”
You might know McGorry from his roles in Orange Is the New Black and How to Get Away With Murder, or from his viral Instagram post in support of the #FreeTheNipple campaign, or from his Twitter spat with Piers Morgan in defense of Beyoncé. If dude feminists formed a lacrosse team, he’d be the captain.
McGorry was sitting in the conference room of the Ms. Foundation headquarters, just a few hours before the organization’s annual Gloria Awards honoring feminists on Wednesday. He was chatting with Ms. Foundation president Teresa Younger and former football player Wade Davis, who came out nine years after he left the NFL, about male feminism and the Ms. Foundation’s #MyFeminismIs campaign to broaden the definition of feminism.
“I actually don’t like to call myself an ally,” Davis said. “It’s almost like this title, being an ally is like, ‘Yeah, I’m here, too, we need a title also.’ No, we should just do the work.”
Younger said guys like Davis and McGorry are crucial to the work of the Ms. Foundation, which she described as promoting “equality of all genders.” She said she wants to expand the feminism tent, so that nobody feels like feminism is only for people who “have read the right books, know the right terminology.” Ambassadors like Davis and McGorry, she said, can help educate men who are coming from the right place but don’t quite get it yet.
“You have to just accept that people are going to say the wrong things sometimes, people are going to do the wrong things sometimes,” she said. “But if we genuinely sit in a place of ‘people are coming to be part of it,’ then that means we’re all learning.”
For McGorry, that means educating other men about how to actively fight sexism, not just stand back and refrain from making sexist comments. “The people that I’m trying to talk to are the other men out there who are good guys,” he said. “If you’re in high school and watching a bully beat someone up, it’s not going to help if you stand there saying, ‘I support you.’ You have to be willing to take a few punches.”
McGorry has taken a few punches himself. Some feminists object to the whole idea of male feminism — or at least the excessive celebration of men who are carrying the feminist torch that women have been carrying this whole time. McGorry gets that, and he said he’s bothered by the backlash, but it’s not going to make him stop.
“Speaking out about these things, as much as there’s a lot of sh-t out there that frankly hurts my feelings a lot, it’s never going to be as hard as being a woman or being trans or being black,” he said. “And especially never going to be as hard as speaking out about sexism or racism as a woman or a person of color.”
Davis said men have a unique opportunity — and therefore a unique responsibility — to educate other men about what they can do to support feminism. He said sometimes his friends will float out thoughts about gender equality, just to see if he’ll set them straight. “Men will go to barbershops sometimes to see what other men are thinking,” he said, adding that he sees all-male spaces as the perfect place to talk about feminism.
Being a male feminist means actively promoting feminism among men and answering questions from other well-meaning guys so that women don’t have to — and that’s McGorry’s favorite part. “I tweeted: ‘When you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression,’ and one of my friends I was like, ‘Can you give me an example of that?’” he said, punching his fist in the air. “And I’m like F-ck yea! Ask me again! Got ’em!”
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GOP Rep. Finlay draws two Democratic challengers for the first time
Avery G. Wilks
A pair of Columbia Democrats are planning to unseat veteran Republican state Rep. Kirkman Finlay in next year’s election, possibly setting up the first Democratic primary for that seat in decades.
Rhodes Bailey, the chief litigator in the Richland County Public Defender’s Office, and Heather Bauer, the co-owner of a Columbia gym and a projects manager for a local IT company, have begun raising money for the challenge, according to filings with the State Ethics Commission.
In a statement, Bailey wrote that Finlay’s “do-nothing politics” have ignored “real priorities like schools, roads, dams, healthcare, climate, gun safety and virtually every other issue of public significance.”
Bauer said she is entering the race to provide a woman’s perspective in a General Assembly dominated by men, and to provide more opportunity for other small business owners.
“As someone who was raised on public assistance, I understand the role government plays in creating opportunity and helping South Carolina thrive,” she said.
Finlay, a descendant of one of Columbia’s oldest and wealthiest families and a former city councilman, will be tough to unseat.
The four-term House member handily defeated Democratic opponents in 2018 and 2016. He beat Democrat Joe McCulloch, a well-known Columbia attorney, by 2.2 percentage points to win the seat for the first time in 2012, then beat McCulloch by 7 points in their 2014 rematch.
“It has been fairly consistent for five times now,” Finlay said of Democratic challengers.
Finlay also regularly works with Columbia Democrats on women’s healthcare issues, such as expanding access to contraceptives, and has boasted endorsements from Democrats like state Sen. Darrell Jackson, state Rep. Beth Bernstein and former Rep. Boyd Brown, D-Fairfield.
Still, this marks the first time Finlay has drawn two Democratic challengers.
House District 75 — which spans from the eastern edge of downtown Columbia to Fort Jackson — has not had a Democratic primary in at least 23 years, according to State Election Commission records.
According to ethics filings, Bailey has loaned his campaign $500, while Bauer reported $335 in fundraising on Aug. 6, including a $250 contribution from Richland County Councilwoman Allison Terracio.
Bailey, a 38-year-old Florence native, has worked in the Richland County Public Defender’s Office since July 2015. The graduate of the College of Charleston and University of South Carolina School of Law spent four years as the S.C. Democratic Party’s legal coordinator for elections.
He is also a member of Whiskey Tango Revue, a local country band.
Bauer, meanwhile, has lived in Columbia since 2007, serving on a host of local boards, such as the Vista Guild Board, and working for nonprofits like the Nickelodeon Theatre.
Bauer graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, then earned her masters in Media Arts from the University of South Carolina. She is a 2019 graduate of Emerge SC, a local effort to recruit women to participate in politics.
She currently is a project manager for local IT company VC3. She and her husband own and run the Workhorse Fitness Gym just south of Williams-Brice Stadium.
Filing for the seat is in March.
melissa@emergesc.org
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Home Science It’s Unscientific To Credit ‘Fundamental Distinctions’ For Underrepresentation In Science
Underrepresentation
It’s Unscientific To Credit ‘Fundamental Distinctions’ For Underrepresentation In Science
Healthy work environments where people of all races, genders, and religions can work together productively and without bullying or harassing behavior occurring must become the norm. Anything less should be unacceptable. Here, the Mars SAM Team celebrates the perfect landing of their rover.NASA
Imagine a scientist. Try closing your eyes and really picturing this person: envision them at work, toiling away, attempting to uncover the secrets of nature itself. What does this person look like? What’s their age, race, gender, and sexual orientation? Do they have any disabilities? What’s their religion? And what was their childhood like in terms of poverty or affluence?
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Although it’s not universal by any means, chances are you pictured a straight, white, older man when you imagined this hypothetical scientist. For centuries, this was the overwhelming default. In many scientific fields, such as physics, there’s still a gross underrepresentation of women and people of color at the highest research levels. Many people who study these disparities contend that there are innate, inherent differences between genders and/or races that could explain these outcomes. Unfortunately for them, that idea is unscientific at this point in time. Here’s why.
1927 Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics. Nearly everyone shown in this image has a Nobel Prize to their name, and everyone except Marie Curie is a white man in physics.Benjamin Couprie, Institut International de Physique Solvay, Brussels, Belgium
One of the least controversial fields in all of science is evolutionary behavioral ecology. It’s based off of a simple idea: that there are personality differences between animals, often linked to innate features such as gender, that have evolutionary roots. Primates in particular, and mammals more generally, display differences in preferences and traits like grooming behavior, mate selection, aggression, and territoriality that appear to be very strongly linked to gender. These differences generally increase when there are larger size differences between males and females.
Therefore, the argument goes, that humans exhibit large gender differences and strong gender-linked preferences, and so maybe there’s an innate connection between gender and career choice. Furthermore, perhaps those differences are sufficient to explain the underrepresentation of women in the sciences.
Over a century ago, women experienced vastly different treatment than men in academic circles and institutions. Here in 2018, the playing field is still far from level, although the reasons are far more insidious than overt these days.Harvard College Observatory, circa 1890
Let’s imagine a non-controversial experiment that you might design to test this out. Put a person in a room with a variety of items displaying a variety of colors. Which items do they choose to examine, play with, investigate, or otherwise utilize? Which items are preferred? When you control for item choice, do you see a preference for the particular color chosen? And finally, when you tally up everyone’s preferences, what are the color preferences when you look at males versus females?
The idea that there would be an innate color preference based on someone’s innate traits isn’t crazy; it’s a legitimate hypothesis. But in order to go anywhere with it, we’d have to test it out.
Female gorilla Fatou, the oldest gorilla in Europe, sits in front of a present basket with different kinds of fruit on her 60th birthday at the zoo (‘Zoologischer Garten’) in Berlin, Germany, 13 April2017 Fatou has been living in the zoo for 58 years, and has her own preferences for objects and foods that are multifaceted.Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance via Getty Images
The science of color studies goes back a very long time, and many studies do show a level of gender dimorphism (or differences between genders) when it comes to color preferences. As you might expect, many such studies indicate that males have a stronger preference for bluer colors, while females have a stronger preference for redder colors.
And as you also might expect, we see these gender-linked differences for color preferences in animals as well. Birds display color preferences; gorillas and chimpanzees display them; butterflies have preferences; and in particular, non-human primates display very strong gender differences for both color and item selection.
A picture taken on October 15, 2018 in Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle, northern France, shows a Vanessa Atalanta butterfly on a flower. Butterflies are one of the insects that demonstrate the strongest color preferences known in nature.JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images
Based on this evidence, you would be extraordinarily tempted to conclude what might seem obvious based on this evidence, as presented here. Animals display color preferences that are often linked to gender. This should, in principle, allow us to conclude something about innate gender preferences for color.
That our closest animal relatives (the primates) display it quite strongly tells us that we might expect that humans display that trait strongly as well.
And that we see color preferences in humans based on gender is another hint. It strongly indicates that we should expect color-preference gender differences that are innate in humans. It’s an eminently reasonable hypothesis.
Fortunately for us, however, it’s a well-studied hypothesis, and the conclusions aren’t what you expect.
When presented with a choice between objects that have different colors, hues, brightnesses or saturation levels, a variety of animals and human populations will display preferences that persist when you group them together in any number of fashions. We must be careful when we draw conclusions about what this means for innate human preferences, however.Getty
In humans, there have been significant differences in the results of the color study dependent upon factors such as:
when, in time, the test was performed,
what the geographical location of the study participants were,
and what the socialization differences between men and women were.
Studies have shown a variety of color preferences between genders, including in preferences between cool and warm colors, brightnesses, chromaticities, tolerances for greys, preferences for yellow (men) versus orange (women), or for blue (men) as opposed to red (women).
Offering up a selection of identical objects with various colors may reveal individual preferences, and those individuals may aggregate to form group preferences. But the idea that we can distill which components of those preferences are due to innate traits and which ones are due to societal traits has yet to be demonstrated in humans.Getty
There’s a compelling reason for this, of course. Human beings aren’t merely the sum of our genetics and our evolutionary history. Sure, they play a role, but we are also products of the societies we’re raised in, and extricating the societal effects from inherent tendencies is often impossible with the limited data we’re capable of collecting.
We might ascribe blue as a boy’s color and pink as a girl’s color, but these attributions are artificial: they’re imposed by our social structures. As recently as a little over 100 years ago, pink was viewed as a color for boys, and consequently boys exhibited a preference for pink, rather than blue.
When societal pressures are present, they can easily overwhelm any possible innate preferences, rendering the latter impossible to observe. When you have two competing signals and one dominates the other, it’s often impossible to extract the subdominant effect.
In most societies around the world, pink is associated with women and girls, while blue is associated with men and boys. This may be true, on average, but it says little about both the preferences of any particular individual and about the innate component of such differences. In fact, the evidence that there is a societal factor that dominates is overwhelming.Getty
And this brings us to the issue of underrepresentation in science. There are fewer women than you’d expect based on the general population; there are fewer people of color than you’d expect as well. Does this mean that women are inherently less interested or suited to science than men? That people of color are inherently less interested or less well-suited to a science career?
Not based on the evidence.
Yes, underrepresentation is real. It is possible that there is a component of that underrepresentation that is due to some type of innate difference or preference distinct to various ways of grouping humans together. But that possibility is not only unsupported by science, it discounts the existence of known societal pressures.
The three key points in the largest study of harassment in astronomy point to women of color experiencing the largest amounts of gender and racial harassment, large levels among women and women of color specifically of feeling unsafe due to gender and race, and women skipping professional events due to feeling unsafe, leading to lost career opportunities.K. B. H. Clancy, K. M. N. Lee, E. M. Rodgers, and C. Richey (2017), J. Geophys. Res. Planets, 122, 1610-1623
It is well-documented that harassment, bigotry, and casual racism/sexism permeate environments where underrepresentation is rampant, and the effect on those environments is damning. The result is the exclusion, marginalization, and undermining of the academic potential of anyone who isn’t a wealthy, male, white, straight, able-bodied individual working in science.
One of uncountably many incidents that actually occur in the sciences on a near-daily basis that illustrate how casually discriminatory attitudes can undermine and marginalize members of underrepresented groups.Alice Adenis/didthisreallyhappen.net, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Until we have a workplace that is free from harassment and abuse of:
people of color,
LGBTQ individuals,
people with disabilities,
religious minorities,
people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds,
or anyone else who isn’t a member of the in-group in every way, it is unscientific to draw conclusions about the effects of whatever inherent differences may actually be present.
Harassment and bullying of graduate students in academia is a rampant problem, and one that is regarded as likely partially (if not wholly) responsible for the gender disparity at the highest professional levels in the sciences. This is a problem that will require action from the top to eradicate.AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
In science, you must be extraordinarily careful that you aren’t biasing your experiment or observation towards drawing a favored conclusion. If we overlook or discount a known factor, like the social effects of underrepresentation on the fields that are afflicted with it, we will never draw a valid scientific conclusion. Until the very real problems existing in the workplace are fixed — until we truly create a working environment that doesn’t discriminate against its most vulnerable members — we have no reason to believe that inherent differences play any major role in creating or sustaining the demographics we see among scientists today. Those who seek to apply behavioral ecology to humans in the workplace must take the full suite of societal effects into account: a notoriously difficult set of factors to quantify. Until they do, their conclusions should be treated with a law familiar to any computer scientist: garbage in, garbage out.
” readability=”194.56355283308″>
< div _ ngcontent-c14 ="" innerhtml ="
(*** )(***** )
Healthy workplace where individuals of all races, genders, and faiths can interact proficiently and without bullying or bugging habits taking place should end up being the standard. Anything less ought to be inappropriate. Here, the Mars SAM Group commemorates the best landing of their rover. NASA
Picture a researcher. Attempt closing your eyes and actually visualizing this individual: picture them at work, toiling away, trying to reveal the tricks of nature itself. What does this individual appear like? What’s their age, race, gender, and sexual preference? Do they have any specials needs? What’s their faith? And what was their youth like in regards to hardship or abundance?
(************* ) SHORT ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD(***** )
Although it’s not universal by any ways, possibilities are you
envisioned a directly, white, older male when you pictured this theoretical researcher. For centuries, this was the frustrating default. In numerous clinical fields, such as physics, there’s still a gross underrepresentation of ladies and individuals of color at the greatest research study levels. Lots of people who study these variations compete that there are inherent, fundamental distinctions in between genders and/or races that might discuss these results. Regrettably for them, that concept is unscientific at this moment in time. Here’s why.(*********** )
(******* )
1927 Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics. Almost everybody displayed in this
image has a Nobel Reward to their name, and everybody other than Marie Curie is a white male in physics. Benjamin Couprie, Institut International de Body Solvay, Brussels, Belgium(*********** )
(************ )
Among the least questionable fields in all of science is evolutionary behavioral ecology(*******************
It’s based off of an easy concept: that there are character distinctions in between animals, typically connected to inherent functions such as gender, that have evolutionary roots. Primates in specific, and mammals more usually, show distinctions in choices and qualities like grooming habits, mate choice, aggressiveness, and territoriality that seem really highly connected to gender. These distinctions usually increase when there are bigger size distinctions in between males and women.
For that reason, the argument goes, that human beings display big gender distinctions and strong gender-linked choices, therefore possibly there’s an inherent connection in between gender and profession option
. In addition, possibly those distinctions suffice to discuss the underrepresentation of ladies in the sciences.
(******************** )
(********************* )
(**** )
(******** )Over a century earlier, ladies experienced significantly various treatment than guys in scholastic
circles and organizations.
Here in2018, the playing field is still far
from level, although the factors are much more perilous than obvious nowadays. Harvard College Observatory, circa1890(*********** )
(***** )
Let’s picture a non-controversial experiment that you may create to check this out. Put an individual in a space with a range of products showing a range of colors. Which products do they select to take a look at, have fun with, examine, or otherwise
make use of?
Which products
are chosen? When you manage for product option, do you see a choice for the specific color selected? And lastly, when you tally up everybody’s choices, what are the color choices when you take a look at males versus women? (*********** )(************* ) SHORT ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD(*************** )
The concept that there would be an inherent color choice based upon somebody’s inherent qualities isn’t insane; it’s a genuine hypothesis. However in order to go anywhere with it, we ‘d need to check it out.
Female gorilla Fatou, the earliest gorilla in Europe, beings in front of a present basket with various type of fruit on her60 th birthday at the zoo(‘ Zoologischer Garten’) in
Berlin, Germany,(*************************************************************************************************************** )April2017 Fatou has actually been residing in the zoo for58 years, and has her own choices for things and foods that are diverse. Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance by means of Getty Images
The science of color research studies returns a long time, and numerous research studies do reveal a level of gender dimorphism( or distinctions in between genders) when it pertains to color choices. As you may anticipate, numerous such research studies suggest that males have a more powerful choice for bluer colors, while women have a more powerful choice
for redder
colors.
And as you likewise may anticipate, we see these gender-linked distinctions for color choices in animals also.(************************** )Birds display screen color choices; gorillas and chimpanzees show them ; butterflies have choices; and in specific, non-human primates show(***************************** )really strong gender distinctions for both color and product choice.
(************* ) SHORT ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
An image handled October 15,2018 in Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle, northern France, reveals a Vanessa Atalanta butterfly on
a flower. Butterflies are among the pests that show
the greatest color choices understood in nature.
JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images
Based upon this proof, you would be extremely lured to conclude what may appear apparent based upon this proof, as provided here. Animals show color choices that are typically connected to gender. This should, in concept, permit us to conclude something about inherent gender choices for color.(*********** )(************ )That our closest animal family members( the primates) show it rather highly informs us that we may anticipate that human beings show
that quality
(************ )Which we see color choices in human beings based upon gender is another tip. It highly shows that we must anticipate color-preference gender distinctions that are inherent in human beings. It’s an incomparably sensible hypothesis.
Luckily for us, nevertheless, it’s a well-studied hypothesis, and the conclusions aren’t what you anticipate.
(** )
(******** )When provided with an option in between things that have various colors, colors, brightnesses or saturation levels, a range of animals and human populations will show choices that continue when you organize them together in any variety of styles.
We should beware when we reason about what this indicates for inherent human choices, nevertheless.(********* )Getty
SHORT ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
In human beings, there have actually been substantial distinctions in the outcomes of the color research study reliant upon elements such as:
when, in time, the test was carried out,
(*********************************** )what the geographical area of the research study individuals were,(************************************
and what the socializing distinctions in between males and females were.
Research studies have actually revealed a range of color choices in between genders, consisting of in choices in between cool and warm colors, brightnesses, chromaticities, tolerances for greys, choices for yellow( guys) versus orange( ladies), or for blue( guys) instead of red( ladies).
Providing a choice of similar things with different colors might expose
private choices, and those people
might aggregate to form group choices. However the concept that we can boil down which elements of those choices are because of inherent qualities and which ones are because of social qualities has yet to be shown in human beings. Getty
‘s an engaging factor for this, obviously. People aren’t simply the
amount of our genes and our evolutionary history. Sure, they contribute, however
we are likewise items of the societies we’re raised in, and liberating the social impacts from fundamental propensities is typically difficult with the restricted information we can gathering. (*********** )
SHORT ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD(***** )
We may ascribe blue as a young boy’s color and pink as a lady’s color, however these attributions are synthetic
: they’re
enforced by
structures. As just recently as a little over100 years earlier, pink was considered as a color for kids, and as a result kids showed a choice for pink, instead of blue.
When social pressures exist, they can quickly overwhelm any possible inherent choices, rendering the latter difficult to observe. When you have 2 completing signals and one controls
the other, it’s typically difficult to draw out the subdominant result.
In the majority of societies around the globe, pink is connected with ladies and ladies, while blue is connected with guys and kids. This might hold true, usually, however it states little about both the choices of any specific person and about the inherent element of such distinctions. In reality, the proof that there is a social aspect that controls is frustrating. Getty(********** )(*********** )(***** )
(***** )(************ )And this brings us to the concern of underrepresentation in science. There are less ladies than you ‘d anticipate based upon the basic population; there are
less individuals of color than you ‘d anticipate also.
Does this mean that ladies are naturally less interested or fit to
science than guys? That individuals of color are naturally less interested
or less appropriate to a science profession?
(************* )(************** )SHORT ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
(************ )Not based upon the proof.
Yes, underrepresentation is genuine. It is possible that there belongs of that underrepresentation that is because of some kind of inherent distinction or choice unique to different methods of organizing human beings
However that possibility is not just unsupported by science, it marks down the presence of recognized social pressures.
(** )(**** )
The 3 bottom lines in the biggest research study of harassment in astronomy indicate ladies of color experiencing the biggest quantities of gender and racial harassment, big levels amongst ladies and ladies of color particularly of sensation risky due to gender and race, and ladies avoiding expert occasions due to feeling risky, resulting in lost profession chances.
K. B. H. Clancy, K. M. N. Lee, E. M. Rodgers, and C. Richey (2017), J. Geophys. Res. Worlds,(****************************************************************************************************** ), 1610-1623
(******************************************** )It is well-documented(******************* )that harassment, bigotry, and casual racism/sexism penetrate environments where underrepresentation is widespread, and the result on those environments is damning. The outcome is the exemption, marginalization, and weakening of the scholastic capacity of anybody who isn’t a rich, male, white, directly, able-bodied private working in science.
(********************************************** )
Among uncountably numerous occurrences that really take place in the sciences on a near-daily basis that show how delicately inequitable mindsets can weaken and marginalize members of underrepresented groups. Alice Adenis/didthisreallyhappen. internet, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
(************ )Till we have a work environment that is devoid of harassment and abuse of:(*********** )(********************************** )(*********************************** )ladies,
individuals of color,
LGBTQ people,
individuals with specials needs,
spiritual minorities, (************************************ )
individuals from financially disadvantaged backgrounds,
(************************************* )
anybody else
who isn’t
the in-group in every method, it is unscientific to reason about the impacts of whatever fundamental distinctions might
really exist.
Harassment and bullying of college students in academic community is a widespread issue, and one that is considered as most likely partly( if not entirely) accountable for the gender variation at the greatest expert levels in the sciences. This is an issue that will need action from the leading to get rid of.
AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
In science, you should be extremely mindful that you aren’t prejudicing your experiment or observation towards drawing a preferred conclusion.
If we ignore or mark down a recognized aspect, like the
social impacts of underrepresentation on the fields that are affected with it, we will never ever draw a legitimate clinical conclusion. Till the really genuine issues existing in the work environment are repaired– up until we really develop a workplace that does not victimize its most susceptible members– we have no factor to think that fundamental distinctions play any significant function in producing or sustaining the demographics we see
amongst researchers today. Those who look for to use behavioral ecology to human beings in the work environment should take the complete suite of social impacts into account: an infamously hard set of elements to measure. Till they do, their conclusions must be treated with a law familiar to any computer system researcher: trash in, trash out.
” readability =”194(***************************************************************** )” >
. (***** ).
. SHORT ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD .
Although it’s not universal by any ways, possibilities are you envisioned a directly, white, older male when you pictured this theoretical researcher. For centuries, this was the frustrating default. In numerous clinical fields, such as physics, there’s still a gross underrepresentation of ladies and individuals of color at the greatest research study levels. Lots of people who study these variations compete that there are inherent, fundamental distinctions in between genders and/or races that might discuss these results. Regrettably for them, that concept is unscientific at this moment in time. Here’s why.
(**************** ).
(*********************************************************************************** )Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics. Almost everybody displayed in this image has a Nobel Reward to their name, and everybody other than Marie Curie is a white male in physics.(********* )Benjamin Couprie, Institut International de Body Solvay, Brussels, Belgium (*********** ).(***** ).
(***** ).(************ )Among the least questionable fields in all of science is evolutionary behavioral ecology It’s based off of an easy concept: that there are character distinctions in between animals, typically connected to inherent functions such as gender, that have evolutionary roots. Primates in specific, and mammals more usually, show distinctions in choices and qualities like grooming habits, mate choice, aggressiveness, and territoriality that seem really highly connected to gender. These distinctions usually increase when there are bigger size distinctions in between males and women.(*********** ).
For that reason, the argument goes, that human beings display big gender distinctions and strong gender-linked choices, therefore possibly there’s an inherent connection in between gender and profession option. In addition, possibly those distinctions suffice to discuss the underrepresentation of ladies in the sciences.
.(**************************************************** ).
Over a century earlier, ladies experienced significantly various treatment than guys in scholastic circles and organizations. Here in2018, the playing field is still far from level, although the factors are much more perilous than obvious nowadays. (********* )Harvard College Observatory, circa(************************************************************************************ )(********** )
(***** ).
(************ )Let’s picture a non-controversial experiment that you may create to check this out. Put an individual in a space with a range of products showing a range of colors. Which products do they select to take a look at, have fun with, examine, or otherwise make use of? Which products are chosen? When you manage for product option, do you see a choice for the specific color selected? And lastly, when you tally up everybody’s choices, what are the color choices when you take a look at males versus women?
SHORT ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD(*************** ).
The concept that there would be an inherent color choice based upon somebody’s inherent qualities isn’t insane; it’s a genuine hypothesis.
However in order to go anywhere with it, we ‘d need to check it out.
Female gorilla Fatou, the earliest gorilla in Europe, beings in front of a present basket with various type of fruit on her 60 th birthday at the zoo (‘ Zoologischer Garten’) in Berlin, Germany, 13 April2017 Fatou has actually been residing in the zoo for 58 years, and has her own choices for things and foods that are diverse. Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance by means of Getty Images
The science of color research studies returns a long time , and numerous research studies do reveal a level of gender dimorphism (or distinctions in between genders) when it pertains to color choices. As you may anticipate, numerous such research studies suggest that males have a more powerful choice for bluer colors, while women have a more powerful choice for redder colors.
And as you likewise may anticipate, we see these gender-linked distinctions for color choices in animals also. Birds display screen color choices ; gorillas and chimpanzees show them ; butterflies have choices ; and in specific, non-human primates show really strong gender distinctions for both color and product choice.
. SHORT ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
An image handled October 15, 2018 in Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle, northern France, reveals a Vanessa Atalanta butterfly on a flower. Butterflies are among the pests that show the greatest color choices understood in nature. JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images
Based upon this proof, you would be extremely lured to conclude what may appear apparent based upon this proof, as provided here. Animals show color choices that are typically connected to gender. This should, in concept, permit us to conclude something about inherent gender choices for color.
That our closest animal family members (the primates) show it rather highly informs us that we may anticipate that human beings show that quality highly also.
Which we see color choices in human beings based upon gender is another tip. It highly shows that we must anticipate color-preference gender distinctions that are inherent in human beings. It’s an incomparably sensible hypothesis.
When provided with an option in between things that have various colors, colors, brightnesses or saturation levels, a range of animals and human populations will show choices that continue when you organize them together in any variety of styles. We should beware when we reason about what this indicates for inherent human choices, nevertheless. Getty
what the geographical area of the research study individuals were,
Research studies have actually revealed a range of color choices in between genders, consisting of in choices in between cool and warm colors, brightnesses, chromaticities, tolerances for greys, choices for yellow (guys) versus orange (ladies), or for blue (guys) instead of red (ladies).
Providing a choice of similar things with different colors might expose private choices, and those people might aggregate to form group choices. However the concept that we can boil down which elements of those choices are because of inherent qualities and which ones are because of social qualities has yet to be shown in human beings. Getty
There’s an engaging factor for this, obviously. People aren’t simply the amount of our genes and our evolutionary history. Sure, they contribute, however we are likewise items of the societies we’re raised in, and liberating the social impacts from fundamental propensities is typically difficult with the restricted information we can gathering.
We may ascribe blue as a young boy’s color and pink as a lady’s color, however these attributions are synthetic: they’re enforced by our social structures. As just recently as a little over 100 years earlier, pink was considered as a color for kids, and as a result kids showed a choice for pink, instead of blue.
When social pressures exist, they can quickly overwhelm any possible inherent choices, rendering the latter difficult to observe. When you have 2 completing signals and one controls the other, it’s typically difficult to draw out the subdominant result.
In the majority of societies around the globe, pink is connected with ladies and ladies, while blue is connected with guys and kids. This might hold true, usually, however it states little about both the choices of any specific person and about the inherent element of such distinctions. In reality, the proof that there is a social aspect that controls is frustrating. Getty
And this brings us to the concern of underrepresentation in science. There are less ladies than you ‘d anticipate based upon the basic population; there are less individuals of color than you ‘d anticipate also. Does this mean that ladies are naturally less interested or fit to science than guys? That individuals of color are naturally less interested or less appropriate to a science profession?
Not based upon the proof.
Yes, underrepresentation is genuine. It is possible that there belongs of that underrepresentation that is because of some kind of inherent distinction or choice unique to different methods of organizing human beings together. However that possibility is not just unsupported by science, it marks down the presence of recognized social pressures.
The 3 bottom lines in the biggest research study of harassment in astronomy indicate ladies of color experiencing the biggest quantities of gender and racial harassment, big levels amongst ladies and ladies of color particularly of sensation risky due to gender and race, and ladies avoiding expert occasions due to feeling risky, resulting in lost profession chances. K. B. H. Clancy, K. M. N. Lee, E. M. Rodgers, and C. Richey (2017), J. Geophys. Res. Worlds, 122, 1610 – 1623
It is well-documented that harassment, bigotry, and casual racism/sexism penetrate environments where underrepresentation is widespread, and the result on those environments is damning. The outcome is the exemption, marginalization, and weakening of the scholastic capacity of anybody who isn’t a rich, male, white, directly, able-bodied private working in science.
Till we have a work environment that is devoid of harassment and abuse of:
spiritual minorities,
or anybody else who isn’t a member of the in-group in every method, it is unscientific to reason about the impacts of whatever fundamental distinctions might really exist.
Harassment and bullying of college students in academic community is a widespread issue, and one that is considered as most likely partly (if not entirely) accountable for the gender variation at the greatest expert levels in the sciences. This is an issue that will need action from the leading to get rid of. AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
In science, you should be extremely mindful that you aren’t prejudicing your experiment or observation towards drawing a preferred conclusion. If we ignore or mark down a recognized aspect, like the social impacts of underrepresentation on the fields that are affected with it, we will never ever draw a legitimate clinical conclusion. Till the really genuine issues existing in the work environment are repaired– up until we really develop a workplace that does not victimize its most susceptible members– we have no factor to think that fundamental distinctions play any significant function in producing or sustaining the demographics we see amongst researchers today. Those who look for to use behavioral ecology to human beings in the work environment should take the complete suite of social impacts into account: an infamously hard set of elements to measure. Till they do, their conclusions must be treated with a law familiar to any computer system researcher: trash in, trash out.
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Tag Archives: 12th Doctor
Doctor Who Christmas Special Twice Upon A Time Review
12th Doctor, 12th Doctors regeneration, 13th Doctor, 1st Doctor, Bill Potts, Chris Chibnall, David Bradley, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Christmas Special Twice Upon a Time, Doctor Who Twice Upon a Time, Jodie Whitaker, Mark Gatiss, Pearl Mackie, Peter Capaldi, Rachel Talalay, Steven Moffat, TARDIS, The 10th Planet, The Doctor
Doctor Who Christmas Special Twice Upon A Time
[Contains Spoilers!]
A glittering festive voyage awaits in this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special: Twice Upon a Time as the 12th Doctor (Peter Capaldi) teams up with his original self, the first Doctor (David Bradley – Harry Potter, Game Of Thrones), and former travelling companion Bill Potts (Pearl Mackie) for one finale adventure in time and space.
The two Doctors with one destiny meet in the frozen landscape of the South Pole, each stubbornly refusing to regenerate, but soon the Time Lords and their TARDISes must unite against mysterious enchanted glass people that have been snatching victims from frozen time. A First World War captain (Mark Gatiss), fated to die on the battlefield, is also plucked from the trenches to play a role in the Doctor’s story. There’s an emotional reunion with Bill Potts for the Doctor as well in this moving tale of hope during humanity’s darkest hour. Twice Upon a Time brings the 12th Doctor’s era to a spectacular close as the Time Lord confronts his past to embrace the future, before a new lifetime of adventures begins as Jodie Whittaker becomes the 13th Doctor!
As well as being Peter Capaldi’s swansong after four years as the Doctor, Twice Upon a Time is also the final episode to be written by outgoing show runner of nearly eight years, Steven Moffat, and the special 60 minute episode is directed by the brilliant Rachael Talalay (Director of 2014’s Dark Water and Death in Heaven, 2015’s Heaven Sent and Hell Bent, and 2017’s World Enough in Time and The Doctor Falls).
Peter Capaldi is on sparkling form in Twice Upon a Time as the Doctor struggles to hold back his regeneration. Tired of becoming other people his world is turned upside down when he encounters the first Doctor! From its wonderful opening recap of events from The Tenth Planet (1966) – the 1st Doctor’s final story which also featured the first appearance of the Mondasian Cybermen – Twice Upon a Time magically revisits this momentous point in the programmes history via original footage, some digital wizardry, recreations of the Snow Cap Base and the interior of the Cyber-Ship, together with David Bradley in the role of the 1st Doctor (originally played by the late William Hartnell who Bradley also portrayed in 2013’s An Adventure In Space and Time, and featuring Jared Garfield and Lily Travers in the roles of the 1st Doctor’s companions Ben and Polly.
“Its far from being all over” for the pre-regenerative Doctors just yet, as this Christmas Special sends the Time Lords to the South Pole in 1986, the Western Front in 1914, a spaceship, and ruins on a distant alien world at the heart of the universe. The fabulous chemistry between Peter Capaldi’s 12th incarnation and David Bradley’s 1st Doctor positively lights up the screen. It creates a really fun and spiky dynamic too as each Doctor confronts the reality of who they were and who they will ultimately become. At times the 12th Doctor is clearly embarrassed and frustrated by his former self‘s old fashioned attitude, while the 1st incarnation is aghast as his future self’s reliance on sonic sunglasses and the like, making for some delightful moments that are sure to raise a wry smile – especially when Bradley’s Doctor steps inside his 12th incarnations TARDIS! The 12th Doctor epitomises the heroic force of nature that the Doctor has become, while the 1st Doctor is the adventurer he was before he fully became Earth’s protector, each has their own strengths and flaws, but it is their journey together and the respect they gradually find for each other that makes Twice Upon a Time feel truly magical.
Prolific writer and guest star of Doctor Who, Mark Gatiss, also gives a strong performance as the British captain taken away from a bomb crater frozen in time during the Great War as he was confronting a wounded German soldier (played by fellow Doctor Who writer Toby Whitehouse), and his subsequent adventure with the two Time Lords and Bill has a profound affect on how events gradually unfold in the episode – even influencing the Doctor’s own timeline.
It’s great to see Pearl Mackie back as Bill Potts for the Christmas Special as well. Her character was the undisputed highlight of Season 10, and Mackie excels once again in the role of the Doctor’s former travelling companion. She also gets to meet the Doctor’s original self, her scenes with the 1st Doctor are glorious fun, especially when the action shifts to the original TARDIS (Its interior recreated in exquisite detail), but it is the moving reunion of the 12th Doctor and Bill and the dynamic between their characters that really steals the show. Twice Upon a Time brings a nice sense of closure to Bill’s time with the Doctor, and I’m so glad Moffat brought her back for Capaldi’s last story.
Unusually there are no real monsters of bad guys to speak off in Twice Upon a Time, aside from the eponymous Glass Woman that’s actually an advanced AI controlling the Testimony, whose vast spaceship takes people out of time to harmlessly record their memories before death and returning them to their fate. They’ve now set their sights on the 12th Doctor’s TARDIS because the captain has somehow become removed from time to and embroiled in the Doctor’s adventure, and they must return him to his proper place in time. Its only when the Time Lords, the captain, and Bill escape in the 1st Doctor’s TARDIS to the most comprehensive database in creation at the centre of the universe – controlled by Rusty the Dalek from 2014’s Into the Dalek – that the 12th Doctor finally realizes there is no foe to fight as Bill reveals she is part of the Testimony as well.
Along with providing a fittingly epic finale for Capaldi’s era, Moffat peppers the scrip with numerous call-backs to various elements created during his tenure as show runner, but Twice Upon a Time never feels overly burdened by the need to explain every obscure nuance or overloaded with gratuitous continuity references. Twice Upon a Time is easily one of Steven Moffat’s finest scripts for the series. It works on so many levels, profound underlying themes resonate powerfully, there’s a beautifully philosophical speech for the 12th Doctor, and it brings some mystery back to the Time Lord while celebrating his past and of course some emotional goodbyes. Its all impressively directed by Rachael Talalay, from the battle scarred landscape in WWI, to the glimpses of the Doctor’s other incarnations the 1st Doctor witnesses in the Testimony spaceship, and of course that beautifully nostalgic original TARDIS interior, Talalay brings Moffat’s script to life amidst a wealth of stunning action set-pieces and dazzling special effects to ensure this Doctor Who Christmas Special provides a rousing send off for both showruner and leading actor.
With the timeline in Ypres 1914 restored amidst the Christmas Armistice the Time Lords also discover that the captain is actually Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart (an ancestor of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), and he asks the Doctors to look after his family. As the 1st Doctor and 12th Doctor finally go their separate paths to face their regenerations Twice Upon a Time will have made you laugh, it will almost certainly have tugged at your heartstrings too, and there’s even a surprise return appearance from Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald and Matt Lucas as Nardole to bid a fond farewell to the 12th Doctor as well before that moment of regeneration finally arrives and Capaldi’s spiky eyebrows and fierce-yet-sad eyes blaze away as the Time Lord becomes Jodie Whittaker – the female incarnation of the Doctor! Her debut is, quite frankly, “oh brilliant”, and the turbulent cliff-hanger aftermath of the regeneration will leave you on the edge of your seat with anticipation for the beginning of the 13th Doctor’s adventures!
Now the stage is set for Series 11 and the beginning of Chris Chibnall’s tenure as Doctor Who’s show runner. The new season will comprise of ten week run of fifty minute episodes (with an hour long episode for the series launch) that will air in the Autumn of 2018. I’m sure Jodie Whittaker will be fantastic as the new Doctor, she was great in Broadchruch, and no doubt her portrayal of the Doctor will be just as riveting and special. The 13th Doctor will be joined by a regular cast of new friends, including Bradley Walsh as Graham, Tosin Cole as Ryan, and Mandip Gill as Yasmin. We’ve already seen the 13th Doctor’s new costume and the TARDIS exterior (it reminds me a lot of the TARDIS exterior from the 1975 classic series story Planet of Evil) in publicity pictures, we can be sure that Chris Chibnall has plenty more surprises in store for us, and I can’t wait to see the 13th Doctor and her friends new adventures in Time and Space in 2018!
And here’s that fantastic regeneration scene!
Images and Clip belong BBC
Doctor Who Christmas Special Twice Upon a Time 2017 Trailer #2
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Check out the new trailer for
The Doctor Who Christmas Special Twice Upon a Time!
Two Doctors, one destiny! The magical final chapter of the Twelfth Doctor’s journey is coming. Don’t miss ‘Twice Upon a Time’ this Christmas!
Doctor Who 2017 Christmas Special Twice Upon A Time Special Preview Clip
Posted by Paul Bowler in All, Doctor Who, Trailers & Posters
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Doctor Who 2017 Christmas Special Twice Upon A Time Children In Need Clip
As part of the BBC’s annual Children in Need live charity fundraising event on BBC One, Doctor Who fans were treated to a preview clip of the Doctor Who 2017 Christmas special Twice Upon a Time! Written by Steven Moffat (his last story before Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall takes over as show runner) and directed by Rachel Talalay, Twice Upon a Time is also Peter Capaldi’s final adventure as the 12th Doctor before he regenerates into 13th incarnation played by Jodie Whittaker. Twice Upon a Time also features David Bradley as the 1st Doctor, Pearl Mackie as Bill, and Mark Gatiss as a World War I solider known as ‘The Captain’ Check out the special preview clip, where the 1st Doctor enters the 12th Doctor TARDIS first show on Children in Need! Can’t wait for this Doctor Who Christmas Special!
Doctor Who Series 10 Trailer Released!
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Check out the awesome new Doctor Who Series 10 trailer! Staring Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, with Pearl Mackie as new companion Bill, along with Matt Lucas as Nardole, Doctor Who Series 10, begins on Saturday 15th April 2017! I think it’s a great looking trailer, lots of locations and monsters, can’t wait for the new series!
Images Belong BBC
Game of Thrones Star Maisie Williams To Guest Star In Doctor Who Series 9
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The official BBC Doctor Who website has revealed that Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, will appear in a guest role in Doctor Who Series 9 when the hit BBC One show returns in the Autumn. .
Speaking of her first day on set Maisie Williams said: “I’m so excited to be working on Doctor Who as it’s such a big and important part of British Culture. I can’t wait to meet the cast and crew and start filming, especially as we’ll be shooting not too far from my home town.”
Steven Moffat, lead writer and Executive Producer, also added, “We’re thrilled to have Maisie Williams joining us on Doctor Who. It’s not possible to say too much about who or what she’s playing, but she is going to challenge the Doctor in very unexpected ways.”
Series Nine of Doctor Who looks set to be the best yet, and I look forward to seeing Maisie Williams appearing on Doctor Who alongside Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman.
Doctor Who Kill The Moon Review
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Kill the Moon
[Contains Spoilers]
After Courtney Woods figured out the Doctor’s secret in The Caretaker, the Time Lord finally grants the Coal Hill School pupil another opportunity to travel in the TARDIS when he offers Courtney the chance to visit the Moon in the future – despite Clara’s reservations. When the TARDIS arrives in 2049 the Doctor, Clara, and Courtney find themselves on a recycled NASA space shuttle with a crew on a suicide mission to blow up the Moon. The shuttle crash lands on the lunar surface, where they discover a derelict mining base full of corpses smothered in webbing. With horrible spider-like creatures scurrying in the darkness, a frightening dilemma must be faced, but when Clara needs the Doctor’s help the most her faith in the Time Lord is severely tested, leaving her wondering if this man she’s trusted so implicitly is really the hero she believed him to be…
Kill the Moon continues the darker, more mysterious tone of series eight, in this exciting seventh episode, from Peter Harness the writer of BBC One’s Wallander and the channels forthcoming adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, this story transports us to a time where the Moon has become a deadly threat to the Earth. Our nearest neighbour has changed somehow, growing denser, the effect on Earth has been devastating, and giant tidal surges threaten to wash away all of civilisation on the planet. Directed by Paul Wilmhurst (Whose many credits include Silent Witness, Law and Order UK, Strike Back, and DaVinci’s Demons) Kill The Moon is an incredibly tense and darkly atmospheric episode where what began as a straightforward trip into the future to allow Courtney to visit Earth’s satellite suddenly becomes an all-out battle for the survival of the human race.
From its adrenaline fuelled opening, as the space shuttle crash lands on the Moon, the Doctor, Clara, and Courtney are thrown into an uneasy alliance with the ships crew. The base, with its sinister webbed interior and gruesome dead bodies, heightens the tension even further as they explore and something ominous begins to stir in the shadows. Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman have built up a brilliant chemistry between the Doctor and Clara, the Time Lord’s friendship with his companion is brought into even sharper focus in Kill the Moon, especially when his actions during this episode give her real cause for concern about her future with the Doctor. Ellis George delivers another impressive performance as Courtney Woods, the Doctor’s newest travelling companion, and her first proper adventure in the TARDIS certainly opens Courtney’s eyes to the sights the universe has to offer – but she also discovers just how dangerous the Doctor’s and Clara’s adventures can become.
After learning the grisly fate of the Mexican crew of the mining base, the Doctor, Clara, Courtney and Lundvik become cornered by one of the creatures inside the base. When trying to evade the spider, Courtney is momentarily separated from the others and uses the antibacterial spray she had in the TARDIS to kill the vicious arachnid. Unnerved by her experience, Courtney wants to go home. The Doctor begrudgingly takes Courtney back to the TARDIS, where she passes the time by posting pictures of the Doctor on Tumblr. However, when Clara suggests to the Doctor they should leave as well because she’s been to the future and knows the Moon isn‘t destroyed, the Time Lord gravely reminds her there are some moments in time that even he cannot see – and this is one such grey area that whatever happens to the Moon hasn’t been decided yet.
The human astronauts are led by Captain Lundvik, played by Hermione Norris (Spooks, Cold Feet, Wire in the Blood, and In the Club), who together with her team: Duke (Tony Osoba, who also appeared as Lan in the 1979 story Destiny of the Daleks, and Kracauer in 1987’s Dragonfire), Henry (Phill Nice), and McKean (Christopher Dane), are determined to complete their mission and destroy the moon using the shuttles payload of nuclear bombs. Even though the Moon is threatening all life on Earth, when the Doctor discovers the secret within the satellites interior it brings him into conflict with Lundvik and Clara. When Courtney decides she wants to help the Doctor instructs her to use a special DVD that will bring the TARDIS to the mining base. As the surface of the Moon starts to break up the horrifying spider creatures swarm to the surface. The Doctor knows the time has come for him to depart in the TARDIS, leaving Clara, Courtney and Lundvik to make this momentous decision alone, even though his actions place them all in terrible danger.
The Moon has been a popular setting for many of the Doctor’s adventures, the second Doctor battled the Cybermen in The Moonbase (1967) and the Ice Warriors in The Seeds of Death (1969), the 3rd Doctor was sent to a penal colony on the Moon in Frontier in Space (1973), and in Smith and Jones (2007) the 10th Doctor and Martha Jones were transported (along with the Royal Hope Hospital) to the lunar surface where they faced the Judoon and a hungry Plasmavore. The production team returned to the scene of an old adventure to film Kill the Moon, travelling to Lanzarote, where the 5th Doctor story Planet of Fire was filmed in 1983, where the island featured as itself and also doubled for the volcanic plant of Sarn. Kill the Moon makes good used of this location, the stark volcanic landscape provides a really effective double for the lunar surface, and the finished result is seamlessly blended with visual effects to create some amazing scenery for the story.
The Doctor also uses a yo-yo to test the local gravity during this story, something the 4th Doctor did on the Nerva space station in The Ark in Space (1975), and he also practiced tricks with one in The Brain of Morbius (1976). Clara’s instance that she knows the Moon isn’t destroyed in the future mirrors a similar quandary raised by Sarah Jane Smith in The Pyramids of Mars (1975), where the journalist is certain Sutekh didn’t destroy the world in 1911 because she’s from 1980, and the 4th Doctor shows her an alternative time where Sutekh has in fact destroyed the world to illustrate why they can’t just leave in the TARDIS.
The spiders in Kill the Moon are a really creepy and menacing. For the most part they actually keep to the shadows, emanating an unsettling clicking sound as they stalk their prey, before suddenly leaping out to attack. After Courtney manages to kill one the Doctor examines the Prokaryotic Unicellular Life form, and when the Time Lord discovers traces of amniotic fluid on the lunar surface, his suspicions are later verified by a scan of the Moon’s interior. The spiders are like a kind of bacteria, and they’ve been living on a much the larger creature that’s been growing and evolving inside the Moon itself. The Moon isn‘t just breaking up, it’s actually hatching, the Moon is a gigantic egg and a new life form is about to be born into the universe.
Clara faces a life-changing situation to make for all humanity when it seems like the Doctor has abandoned them. With Lundvik’s help, Clara manages to send a message to Earth, one that is broadcast worldwide, where she asks everyone on the planet to help them decide – by either turning their lights to off destroy the Moon with the nuclear bombs or keep them on to allow the creature to hatch and survive. When they see the lights go out around the world, Lundvik arms the bombs, but Clara stops the countdown at the last moment. The Doctor returns and takes them back to Earth in the TARDIS, where they witness the Moon break up as the beautiful winged creature emerges – leaving something very special behind for the Earth as it flies off into the depths of space.
The Doctor knew this was a decision that only humanity could make, he couldn’t do it for them, and he was sure Clara would make the right choice in the end. From this point onwards, during the mid 21st century, the events of this day would inspire humanity to reach out to the stars, and they would ultimately set out to explore the universe. After returning Courtney to school, the Doctor is ready to set of on another adventure, but Clara brings the TARDIS to a halt and angrily confronts the Time Lord about what happened. Jenna Coleman is absolutely terrific in this scene, Clara’s furious diatribe even catches the Doctor off guard, and after she’s stormed out of the TARDIS it doesn’t take Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson) long to figure out what’s happened and offer his advise as he knows all too well what she’s going through because of his experiences in the army.
The Doctor’s reasoning for leaving Clara, Courtney and Lundvik on the Moon, telling them it’s their choice, is quite unlike anything we’ve seen the Time Lord do before in this kind of situation. Kill the Moon highlights just how alien and detached this 12th incarnation can be. Peter Capaldi is magnificent in this episode and the Time Lord’s actions here are sure to have long lasting repercussions for the rest of series eight.
Kill the Moon is a dark, thrilling, and emotional roller coaster ride of an episode from Peter Harness. Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, and Ellis George all deliver brilliant performances in this episode, they make a great team, which makes the resolution of the crisis at the heart of this adventure seem all the more bitter sweet as a result. Paul Wilmhurst’s excellent direction masterfully builds the tension and suspense during the first half of the episode. The dark and sinister atmosphere is heightened even further when the spiders emerge, the Doctor’s and Clara’s friendship is tested to breaking point, and Wilmhurst keeps piling on the shocks and scares right up until the climatic final scenes that will leave you wondering where the Doctor and Clara can go from here.
Doctor Who The Caretaker Review
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Clara is just about managing to keep her life under control, with her job at Coal Hill School, her adventures in time and space; a new boyfriend, and the Doctor, things are all ticking along nicely. However, when the Doctor needs to go undercover in Coal Hill School as its new Caretaker, things get decidedly complicate for Clara. With strange events happening near the school, the entire world is soon at risk as the terrifying Skovox Blitzer prepares to wipe out all humanity, and if that wasn’t enough for the Impossible Girl to deal with Clara’s well organised world is suddenly thrown into complete turmoil when Danny Pink finally meets the Doctor…
Coal Hill School takes centre stage in The Caretaker, the sixth episode of series eight, co-written by Gareth Roberts and Steven Moffat, and directed by Paul Murphy (Robot of Sherwood). The school played a prominent role in the very first episode of Doctor Who in 1963; it was revisited by the 7th Doctor in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988), before featuring in the 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor (2013), and again most recently in the 2014 eighth series episodes Into the Dalek and Listen. Gareth Roberts has written several Doctor Who stories: including The Shakespeare Code (2007), The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008), the Lodger (2010), and Closing time (2011), Roberts has also written many episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures (co-writing the pilot episode Invasion of the Bane with Russell T Davies) and co-wrote the second story in the Doctor Who series of specials in 2009, The Planet of the Dead (also with Russell T Davies). The Caretaker has some similarities with The Lodger, from Matt Smith’s first season, when the 11th Doctor moved into Craig Owens flat to defeat a hidden alien menace, where the Doctor’s attempts to blend also were far from successful.
The Caretaker sees the Doctor taking a new job as Coal Hill School’s new Caretaker, Mr John Smith (A popular alias used by many of the Doctor’s incarnations over the course of the series, and first used by the 2nd Doctor in the 1968 story The Wheel in Space), much to Clara’s horror, and soon the grouchy old Time Lord is causing all sorts of problems for her when he moves the TARDIS into the Caretaker’s storeroom at the school to investigate a new threat facing the Earth. Peter Capaldi has some brilliant comedic moments as the Doctor in this episode, its great fun to see his grumpy and impatient incarnation of the Time Lord trying to get on with his mission, but he soon finds that “boring little humans” and everyday life at Coal Hill School have a way of upsetting his carefully mapped plans to defeat the Skovox Blitzer.
With an increasingly exasperated Clara trying to stop her life imploding around her, matters are complicated even further when events draw Coal Hill pupil Courtney (Ellis George) into the fray. We first saw Courtney momentarily in Deep Breath and Into the Dalek, in The Caretaker we get to know her a bit more, she turns out to be something of a kindred spirit for the Doctor, and she can be every bit as blunt and direct to the point is the Coal Hill’s cantankerous new caretaker.
Clara Oswald is busy living two completely separate lives, having exciting adventures with Doctor one moment, before returning to her life as a teacher at Coal Hill School, while also dating ex-soldier turned maths teacher, Danny Pink. So, when the Doctor postpones Clara’s next adventure because he’s busy with something else, she’s far from impressed when the Doctor later walks into the staff room at Coal Hill School and introduces himself as the new Caretaker. While a Police CSO (Nigel Betts) investigates a disturbance in a nearby abandoned building, only to discover something extremely nasty hiding in the shadows, the Doctor instigates his plan to scan for the alien technology that is threatening the planet. Meanwhile, Clara’s frenetic attempts to keep the Doctor from meeting Danny ultimately prove unsuccessful, and results with a series of misunderstanding between all three of them.
Series eight has shown that although Clara still travels with the Doctor, she‘s still very much a control freak, insisting the Time Lord returns her to her own time moments after she left so that she doesn’t miss out on events happening in her own life. However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Clara to balance her normal life with her time travelling adventures, things start getting really chaotic in The Caretaker with the Doctor working at the school, especially now that she’s also dating ex-soldier Danny as well. Having set up a circle of time mines around the school to deal with the alien threat, the scan reveals the Skovox Blitzer’s location, and the Doctor finally explains to Clara how he will use a special watch that can make him invisible to lure the machine creature back to the school where the Chronodyne Generators will drag it into time vortex – sending the Skovox Blitzer billions of years into the future. But when Danny finds some of the devices and accidentally deactivates them, the Doctor’s plan only manages to send the Skovox Blitzer three days into the future – leaving Clara with some serious explaining to do now that Danny knows about the Doctor and the TARDIS, and Clara’s mortified when Danny initially believes she’s an alien and that the Doctor is her space dad!
Samuel Anderson also returns as Danny Pink in The Caretaker, and with all the strange happenings at the school it’s not long before Danny figures out what’s been going on. So, when the one thing that Clara has worked so hard to avoid finally happens, naturally all hell breaks loose as Danny Pink meets the Doctor for the first time. The Doctor is very rude to Danny, particularly after he discovers Danny’s a former-soldier, something the Time Lord has voiced reservations about since his regeneration, and this episode goes some way to addressing the Doctor’s stance on this issue – which has seemed somewhat at odds with the character especially considering his past friendship with UNIT and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. There’s a magnificent scene where Danny uses the Doctor’s watch to make himself invisible to observe the Doctor when he’s with Clara, but when the Time Lord notices Danny a furious argument breaks out between them inside the TARDIS – one that offers us an entirely new perspective on the Doctor’s relationship with his companions when Danny compares the Time Lord’s attitude to that of a military officer.
The Skovox Blitzer (Jimmy (Vee) is one of the most deadly and efficient killing machines ever constructed, its ruthlessly efficient, following its programming to the letter, and has hidden itself near Coal Hill School as it prepares to bring about the destruction of all humanity. The Doctor states the Skovox Blitzer homed in on this location because of the high concentration of atron emissions that have accumulated in and around this area over the years, probably due to its special connection with the Time Lord’s many adventures, and that it has enough explosive firepower in its armoury to take out the entire planet.
When the Skovox Blitzer reappears earlier than expected during Coal Hill School’s parents evening, the Doctor has to act quickly or everyone will be killed. With Clara acting as a decoy to draw the Skovox Blitzer to the storeroom, and with Danny’s timely intervention to distract it, the Doctor is finally able to shut the lethal machine down before it self-destructs. As the Doctor sends the deactivated Skovox Blitzer into space and welcomes a newfound friend to the TARDIS, Clara and Danny reach a mutual understanding about her adventures with the Time Lord, and somewhere in space and time a new arrival reaches the Promised Land.
The Caretaker is a fun, action-packed story from Gareth Robert’s and Steven Moffat. Peter Capaldi is really making the role of the 12th Doctor his own now, and he seems equally at home playing the lighter, more comedic elements as he does with the darker aspects of the Time Lord’s character. There are some great scenes for Jenna Coleman and Samuel Anderson as well, especially when Clara and Danny team up with the Doctor against the Skovox Blitzer, and director Paul Murphy strikes a perfect balance between the humours moments and fast-paced action sequences.
The Caretaker also features a coda where the Police CSO killed by the Skovox Blitzer finds himself in minimalist office situated in vast white corridor, where he’s greeted by the a sinister man, Seb (Chris Addison). When asked, Seb tell him this place has a number of names: heaven, afterlife, the Promised Land, and the Nethersphere. Missy (Michelle Gomez) enters the corridor from another door, but she says nothing and walks away. It would seem she is too busy to see the latest arrival to her realm, and as he looks out of the window, the Police CSO is visibly shaken by what he sees. This unsettling scene continues to build upon the mystery surrounding this uncanny Mary-Poppin’s like character, presenting us with even more tantalising questions about what she’s up to, and this time her demeanour is darkly sever and far from welcoming.
Although the threat of the Skovox Blitzer is resolved a little simplistically, its alien technology still presents a very unusual menace for the Doctor and Clara to battle. The Caretaker really puts Clara’s friendship with the Doctor to the test, which provides lots of fun moments throughout the episode, especially when the Doctor gatecrashes one of her lessons and later mistakenly thinks Adrian (Edward Harrison) is Clara’s boyfriend because he looks similar to the 11th Doctor and wears a bow-tie. However, now that Danny has met the Doctor, and with Courtney also discovering the Time Lords secret, it looks like Clara’s delicately balanced double-life as school teacher and time traveller is about to become even more hectic than ever before.
Doctor Who Time Heist Review
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Time Heist
Presented with a task he cannot refuse, the Doctor becomes a bank robber, and brings together a team of talented criminals to rob the most dangerous bank in the galaxy. With the help of a mutant shape shifter and computer-enhanced human, the Doctor and Clara must find a way to get past the advanced security within the Bank of Karabraxos, controlled by the villainous Ms Delphox, where the Doctor and his team soon encounter the Teller: a fearsome telepathic creature of unimaginable power that can detect guilt…
Time Heist plunges the Doctor and Clara into an adventure where time travel and bank heist collide in this fifth episode of series eight, co-written by Stephen Thompson and Steven Moffat. Having brought us The Curse of the Black Spot (2011) and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, Stephen Thompson latest offering is an exciting high-concept adventure that combines Doctor Who with Ocean’s 11 and a hint of Mission Impossible, as the Doctor and his team attempt to beak into the most highly guarded bank in the cosmos.
Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman are once more on great form in this episode as the Doctor visits Clara while she’s getting ready for a date with Danny, when a surprise phone call to the TARDIS suddenly finds them awakening on another world – their memories erased by memory worms (creatures first seen in the 2012 Christmas Special: The Snowmen). The Doctor and Clara have little choice but to accept their mission from the mysterious Architect to rob the Bank of Karabraxos, together with their fellow team members: the beautiful shape-shifter Saibra (Pippa Bennett-Warner) and cyber-augmented computer hacker Psi (Jonathan Bailey).
All movement on this planet is monitored, even the air is regulated. The Bank of Karabraxos also has the ultimate security system, the terrifying mind-reading alien: The Teller. The Doctor and his team have some protection from the creatures power because their memories have been wiped, but with no idea how to carry out the heist they‘ve been hired to perform, they must rely on a series of briefcases left by the Architect to guide them. Once the Doctor and his team manage to get into the Deposit Booth, their presence is detected, putting the mission and their lives in jeopardy. The ruthless head of security at the bank, Ms Delphox (Keeley Hawes), is determined to stop the Doctor’s gang and keep the impregnable banks secrets and its reputation secure.
Time Heist is an involving and action-packed story from writer Stephen Thompson. The clever use of time travel to rob a bank is really inspired, complex, exciting, and with a fascinating central premise, the real highlight of Time Heist is seeing the Doctor working with a team of professional criminals to break into the Bank of Karabraxos. The scene where Psi attempt to distract the Teller features the hacker accessing a colourful array of computerised mug shots: where we see a Teripletil (originally seen in the 1982 story the Visitation), a Slitheen (aliens that have featured in a number of new Doctor Who and Sarah Jane Adventures), a Sensorite (last seen 1964‘s The Sensorites), Androvax and the Trickster (both from the Sara Jane Adventures), Captain John Heart (James Masters) who appeared in Torchwood’s second season, an Ice Warrior of the same design seen in Cold War (2013), the Gunslinger from A Town Called Mercy (2012), and Absalom Daak (the Dalek Killer) a popular character from the Doctor Who comic strips.
Capaldi’s 12th Doctor is at his grouchy, disagreeable best in Time Heist, he’s far less user-friendly than his predecessor, and seems almost frustrated at times by his team’s inability to keep up with him – which makes him that little bit more dangerous and unpredictable. Pippa Bennett-Warner is great as the shape-shifter Saibra, she even gets to impersonate Clara at one point, and Jonathan Bailey is also really good as computer wiz-kid Psi. The scene were Psi brings the Doctor to task about his “professional detachment” is another superb moment. Jenna Coleman also has plenty to do in Time Heist, she’s an integral part of the Doctor’s team, and because their memories get erased it leads to really some fun banter between them during the episode.
Using a dimensional shift bomb the Doctor and his fellow bank robbers descend to the service level, where they uncover the horrific fate of those who have dared to cheat the bank. With security closing in, the teams escape route inadvertently leads them into frightening encounters with the Teller, where first Saibra, and then later once Ms Delphox has unleashed the Teller to track them down, Psi, valiantly sacrifice themselves using the exit strategy provided for them by the Architect. After this deadly game of cat and mouse with the Teller, a solar storm begins battering the planet, allowing the Doctor and Clara the chance they need to finally break into the vault and use the code from the last case to find the things that their team most wanted to find in all the universe.
Keely Hawes gives a brilliant performances as Ms Delphox, the wickedly evil head of security at the Bank of Karabraxos, with her deadly golden armoured guards and icy-cool charm, she makes a perfect adversary for the Doctor. The way Mrs Delphox deals with a customer who is trying to swindle the bank is quite horrific, and she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to stop the Doctor his and team from reaching the vault.
After trying to locate the contents of the Private Vault the Doctor and Clara are captured and Ms Delphox orders her guards to dispose of them. The guards are actually Saibra and Psi in disguise; it seems the disintegrator “exit strategy” devices given to them by the Architect were really teleports to a ship hidden in orbit. The Doctor gives them the items they found in the vault as payment for their mission, Saibra has the gene suppressant antidote she wanted to cure her mutation and Psi receives the neophyte circuit to restore his memories.
With the solar storm sweeping the planet, the Doctor and his allies gain access to the Private Vault, where the Director of the Bank is revealed as Madame Karabraxos. She has used numerous clones of herself to control her own security, of which Mrs Delphox was just one of many, and it quickly becomes apparent that Madame Karabraxos has no qualms about “firing”, quite literally, any clones that fail her. A sudden flash of inspiration inspires the Doctor to give Madame Karabraxos the phone number for the TARDIS on a scrap of paper as she gathers her valuables, revealing he is a time traveller, before asking her to call him should she ever have any regrets as she departs. The Teller arrives and the Doctor willingly allows the creature to scan his mind, unblocking his memories, revealing the Doctor was really the Architect and shows the Time Lord how he set up the whole heist and planted all of the cases to enable his team to reach their goal.
The Teller (Ross Mullan) is an alien being whose telepathic powers have been subverted and slaved to Ms Delphox’s will in order to provide the Bank of Karabraxos with the most ingenious and impregnable security system in the universe. This creature has awesome powers, and even the Doctor has never encountered anything quite like it before. The way it locks onto a persons mind to wipe it completely, feasting on their memories before turning their brain to “soup”, leaving them alive but in a state far worse than death, is very unsettling. We discover that the Teller is not the last of its kind as Ms Delphox claimed, and that the Doctor has orchestrated the entire heist to free another member of the Teller’s species, a female that’s been imprisoned in the Private Vault by Madame Karabraxos as a bargaining chip to ensure the Teller’s complete obedience to the Bank of Karabraxos. The Doctor helps both aliens and uses the TARDIS to take them to a planet where they can live together in peace and solitude, free from the mental traffic of the universe.
Time Heist is a fast-paced Sci-Fi crime-caper from Stephen Thompson and Steven Moffat, the story makes great use of its diverse cast of characters, Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman are excellent as the Doctor and Clara, I really like how their characters interact with Saibra and Psi, lets hope they return to work with the Doctor again one day. It’s also ingenious how the phone call from the elderly Madame Karabraxos instigates the whole adventure, and the Doctor being jealous about Danny was priceless. Time Heist is the second story directed by Douglas Mackinnon for Peter Capaldi’s debut season, and just as he did with Listen, Mackinnon’s stylish use of striking and innovative visuals, together with the stunning CGI vistas featuring the bank, really enhances the story, capturing the heist vibe perfectly, to make Time Heist a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting adventure.
Doctor Who Into The Dalek Review
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Into The Dalek
In a remote corner of the galaxy a Dalek Saucer hunts down a lone spacecraft. The Doctor saves a soldier, Journey Blue, seconds before the vessel is destroyed and returns her to the rebels command ship, the Aristotle. The rebel’s hidden base contains the human forces last hope of survival, a Dalek captive, one afflicted with a bizarre malfunction. The Doctor must travel into darkness, on his most dangerous adventure yet. A miniaturised squad of troops, along with the Doctor and Clara, begin a fantastic voyage into the Dalek. With the Dalek fleet closing in, the Doctor must look to his conscience as he confronts a decision that could alter the Dalek race forever…
Into The Dalek takes the Doctor to one of the most dangerous places in the universe, a place where even he’s weary of visiting, the inside of a Dalek itself! With its exhilarating story by Phil Ford (co-writer on The Waters of Mars (2009), writer of the animated Dreamland (2009), and contributor to the Sarah Jane Adventures) and show-runner Steven Moffat, and Directed by filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Kill List and Sightseers), Into The Dalek sees the new Doctor confronting his old enemies, the Daleks, and the Doctor finds he needs Clara by his side now more than ever.
Returning to Earth to collect Clara from Coal Hill School, the Doctor and Clara are soon back on the Aristotle. The humans last chance rests with their “patient”, a Dalek, one so battle damaged that it has actually become good. The Doctor and Clara are taken to meet the Dalek prisoner. Intrigued by this Dalek’s unusual behaviour, the Doctor agrees to help them and find a way to use this malfunction against the rest of the Daleks. The Doctor, Clara and a special team of soldiers are miniaturised and injected into the damaged Dalek through its eyepiece on a mission to find the cause of this sickly Dalek’s altered moral state. The Dalek seems willing to cooperate, but can it really be trusted?
No Doctor ever really seems like the Doctor until they’ve battled the Daleks. Peter Capaldi’s first run in with the Daleks in this second story of series eight is a fittingly action-packed adventure. Capaldi delivers a towering performance as the Doctor. Faced with a chance to strike back at his old adversaries, the Time Lord must soon confront some unpleasant home truths about himself, while also getting miniaturised and sent on a mission inside a Dalek to boot! Of course, this isn’t the first time that Doctor Who has ventured into the realm of The Fantastic Voyage (1966), Tom Baker’s 4th Doctor and his companion Leela (Louise Jamerson) also got miniaturised and injected into the Doctor’s brain to defeat the Nucleus of the Swarm in the 1977 story: The Invisible Enemy. Into the Dalek sees the Doctor placed in the most dangerous situation imaginable. The scenes inside the Dalek are really effective, offering a fascinating new perspective on the universes most feared supreme beings, and Peter Capaldi brings so much gravitas to the role of the Doctor that you are left hanging on his every word after he’s miniaturised and sets about exploring the Dalek’s interior – where he gravely surmises the technology that has refined hatred into an evil beyond all imagining.
Into The Dalek is another good episode for Clara, as she is miniaturised along with the Doctor and the soldiers, and quickly finds she’s right at the heart of the action when their mission becomes a desperate battle for survival. Jenna Coleman is excellent Clara, and she’s involved in many of the stories key moments. The scenes in the TARDIS where the Doctor asks her if her to be a “pal” and tell him if he’s a good man, which featured so prominently in the series eight trailer, is finally put into context here, and there is a nice moment of levity between Capaldi and Coleman as well, when the Doctor later introduces her as his carer! Clara is still getting used to the new Doctor, there’s a really interesting dynamic developing here, and she’s not afraid to stand up to this more argumentative incarnation either. There’s also a hint of romance in the air back on Earth for Clara when new maths teacher, and ex-soldier, Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson), starts work at Coal Hill School, and despite the awkwardness of their first meeting, she eventually asks him out for a drink.
The crew of the Aristotle: Journey Blue (Zawe Ashton), Colonel Morgan Blue (Michael Smiley), Gretchen (Laura dos Santos), and Ross (Ben Compton) are all fairly well developed characters, and you get a real sense of how desperate the situation has become as these human survivors make their last stand against the Daleks. Once miniaturised and inside the damaged Dalek, nicknamed “Rusty” by the Doctor, there are some really tense encounters with the Dalek antibodies along with a heroic act of self-sacrifice as well.
Into The Dalek initially conjures up memories of the Robert Shearman episode Dalek (2005), from series one, which also featured a lone Dalek prisoner. Into The Dalek, while not exactly peppered with references to other Dalek stories, certainly embodies aspects from a few episodes that immediately spring to mind: that familiar Dalek heartbeat sound effect, a mainstay of nearly every Dalek story since their first appearance, which begins once the miniaturised team are inside the Dalek, seems even more ominous in this setting, the Doctor also reflects on his first encounter with the Daleks on Skaro, Rusty screeches “Death to the Daleks” at one point, the title of the third Doctor story that featured the Daleks in 1974, and we see moments of destruction from Journey’s End (2008).
The moment that really strikes a cord happens after the Doctor repairs the Dalek, and its original moral setting gets inadvertently restored. Clara gets to see a much darker side to this Doctor, especially after they’ve fallen into the Dalek’s organic refuse disposal, the way she challenges the Doctor when he’s about to give up on Rusty is superb, she also plays a key role in helping reboot Rusty’s memories, enabling the Dalek to once again experience the miracle of seeing the birth of a star and the endless rebirth of the universe. The Doctor manages to link into the Dalek’s mind, helping to open its thoughts to accept the truth of the Daleks, but Rusty is soon overwhelmed by the Time Lord’s ingrained hatred of the Dalek race. Rusty turns against the Daleks attacking the Aristotle and exterminates them, before leaving in the Dalek ship to continue its mission to destroy the Daleks. Though victory may be his, the Doctor is left troubled by the hatred the Dalek saw within him.
The Daleks are back, as hell-bent on universal domination as ever, and exterminating everything in sight. Phil Ford’s and Steven Moffat’s exciting scrip, with its intriguing central premise, engineers some fantastic moments for Capaldi’s Doctor, as he confronts a fascinating moral dilemma. With its disturbing insight into the concept of Dalek purity, unnervingly friendly lone Dalek (Barnaby Edwards), and titanic showdown between the Daleks (Voice of the Daleks by Nicholas Briggs) the Doctor’s old enemies are as menacing and as ruthless as ever.
Journey Blue endures the loss of her brother and her adventure inside the Dalek is fraught with challenges. Through it all she finds an unwavering trust in the Doctor, she asks to join the Doctor on his adventures, but he sombrely declines because she’s a soldier. With Clara taking a shine to Danny Pink it will be interesting to see what the Doctor makes of his companions blossoming relationship with this former soldier. There is also another brief interlude featuring the mysterious Missy (Michelle Gomez), a bizarre character who seems to be gathering up people that have recently died or sacrificed themselves for the Doctor.
With excellent Direction by Ben Wheatley, Into The Dalek fully embraces the darker tone of series eight, the underlying tension between the Doctor and the captive Dalek is positively electric, and Capaldi’s performance is riveting. The miniaturised crew’s exploration of the Dalek’s interior provides some really tense and claustrophobic scenes; there are moments of dark psychological horror, and some great character development for the Doctor and Clara. The special effects and big action set-pieces are truly spectacular, and by the time the Daleks begin gliding through the airlock you’ll be completely immersed in the spectacle of it all.
Into the Dalek provides a great second adventure for Peter Caaldi’s new Doctor, with its bold storyline, great dialogue, and impressive visual effects this episode is a sure fire winner. Dalek stories are always something special, the trick is finding new ways to feature them and keep them interesting, and Into The Dalek with its good script and excellent direction provides a fittingly action-packed adventure for the return of the Daleks!
Images Belong To BBC
Doctor Who Deep Breath Review
12th Doctor, Ben Wheatley, Clara, Deep Breath, Dinosaurs, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Deep Breath Review, Doctor Who Series 8, Jenna Coleman, Madame Vastra, Missy, Peter Capaldi, Steven Moffat, Strax, TARDIS
Doctor Who Deep Breath
In Victorian London, a dinosaur suddenly appears outside the Houses of Parliament. The Paternoster Gang, investigating trio extraordinaire, Silurian Warrior Madame Vastra (Neve Mclntosh), her human wife/maid Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart), and the Sontaran Nurse/Butler Strax (Dan Starkey), arrive to help Inspector Gregson (Paul Hickey) just as the T-Rex spits the TARDIS out onto the banks of the Thames. After taking charge the Paternoster Gang soon encounter a newly regenerated Doctor (Peter Capaldi) when he emerges from the TARDIS along with travelling companion, Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman).
On their return to the Paternoster Gang’s residence Clara struggles to accept the Doctor’s transformation and new personality. When the Doctor witnesses the dinosaur bursting into flames from the rooftops, he sets off to investigate, and soon the connection with the recent outbreak of spontaneous combustion in the capitol becomes apparent. A newspaper advertisement for the Impossible Girl catches Clara’s eye. Believing it’s a message from the Doctor, she goes to meet the Time Lord in a restaurant, where the patrons turn out to be clockwork robots from the 51st century, controlled by the sinister Half-Face Man (Peter Ferdinando), who has been ghoulishly harvesting human body parts to rebuild himself.
Trapped inside the robots buried spaceship, the Doctor manages to escape, seemingly abandoning Clara in his confused state. Clara holds her breath to try and evade the robots, she’s captured, but the Doctor uses a robot disguise to reach her as the Paternoster Gang join the battle. The Doctor and his companions must end the terrifying menace of the Half-Face Man before he can escape, but exactly who is this new incarnation of the Doctor, is he a good man, and will the Time Lord’s friendship with Clara survive?
The eighth series of Doctor Who launched in a blaze of publicity with Deep Breath, a special feature-length episode, staring Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman, and written by show runner Steven Moffat, and Directed by Brian Minchin. Deep Breath certainly gets the 12th Doctor’s era off to a great start as Peter Capaldi, actor, Oscar-winning film-maker, writer, artist, and life-long fan of the show, known for playing darker roles, especially the notoriously potty-mouthed Malcolm Tucker from BBC’s cult political comedy The Thick of It, brings a much darker, edgier side to his incarnation of the Time Lord. With his piercing gaze, wild eyebrows, spiky attitude, and unpredictable nature, the 12th Doctor is instantly captivating, very impatient, abrasive, and even a little intimidating at times. Peter Capaldi’s superb performance energises virtually every scene and quickly establishes the mercurial idiosyncrasies of the new Doctor’s personality.
Post-regenerative high jinks aside, in between forgetting everyone’s name, his insistence that Clara is a control freak, running across rooftops in his nightshirt, or charging off into the night on horseback, the Doctor actually spends a lot of his time in Deep Breath telling people, and even a dinosaur, to shut up! There is a great scene were the bewildered Doctor meets a tramp, Barney, played by Brian Miller (the widower of Elisabeth Sladen), where the ensuing discussion about the Time Lord’s new face, the fact he’s Scottish now, and has “attack eyebrows” provide some really fun moments. Midway through the episode we being to get a real sense of what Peter Capaldi’s new Doctor is about: he’s a real livewire, he wont necessarily care what you think about him, and he certainly wont stand around waiting for your to keep up with him either – if anything, his erratic behaviour and unruly nature makes him seem even more alien and mysterious.
Jenna Coleman is excellent in this episode as Clara. Its clear from the start that Clara is struggling to cope with this radically different, older, and greyer version of the Time Lord, who she had, until now at least, developed a close friendship with. Now she’s not even really sure who he is anymore. The Impossible Girl proves as resourceful as ever though, especially after she’s reunited with the Doctor in the restaurant, their banter is terrific, and the flashback when she becomes the Half-Faced Man’s prisoner gives us further insight into her character. Jenna Coleman really gets a chance to shine in this episode, she makes Clara seem bolder, more confident, and as a consequence the new dynamic that’s established towards the end of the episode between Clara and the 12th Doctor also feels all the stronger and refreshingly different as a result.
Fan favourites, The Paternoster Gang, also make welcome return in Deep Breath. Neve McIntosh is magnificent as the Silurian warrior Madame Vastra, she is accompanied by Catrin Stewart who plays Vastra’s human wife Jenny Flint, and Dan Starkey is also back as the hilarious Sontaran Nurse/Butler, Strax. This episode is a great showcase for their characters individual strengths: Vastra’s and Jenny’s relationship is beautifully portrayed, Vastra also provides some very timely advice for Clara about the Doctor, and Strax gets some brilliant comedic moments too.
Deep Breath also heralds a significant change in the pace and tone of storytelling from Steven Moffat as well, there are longer, more developed scenes, and the extended running time is an added bonus that really allows the plot and characters a chance to develop naturally. Deep Breath is Directed by filmmaker Brian Minchin (Kill List and Sightseers), who brings his own distinct style of horror and suspense to this episode, and as a result, the sombre atmosphere, Victorian streets, and sinister Clockwork robots are elevated to a whole new level that really underlines the darker tone of this of this new series. There are references to a number of past Doctor Who adventures as well in Deep Breath: perhaps most notably with Vastra’s initial observation about the 12th Doctor, which is reminiscent of the Brigadier’s line: “Here we go again,” from the Planet of the Spiders (1974), when Jon Pertwee regenerated into Tom Baker, there is also mention of the 4th Doctor’s long scarf, and when Clara first sees the changes inside the TARDIS she says: “You’ve redecorated, I don’t like it,” echoing Patrick Troughton’s classic line from the Three Doctors (1974/74). During her debate with Vastra, Clara also mentions Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who she quoted in the 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor (2013) while teaching in a lesson at Coal Hill School.
The Clockwork robots are also very effective, it’s clever how the episodes title forms the basis of how they attack, and their clunky, jerky movement are quite unsettling. The Half-Face Man (Peter Ferdinado), driven by his quest to reach the Promised Land, with his creepy mechanical features, unnervingly brought to life with some incredible special effects, also makes a perfect foil for the 12th Doctor. I thought the scene where Clara held her breath to try and evade the robots was really tense, and the way the Doctor then disguised himself as a robot provided an unexpected twist. The Doctor’s confrontation with the Half-Face Man in the restaurant after it takes off using a hot air balloon made of human skin, also reveals the Clockwork robots link to the 10th Doctor story The Girl in the Fireplace (2006), when the Doctor discovers this ship is the SS Marie Antoinette, sister ship to the SS Madame De Pompadour. The parallels between the Doctor and the Half-Face Man are actually quite striking in this story, both are attempting to rebuild themselves in some way, and the resolution of their conflict is chillingly effective.
When the Doctor and the TARDIS vanishes, leaving Clara stranded in Victorian London, Vastra assures Clara that the Doctor will return for her, which he soon does. However, Clara is unsure if she wants to continue travelling with him but when the TARDIS lands in Glasgow she gets a call from the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) on her mobile, imploring her from Trenzalore to stay and help his new incarnation. The 12th Doctor remembers this conversation, he asks Clara if she will help him, and she agrees as they leave to go for a coffee. It is this scene that really stays with you long after the credits have rolled. Matt Smith’s cameo as the 11th Doctor provides a great link into the events of The Time of the Doctor (2013), Jenna Coleman handles this scene perfectly, and when Capaldi’s Doctor steps from the TARDIS and asks Clara to help him it become a heartrending moment of clarity that effectively re-defines the Time Lord’s friendship with his companion and reboots the series in an instant.
In the final scene the Half-Face Man wakes in a garden, where he is greeted by a strange woman called Missy (Michelle Gomez), who seems to know the Doctor and refers to him as her boyfriend, as she welcomes the Half-Face Man to Heaven. Michele Gomez’s unexpected appearance in Deep Breath as Missy, having already been officially announced as playing the Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere, hints that this bizarre Mary Poppins like character will play a key role in series eight. Could she be the woman in the shop, the one who gave Clara the Doctor’s phone number in The Bells of St John (2013), the same person who apparently put the advert in the newspaper so Clara and the Doctor would meet at the restaurant in Deep Breath? For now she remains a mystery, whoever she is she certainly knows the Doctor, and seems to delight in telling the Half-Face Man that he has finally reached the Promised Land.
Deep Breath features a brand new title sequence, a glorious steam punk mix of whirling cogs, punctuated midway with Capaldi’s steely gaze, all set against the swirling backdrop of the time vortex as the title logo is revealed. The special effects in Deep Breath are uniformly excellent, and the attention to period detail is exquisite. There’s a new theme tune as well, which initially took me by surprise, but it‘s really beginning to grow on me now. The TARDIS also gets something of a makeover, bookshelves now line the upper gantry of the console room, and a vivid orange glow emanates from the time rotor – swathing the entire TARDIS set in deep shadows.
While events in Deep Breath are resolved relatively straight forwardly, above all else it is Peter Capaldi’s terrific performance as the new Doctor that really impresses. Jenna Coleman also excels, and return of the Paternoster Gang was most welcome. Deep Breath, while not the most complex of stories, still offers an excellent introduction to Peter Capaldi’s new Doctor, and provides an enjoyable start to the new series.
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15 January 2020 / Business & Tech / Jay Barmann
A case backed by Attorney General William Barr is escalating quickly at the Department of Justice that will once again pit Apple against the federal government in a fight over smartphone privacy. The DoJ has asked Apple to help it gain access to two iPhones that belonged to Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the suspected gunman in the December 6 shooting at a naval base in Pensacola, Florida.
Much as the company did in 2016 following a similar request in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre, Apple is intending to push back by any legal means necessary in order not to comply with the government's request. As the New York Times reports, the speed of this case is frustrating Apple executives because they don't believe that the government has invested adequate time or resources into trying to hack the phones themselves, and are seizing on this case to further larger motives held by Barr.
The devices in question are an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 7 Plus, and experts are balking at the government's handling of the case in part because the iPhone 5 in particular can already be easily hacked using tools created by third-party firms like Cellebrite and Grayshift. The phone used in the San Bernardino case, an iPhone 5C, was even newer than that model.
In early 2016, as Apple fended off FBI requests to hack the iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, the government ended up paying Israel-based Cellebrite to do the work for them. Within a week, Cellebrite had cracked the phone, and the government dropped its case against Apple. Edward Snowdon was quick to note on Twitter at the time that the government had been lying for several months when they said it was impossible for them to crack the phone without Apple's help.
Both for reasons of principle and — obviously — marketing, Apple has held firm to their refusal to build a law-enforcement backdoor into any of their devices. The company does, like Facebook and Google, comply with law enforcement requests to access data on its servers, and the Times notes that Apple has complied with "roughly 127,000" such requests over the past seven years.
At issue is whether personal privacy trumps national security, or vice versa, and CEO Tim Cook has said that any such backdoor would simply be exploited beyond the control of Apple or the government if it even existed. "In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone's physical possession," Cook said in 2016.
Barr stands on the opposite side of the issue and has likely not through the broader implications, because he's a law man. He gave a speech in October on this very topic, arguing against the existence of warrant-proof encryption and saying that "While we should not hesitate to deploy encryption to protect ourselves from cybercriminals, this should not be done in a way that eviscerates society’s ability to defend itself against other types of criminal threats." In other words, encrypt against bad hackers who want to, say, take down our power grid, but make sure there's a backdoor — that said hackers theoretically can't find? — so that the FBI can get in when they need to.
President Trump, of course, sees no nuance in this argument, and he tweeted today, "We are helping Apple all of the time on TRADE and so many other issues, and yet they refuse to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements."
We are helping Apple all of the time on TRADE and so many other issues, and yet they refuse to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements. They will have to step up to the plate and help our great Country, NOW! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2020
Bruce Sewell, Apple’s former general counsel, said in a 2019 interview that he believes Cook has staked his reputation on Apple's stance to hold firm against such encryption-breaking demands, and over several iPhone models, the phones have only become more sophisticated in their security protocols.
NYU Marketing professor and tech pundit Scott Galloway tells the Times that the strategy, regardless of its ethical implications, is "brilliant marketing. "They’re so concerned with your privacy that they’re willing to wave the finger at the F.B.I.,” he says.
But Barr is a new adversary for Cook and Apple, so we'll see how this one plays out.
Prepare for Ubers to Start Rejecting More Trips As AB5-Related Changes Roll Out
City Aims to Shut Down 'Rogue' Scooter Company Go X for Operating With Allegedly Forged Permit
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Sovereignty Blog
Companion blog to the book Redefining Sovereignty
A SHOW ABOUT NOTHING:
How not to secede while really trying: Other countries cope with separatist movements. We cope with a never-quite-separating separatist movement (Mark Steyn, June 19, 2006, Western Standard)
Up to the eighties, the Cold War provided useful cover for Quebec’s bluff: the map was, for the most part, frozen. But, in the wake of the Soviet collapse, any folks who thought they were a nation could pretty much be one. And evidently Quebecers don’t, not in any meaningful way. Why not? They’ve got all the characteristics of a nation. Compared to their nominal compatriots, they speak a different language, they come from a different ethnic stock, they have a different (albeit mostly residual) religion. By contrast, Montenegrins are all but identical to Serbs in lingo, race, religion and culture. And yet 600,000 fellows up in the hills now have their own nation, and seven million Quebecers don’t.
You’ll search hard in Quebec for any signs of affection for Canada. The symbols of the state are all but absent. You can drive for hours in the hinterland and not see a single Canadian flag flying from anything other than a post office. The head of state hasn’t ventured any deeper into the province than Hull in 30 years. Her representative, the lieutenant-governor, isn’t allowed into the national assembly to read the throne speech.
Much of this is fairly recent. It’s well known during the blockbuster Royal tour of 1939 that the streets of Anglo Canada were jammed: a million turned out to cheer the king and queen in Vancouver, a million and a half in Toronto. But the Montreal and Quebec City stops attracted comparable crowds. As Their Majesties passed through Trois-Rivierès, 50,000 people swarmed the train station to sing “Dieu Sauve Le Roi.” The queen (i.e., the late queen mum) was asked whether she considered herself English or Scottish and replied that, ever since arriving at Quebec City, she’d been Canadian.
Sixty-seven years on, you’d be hard put to find anyone in Quebec City who considers himself Canadian, outside a few tourists in the bar of the Chateau Frontenac. Quebec “nationalism” did a grand job at lowering the province’s Canadianness to all but undetectable levels. What they failed to do was provide anything to put in its place. It’s an old political axiom that you can’t beat something with nothing. The Péquistes were very effective at transforming the Canadian something into a big nothing, and then they left it at that. But it seems you can’t beat nothing with nothing. Quebec nationalism successfully semi-detached itself from Canada, only to run out of gas in no man’s land.
Quebec is an object lesson in how multi-culturalism can remove any organizing principle whatsoever from a society.
Comments Off on A SHOW ABOUT NOTHING: | MULTICULTURALISM, SELF-DETERMINATION | Permalink
Posted by orrinj
E PLURIBUS UNDER:
Howard watches his words (Matt Cunningham, 14nov05, Herald Sun)
PRIME Minister John Howard last night refused to back a multicultural Australia saying he preferred a cohesive, integrated society.
Asked if he liked the word “multiculturalism”, Mr Howard said: “No, not particularly.
“Different people have different versions of what it means,” he said.
“I’m in favour of drawing people from everywhere and when they come to this country I’m in favour of them becoming Australian.”
Try to have many cultures and you’ll have none. Odd that only the Anglosphere grasps that.
1 Comment | ANGLOSPHERE, MULTICULTURALISM | Permalink
THE WAGES OF MULTICULTURALISM:
Intifada in France (New York Sun Staff Editorial, November 4, 2005)
If President Chirac thought he was going to gain peace with the Muslim community in France by taking an appeasement line in the Iraq war, it certainly looks like he miscalculated. Today the streets of the French capital are looking more like Ramallah and less like the advanced, sophisticated, gay Paree image Monsieur Chirac likes to portray to the world, and the story, which is just starting to grip the world’s attention, is full of ironies. One is tempted to suggest that Prime Minister Sharon send a note cautioning Monsieur Chirac about cycles of violence.
Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: “the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs.” President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the “conservative society” that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it “is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world.”
Small, petty, and unChristian it may be, but who can even pretend not to be enjoying this?
Paris Burning (Robert Spencer, November 4, 2005, FrontPageMagazine.com)
In her seminal Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, historian Bat Ye’or details a series of agreements between the European Union and the Arab League that guaranteed that Muslim immigrants in Europe would not be compelled in any way to adapt “to the customs of the host countries.” On the contrary, the Euro-Arab Dialogue’s Hamburg Symposium of 1983, to take just one of many examples, recommended that non-Muslim Europeans be made “more aware of the cultural background of migrants, by promoting cultural activities of the immigrant communities or ‘supplying adequate information on the culture of the migrant communities in the school curricula.’” Not only that: “Access to the mass media had to be facilitated to the migrants in order to ensure ‘regular information in their own language about their own culture as well as about the conditions of life in the host country.”
The European Union has implemented such recommendations for decades — so far from playing down the differences between ethnic groups, they have instead stood by approvingly while immigrants formed non-assimilated Islamic enclaves within Europe. Indeed, as Bat Ye’or demonstrates, they have assured the Arab League in multiple agreements that they would aid in the creation and maintenance of such enclaves. Ignorance of the jihad ideology among European officials has allowed that ideology to spread in those enclaves, unchecked until relatively recently.
Consequently, among a generation of Muslims born in Europe, significant numbers have nothing but contempt and disdain for their native lands, and allegiance only to the Muslim umma and the lands of their parents’ birth. Those who continue to arrive in Europe from Muslim countries are encouraged by the isolation, self-imposed and other-abetted, of the Islamic communities in Europe to hold to the same attitudes. The Arab European League, a Muslim advocacy group operating in Belgium and the Netherlands, states as part of its “vision and philosophy” that “we believe in a multicultural society as a social and political model where different cultures coexist with equal rights under the law.” It strongly rejects for Muslims any idea of assimilation or integration into European societies: “We do not want to assimilate and we do not want to be stuck somewhere in the middle. We want to foster our own identity and culture while being law abiding and worthy citizens of the countries where we live. In order to achieve that it is imperative for us to teach our children the Arabic language and history and the Islamic faith. We will resist any attempt to strip us of our right to our own cultural and religious identity, as we believe it is one of the most fundamental human rights.” AEL founder Dyab Abou Jahjah, who was himself arrested in November 2002 and charged with inciting Muslims in Antwerp to riot (Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said that the AEL was “trying to terrorize the city”[2]), has declared: “Assimilation is cultural rape. It means renouncing your identity, becoming like the others.” He implied that European Muslims had a right to bring the ideology of jihad and Sharia to Europe, complaining that in Europe “I could still eat certain dishes from the Middle East, but I cannot have certain thoughts that are based on ideologies and ideas from the Middle East.”
What kind of ideologies? Perhaps Hani Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna and brother of the famed self-proclaimed moderate Muslim spokesman Tariq Ramadan, gave a hint when he defended the traditional Islamic Sharia punishment of stoning for adultery in the Paris journal Le Monde. In Denmark, politician Fatima Shah echoed the same sentiments in November 2004. That same month, filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who had made a film, Submission, about the oppression of women by Islamic law, was murdered in Holland by a Muslim, Mohammed Bouyeri. Bouyeri later declared in court: “I did what I did purely out my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted.” In other words, his problem was religious, not racial: Van Gogh had blasphemed Islam, and so according to Islamic law he had to die. Significantly, Bouyeri maintained during his trial that he did not recognize the authority of the Dutch court, but only of the law of Islam.
How many European Muslims share the sentiments of Mohammed Bouyeri? How many of these are rioting this week in Paris? Alleviating Muslim unemployment and poverty will not ultimately do anything to alter this rejection of European values by growing numbers of people who are only geographically Europeans. And the problem cannot be ignored. For France is not alone: Muslims in Århus, Denmark have also been rioting this week. And in France, Sarkozy recently revealed that this week’s riots are just a particularly virulent flare-up of an ongoing pattern of violence: he told Le Monde that twenty to forty cars are set afire nightly in Paris’ restive Muslim suburbs, and no fewer than nine thousand police cars have been stoned since the beginning of 2005.
Blame for the riots in France has thus far focused on Sarkozy’s tough talk about ending this violence. On October 19 he declared of the suburbs that “they have to be cleaned — we’re going to make them as clean as a whistle.” Six days after this, Muslim protestors threw stones and bottles at him when he visited the suburb of Argenteuil. He has been roundly criticized for calling the rioters “scum”; one of them responded, “We’re not scum. We’re human beings, but we’re neglected.” However, as a solution the same man recommended only more neglect, saying of the Paris riot police: “If they didn’t come here, into our area, nothing would happen. If they come here it’s to provoke us, so we provoke back.” Others complained of rough treatment they have received since 9/11 from police searching for terrorists: “It’s the way they stop and search people, kneeing them between the legs as they put them up against the wall. They get students mixed up with the worst offenders, yet these young people have done nothing wrong.”
But of course, all these problems are exacerbated by the non-assimilation policy that both the French government and the Muslim population have for so long pursued: the rioters are part of a population that has never considered itself French. Nor do French officials seem able or willing to face that this is the core of their problem today.
1 Comment | MULTICULTURALISM | Permalink
WHEN THE MODUS VIVENDI TURNS DEADLY:
Faith in Democracy: How the debate over religion in the West distorts our understanding of freedom in the Middle East (James W. Ceaser, 11/07/2005, Weekly Standard)
THE STIRRINGS OF A NEW wave of democracy are underway in one of the least probable regions of the world: the Middle East and Central Asia. Elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian territory, and Lebanon, together with rumblings of liberalization in Egypt, are tangible signs of a growing desire for democratic forms. While the ultimate prospects for success are uncertain–waves of democracy have been partly reversed before–all observers agree that the outcome will hinge in part on meeting the enormous challenges stemming from the interactions of faith and politics. The influence of religion, especially Islam, is considerable throughout the region, and it is impossible to imagine achieving a natural equilibrium between society and government without religion playing some role. Yet Western intellectuals have been strangely inhibited in honestly assessing, or even frankly discussing, the many dimensions of this issue, largely because they have been preoccupied with the role of faith in Western societies and with trying to discredit a growing influence of the religiously minded on American political life. Given all that is at stake in the Middle East, the tangle of this willful confusion deserves a closer look. […]
What passes today for examination of religion in Islamic nations is often little more than a cover for efforts by some to score points for their position in the theoretical dispute about faith in the West. Before we can begin to discuss their religious problem, we must first come to grips with our religious problem.
The Western problem with religion became apparent in the reactions to the events of 9/11. As president of the United States, George Bush had the first crack at framing the meaning of what had happened. To the dismay of many, he immediately opted to characterize the attacks as part of a “war.” But a war against whom or what? Bush sought to delimit the enemy to a group of “terrorists” or “evildoers”–he did not use the term fundamentalists. As the terrorists were all Muslims and explicitly justified their actions in the name of Islam, Bush could not avoid raising the religious question. He took pains, however, to separate the terrorists from the practitioners of the religion as a whole, arguing that the threat came from a “fringe form of Islamic extremism.” “Ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith.” Bush characterized the enemy on the basis of its inveterate opposition to a free regime: Our enemies are people “who absolutely hate what America stands for, . . . they hate . . . democratically elected government, . . . they hate our freedoms–our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” Bush’s defense of democracy and freedom relied on a universal set of ideas deriving from principles of nature and of religion, the latter expressed in nonsectarian terms: “Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.”
A strong reaction against this understanding of the conflict and against Bush’s characterization of the West developed. Although none denied that the terrorists opposed freedom, many claimed that what provoked the Islamic world–and would prevent a long-term solution to the conflict–was America’s own religious fundamentalism. In this view, there was indeed a clash of fundamental values, but it was not at bottom one between liberal democracy and its foes, but rather between two religious fundamentalisms: Christian fundamentalism (American style) and Islamic fundamentalism. While obviously different and conflicting, these two fundamentalisms are in another sense the same. They are both “fundamentalisms.” The most important division in the world today, therefore, is one that cuts right through both Western and Islamic societies. It is the line between those who are religiously fundamentalist and those who are not.
This last view has had widespread support among Europe’s intelligentsia. In a highly publicized account of the post-9/11 world, the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida argued that the current international situation is best summed up as “a confrontation between two political theologies.” One is found among those who identify themselves as “Islamic fundamentalists,” the other is localized in America, a nation that, despite a legal separation of church and state, has a religious culture that “relies on a fundamentally biblical (and primarily Christian) . . . discourse of its political leaders.” An equivalency of sorts exists between these two fundamentalisms, captured in the slogan “Bush and Bin Laden.” In neither case do the fundamentalists speak for all of the faithful. Islamic fundamentalists, according to Derrida, do not represent authentic Islam, “any more than all Christians in the world identify with the United States’s fundamentally Christian professions of faith.” The idea of the West as an entity of roughly shared values no longer exists. It has been superceded by the more basic division between fundamentalists and nonfundamentalists, a distinction that places America in one camp along with al Qaeda and Europe in the other camp with certain so-called “moderates.” America’s essence of religious fundamentalism is often captured by the term “Bush,” whose name now designates not so much a person as a worldview alien to Europe. Only this metaphysical use can explain why the American president has become so despised.
The picture of America described by Derrida represents a striking departure from the image that was often purveyed by European intellectuals during the last century, when the stress was placed on America’s relentless and unchecked modernizing impulse. America was decried for its disregard of tradition. America was modernity’s bulldozer, uprooting the past in every realm, from architecture, to gastronomy, to religion. A hundred years ago, Max Weber, in his celebrated work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, characterized modernity as “an iron cage” in which only “the ghost of dead religious beliefs” still lingered. Modernity was governed by a process of “secularization,” under which religion gradually loses its hold on all aspects of society and culture. The nation leading this process, Weber suggested, was America, where “the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions.”
Not all or even most of the European critics of America in the 19th and 20th century were religious, but almost all subscribed to this idea of America as the destroyer of tradition. The greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger, characterized “Americanism,” by this time an abstract concept, as “the still unfolding and not yet full or completed essence of the emerging monstrousness of modern times.” According to Heidegger, Europe (chiefly Germany) was caught in a “great pincer,” squeezed by the modernist ideologies of Americanism and Bolshevism, which, despite their differences, represented from “a metaphysical point of view, the same dreary technological frenzy and the same unrestricted organization of the average man.”
In the contemporary European intellectual critique of America, by contrast, the force threatening Europe derives from religion, with the pincer squeezing Europe coming from the two fundamentalisms. Although many European thinkers still take America to task for being too modern in certain realms, the main charge today is that America is not modern enough–that it adheres to an anachronistic concept of the nation, that it still expresses a belief in a principle of natural rights, and that it is not embarrassed to rely on religion. Meanwhile, European culture and politics have moved on to embrace a post-religious ethos, in which even the slightest mention of the Almighty in an official public address is seen as fatally compromising the practice of true democratic politics. Modern philosophers see this post-religious ethos as the core of a new third force in the world, which alone is consistent with promoting democracy. This time, Europe has much more confidence that it is leading the way to the future.
This change in European thought would seem at first glance to place Europe, not America, in the position of uprooting tradition by breaking with a major part of the West’s heritage. Remarkably, however, Western European thinkers present this shift not as a break or discontinuity, but as an organic fulfillment of tradition. Derrida’s own philosophical school of deconstructionism, which once prided itself on being the intellectual enfant terrible that challenged the Enlightenment, has now settled into a comfortable middle age of bourgeois orthodoxy by achieving, in Derrida’s words, the Enlightenment’s “absolutely original mark with regard to religious doctrine,” namely a political system and public culture in which religion plays no role.
This analysis of the current difference between America and Europe curiously parallels a similar description by Alexis de Tocqueville of the situation in the 18th century. Tocqueville sought to explain how at that time “irreligion” became “the dominant and general passion” among intellectuals in France, though not yet among the public. He attributed the development to the influence of Enlightenment philosophers. But Tocqueville made clear that this was not the only path the Enlightenment might follow. He sketched an alternative, a second version of the Enlightenment, found in America, in which “the spirit of religion” was joined with “the spirit of freedom.” America’s religiosity was exceptional, but its exceptionalism offered a model worthy of consideration in promoting liberal democracy. For Derrida, American exceptionalism is a nightmare and a grave threat to democratic prospects.
From the thesis of the two fundamentalisms has come a general theory of how to approach the problems of the post-9/11 world. If there is to be reconciliation between Islamic societies and the West, it lies with the model discovered by the post-religious nations; any constructive dialogue must take place with the West’s de-fundamentalized part, Europe. The two fundamentalisms only provoke one another, clashing as ignorant armies on a darkling plain. Post-religious nations also hold the key to promoting democracy. Democracy will never be spread if it is proclaimed, as America tries to do, on the basis of a universal standard, which is only another manifestation of American religious fundamentalism. According to Jürgen Habermas, Europe’s most important contemporary philosopher, the promotion of democracy must rely on a different kind of “universalism,” embodied in contemporary European philosophy, that is predicated “on an equality that demands . . . one step outside of one’s own viewpoint in order to put it into relationship with the viewpoints adopted by another, which are to be regarded as equal.” Other cultures must evolve to join this new universalism under Europe’s patient tutelage.
Pierre Rosanvallon, one of France’s most prominent social scientists, has carried Habermas’s doctrine a step further, distinguishing between America’s “dogmatic universalism,” which is “characterized by an intolerable arrogance that is only made more so by its spontaneous naiveté,” and Europe’s pragmatic or “experimental universalism,” which makes no kind of absolute claims.
Europe’s secular
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CATHEDRAL VS. CUBE:
Politics Without God?: Reflections on Europe and America (George Weigel, DEC. 24, 2004, Zenit.org)
At the far western end of the axis that traverses Paris from the Louvre down the Champs Elysées and through the Arc de Triomphe is the Great Arch of La Défense. Designed by a sternly modernist Danish architect, the Great Arch is a colossal open cube: almost 40 stories tall, faced in glass and 2.47 acres of white Carrara marble. Its rooftop terrace offers an unparalleled view of the French capital, past the Tuilleries to the Ile de la Cité, Sante Chapelle, and Notre-Dame.
The arch’s three-story high roof also houses the International Foundation for Human Rights. For President François Mitterrand planned the Great Arch as a human rights monument, something suitably gigantic to mark the bicentenary of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Thus, in one guidebook, the Great Arch was dubbed “Fraternity Arch.” That same guidebook, like every other one I consulted, emphasized that the entire Cathedral of Notre-Dame would fit comfortably inside the Great Arch.
All of which raised some questions, as I walked along that terrace in 1997. Which culture would better protect human rights and secure the moral foundations of democracy? The culture that built this rational, geometrically precise, but essentially featureless cube? Or the culture that produced the gargoyles and flying buttresses, the asymmetries and holy “unsameness” of Notre-Dame and the other great Gothic cathedrals of Europe?
Those questions have come back to me, if in different forms, as I’ve tried to understand Europe in recent years. How, for example, should one understand the fierce argument in Europe over whether a new constitutional treaty for the European Union should include a reference to the Christian sources of European civilization? Why did so many European intellectuals and political leaders deem any reference to the Christian sources of contemporary Europe civilization a threat to human rights and democracy?
Was there some connection between this internal European debate over Europe’s constitution-making and the portrait in the European press of Americans (and especially an American president) as religious fanatics intent on shooting up the world? Was there a further connection between this debate and the fate of Rocco Buttiglione’s candidacy for the post of Commissioner of Justice on the European Commission?
Understanding these phenomena requires something more than a conventional political analysis. Nor can political answers explain the reasons behind perhaps the most urgent issue confronting Europe today — the fact that Western Europe is committing demographic suicide, its far-below-replacement-level birthrates creating enormous pressures on the European welfare state and a demographic vacuum into which Islamic immigrants are flowing in increasing numbers, often becoming radicalized in the process.
My proposal is that Europe is experiencing a crisis of cultural and civilizational morale whose roots are also taking hold in some parts quarters of American society and culture. Understanding and addressing this crisis means confronting the question posed sharply, if unintentionally, by those guidebooks that boast about the alleged superiority of the Great Arch to Notre-Dame: the question of the cube and the cathedral, and their relationship to both the meaning of freedom and the future of democracy. […]
Probing to the deeper roots of Europe’s crisis of civilizational morale is important for understanding Europe today and for discerning whatever promising paths of European renewal there may be. Getting at the roots of “Europe’s problem” is also important for understanding a set of problems Americans may face in the not-too-distant future. And that means that both Europeans and Americans must learn to think in new ways about the dynamics of history.
During 13 years of research and teaching in east central Europe, I’ve been impressed by what might be called the Slavic view of history. You can find it in a great thinker who lived in the borderland between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, Vladimir Soloviev, who challenged the fashionable nihilism and materialism of the late 19th century.
You can find it in 19th-century Polish novelists, poets and playwrights, who, breaking with the Jacobin conviction that “revolution” meant a complete rupture with the past, insisted that genuine “revolution” meant the recovery of lost spiritual and moral values. You can find it in such intellectual leaders of the anti-communist resistance in east central Europe as Karol Wojtyla, Václav Havel and Václav Benda, who all argued that “living in the truth” could change what seemed unchangeable in history.
The common thread among these disparate thinkers is the conviction that the deepest currents of “history” are spiritual and cultural, rather than political and economic. “History” is not simply the byproduct of the contest for power in the world — although power plays an important role in history. And “history” is certainly not the exhaust fumes produced by the means of production, as the Marxists taught.
Rather, “history” is driven by culture — by what men and women honor, cherish, and worship; by what societies deem to be true and good and noble; by the expressions they give to those convictions in language, literature and the arts; by what individuals and societies are willing to stake their lives on.
Poland is one embodiment of this way of thinking, which Poles believe has been vindicated empirically by their own modern history. For 123 years, from 1795 to 1918, the Polish state was erased from Europe. Yet during that century and a quarter the Polish nation survived with such vigor that it could give birth to a new Polish state in 1918. And despite the fact that the revived Polish state was then beset for 50 years by the plagues of Nazism and communism, the Polish nation proved strong enough to give a new birth of freedom to east central Europe in the Revolution of 1989.
How did this happen? Poland survived — better, Poland prevailed — because of culture: a culture formed by a distinctive language, by a unique literature, and by an intense Catholic faith (which, an its noblest and deepest expressions, was ecumenical and tolerant, not xenophobic, as so many stereotypes have it). Poles know in their bones that culture is what drives history over the long haul.
This “Slavic view of history” is really a classically Christian way of thinking about history, whose roots can be traced back at least as far as St. Augustine and “The City of God.” Yet, it is the Slavs who have been, in our time, the most powerful exponents of this “culture-first” understanding of the dynamics of the world’s story. […]
If democratic institutions and procedures are the expressions of a distinctive way of life based on specific moral commitments, then democratic citizenship must be more than a matter of following the procedures and abiding by the laws and regulations agreed upon by the institutions A democratic citizen is someone who can give an account of his or her commitment to human rights, to the rule of law and equality before the law, to decision-making by the majority and protection of the rights of minorities. Democratic citizenship means being able to tell why one affirms “the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, democracy, equality, freedom and the rule of law,” to cite the preamble to the European constitution. Who can give such an account?
Here is one of the richest ironies involved in the question of the cube and the cathedral. The original charge against Christians in the Roman empire was that they were “atheists”: people who were “a-theos,” people who had abandoned the gods of Rome and who were thus a threat to public life and public order. To be a-theos was to stand outside and over-against the political community.
The “Christophobia” of contemporary European high culture turns this indictment inside out and upside down: Christianity cannot be acknowledged as a source of European democracy because the only public space safe for pluralism, tolerance, civility, and democracy is a public space that is thoroughly a-theos.
It is all very strange. For the truth of the matter is that European Christians can likely give a more compelling account of their commitment to democratic values than their fellow Europeans who are a-theos — who believe that “neutrality toward worldviews” must characterize democratic Europe. A postmodern or neo-Kantian “neutrality toward worldviews” cannot be truly tolerant; it can only be indifferent.
Absent convictions, there is no tolerance; there is only indifference. Absent some compelling notion of the truth that requires us to be tolerant of those who have a different understanding of the truth, there is only skepticism and relativism. And skepticism and relativism are very weak foundations on which to build and sustain a pluralistic democracy, for neither skepticism nor relativism, by their own logic, can “give an account” of why we should be tolerant and civil.
In contrast to this thin account of tolerance — we should be tolerant because it works better — there is the argument for tolerance given by Pope John Paul II in his 1989 encyclical letter on Christian mission, “Redemptoris Missio” [The Mission of the Redeemer]. There the Pope taught that “The Church proposes; she imposes nothing.” The Catholic Church respects the “other” as an “other” who is also a seeker of truth and goodness; the Church only asks that the believer and the “other” enter into a dialogue that leads to mutual enrichment rather than to a deeper skepticism about the possibility of grasping the truth of things.
The Catholic Church believes it to be the will of God that Christians be tolerant of those who have a different view of God’s will, or no view of God’s will. Thus Catholics (and other Christians who share this conviction) can “give an account” of their defense of the “other’s” freedom, even if the “other,” skeptical and relativist, finds it hard to “give an account” of the freedom of the Christian.
A great deal of effort has been expended trying to determine why Old Europe and Blue America react with such hysteria to Red America generally and George W. Bush in particular–extending Mr. Weigel’s argument just a bit, the reaction seems more understandable if we consider these cubists to be stuck in the midst of the crisis and looking out, with fear and envy, at the equanimity and confidence of their neighbors in the cathedral.
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APPENDIX: HISTORICAL TEXTS
AXIS OF GOOD
CRITON M. ZOAKOS
CRUSADER STATE/JACKSONIANISM
DANIEL PHILPOTT
DECENT LEFT
DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY
DONNA M. HUGHES
END OF HISTORY
ISLAMIC REFORMATION
JEREMY RABKIN
JOHN LEWIS GADDIS
LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC INTERVENTION
MARC F. PLATTNER
ORRIN C. JUDD
PALEOCONS
PHILIP BOBBITT
RALPH PETERS
REDEFINING SOVEREIGNTY: THE BOOK
SELF-DETERMNINATION
STUART TAYLOR JR.
THEOCONS
WESTPHALIAN SOVEREIGNTY
YORAM HAZONY
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Jewish Affairs
Polish Independence After A Century
Filed in Guest Voices by Henry Srebrnik on November 2, 2018 • 0 Comments
For the long-suffering Polish nation, which had lost its sovereignty by the end of the 18th century, the end of World War I entailed more than an end to the fighting.
November 11, 1918, the date of the armistice that ended what was then called The Great War, also provided a promise to recreate a sovereign Polish state. The three empires that had partitioned the country — Austria-Hungary, Prussian Germany, and czarist Russia — all fell victim to defeat and revolution.
Jewish settlement on the territory that comprises modern day Poland can be traced back more than 1,000 years, with the settlement of Jews seeking relief from persecution in Western and Central Europe.
Borders of 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth superimposed on present-day national borders
The medieval Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been one of Europe’s largest states. At the turn of the 17th century, its population of some seven million comprised 4.5 million Poles, the rest being Lithuanians, Jews and Ukrainians. By the beginning of the partitions, about ten percent of the population was Jewish, and part of the fabric of Polish life.
Out of the rubble of World War I were born new states. Some, like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, were multi-national. The others, including Poland, were created as nation states. They were, as Yuri Slezkine called them in The Jewish Century, “states that posed as tribes.”
However, they all promised to protect the integrity of minorities within their borders. Minorities Treaties were drawn up between the United States, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan, on the one hand, and 14 newly created or expanded states in Europe and the Middle East, including Poland.
They governed eligibility for citizenship in the latter states and granted citizens belonging to racial, religious or linguistic minorities certain collective rights, including protection by the state for their members to use minority languages, and the right for them to establish and control educational, religious and social welfare institutions.
Polish Jews in 1930s
Jews throughout the world greeted the treaties with enthusiasm, believing that the policies would inaugurate a new era of security — but their hopes were soon dashed. Efforts in the 1920s to invoke the treaties and enlist the League of Nations to stop various antisemitic actions, including pogroms, brought no tangible results.
In September 1934, Poland unilaterally renounced its obligations under its treaty, as political antisemitism increased during the decade.
After the 1918 armistice, the Allied Supreme Council, which was determining the frontiers of the re-established Polish state, had created a temporary boundary marking the eastern frontier of Poland. It came to be known as the Curzon Line, and authorized a Polish administration to be formed on the lands west of it.
However, the Russo-Polish War of 1919-1920, in which Poland was victorious, provided Poland with almost 52,000 square miles of land east of the Curzon Line. Most of its inhabitants were not Polish but Belarusian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian.
Polish farmer in 1920s
Overall, a full 31 percent of the population were non-Polish minorities. Of these, according to the 1931 census, 15 percent were Ukrainians, 8.5 percent Jews, and 4.7 percent Belarusians. Other statistics estimated the Jewish population, which lived mostly in urban centers, at almost 10 percent.
Between the two world wars anti-Jewish boycott agitation grew as the economic situation deteriorated during the depression. Right-wing parties, especially the National Democrats (Narodowa Demokracja, or Endecja), with the silent approval of the authorities, pointed at the Jews as the cause of the distress.
Campus of Jagiellonian University in Krakow
Jews could not work in the civil service, few were public school teachers, almost no Jews were railroad workers, and no Jews worked in state-controlled banks or monopolies. There was also discrimination and exclusion of Jews at the universities, including the creation of “ghetto benches.” Quotas (numerus clausus) introduced in 1937 in some universities halved the number of Jews by the late 1930s. The restrictions were so inclusive that, while Jews made up 20.4 percent of the student body in 1928, by 1937 their share was down to only 7.5 percent.
Between 1935 and 1937, 79 Jews were killed and 500 injured in anti-Jewish incidents. Escalating hostility towards Polish Jews and an official Polish government desire to remove Jews from Poland continued until the German invasion in 1939.
The Polish city of Bielsko-Biala in the 1930s
World War II was a disaster for Poland, of course, since as many as six million people — more than one-fifth of its overall population of 35 million in 1939 — were murdered by the Nazis. The postwar 1946 census found just 23,930,000 people left in the country.
The death toll included the mass slaughter of the country’s Jewish community, which had numbered about 3.3 million people, and had constituted one-tenth of Poland’s prewar population.
Only some 40,000 to 100,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust in Poland, another 50,000 to 170,000 were repatriated from the Soviet Union, and 20,000 to 40,000 from Germany and other countries.
As well, Poland lost its large eastern territories to the Soviet Union, as its border was moved westward along a line almost equivalent to the Curzon Line. But it gained new territories in the west, wrested from Germany — and expelled about five million Germans from those lands, in what we today would call “ethnic cleansing.”
So, in a sense, it was two of the greatest mass murderers in world history, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, who “solved” Poland’s minority “problem,” and thus paved the way for today’s Poland.
The “dirty secret” of Polish homogeneity is that it is World War II, with its genocide, ethnic cleansing and massive war crimes, which made the country one of the most ethnically and religiously homogeneous nations in Europe.
Today around 98 percent of the population of 38.4 million identifies as ethnically Polish, and 87 percent belong to the Roman Catholic Church.
The liquidation of Polish Jewry during the Holocaust, followed by a pogrom in Kielce in 1946 and an antisemitic campaign that drove thousands of Jews from the country in 1968, meant that for decades the community existed mostly as a fading memory.
Over the past 25 years there has been a reawakening of Jewish consciousness, and young people of Jewish origin who had no previous Jewish affiliation have joined the community. There are also several hundred Israelis in Poland.
Jewish activists from abroad, including several members of both the Chabad and Reform movements, have also taken up residence in Poland and established communities.
It is difficult to determine an exact figure for the Jewish population of contemporary Poland, but it is estimated to be between 10,000 and 20,000 members. The Polish Jewish community is primarily concentrated in Warsaw, but there are also communities in Kraków, Lodz, Szczecin, Gdansk, Katowice and Wroclaw.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Henry Srebrnik
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Sheldon Kirshner, a journalist living in Toronto, has freelanced for various publications in Canada and abroad. He holds a BA degree in European history from Concordia University in Montreal and ... Read More
Ukraine’s Nazi Collaborators
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Contact: sheldonkirshner@gmail.com
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That’s Academic
Straits Times illustration by Manny Francisco
Earlier this month the National University of Singapore announced that in place of a three- or four-year programme leading to a degree, the University would commit itself to a two-decade relationship with students. Is it time to rethink the role of higher education?
For centuries, universities have operated on the assumption that three or four years of study sufficiently prepare most graduates for a lifetime of employment. The origins of that model lie in medieval Europe, though it only became widely available to women less than a hundred years ago.
Over the course of that past century, two factors have called into question whether the degree-based system of tertiary education remains fit for purpose.
The first is that our lives are now much longer. Since 1900, average human life expectancy has more than doubled. Yet our education, work, and retirement patterns remain essentially the same. Most of that additional time has gone into our retirement years; as that age is pushed back and our working lives are extended, John Ralston Saul among others has argued that we should spend a larger proportion of our life getting better educated.
The second is the transformation of employment. When workers stayed with a single company for decades, on-the-job training might reasonably be expected to keep employees up to date in their chosen field. Some specialised disciplines like law and medicine already impose formal obligations for continuing professional development. But, for the most part, employees have been left to fend for themselves. This becomes a problem when, as a study by LinkedIn shows, people are changing jobs twice as frequently as they did even twenty years ago. And, the global consulting firm McKinsey recently found, around one-third of the new jobs being created today simply did not exist that long ago.
These questions come at a time when there is more competition in the tertiary space than ever before. Why pay for a degree, for example, when you can do MIT’s version of the same course through your computer for free? The first wave of massive open online courses (MOOCs) emerged in 2012 and most major universities (including NUS) are experimenting with them. Though the threatened tsunami, earthquake, or other natural disaster has failed to lay waste to modern universities, their financial model is being challenged as never before.
That’s a good thing. No one should be able to claim a monopoly on knowledge. But this competition is happening at the same time as a more troubling trend calls into question the very notion of expertise itself.
Better questions, better answers
Much as lawyers grow weary of Shakespeare’s suggestion that they should all be put to death, educators are regularly reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s line from his Maxims for Revolutionists: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”
Doing and teaching are fundamentally different skills. Readers of this newspaper are, presumably, fluent in English. Yet teaching English language, whether to children or non-native speakers, is a specialised task for which dedicated programmes exist.
For much of human history, teaching meant the sharing of knowledge. Examinations would then test the amount of information retained and the ability to reproduce it correctly under exam conditions.
Such “closed book” examinations are increasingly rare at universities, but a significant proportion of education remains the transmission of information. Now that most of us carry a device in our pockets with access to nearly all of human knowledge, however, the notion that formal education is the only path to knowledge collapses. Similarly, to the extent that the status of a teacher or a professor was built on having privileged access to knowledge, that has also disappeared.
So what is it that universities — and academics — can offer that Google and Wikipedia cannot?
In the best of worlds, better questions and better answers.
Better questions in the sense that while Google is tolerably good at responding to direct factual inquiries, it is not always helpful in working out what the right question should be. The most important human advances have tended to come from individuals asking questions that no one else had thought to raise.
Better answers in the sense that Wikipedia epitomises the wisdom of the crowd. Collective opinion may be useful in areas such as quantity estimation and general world knowledge, but considerably less reliable in more specialised fields or where interested parties might edit it in their favour.
Philosophers draw a distinction here between “knowing that” and “knowing how”. In law school, for example, a good part of first year is spent dispelling any myth that learning the law is memorising a set of rules. Knowing that the law is X rarely helps a client; knowing how to apply X to a client’s unique circumstances is much harder. In law, as in many other disciplines, the skill lies not in knowing past facts, but having the critical and analytical tools to understand and evaluate new facts or formulate new theories.
Curating a scholarly environment — running a university — means encouraging such a culture that continually asks new questions and questions old answers. It is not (yet) something that can be done through artificial intelligence and is precisely the opposite of crowdsourcing.
Professor Robot?
So what does this mean for universities?
In essence, that it will be harder to maintain good universities, but more important than ever to maintain great ones.
The massification of education through MOOCs and other online tools is already making tertiary education available to tens of millions of new students. Even if only ten percent actually complete such modules, that is still millions getting an education that they might otherwise have been denied.
Traditional brick-and-mortar universities will continue to experiment with MOOCs and other forms of technology-enhanced learning. Professor Ashok Goel recently conducted such an experiment at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He added a teaching assistant for one of his online courses, but omitted to tell students that “she” was actually an application based on IBM’s Watson AI system.
In five months, none of the students noticed.
Interacting with “Jill” online — who communicated via email, but had to be programmed with a delay so that she would not reply to questions instantly — some thought she was a little weird, but not appreciably weirder than other academics. Prof Goel has since run the class again with a mix of AI and human assistants. At the end of the semester, students guessed which was which and did only slightly better than chance.
Jill was more of a chatbot than a replacement professor — on the notorious website Ashley Madison, similar technology enabled millions of married men to chat with “women” about having an affair — but she is a harbinger of things to come.
Initially, at least, such tools will increase productivity. Jill, for example, answered fairly routine questions and was an assistant in the way that GPS navigation systems assist in driving a car.
Moving forward, will we see the next step: the professorial equivalent of autonomous vehicles?
Not for some time, I would guess. But students will likely spend less time in lecture theatres listening to a professor who occasionally pauses for a question. In its place, one can imagine the imparting of information and training in basic skills moving to an AI platform that can tweak itself to respond to individual student needs.
In some ways, that is merely an update on a far older technology that enables students to process information at their own pace: books. Socrates famously warned that the written word would make us lazy, for we would rely on texts rather than on our minds. It is possible that historians of the future — if such jobs continue to exist — will look back on our current ambivalence about IT as similarly missing the point.
But I doubt it.
For the most interesting experiences in the classroom are not the individual acquisition of knowledge but the shared enterprise of discovery. And the most revelatory moments of research have generally come not from solitary figures working in isolation, but from communities of scholars bouncing ideas off one another, challenging each other, disagreeing with one another in a spirit of collegiality.
Indeed, the transformations highlighted at the start of this article — extensions to the duration and the quality of life — are attributable to achievements of research in universities.
That is why it is so ironic, and depressing, that the push for lifelong learning comes at a time when there is greater scepticism about expert opinion than ever before. Trump and the “fake news”/“post-truth” phenomenon is only one example of this. Prior to the disastrous Brexit vote, a British cabinet member was asked whether even one economist thought Britain’s exit from the EU would have a positive effect. “People in this country have had enough of experts,” he scoffed.
The anti-intellectualism of flesh and blood pundits is more of a threat to universities than the artificial intelligence of silicon ones.
Yet academics must do more than assert their value to society. It is entirely appropriate that we should be required to prove it.
For our students, a commitment beyond a bachelor’s degree is a good place to start. Announcing the NUS Lifelong Learners programme, Provost Ho Teck Hua stressed that it will help graduates take advantage of the changes that globalisation and digital technologies are bringing to the workplace. As Minister for Education Ong Ye Kung observed during the Committee on Supply Debate, this gives new meaning to the word “alumni”. A rigorous education that encourages new questions and newer answers throughout one’s life will help those alumni adapt to whatever the future holds.
A portion of that evolving educational mission will doubtless be served by technology. But just as GPS and autonomous vehicles are transforming transportation, with improvements in safety and efficiency, the most important question for graduates will remain the same one it has always been for drivers: Where do you want to go today?
The writer is Dean and Professor of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law.
A version of this essay appeared in the Straits Times on 24 March 2018 under the title “Whither Higher Education?”. A full version is available free on SSRN.com here.
J. Peter Burgess says:
Monday, 26 March 2018 at 1:38 pm
Wonderful piece, among your finest!
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Title page of the first edition
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress
Richard Bentley
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress (1838) is Charles Dickens's second novel. It was first published as a book by Richard Bentley in 1838. It tells the story of an orphan boy and his adventures among London's slums. Oliver is captured by, and forced to work among, pickpockets and thieves until redeemed by a gentleman who has taken an interest in him. Characters include Fagin, Nancy, Bill Sykes, and the Artful Dodger. The book is one of the earliest examples of the social novel. It draws the reader's attention to evils such as child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children.
The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of hardships as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story's development. The book influenced American writer Horatio Alger, Jr. and his stories of poor boys living on the streets of nineteenth-century New York City.
The book has been adapted to a popular musical play called Oliver! and several movies, notably a 1948 production starring Alec Guiness as Fagin. A Disney animated feature about alley cats called Oliver & Company has also been released.
Nicholas Nickleby
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The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
"The Long Voyage"
"The Signal-Man"
Sketches by Boz
The Mudfog Papers
Master Humphrey's Clock
American Notes
The Life of Our Lord
A Child's History of England
The Uncommercial Traveller
The Frozen Deep
No Thoroughfare: A Drama: In Five Acts
Bentley's Miscellany
Household Words
All the Year Round
"A House to Let"
"The Haunted House"
"A Message from the Sea"
"Mugby Junction"
John Dickens
Elizabeth Dickens
Catherine Dickens (wife)
Ellen Ternan (mistress)
Charles Dickens Jr.
Mary Dickens
Kate Perugini
Walter Landor Dickens
Francis Dickens
Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens
Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens
Henry Fielding Dickens
Dora Annie Dickens
Edward Dickens
Epitaph of Charles Irving Thornton
Tavistock House
Gads Hill Place
Dickens and Little Nell (statue)
Dickens of London (1976 miniseries)
Dickens in America (2005 documentary)
The Invisible Woman (2013 film)
Dickensian (2015 TV series)
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017 film)
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1830s books
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back to Research & Centers overview
In 2011, Rutgers SMLR Professors Susan J. Schurman and Adrienne Eaton were selected as the principal investigators for a five-year research partnership with the Solidarity Center, a non-profit organization that assists workers around the world who are struggling to build democratic and independent trade unions.
The research partnership is aimed at documenting the effects of globalization on the nature of work and on labor and employment relations around the world. In particular, the research has focused on three programmatic areas thus far: unions and informal workers, unions and women workers and unions and migrant workers. Studies have been undertaken in Cambodia, Colombia, Dominican Republican, Jordan, South African, and Tunisia and have involved researchers based both at Rutgers and at other institutions around the globe.
These reports are made possible through support provided by the Office of Democracy and Governance, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, US Agency for International Development, under the terms of Award No. AID-OAA-L-00001. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Agency for International Development.
"A Review of Trade Union Organizing in the Informal Economy"
Principal Investigators: Professors Susan J. Schurman and Adrienne E. Eaton
The purpose of this report is to review the existing literature on efforts throughout the globe by workers who labor outside the formal labor and employment relations policy framework of their country to form or join trade unions as well as unions’ efforts to organize and represent them. Details of our findings are contained in the full report.
"Gender Equality and Labor Movements: Toward A Global Perspective"
By Dorothy Sue Cobble, Distinguished Professor
This report offers a critical review of the English-language research on gender equality and labor movements with an eye to highlighting theoretical insights and “best practice” case studies around the world most relevant to those engaged in building democratic, just, and humane societies. Where possible, I utilize case studies that illuminate developments in the Global South, including but not limited to Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Details are contained in the full report.
"Trade Unions Organizing Workers 'Informalized From Above': Case Studies from Cambodia, Colombia, South Africa, and Tunisia"
This report is the second working paper from a five-year study aimed at documenting the effects of globalization on the nature of work and on labor and employment relations around the world. In particular the research seeks to describe efforts by trade unions to organize workers in the informal economy in order to provide these workers the benefits attached to formal employment. Details are contained in the full report.
"Emergent Solidarities: Labor Movement Responses to Migrant Workers in the Dominican Republic and Jordan"
By Professor Janice Fine
This paper explores four questions: First, what are the main dynamics of labor migration and what are the main issues faced by migrant workers? Second, what is the process by which a labor movement becomes engaged with their state’s immigration policy regime and organizing immigrant workers? Third, what types of activities do unions undertake when they do become engaged? Fourth, what factors account for a union federation or national union’s willingness to organize migrant workers both in terms of organizing and bringing them into membership as well as supporting more liberalized immigrant admissions or legalization policies? Details are contained in the full report.
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Zionist Colonization is Not ‘Exceptional’: A Marxist Viewpoint
Imperialism, Theory, War/Peace • May 4, 2017 • Tikva Honig-Parnass
This article aims to challenge the rather widely accepted claim that the nature of Zionist settler colonization is exceptional[1] and even “defies appeal to any precedent that can usefully be invoked as to its evolution and eventual revolution.”[2]
My challenge will focus on Moshé Machover’s 2016 article, “The decolonization of Palestine”[3] which is the third of a series of three articles published in Weekly Worker .[4] It deals with the typology of colonial projects and its implication upon identifying Zionist colonization and the struggle for its downfall.[5] I have chosen to critically examine this third article precisely because Machover argues that his analysis is based on a Marxist observation. On this very observation however, I establish my contrasting position – namely, that Zionist colonization is not unique. The class analysis of the colonial group itself, reveals features of Zionism to be similar to those of other colonial projects, including apartheid South Africa, with which comparisons are often made. These projects seek to dispossess and subdue the indigenous people, and whenever needed, exploit their cheap labour for the benefit of capital. Capitalist class interests dominate the colonial states’ “peaceful resolution” of the conflicts with the colonized, aiming to retain the rule of capital and, in the globalized era, to enable economic neoliberalism.
Typology of Colonial Projects
Machover’s opposite viewpoint is based on a typology of colonial projects as follows. He writes that shortly before the 1967 June war, the Israeli socialist organization Matzpen, unaware of Karl Kautsky’s writings on colonialism, made “what we regarded as an elementary Marxist observation,” adopting in substance Kautsky’s 1907 distinction between two types of colonialism – namely, the “work colony” and the “exploitative colony.”[6]
Machover contends that Matzpen’s original perspective “stood the test of time” – namely, Zionist colonization of Palestine is of the “exclusionary” type – Kautsky’s “working type.”[7]
These two types differ according to a major criterion (which will be the target of my criticism): the question of the inclusion or exclusion of the indigenous people from the colonial economy. Thus, in “exploitation” colonization like Apartheid South Africa, the settlers established their economy upon the exploitation of the indispensable labour of the Blacks. On the other hand, the colonization of Palestine has been of the “exclusionary” species, similar to that of North America and New Zealand: the indigenous people were largely excluded from the Zionist economy, while “direct production – actual labour” – was performed by the settlers themselves.
Machover emphasizes that the Zionist colonization was from its very beginning an exception even among the ‘exclusionary’ types of colonies. The economic, social and juridical conditions in Palestine made it “a far cry” from territories where ‘classical’ exclusionary colonization had taken place in earlier centuries. Moreover, the nature of the conflict, which has been engendered in the process of Zionist colonization, was exceptional as well. It assumed the form of both a colonial and national clash: “a binary confrontation between two discrete national groups that have crystallized in and through this asymmetric collision: a Hebrew settler nation and a single indigenous Palestinian Arab people.” This unique type of “a complex conjunction of a two-sided national problem” and the presumed dispensability of Palestinian labour power determine that the route to Palestinian freedom and the resolution of the “conflict” will be unique as well.
Hence, the Zionist colonization and its Israeli state did not follow the 20th century wave of “so-called bourgeois democratic decolonization” which took place at all ‘exploitative’ colonies including apartheid South Africa. Due to the decisive dependency on their labour-power, the indigenous people of these ‘exploitative’ colonies constituted a “potentially powerful internal force.” The dispensability, however, of Palestinian labour negates the prospect of emerging social forces that could lead to a similar decolonization of Palestine. The route to decolonization/de-Zionization of Palestine would inevitably skip the bourgeois democratic transformation which occurred in the exploitative colonies. Nor would the resolution of the “conflict” be confined to the Palestine/Israel box. The decolonization of Palestine could materialize only after a comprehensive transformation of the Middle East and as part of the Socialist Federation established throughout the region. Together with all revolutionary socialists of the region the Palestinian-Arabs and the Hebrews will struggle for the overthrow of the Zionist and Arab regimes and lead the way to a socialist federation of the Arab East.
Since Machover argues that the resolution to the Israel-Palestine ‘conflict’ is based on the ‘exceptional’ nature of Zionist colonization, I see my central task on refuting this mistaken viewpoint alone without dealing here with the resolution presumed to stem from it. As in the past, I support a resolution which is in line with a Marxist perspective[8]: Zionist colonialism and the aims of the struggle for its downfall is not different in principal from other colonial struggles. Learning from their mistakes, it should aim toward a democratic single state in the entirety of Historic Palestine along with the implementation of the Right of Return.[9]
I present below what I believe is an essential Marxist perspective which avoids the fallacy of seeing Zionist colonization and decolonization of Palestine as exceptional.
Class, State and Colonialism in the Neoliberal Era
Marxist notions of class and production relations are the starting points for analyzing the dynamics of any society. This applies as well for a settler colonial project even at its early stage of capital accumulation and class formation. By the same token, Marxist viewpoints on the relationship between state and class is essential to the study of the capitalist settler colonial state. This viewpoint depicts the state as the organized political expression of its class structure which in turn generates the state’s character. “State and class need to be seen as mutually reinforcing each other, with the latter providing conditions of existence for the first.”[10]
Thus, seeing the economic realm as inseparable from the political sphere should replace a prevailing erroneous approach in the study of colonialism. Namely, its focus on the colonial state’s politics and ideology, assumed to generate the oppression of the indigenous people independently of the class structure within the colonial group itself. This approach plays down or even conceals the fact that this ‘internal’ class struggle plays a crucial role in shaping the colonial policies against the indigenous people.
The essence of a colonial capitalist class is its relentless search for more and more profitable new spaces and resources. The exploitation of cheap labour is an important component of this structural desire for profit. Already early in the colonization process, when the economy was based almost only on agriculture or home industry, there was a demand for cheap native labour.
Machover’s depiction of North America as “exclusionary” is a telling example of the mistaken basis on which his typology relies. This depiction is based on the notion that because native labour was dispensable, the European settlers chose to eliminate them. In fact, however, it was not the lack of demand which caused them to give up relying on native labour. European settlers replaced them with African slaves because the cost of their labour was much lower than that of the natives. Among other things, the Natives lacked immunity to lethal diseases to which Africans were already exposed and the fact that the indigenous populations had better knowledge of the land and people, made attempts at escape and revolt more likely to be successful. But most important was the determined, forceful and organized resistance of Native tribes which in many places succeeded in defeating the settlers and ended with treaties that allowed for the Natives to remain on their lands.[11]
In North America, as well as in other colonial projects, the extent of the demand for cheap labour was not a constant, fixed feature of the settler economy which was determined at the beginning of the colonial project. Like any capitalist system, the quest for the indigenous cheap labour in ‘exclusionary’ colonialism as well as in the ‘exploitation’ type was due to changes over time according to the fluctuations in their political and economic needs.
The drive of capital to search for profitable markets and raw material through domination of space is a major characteristic of the neoliberal world economy. Entire communities, which before colonization were agricultural societies, have been removed from their lands – their collective means of production – by large international companies, and with the sponsorship of the state. This has been taking place not only in the global South like India (the territories controlled by the Maoist Naxalites, throughout Bihar, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh states)[12], or in less developed states like Mexico (the Chiapas region). It is also evident in the remaining ‘pockets’ of natives within colonial advanced capitalist states like Canada and the USA where they have been granted semi-autonomy.
Marx’s notion of labour exploitation does not fully apply to the communal, collective oppression of the Indigenous People. The latter’s form of
dispossession is essentially different from the relations of production which takes place between the employer who owns the means of production and an individual who has only his labour to sell. As Glen Coulthard says:
“It appears that the history of dispossession, not proletarization, has been the dominant background structure shaping the character of the historical relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state … Stated bluntly, the theory and practice of Indigenous anticolonialism, including Indigenous anticapitalism, is best understood as a struggle primarily inspired by and oriented around the question of land and less around our emergent status as ‘rightless proletariat’.”[13]
Recognizing Native land expropriation as another form of ‘exploitation’ by capital explains the significant role they are playing in the struggle against capitalism and colonization.[14] By the same token it seems imperative to adopt this perspective for the study of the colonization of Palestine and the resistance against Zionist colonialism and imperialism. Like in other colonial states, Palestinian peasants have frequently depended upon non-wage activities in order to reproduce themselves, such as farming of small plots of land or unpaid family labour. Hence, reducing the issue of their labour contribution to the Israeli economy to ‘real work’ alone is a fallacy.
The Similarity Between Zionist Colonialism and Apartheid South Africa
The discussion on the nature of Zionist colonialism has often focused on the question of its similarities with Apartheid South Africa.[15] As mentioned, Machover regards the settlers’ demand for the colonized cheap labour as the decisive criteria for estimating the nature of the two colonial models. Accordingly, Palestinian workers – contrary to South African Black labour – are considered mostly outside the Israel economy.
The comparison below between Israel and South Africa is divided to three parts:
From pre-1948 to early 1990: Competition over labour market and class contradictions in the colonial society of Apartheid South Africa and Palestine/Israel;
South Africa and Israel-PLO Peace Agreements In the service of Capital; and
From 1967 to Post-Oslo Years – Palestinian Reserve Army of Labour
A. From Pre-1948 to early 1990 – Competition over Labour
A1. Introduction
Machover deals at length with the ideology, politics and strategies during the incipient stages of the Zionist colonization, including Hertzel’s plans for a Jewish state and later the history of the relations between the yishuv[16] political leadership and the British mandate till 1948. However, his mention of the presumed major feature of the ‘exclusionary’ Zionist colonialism is rather laconic: “In the pre state period, a ban on settlers employing Palestinian Arabs was enforced by the Zionist labour leaders.” Competition in the labour market is mentioned but lacks recognition of its centrality in portraying Zionist colonization as emphasized by several Israeli academics.
What is especially missing in Machover’s perspective is the recognition of the emerging class structure in the Jewish society and the opposed interests of the Jewish embryonic bourgeois and workers regarding the ban on employing Palestinian labourers. Looking into class contradictions within the colonial society itself, reveals similarity between apartheid South Africa and Zionist colonization already before 1948.
In both cases, it was the Labour party and trade unions that led the struggle for excluding the colonized from the labour market. In both, the workers fought against capitalists employing Indigenous cheap labour and in leading nationalist ‘Labour’ parties supported the exclusion of colonized labour. As noted by Gershon Shafir, “Since large pools of low-paid unskilled workers threatened the employment of Afrikaner and Jewish workers, they sought protection in nationalist movements. The defense of a ‘European standard of living’ [in South Africa] and ‘Hebrew labour’ in [Palestine], became key demands of Afrikaner and Zionist nationalist movements [respectively].”[17] In both countries, apartheid regimes were established in 1948: the Zionist state of Israel and the ‘majority rule’ following the election victory of ANC in South Africa.
A2. South Africa – White Trade Unions’ campaign against Blacks.
Thomas Hazlett[18] opens his instructive article on apartheid South Africa with rejecting “The conventional view [which determines] that apartheid was devised by affluent whites to suppress poor Blacks.” However, says Hazlett, “In fact, the system sprang from class warfare and was largely the creation of white workers struggling against both the black majority and white capitalists. Apartheid was born in the political victory of radical white trade unions over both of their rivals.”
The notion that the need for cheap Black labour following the 1871 Gold Rush gave rise to the Apartheid regime is rather a simplification-to say the least. It ignores the fact that the competition with Black workers who came from far villages to the Natal mines area opened a decades long struggle of white workers against the mines’ owners and later against employers in other industrial sections. The Labour unions and South African Labour Party (SALP), were formed in 1900 and 1908 respectively, to guard against the persistent tendency of the white capitalists to employ Black workers. Like the Zionist Labour Movement and the Histadrut[19] they were all white/Jewish and avowedly socialist: “Workers of the world unite, and fight for a white South Africa” was the slogan raised by white workers during their 1921 two months of bloody strike launched against the mine owners’ intention to fire 2000 white workers and replace them with Blacks.
The 1924 PACT Government-between the National Party (NP) and Labour Party (LP) “set an agenda of pro forma socialism.” Strikes and violent conflicts with the white capitalists and the government continued. However, the government adopted discriminatory laws for the benefit of whites, using the pretext of ‘industrial safety’ and claiming to adopt other ‘pro worker’ measures enacted in Western democracies.
The final intervention of the government in the service of white labour, was the nationalization of industries which employed large numbers of Blacks. Thus the state-run railways and other huge state enterprises aimed to impose racial white preference, similar to the Jewish exclusive Jewish ‘strategic’ industries in pre-state Israel and thereafter the establishment of the state.
The level of the assumed indispensability of Black labour fluctuated over time according to changes which took place in the economy and the white workers’ fear of competition. Thus, the demand during World War II for the country’s mineral exports was particularly strong and led to a large expansion of the mining and industrial sectors. This lured many thousands of new Black workers into the wage economy.[20] However the postwar contraction raised fears that “poor whites” would be passed by upwardly mobile Blacks which excited a radical response in the polls. By 1948 the National Party was elected to replace the past Color Bar regime with Apartheid, a newly comprehensive social policy of “separate development.”
The 1950 Apartheid laws, the Group Areas Act (1950), and The Population Registration Act,in combination with the Pass Laws enacted earlier, achieved almost full regulation of labour power. In addition, the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 implemented the policy of Cantonization and ‘Self Rule’ – shared by most colonial projects (including Israel’s policy in the West Bank). Accordingly, entire communities were brutally removed from rural areas – reclassified as “rural white areas” – to the homelands, and their lands were sold at low prices to white farmers. “From 1960 to 1994, more than 3.5-million people were forcibly removed from their homes and livelihoods, and moved into the Bantustans, where they were plunged into poverty.”[21]
A3. Palestine/Israel: The Histadrut fight for “Jewish Labour”
1. Pre-state period
As mentioned, unlike non-Marxist Israeli scholars, Machover does not emphasize the centrality of the competition with Palestinian labour as a central characteristic of pre-state colonization and as a prominent factor in the economy hereafter(like in any colonial project). Thus, for example, Michael Shalev asserts[22] that, due to the continued demand for Palestinian cheap labour and the absence of state power to enforce their exclusion, the political regulation of the labour market emerged as a basic characteristic of the Zionist project of state and nation-building. Moreover, as emphasized by Gershon Shafir, “From the start, competition in the labour market between the expensive Jewish and the cheaper Palestinian workers was one of the basic dimensions of the national conflict during the pre-state era.”[23]
Moreover, the emerging class structure in the Yishuv the Jewish bourgeoisie, and the workers adopted contradictory positions toward employing Palestinian workers. Like in South Africa, the Labour party and the Histadrut led the struggle against Palestinian workers and the political regulation of labour market. “The consistent threats for the political arrangements [introduced in both countries] came from the Jewish and English business interests, especially employers who were not inclined to subsidize the Afrikaner and Jewish workers.”[24] Employing Palestinian cheap agricultural labour continued at least until the 1936-9 “Great Arab uprising.” Thus for example, in 1934, 35.000 workers were brought from Horan due to the need for additional employees during agricultural seasonal work.[25]
The Histadrut together with the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the second institutional pillar of Zionist colonization, monopolized a section of the land and other markets and created a large, integrated cooperative Jewish sector of the economy. The JNF purchased lands for settlement and entire Palestinian communities were removed from their centuries owned lands. Palestinians were forbidden to purchase or lease those lands, nor were they allowed to work on them as employees. (These rules have lasted till the very preset).
Again, like in South Africa, colonial discriminative strategies took place under the guise of Socialism and alliance with European Social Democratic movements and parties. May Day was celebrated as a public holiday in which mass parades took place, waving plentiful red flags alongside the blue-white Jewish flag, while the Zionist Labour party translated and published classic Marxist writings.
The Histadrut did not have to nationalize the small and weak industries in the private sector in order to ensure the ban of Palestinians, as did the PACT government in South Africa .It introduced the irregular phenomenon of a “trade union” that established its own industrial, financial,construction, transport, and service enterprises. The Histadrut industrial enterprises ultimately formed the core of the four great conglomerates that for decades dominated the Israeli economy and served as the nucleus of Israel’s capitalist class.[26]
Thus, a long-term division of labour was created between the Histadrut/Labour Party and the bourgeoisie. In exchange for helping to develop the weak private industrial and commercial enterprises, and for ensuring “industrial silence” in labour relations, the bourgeoisie
accepted Zionist Labour’s political leadership.[27]
And of course, notwithstanding class contradictions, both the employee strata organized in the Histadrut and the middle and upper class were united around the Zionist goals of colonizing the land and building the state in-the-making.
2. From 1948 to 1966: Ethnic Cleansing and Military Regime
During the 1948 war a majority of the Palestinian inhabitants of what became Israel were ethnically cleansed. Soon after the end of the war a military government was enforced on the remaining 120,000-150,000 Palestinians in the newly established state.
The military regime fully administered their lives, including through a daily pass system which limited mobility outside their villages and towns. It aimed to control the labour market and access to land, thus preventing the competition of cheap Palestinian workers with the mass Jewish new immigrants who flooded the country.[28]
In December 1966, a few months before the 1967 war, the military government was abolished. By then most of the Palestinian lands were expropriated and Jewish settlements-Kibbutzim and Moshavim were built on them, resulting in Jewish total control of agricultural production. A number of Basic Laws assured the massive land confiscation as well as other aspects of the Apartheid nature of the state.
These laws are comparable to South Africa’s laws of the 1950s as stated by Saree Makdisi: “Every single major South African apartheid law… has a direct equivalent in Israel today.”[29]
Thus for example two laws mentioned by Makdisi which were the pillars of South African Apartheid included the Population Registration Act of 1950 (which assigned to every South African a racial identity according to which s/he had access to a varying range of rights, and; the Group Areas Act of 1950, which assigned different areas of South Africa for the residential use of different racial group. Both have a direct equivalent in the Basic laws of Israel in which every citizen of the state has a distinct national identity upon which various fundamental rights – like access to land and housing are attendant. These include the Law of Nationality and Entry 1952, the Law of Return – 1950 as well as the articles in the Basic Law Israel Lands, enacted in 1960.
With the accelerated development both in agriculture and in industry, especially after the 1967 war, the ban on Palestinian citizens labour could no longer be maintained. It created an ever increasing demand for a cheap, mobile and under-privileged labour force. They became “a decisive factor in the major sectors of the Israeli economy: in the construction industry, in road building, in tourism, agriculture and various other industries.” Thus for example the public construction sector owned largely by the Histadrut giant Solel-Boneh, relied almost exclusively on Palestinian manual labour. Immanuel Farajun notes that “The accelerated development of the Israeli economic infrastructure and the large capital investments during the years 1967-1973 would never have materialized without Arab labour, and particularly workers from the new occupied territories.”[30]
B. South Africa and Israel-PLO Peace Agreements
B1. Introduction
Both the Israel-PLO agreements and the electoral transference of power in South Africa took place after extended periods of economic stagnation. The peace agreements were required for mitigating the sanctions and boycotts and the continued resistance which threatened to impede the full integration of both economies into the globalizing world economy. In both countries important segments of the business community played equally prominent role in the efforts to achieve peaceful resolution to the conflict.[31] The changes in social relation formation cultivated a collaborating indigenous middle class who supported the aims of the agreements, namely to perpetuate economic neoliberalism and the rule of local and global capital.
B2. South Africa 1994 Agreement – Non revolution
By the end of the 1980s, South Africa was in the longest recession in its recorded history. Falling profitability in key economic sectors coincided with the upsurge of black discontent and a long period of political and socio-economic upheaval from Soweto in 1976 onwards. The profitability crisis was worsened by international sanctions and boycotts, which in addition to other troubles, contributed to substantial outflows of capital.[32] Widening sectors of the capitalist class realized that doing away with the fettering apartheid regime was an essential condition for revising economic growth and modernity. The ANC/SACP was rightly considered a most suitable partner for implementing this vital transformation while retaining economic neoliberalism and accelerating market-led restructuring and deregulation: “Business leaders also knew from, among other things, private discussions they held with ANC leaders in the 1980s and early 1990s, that the liberation movement had little desire to upset capitalist social relations. Indeed, this was obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the ANC’s own evolution,” say Ferguson and Jones.[33]
The ANC was never anti-capitalist. Their determined struggle against the Apartheid regime and the fake socialist discourse led by the SACP was misinterpreted as signifying a radical positions on social economic issues as well. In fact, the ANC was always a moderate reform movement dominated by the emergent nascent Black middle class. A part of them developed toward the 90′ into thin layer of Black capitalists. Thus, after the fall of the Soviet Union they explicitly adopted a market ideology which made them the best option for implementing white capitalist plans for economic restructuring: “Everyone agreed that the interests of capital could best be served by a moderate black regime. Such a government could contain and co-opt working class discontent far more effectively than the increasingly shaky and internationally discredited apartheid regime.”[34] And indeed, in power the ANC proved to be a most capable instrument in implementing whites ‘business elite interests which led to the 1994 agreement. At the same time, they also advanced their own class interests by organizing the access of black business people to domestic as well as foreign capital. Rightly Furguson and Jones conclude: “The preservation of the old state apparatus[..] is a clear sign that no revolution of any sort has taken place in South Africa. What has happened is a readjustment of the political forms which guarantee the exploitation of black workers.”
B3. Israel-PLO Oslo Agreement – Non Peace
Indeed as mentioned, the economic and political concerns which brought about the Israel-PLO Agreement were essentially similar to those which led to the South African “peaceful resolution.” However, here the U.S. was the major partner who determined its substance, aiming to create the adequate conditions for implementing the U.S. neoliberal plan for the Middle East.
Since 1967 Israel has become a strategic asset for enforcing U.S. interests in the region – largely to control the access to its vast supplies of oil. This implied the need to repress the ongoing resistance by the masses of different political and social movements both against the authoritarian Arab regimes and Imperialist powers headed by the USA.
As noted by Toufic Haddad: “The undemocratic basis of these [Arab] regimes and the existence of various competing ‘radical’ traditions in the region leftists, Pan-Arabists, and Pan-Islamists, always meant the system was perpetually unstable and could quickly change. It is within this context that the U.S. came to recognize Israel as strategic ‘tramp card’ to this agenda after the latter’s 1967 defeat of pan-Arabist leader Jamal Abdel Nasser.”[35]
The Palestinian ‘Issue’ has been a prominent component in the continued structural instability of U.S. allied Arab regimes:
“…the question of controlling,managing and possibly liquidating the aspirations of Palestinian national self determination acquired significant strategic value for the U.S., as it was tied to both wings of its imperial strategy: the political, nationl, geographic, cultural, historical and moral bonds between the Palestinian people and the Arab periphery, continually re-raised the various forms of western imperial subjugation of the region. Equally so, Palestinian resistance to Israel’s settler colonial presence never ceased despite the ethnic cleansing of 1948, and the successive waves of their displacement.”[36]
Like the Blacks’ uprising in South Africa, the 1987-93 Palestinian Intifada played a decisive factor in accelerating the process toward Oslo Agreement.
Thus, the Israeli-Palestinian ‘conflict’ was a stumbling-block on the way to mobilize the Arab states to the U.S. imperial neoliberal plan for the Middle East. Reaching a “peace settlement” was a condition for the aspired “normalization” of Israel-Arab states relations. Israel’s capitalist elite, linked, to the Labour Party who had introduced neoliberal policies in 1985, were active partners to the plan. Their need for open markets and integration within global capital had been prevented by the Arab boycott which was assumed to end following the Oslo Agreement.
A necessary element in the U.S. imperial plans was the need to nurture a Palestinian leadership willing to supply a ‘Green light’ for the ‘moderate’ Arab regimes, to end Israel’s isolation. Here, Like in South Africa, a leadership of the liberation struggle, shared a ‘peace’ settlement which ensured the continued rule of local and global capital. In exchange, the colonized were granted forms of political rule which served as a tool for repressing resistance to and cooperating with neoliberal strategy.
Oslo opened the way for creating one Zionist economic, military and political regime, throughout entire Historic Palestine, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) acted as a sub contractor. Thus, a class structure has been evolving, in which Palestinian labour is exploited either directly by Israeli capitalism and its state or indirectly through the totally dependent PA and Palestinian business elite.
C. From 1967 to Post Oslo Years – Palestinian Reserve Army of Labour
The 1967 war resulted in the accelerated economic development of Israel, both in agriculture and in industry, creating an ever increasing demand for a cheap, mobile and under-privileged labour. This role was filled by the Palestinian workers, including both residents of the 1967 occupied territories, and Palestinian citizens just starting to flow into the market in large numbers.[37]
Israel’s policies of de-development and its massive seizure of Palestinian lands and resources aimed at the destruction of the agricultural sector, turned a large portion of rural Palestinians to a source of cheap, highly exploited labour for Israel’s economy. Together with the abundant employees by the dependent PA, Palestinian workers have been prey to both ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ exploitation. That is, by Israeli capitalists and the Israeli state, and by their proxies – the PA and its dependent business elite.
The Israeli economy’s expansion following the 1967 war, “was dubbed ‘the Palestinian boom’. By the mid-1980s, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip made up around 7 per cent of the Israeli labour force … half this number working in the construction industry – a vital sector that was at the core of Israel’s capitalist class, composed of large conglomerates tied to the state, private capital, and the labour Zionist movement.”[38]
However, since Oslo and the establishment of the PA, Israel gradually replaced the 1967 Palestinian labour force with hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from Asia and Eastern Europe. Thus, the Israeli economy no longer relied heavily upon the ‘direct’ exploitation of cheap Palestinian labour as was in the 80s. Instead of working within Israel, Palestinians became increasingly dependent on public sector employment with the PA or transfer payments made by the PA to families of prisoners, martyrs or the needy. Also the other major area of employment the private sector, particularly in the services sector, was almost entirely dependent on the PA.[39]
Hanieh notes that “this substitution was partly enabled by the declining importance of agriculture and construction as Israeli economy shifted away from those sectors of the economy toward high-tech industries and exports of finance and capital.”[40]
Thus, between 1992 and 1996, Palestinian employment in Israel declined from 36.2 per cent of the West Bank/Gaza Strip total Labour force to 14.9 per cent. However between 1999 and 1997 an upturn in the Israeli economy saw the number of Palestinian workers increase to approximately pre-1993 levels. “As these changes proceeded apace,” Hanieh notes, “Palestinian labour became a tap that could be turned on and off, depending on the economic and political situation and the needs of Israeli capital.”[41] These have come to constitute a disposable “reserve army of labour” for Israeli capitalism together with Palestinian citizen labour.[42]
Karl Marx used the “industrial reserve army” term to depict the presence of a large pool of workers living a precarious existence as one of the basic characteristics of Capitalism. Fred and Harry Magdoff explain, “this surplus-labouring population is not only the lever of capitalistic accumulation, but a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production – a disposable industrial reserve army, that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred it as its own: More than an underlying attribute of capitalism, the reserve army helps to keep costs down – permitting the market system to function profitably – and serves as a constant and effective weapon against workers.”[43] By the same token, I a colonial situation the indigenous people who are dispossessed from their lands or those who joined the existing ‘classic’ exploited working class, constitute the reserve army of both the colonized and the colonialists’ labour.
Workers are to some extent disposable in any capitalist system including that of a colonial project – be it of the ‘exclusion’ or the ‘exploitation’ type. The very concept of reserve army implies fluctuations in the rate of workers who are indispensable to the economy. Changes in the weight of the demand for indigenous cheap labour, throughout the years of Apartheid South Africa and in Palestine, before and after the ’67 occupation. Moreover, at any given time a colonial regime may employ, in different proportions, both exclusion and exploitation measures toward its colonized workers which from the very earlier stages of capitalism play the role of a reserve army of labour. •
I am thankful to Adam Hanieh whose book Lineages of Revolt has been a telling resource for many of the ideas presented in this article.
Ilan Pappe, Ed., Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid , Zed Books (2015); Moshé Machover, Israelis and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution , Haymarket Books (2012), p. 262-283.
Moshé Machover, “The decolonization of Palestine,” Weekly Worker , 23 June 2016. Published later at Israeli Occupation Archive , August 2016.
The first: “Colonization and the Natives,” Weekly Worker , 17 December 2015; and the second: “New context, new focus,” Weekly Worker , 4 February 2016.
Some of the ideas presented in this article had been presented in Machover’s previous articles including the 2014 “Standing the Test of Time,” which was strongly criticized by a number of comrades and myself.
See criticism of this article by David Walton, “Last Resort,” Weekly Worker , (July 26 2012) and Moshé Machover response to him: “False analogy,” August 6, 2012. See also: Ralph Schoenman, “Moshé Machover’s Sleight of Hand,” Weekly Worker , August 6, 2012; and Tikva Honig-Parnass, “One democratic state in historic Palestine: A socialist viewpoint,” International Socialist Review , Issue #90 October 2013.
Karl Kautsky, Socialism and Colonial Policy (1907).
See: “The Palestine Problem and the Israeli-Arab dispute,” statement by the Israeli Socialist Organization (Matzpen), May 18 1967.
Reproduced in Machover, Israelis and Palestinians , p. 13. I adopted this mistaken depiction of Zionist colonialism typology in my book False Prophets of Peace, Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine , Haymarket Books (2011), p. 47. “Consciously and deliberately,
Zionists adopted the model of pure settler colonies, following colonialist precedents set in North America, New Zealand, and Australia, where native populations were exterminated or expelled instead of used for cheap labour.”
Honig-Parnass, “One Democratic State in historic Palestine.”
My opinion on the fake ‘Hebrew’ national group who equally to the Palestinian nationalism is the creation of imperialism as well as my call for a one state, are presented at length in my article, Ibid, 2013.
Adam Hanieh, Lineages of Revolt , Haymarket Books (2013), p. 8.
See Sam Morningstar, “Why were Africans used as slaves instead of Native Americans?,” Quora , April 2, 2014.
Arundhati Roy, “The Heart of India is Under Attack,” The Guardian , October 30, 2009.
The introduction to Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014, Quoted in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “A Sense of Hope and the Possibility of Solidarity,” International Ssocialist Review Issue #103 Winter 2016.
Pappe, Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid .
The organized Jewish settler society in Palestine of pre-state Israel.
Gershon Shafir, “Business in Politics: Globalization and the Search for Peace in South Africa and Israel/Palestine,” Israel Affairs , 5:2-3 (1998), published online: 11 Apr 2007 dx.doi.org/10.1080/135371299087195. David Levi-Faur, Gabriel Sheffer, David Vogel, eds., Israel: The Dynamics of Change and Continuity , Psychology Press (1999), pp. 103-120.
Thomas W. Hazlett, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: Apartheid , 2nd edition (n.d.). Thomas W. Hazlett is a professor of law and economics at George Mason University. In 1991–1992 he was chief economist of the Federal Communications Commission.
Histadrut (an acronym for the General Federation of the Workers in Eretz Israel) was a central organ of the colonial project. As the overarching organization of workers’ trade unions, it controlled key areas that
were needed to accomplish the primary tasks of the Zionist colonial enterprise. These included economic production and marketing, defense, and control of the labour force,
as well as creating jobs outside the free market so as to avoid competition with abundant and cheap Palestinian labour. The Histadrut thus introduced
the irregular phenomenon of a “trade union” that established its own industrial, financial, construction, transport, and service enterprises.
Earlier alleviation of the ban on Black labour took place during the boom in early 1930s.
Hazlett, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: Apartheid .
Michael Shalev, Labour and the Political Economy in Israel , Oxford University Press (1992).
Shafir, “Business in Politics.”
Ibid, p. 116.
Ibid. Shafir quotes Davar, the Eretz Israel Workers Daily , August 14 1934. Horan is a district/region of the Ottoman Empire, south-west of what is Syria today.
See Adam Hanieh, “From State-Led Growth to Globalization: The Evolution of Israeli Capitalism,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32:4 (2003). He analyzes here the Histadrut’s central role in developing the economy of the state, “preparing” it for the the mid-90s economic neoliberalism initiated by a Labour-led government.
Zeev Sternhell, Nation Building or a New Society? The Zionist Labor Movement (1914–1940) and the Origins of Israel (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers 1995). Elaborating on the nature of Zionist labour “socialism” in the pre-state period, he depicted the ideology of “Constructive Socialism,” created by the Zionist Labour movement as the local version of National-Socialism – which retained the main tenets of organic nationalism within a “socialist” framework.
Sara Lazar, From Hebrew Histadrut to Israeli Histadrut 1948-1966 .
Saree Makdisi, “A Racism Outside Language: Israel’s Apartheid,” Pambazuka , March 11, 2010.
Emmanuel Farajun, Palestinian Workers: A Reserve Army of Labour in the Israeli Economy (July 1979). Originally published in Hebrew by The Israeli
Socialist Organization (MATZPEN) in Dapim Adumim (“Red Pages”), no 5, May 1978. In English see: Emmanuel Farajun, “Palestinian Workers: Introduction,” FORBIDDEN AGENDAS, KHAMSIN 7, 10 July 1980.
Shafir, “Business in Politics: Globalization and Search for Peace in South Africa and Israel/Palestine,” notes that despite differences between the business communities of Israel and South Africa, they share some remarkable similarities that led significant sectors of the business communities of both countries to mobilize for peacemaking.
Philip Ferguson and Sharon Jones, “South Africa’s Non-evolution,” Red Line: Contemporary Marxist Analysis , July 6, 2012.
Toufic Haddad, Palestine Ltd. Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory , I.B. Tauris (2016), p. 38. Haddad refers to Samir Amin, and Gilbert Achcar.
Farajun, Palestinian Workers: A Reserve Army of Labour in the Israeli Economy .
Hanieh, Lineages of Revolt , p. 105.
Ibid., p. 109.
Ibid. Headline of sub-chapter: “A Disposable Reserve Army of Labor,” p. 109.
Fred Magdoff and Harry Magdoff, “Disposable Workers: Today’s Reserve Army of Labor,” Monthly Review , 55:11 (April 2004).
Tikva Honig-Parnass was raised in the Jewish community of pre-state Palestine, fought in the 1948 war, and served as the secretary of the then Radical Left Zionist Party of Mapam (The Unified Workers Party) in the Knesset (1951–1954). In 1960 she definitively broke with Zionism and joined the ranks of the Israeli Socialist Organization, known as Matzpen. She is author of False Prophets of Peace and co-edited Between the Lines with Toufic Haddad, both published by Haymarket Books.
War/Peace • June 21, 2018
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The ‘One Democratic State Campaign’ for a Multicultural Democratic State in Palestine/Israel
Jeff Halper
The Great March of Return and Israel’s Attack on Gaza: Canadian Opposition
War/Peace • April 3, 2018
Solidarity with the Great Return March in Gaza
Socialist Project and Palestinian BDS National Committee
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Investigating water ice, space weathering on the Moon
$7 million research effort enhances prospects for future human space exploration
By Talia Ogliore November 12, 2019 November 12, 2019
The first manned lunar landing mission, Apollo 11, launched from the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969. A new research collaborative led by Arts & Sciences researchers from Washington University in St. Louis seeks to identify the source of water stored as ice at the lunar poles, and also to help future space explorers to harvest the water for beneficial use. (Photo: NASA)
When humans go back to the Moon — and NASA plans to return by 2024 — they’re going to need water. For now, the astronauts expect to bring their own. But future space explorers aim to take advantage of water recently discovered in little-explored regions of the Moon.
The water is stored as ice in shadowy parts at the Moon’s poles. A consortium led by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis will investigate the life cycle of this water and other volatiles on the surface of the Moon. The team is one of NASA’s eight new Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institutes; the five-year cooperative agreement is valued at more than $7 million.
Gillis-Davis
“One of the big questions we are looking to shed light on is what are the origins and evolution of water on the Moon,” said Jeffrey Gillis-Davis, research associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences and the principal investigator of the Interdisciplinary Consortium for Evaluating Volatile Origins (ICE Five-O) team.
“Studying the interaction between lunar volatiles and the space environment gives our team the opportunity to test hypotheses regarding the delivery and retention of water and other volatiles on bodies in the inner solar system,” he said.
Researchers on the ICE Five-O team will investigate fundamental questions at the intersection of space science and human space exploration.
For example, NASA is eyeing the water at the Moon’s poles with more than just basic science in mind. If humans are able to successfully mine lunar ice, it could be split into its elemental components — hydrogen and oxygen — and used in fuel for high-energy rockets. Future refueling stations on the Moon could propel explorers to sites all over the inner solar system.
WashU Expert: On Apollo legacy, and why we should return to the moon
“This project represents a great integration of our analytical and experimental laboratories both in the Earth and Planetary Sciences and Physics departments, as well as our experience in lunar science and other planetary research,” said Brad Jolliff, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences and a co-investigator on the project.
Other Washington University co-investigators include Ryan Ogliore, assistant professor of physics, and Alian Wang, research professor of earth and planetary sciences.
In addition to Washington University, the new consortium includes researchers from the University of Hawaii; California State University San Marcos; San Francisco State University; NASA’s Johnson Space Center; the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory; the Lunar & Planetary Institute; University of Winnipeg; York University; and the University of Toronto.
Determining the source
In 2017, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter found new evidence of surface water ice in polar regions of the Moon. Scientists suggest three main hypotheses for the origins and evolution of water and other ices now known to be contained in permanently shadowed regions of the Moon.
The water may have been expelled from volcanoes on the Moon billions of years ago. Or the water and other volatiles may have been delivered to the surface of the Moon by comets and water-rich asteroids. Another theory suggests that the water was formed when oxygen-rich minerals on the lunar surface were buffeted by hydrogen ions streaming from the sun.
Shackleton crater is in the center this multi-temporal illumination map of the lunar south pole. Permanently shadowed craters may harbor reservoirs of ices and other volatile compounds that could serve as valuable resources for future explorers. (Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)
“We want to place some constraints on how the isotopic ‘signatures’ of volatile sources might be modified as molecules traverse across the lunar surface and find their way into permanently shadowed regions,” Gillis-Davis said. “We want to be sure that future measurements can conclusively determine the source or sources of volatiles, when ice chemistry is measured on the lunar surface.”
To do that, the researchers will also study how the harsh space environment alters the surfaces of airless bodies like the Moon, a process called space weathering.
The ICE Five-O grant includes funding for a new state-of the-art space weathering laboratory. Ions streaming from the sun and high-velocity dust-sized particles release huge amounts of energy that transform minerals into glass and can destroy ices, or lead to a variety of chemical processes — for example, transforming molecules of water (H2O) ice and carbon dioxide (CO2) ice to methane ice (CH3). The new space weathering facilities will expand the range of surface conditions that researchers can simulate. These simulations will allow researchers to create conditions like those found at the lunar poles and on other planetary bodies — to see how water, ice and rock are altered when they encounter these conditions.
Collaborators are also developing the protocols and techniques for collecting new space samples that are more likely to contain volatile substances. These protocols are not only important for when humans return to the Moon, but also for other space missions such as those to the surfaces of asteroids. The ICE Five-O team includes NASA sample curation specialists, who are developing new techniques to safely transport, preserve and handle these volatile-rich samples.
“Revealing the source of the Moon’s water can in turn inform us about how the Earth got its water,” Gillis-Davis said. “If we see that the water wasn’t sourced entirely from lunar volcanoes — that it was delivered later — then it would be a strong indicator that Earth’s oceans formed at least in part by water delivered after Earth’s formation, rather than during its accretion in the early solar system.”
The research led by the ICE Five-O team will help guide critical parts of the planning for future manned missions to the Moon.
“ICE Five-O results aim at not only determining the source of lunar water but also enabling an era of sustained exploration, where people live and work on the Moon for extended periods of time,” Gillis-Davis said.
Related video: Washington University scientists on how Apollo 11 launched 50 years of lunar science.
Arts & SciencesEarth and Planetary SciencesMoonPhysics
Media Contact: Talia Ogliore
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(CIHRS) delivered an oral Intervention during UNHRC 17th Session « ID with SR on Extrajudicial and Summary Executions » | 31/05/2011
Article • Publié sur Souria Houria le 31 mai 2011
United Nations Human Rights Council 17th Session
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)
Oral Intervention Item 3: ID with SR on Extrajudicial and Summary
Delivered by: Laila Matar
Thank you Mr. President,
The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), in cooperation with 12 Arab partner NGOs* , welcomes the timely report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial killings. Widespread instances of extrajudicial, summary, and arbitrary executions carried out by governments throughout the Arab region in response to protests calling for political reform, constitute one of the most brutal and widespread crackdowns on democratic movements in recent history. We ask the Special Rapporteur to urgently address these killings in a report specifically dedicated to this purpose, which would provide the international community with a preliminary analysis of the international legal implications of any alleged extrajudicial killings in these particular situations.
In Libya, Muammar Ghadafi and his government have waged an all out war against its civilians for their participation in peaceful protests. Ensuring timely international justice for those responsible for alleged crimes against humanity in Libya is critical to upholding the basic standards of international humanitarian law.
In Tunisia, 300 civilians are estimated to have been killed during protests. In Egypt, the death toll of protestors exceeds 840. We ask the SR on Extrajudicial killings, in cooperation with mandate holders on the independence of judges and lawyers, arbitrary detention, torture, and freedom of expression, to urgently request a joint visit to both of these countries in order to advice transitional authorities on the proper legal framework, international standards and good practices that must be used to ensure a fair and transparent transitional justice process, which have thus far greatly deviated from international standards.
In the case of Yemen, over 200 people have been killed since February in attacks on peaceful demonstrators by security forces. Yesterday, government and government led militias used deadly force, including live ammunition, against protestors in al Hureya Sqaure in Taiz. Throughout the events that took place last night, initial estimates are at more than 50 killed, two of which were burnt alive, and over hundreds injured.
Authorities in Bahrain are responsible for the killings of at least 31 protestors since February. In addition, four people have died under circumstances that appear to indicate inhumane treatment and torture during detention.
In Syria, the government continues to commit gross and systematic violations against its population, with security forces using live ammunition to kill peaceful protestors. Since the start of protests in March, between 1000 and 1,200 people have been killed by security forces and pro-government assailants.
Such acts may be tantamount to crimes against humanity. As such, this Council should recommend the Security Council to immediately refer the situations in Syria and Yemen, as it did with Libya, to the International Criminal Court for investigation.
Finally, the Human Rights Council can no longer maintain silence in the face of extrajudicial executions and other grave violations in Bahrain and Yemen. These two situations must be urgently dealt with to prevent further rights violations from occurring.
* This statement is supported by the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights, Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies (Syria), Sisters’ Arab Forum for Human Rights (Yemen), Hewar Foundation for Democratic Development (Yemen), Yemeni Organization for Human and Democratic Rights, and Social and Democratic Forum (Yemen), Hood organization for Human Rights (Yemen), National organization for human rights (Yemen), Yemeni Center for Civil Rights, Yemeni Center for Human Rights, Yemeni Center for Human Rights Studies, and Yemeni Center for Journalists’ training.
Source: http://www.cihrs.org/English/NewsSystem/Articles/2882.aspx
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Such A Great Deal For Draymond
A triple double in a title clincher. He got off a tough start in the Finals but man, did he respond when Golden State needed him over these last three games. He got so close at MSU to a championship…a national title game, another Final Four appearance and then a third year where his team was a 1 seed, but they just couldn’t get over the hump. So happy to see him get it done at the NBA level and he sure as hell didn’t bandwagon his way into this title…he was a HUGE part of this thing.
Then you realize he’s only 25. He’s on a team with a similarly young core and which should remain a contender for years to come as long as they stay healthy and the dreaded “Disease of More” doesn’t damage them. Just an unbelievable future for that guy…and then you think about the kind of representative and ACTIVE ambassador he is for MSU’s program and man, it’s just so, so good.
Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors, Michigan State Spartans
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A few laps, lay-ups, and complete passes and I’m Done
Adam Duerson contemplates the current status of the sports movie in the December 17, 2007 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine.
Asking whether or not “the perceived need to appeal to women–and overseas markets [has] doomed the sports flick,” Duerson begins his piece, “Endangered Species,” by remarking that “Will Ferrell! On Figure skates! For better or worse…is how sports movies in the year 2007 will be remembered” (26).
After providing some box office numbers, he wonders, “where are the HoosiersRaging Bulls? and the ” and then adds, “the reality is that it’s not nearly as easy to make a sports movie as it used to be. With movie attendance in the U.S. dropping, the new Hollywood business model relies more heavily on foreign receipts.” The problem with this method is that according to Mark Ciardi, “there’s no foreign [earning] on sports movies” overseas.
In addition to how unenthusiastic other countries are for American sports movies, Duerson argues that “there’s the prevailing notion in Hollywood that women choose which movies couples see together but that only men are drawn to sports films.” Duerson gets veteran sports film marketing man Jeff Freedman to comment on the situation, which is basically that a sports film can only be made if the sport is secondary to thematic and other narrative elements. In other words, “the first thing a studio decides…is to say it’s a love story, or a father-son story.”
He includes an unnamed Hollywood marketing professional’s observation that “if somebody wanted to make Raging Bull today, I don’t know that it could happen” because “it’s too dark.” Duerson’s article then implicitly criticizes Hollywood’s multiplex complex as a limitation to the production and wider distribution of sports films that possess artistic qualities on par with dramas and action films. To get funding or a distribution deal, filmmakers are “plugging away with the same old sports comedy-drama-romance hybrids.” He then cites the Will Ferrell basketball comedy Semi-Pro and George Clooney’s period comedy Leatherheads as 2008’s sports film offerings.
Duerson closes his thoughts by pointing out that independent sports cinema may inspire the critics and are received well at film festivals, but distributors aren’t convinced the general public will buy it.
As a one-page article, Duerson understandably doesn’t have the space to delve deeper into the issues and examples he brings up as indicating the steady decline of the sports film. I’m going to attempt to contextualize or offer some more points to ponder. Duerson’s three concerns are profits, audience, and distribution. Ultimately, though, it’s one issue: money. Whether or not a movie is to be made depends on how much money it could make. Hollywood is a business and has always operated along the paradigm of telling stories the audience will purchase (with or without encouragement from the studios). Artistic innovations and creating the impression or building the mythology that making movies (and any art form for that matter) privileges the art above else is realistically speaking wishful thinking.
The example of Raging Bull as a sports film of quality and not just a guilty pleasure (entertainment) needs a bit more background explanation. Kevin J. Hayes articulates in the introduction of Cambridge Film Handbooks’ edition on the film that “superlatives abound whenever people talk about Raging Bull. Not only is it an exemplary cinematic work, it is also a cultural icon representing a rich cross section of themes, issues, and characters that reflect American culture in ways that typical Hollywood films do not” (1). Wouldn’t you say that the bulk of commercial, mainstream American films today don’t come close in this respect? Hayes later adds, “Raging Bull owes an important debt to the heritage of the boxing film genre” and boxing itself (10).
Culturally, Scorsese’s film was conceived in an atmosphere that allowed it to be brought into the world. Its examination of masculinity, violence, and the notion of loss isn’t what would keep a studio head or a distribution company today from a greenlight. Instead, it’s about the way the entertainment industry has changed post-highspeed internet and DVD. The idea of diversification of markets isn’t new to advertisers. Merchandising of characters in films and books aren’t limited to the movies and the publishing industry. Dialogue and images from a film can be found in all consumer markets (ahem, George Lucas). Cross-stitching the music with the movie industry isn’t new either. Elvis. Frank Sinatra. Louis Armstrong. Barbara Streisand.
The difference now is that the internet is a new medium through which music, moving images, and literature can circulate. The behaviors and the tendencies (and preferences) of the buying public (which is primarily teenagers) is devastatingly significant in determining how to make the most amount of money (over a short or long period of time). If the sports film (as a drama) today can’t narratively or thematically be similar to those of earlier generations for reasons of economy rather than artistry, it’s happening across the board. Outside independent cinema, studios have little motivation to make movies–they want to make franchises (that include video game tie-ends).
And, if you want originality in content and form, you might not find it in a movie theatre. You might have to turn to Youtube or an art gallery.
I don’t think it’s that unfortunate that studio heads have to view sports films as not being sports films. Thematically, they’re about more than whatever sport is involved. These films are about relationships between people, self-discovery, and hope, or, in other cases, defeat. Instead of employing the motif or metaphor of a soldier or an artist, these movies elect the athlete.
Adam Duerson, if you’re reading this entry, when I make my football movie, it should be a sign of better things to come. Mine won’t be a sports romantic comedy.
I’m cognitively wiped out right now. I’ll revisit this post again.
Originally published at Century Fille.
This entry was posted in Basketball, Films, Football and tagged Adam Duerson, art, hollywood, Martin Scorsese, money, Raging Bull, sports illustrated, sports movies, Will Ferrell, youtube on December 18, 2007 by sittingpugs.
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Hip surgery ends a lost year for Isaiah Thomas, who now faces an uncertain future
Dan Devine
March 30, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC
This time last year, Isaiah Thomas was on his way to the first All-NBA appearance of his career, vying for the league lead in scoring while leading the Boston Celtics to their first 50-win season in a half-dozen years. Now, a year and two teams removed from the greatest heights of his career, the Los Angeles Lakers point guard has again come to a crashing low.
The Lakers announced Wednesday that Thomas would go under the knife to repair the right hip that has now scuttled two seasons, and has generated massive uncertainty about what comes next for a perennial underdog and two-time All-Star who just 12 months ago appeared to be on the verge of a superstar breakthrough. Thomas had the “minimally invasive procedure to ‘clean up’ the joint of all inflammatory debris related to his injury from last season” on Thursday; afterward, the Lakers confirmed that Thomas would miss the rest of the season, pegging his expected recovery time at four months.
Four months means the end of July. Free agency opens at the beginning of July, and when it does, Thomas will be an unrestricted free agent for the first time in his career. One year ago, operating as a folk hero in Boston and one of the NBA’s most explosive scorers, Thomas looked poised to cash in with the biggest payday of his career. Now, he’ll hit the market in the midst of his second major hip rehabilitation in as many summers, surrounded by questions about whether he can ever return to the peak of his form.
Thomas first injured his hip after colliding with Karl-Anthony Towns on a layup attempt during a game between the Celtics and Minnesota Timberwolves on March 15, 2017. After a brief absence with what was initially diagnosed as a right knee bone bruise, Thomas returned to the Celtics, playing brilliantly down the stretch.
He led the team through playoff series victories over the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards, despite dealing with the emotional trauma of the death of his sister, Chyna, just before the start of the postseason, and despite smacking his face on the court during the first game against Washington, costing him a tooth and requiring him to undergo hours of oral surgery. Eventually, though, playing through the pain caught up with Thomas, resulting in his shelving during the conference finals matchup with LeBron James’ Cavs after re-aggravating an injury that was later revealed to be a torn labrum in his right hip, which would shelve him the rest of the season.
After weeks of consultation, Thomas and the Celtics announced that he wouldn’t need surgery to repair the labrum. Instead, he’d opt to rehabilitate the injury, with player and team anticipating that he’d be back on the TD Garden court to start to the 2017-18 campaign.
Plans changed, though.
Boston Celtics guard Kyrie Irving (right) embraces Cleveland Cavaliers guard Isaiah Thomas after a Jan. 3, 2018, game. (AP)
After Kyrie Irving made it clear that he didn’t want to return to the Cavs to play second fiddle to LeBron, Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge sent his current All-Star point guard (plus forward Jae Crowder, center Ante Zizic and the Brooklyn Nets’ unprotected 2018 first-round pick) to Cleveland for a new one — a decision reportedly made, at least in part, out of a concern that the 5-foot-9 Thomas, who’s made a career out of being able to blow past defenders and explode to the basket, wouldn’t have the same burst or lateral quickness after his injury.
Those concerns, thus far, have largely borne out. After missing the first 36 games of the season rehabbing, Thomas struggled mightily to regain his form, fitness and rhythm after returning to the court. In 15 games in Cleveland, Thomas averaged 14.7 points, 4.5 assists and 2.1 rebounds in 27.1 minutes per game, shooting a career-worst 36.1 percent from the field and 25.3 percent from 3-point range.
He was also a major defensive liability for a Cleveland team that already struggled to corral ball-handlers at the point of attack. After his return, the Cavs allowed 106.4 points per 100 possessions with Thomas off the floor, and a staggering 118.6 points-per-100 with him on it, turning the average Cavalier opponent into essentially the most stacked All-Star team in history during his time on the court.
That disappointing performance wasn’t all his fault; he was just knocking the rust off after seven months on the shelf, and few other Cavs had covered themselves in glory on the defensive end. But it was still a problem, and Thomas also wasn’t helping the Cavs’ offense produce, and he had reportedly played a central role in the internecine squabbling that had festered inside the Cavs’ locker room amid their struggles.
The Cavs needed an on-court shake-up and an off-court exorcism. And so, despite his wishes, off Thomas went, headed to Hollywood in February, when the Cleveland Cavaliers traded him along with center Channing Frye and a protected first-round draft pick in exchange for Lakers guard Jordan Clarkson and power forward Larry Nance Jr.
Isaiah Thomas played just 17 games for the Lakers before his hip issues flared up again. (Getty)
Thomas didn’t light the world on fire during his stint in L.A., averaging 15.6 points, 5.0 assists and 2.1 rebounds in 26.8 minutes per game while shooting 38.3 percent from the field and 32.7 percent from 3-point land — numbers largely commensurate with what he’d produced in Cleveland. But while he bristled some at the notion that he’d become a backup point guard on a team that starts No. 2 overall draft pick Lonzo Ball, Thomas did at least show flashes of being capable of getting back to the fire of old, topping the 20-point mark six times in 17 outings as a Laker and accepting the challenge of serving as a mentor figure to a young L.A. team.
Lakers obviously didn’t make the trade with a primary goal of getting IT. But his stint turned out to be a good for all involved. He didn’t pout about not staring. Provided a veteran presence to the kids that reinforced what coaches had been saying. Helped w/ FT woes (cont’d)
— Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) March 28, 2018
“I’m here to help,” Thomas recently told Sam Amick of USA TODAY Sports. “I’m here to continue to get better, and I’m still – [expletive], I can reach levels that I know I haven’t reached yet, and I’m here to help along the way in whatever they need me to do, and I’m going to be a professional.”
In doing so, Thomas hoped to display improving physical health and rehabilitate his stock around the league ahead of entering unrestricted free agency this summer. In the summer of 2017, still with the Celtics, Thomas — the last player picked in the 2011 NBA draft, playing out the final year of a four-year, $27 million deal that made him one of the league’s great bargains as he ascended to All-Star, All-NBA and top-five MVP-voting status — made it clear that he expected any prospective suitor for his services come 2018 to “back up the Brinks truck” in free agency.
Given the state of financial play around the NBA, with most teams strapped for cap space after spending freely in the summer of 2016, and given how things went in Cleveland, that was almost certainly out of the cards for Thomas. Now, though, he has no more opportunities to prove himself; this is officially a lost year, leaving the 29-year-old Thomas facing some very big questions about where he might play next … and how well he’ll be compensated once he gets there.
A return to L.A. might be possible, on a short-term, short-money deal …
While IT wasn’t really part of the Lakers long term plan, I could see him back on a short deal depending on how free agency goes for both sides and his recovery from this hip surgery.
… provided, of course, the Lakers don’t hit a home run on their expected swing for the fences to land two maximum-salaried free agents: California native Paul George and LeBron James, the superstar with whom Thomas just made an oil-and-water pairing in Cleveland.
Given his backstory, it’s possible that the combination of a perhaps-overdue surgery and this exact scenario — nine-figure deal snatched away, nobody believes in you, everyone’s pretty sure you’re washed up — is exactly what Thomas needs to position himself to make the splash he’d hoped for, just a little later than he’d hoped to.
Hip labral tears are nasty. Many players — like Jonny Flynn and Martell Webster — were never the same, even after surgery. But if you're looking at a success story, there's LaMarcus Aldridge, who has torn his labrum in his hip twice. https://t.co/NlJCKCLOBO
— Tom Haberstroh (@tomhaberstroh) March 28, 2018
or Wilson Chandler https://t.co/dTsZhQ5Szn
— Michael Pina (@MichaelVPina) March 28, 2018
The one thing that Isaiah Thomas has in his favor is that the market will reset in 2019. It will be key to use the 2018-19 as a bridge year to audition for the following season.
— Bobby Marks (@BobbyMarks42) March 28, 2018
As recently as a couple of weeks ago, Thomas sounded positive about his prospects of eventually making it all the way back to the top of the mountain, even if this wasn’t exactly how he drew it up.
“I’m feeling good, man. Every day, every game, I’m getting better and better. I’m moving better. My body’s feeling better,” he told Amick. “It’s just — it’s going to take time to get back to that level, but also, which I tell people, my opportunity is not the same as it was when I was in Boston. Even when I was in Cleveland, it wasn’t the same as it was in Boston, so you can’t expect me to go out and average 30 points when I’m not given that same opportunity.
“If that opportunity comes back, and when it does — because I know it will — I promise you: I’ll be more than ready to take advantage of that opportunity, and be back on top.”
More NBA coverage:
Dan Devine is a writer and editor for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@oath.com or follow him on Twitter!
Follow @YourManDevine
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No one dares says the Patriots are done ... publicly anyway
Dan WetzelColumnist
December 9, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC
In 2014, the New England Patriots lost a game 41-14 … and won the Super Bowl. In 2016, they lost Rob Gronkowski to a season-ending injury … and won the Super Bowl. In 2018, they managed just 209 total yards in a loss to the lowly Detroit Lions … and won the Super Bowl.
So no one really wants to say anything now. No one wants to declare the Pats dead and buried, no matter how anemic they have looked on offense the last month.
We’ve seen this act before — there simply isn’t anyone better at figuring things out on the fly, be it in game or week to week, than Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.
“They have the greatest head coach in the modern era and the greatest quarterback in the modern era, so I think there’s a good chance we’ll see them again,” Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt told reporters after a 23-16 victory in Foxborough on Sunday. “We’ll give them the respect they deserve.”
Out loud, yes. From an owner, of course. Same with coaches, media and even most players.
Yet of all New England’s struggles, the one that may prove fatal is that what gets said in public may no longer be what is uttered, let alone believed, in private. At least among confident opposing players.
“We’ll be seeing them in the playoffs,” K.C. defensive end Frank Clark told the Boston Globe’s Ben Volin on Sunday. “Hopefully we do. I want to see them again.”
Clark is an outspoken guy spouting off after a big win. He may wind up regretting those words. But that is also the kind of bravado that rarely, if ever, has been heard when it comes to New England.
Tom Brady after getting sacked during the first quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs. (Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)
It also may truthfully reflect the Chiefs’ thinking. And it may be shared by Baltimore and Houston, the two other AFC leading teams that beat New England across the past six weeks of the season.
“They don’t have a tackle that can block us,” Clark said. “Speed, power, whatever we were throwing at them, they couldn’t handle.”
Clark wasn’t wrong. The Patriots offensive line can’t block. Brady is under assault when he drops back and doesn’t look all that great when he actually has time. The running game is almost non-existent. On the rare occasion wide receivers get open, they tend to drop passes.
For New England, there isn’t just one problem to fix. That doesn’t mean it can’t get fixed, but currently the Patriots look like a golfer trying to fix an errant swing in the middle of a round.
There is clearly blood in the AFC water.
It’s a stark contrast to years past, when New England entered January with the ability to intimidate opponents before they even got off the bus. Once games started, especially in Foxborough, fear appeared to play a role in self-destructions and poor performances.
How many supposedly hot young quarterbacks (Andrew Luck, Marcus Mariota, Tim Tebow) have melted in the dark, winter cold of Gillette?
Due to the sheer length of the Belichick-Brady run (dating back to the 2001 season), almost every player in the league grew up watching them win and win and win. The psychological effect is profound. So many fourth-quarter rallies. So many victories. At times opposing players have said they felt like extras in a movie they had already seen. The ending felt inevitable.
“You’ve got to play a damn near perfect game against them,” then-Jacksonville safety Jarrod Wilson said after New England erased a 10-point, fourth-quarter deficit to win the 2018 AFC championship game.
Well, you don’t anymore. At least not right now.
Was that mindset an advantage for New England? Probably. Yet does it linger when the projected No. 1, No. 3 and No. 4 seed in the AFC, and thus the most likely Patriots playoff opponents, just beat them, mostly pretty handily.
The flipside is that New England may get to embrace the rare underdog, no-one-believes-in-us role. It’s also possible that revenge games against the Ravens, Texans or Chiefs will result in someone overlooking New England.
That kind of seems unlikely.
These are still the Patriots. They get everyone’s best shot.
New England has reached four of the past five Super Bowls, winning three. They also own titles from the 2001, 2003 and 2004 seasons. For nearly two decades they’ve run the conference, appearing in 13 of the past 18 AFC title games, including eight consecutive.
They can still get back there this postseason, and can even retool the roster and return to bully status next. Even now, despite all the struggles, the Patriots are still 10-3, with the inside track on a playoff bye. On Sunday, they were at the goal line at game’s end, capable of beating a good Chiefs team.
Nearly every potential opponent will mention all of that going forward. They’ll “give them the respect they deserve.”
Whether they actually believe it, and whether that matters, is another story.
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Thamel: Why LSU is going to win the College Football Playoff
Davis drops 50 points as Lakers dominate Timberwolves
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2018 NFL season preview: Cleveland Browns
By Reshef Mashraky - August 15, 2018
It has been a really long time since there was anything to be excited about for Browns fans. But right now, there is a whole lot to like in Cleveland.
For a team that had long struggled to find a capable starting quarterback, everything appears to have changed. Prior to the draft, Cleveland was able to acquire the services of dual-threat quarterback Tyrod Taylor. Taylor provides a major boost to the entire offense, and he will almost certainly get the first chance to start in Week 1.
The Browns were in a very strong position in the NFL Draft. They possessed the first and fourth overall picks, allowing them lot of flexibility with their selection strategy. Whether they maximized those picks remains to be seen, but they ultimately opted to draft Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield. Mayfield is their franchise quarterback of the future, but for now, he will most likely ride the bench behind Taylor as he adjusts to the speed of the NFL game, and the complexity of a pro-level offense. Nevertheless, having two potential starters on the team is unfamiliar territory in Cleveland.
The Browns were highly active in free agency. They signed one of the best possession receivers in the game in Jarvis Landry, who will be a great option for whoever starts at quarterback for this team. Landry is a football magnet, who tallies receptions with ease, and provides a strong option for the quarterback near the line of scrimmage and in high percentage routes.
The team recently traded Corey Coleman to the Bills, basically showing they feel great about where Josh Gordon is right now. Gordon has had many issues away from football, but he appears to be in a better place. His best season came in 2013, when he led the NFL in receiving with 1,646 yards and caught nine touchdowns. There is no doubt he has one of the highest ceilings in all of football, and this could be the year he returns to form.
As far as the running game is concerned, the Browns went out and signed Carlos Hyde in free agency. Hyde will get the first crack at the starting gig, as the team signed him to a big contract this offseason. But then Cleveland drafted Georgia running back Nick Chubb in the second round of the draft. It will be difficult for them to keep him off the field. Hyde’s injury history is certainly one that could have an impact this season. If he is (again) unable to remain healthy, Chubb will take on an expanded role for the offense.
And then there is Duke Johnson, who the team uses primarily in the passing game. But if they feel that Hyde and Chubb are better as pure runners, there is a chance they line Johnson up in the slot rather than behind the line of scrimmage, thereby maximizing the number of playmakers on the field at the same time.
The Browns used their fourth overall pick to draft an elite talent in safety Denzel Ward from Ohio State. With Myles Garrett rushing the passer off the edge, there is a lot of young talent on the Browns defense.
This team may take some time to progress and reach a point where they win more games than they lose, but there is certainly a lot to be excited about in Browns headquarters these days.
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