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March 15, 2019 by Will Simon and Adam Shaham Leave a Comment
All 14 priests named in this report were identified by cross-referencing Georgetown University’s archival material with publicly available information including media reporting, the August 2018 Pennsylvania Grand Jury report and recent reports by Catholic Church authorities disclosing priests credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors.
BishopAccountability.org, a survivors’ advocacy organization that compiles and categorizes records and articles connected to abusers, served as an effective database from which to find more information about each priest. While a great deal of the information presented in this report is in credit to their meticulous work, every detail found on the website was verified by another source.
The report also draws from the accounts of national, regional, local and campus media outlets across the United States. News media were critical not only in providing detail about abusers’ prior work and the allegations against them, but also in creating a database of sources in the activist community.
The catalogues and records of the Catholic Church and Jesuit order were invaluable in identifying the locations of priests during each year of their ministry, including delineating between priests associated with Georgetown University and with the Woodstock Theological Center. The university’s collections of the Official Catholic Directory and catalogues of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus were especially instructive.
By studying telephone directories, yearbooks, alumni magazines, schedules of classes and other archival material, university archives staff in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections and the staff of Woodstock Library have worked tirelessly to ensure this report is accurate in its understanding of each abuser’s connection to Georgetown. Their persistent dedication to establishing the historical record was unmatched in both commitment and depth.
Further questions regarding the methodology of the report should be directed to [email protected].
About Will Simon
About Adam Shaham
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I just noticed this is the 200th post and I thought it was time I thanked my readers (who are also listeners thanks to the magic of YouTube and the Internet) and especially that small, select band of commentors who seem to be the most knowledgeable and polite on the web.
I just started this blog in June 2011, four months ago, and starting from zero, my readership has grown until now I estimate that I am being read in thirty or forty countries. Music may not be a universal language, but it is one that inspires universal interest. My readership is select, that is to say, small, but it seems to be growing and growing. I have had one Instalaunch (so far) which is what happens when the Blogfather, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit links to you: my readership multiplied by 100 times instantly.
If you read all of this blog, you might get a bit of a sense of what is going on now in music, a little music history and theory, lots of talk about composers like Bach and Beethoven, critiques of other composers, praise of the Beatles and critiques of most other pop music, discussion of issues of performance and composition and a little of my own career in music.
Interesting and entertaining, all of it! And speaking of interesting and entertaining:
Julian Bream, improvising with the sarod player Ali Akbar Khan in 1963. This was at least two years before George Harrison discovered Indian music!
Posted by Bryan Townsend at 7:31 AM 1 comment:
Labels: Indian music, Instapundit, Julian Bream
History of a Composition
I've been a composer nearly all my life, but for most of that time composition has had a distinctly secondary role. Often I composed simply because I needed repertoire for a certain combination of instruments. I have a good friend who is a fine violist and there is absolutely no good repertoire for viola and guitar so I have written a couple of pieces. I used to coach guitar ensembles and discovered that even after months or years of rehearsal, it is extremely difficult to get multiple guitars to play exactly together. Just listen to a recording of Julian Bream and John Williams. I wrote one piece that was an etude in ensemble, but that succeeded more in demonstrating the problem than in solving it. Finally I decided to write a piece for guitar ensemble that would pose no ensemble problems: the guitars would simply not be required to play together! Here is the piece:
Let me explain how this works: there is a conductor who cues the beginning and the progress through the piece. The score is a flow-chart. You start at the top and follow the lines, therefore everyone plays the top box, but then you have a choice of one of the two boxes below. That top box is a rather odd effect where, by crossing the 6th and 5th strings over one another and holding with the left hand and then by playing rasgueado (a kind of flamenco strumming) you get a nicely noisy, chaotic sound. I premiered this with an ensemble of ten guitars and having all ten start with that is a nice shock to the audience. With the next level down, all the guitars are either playing Bartok 'snap' pizzicatos or harmonics. As we move through the piece, pitched notes gradually predominate until at the ending we hear only melody. The way I conduct it, I keep going back to that opening chaotic gesture which I bring back in by cuing one or more guitars to return to that box, threatening to overwhelm whatever is going on. I end the piece by having a few guitars move to the final box, #10, while most stay with the chords on #9. Then I mix in more and more of box #1 until the melody is lost in the chaos. Then I chop off everyone except the guitars playing the melody and let it just float around and trail off...
It is actually pretty effective in concert and, since no-one has to worry about ensemble, they can, theoretically, be more creative.
The music obviously has flamenco influences as we can see from the chords of #6 and #7. I have never analyzed the piece, it was written purely from instinct.
The original title was "Forms" which is quite appropriate as the piece can have many different forms and will be different every time you play it. It is really a kind of toolbox for building a piece from scratch with the contents laid out, but with the flow determined completely by the conductor and players. I changed the title when it was published together with two other pieces for guitar ensemble because I had this great title and the piece it was supposed to be the title of never got past the sketch stage. It was originally going to be a 'string quartet' for mandolin, guitar, harpsichord and double bass.
I have a recording of this piece and if I get a chance to convert it to a digital file I will update this post with it.
But in the meantime, comments?
Labels: composition, contemporary music, Guitar
The Economics of Music Composition
This is a dissertation-sized topic that I would just like to sketch out briefly. How do composers support themselves? There are several different models. Up until around 1800 the only two ways of getting paid to compose music were to be supported by either the church or by the nobility. Guillaume Dufay (1397 - 1474) for example, was in the employ of the church from his early years and also was maistre de chapelle in Savoy. He was also employed by the Este family in Ferrara. Towards the end of his life he was canon of the Cathedral in Cambrai and also composed music for the court of Burgundy. His music was highly valued by the powers, both sacred and secular, of his time. From the Renaissance on, the nobility tended to become the most important patrons of composers and the church less so. The exception is J. S. Bach, who wrote most of his music for the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, though he also had been employed by various courts. Haydn was composer to the Esterhazy family who were rich enough to have their own orchestra and opera house. Late in his life he retired from their service and became one of the first free-lance composers, travelling to London where he was acclaimed and made a fair amount of money from the public performance of his music. Beethoven lived on a mixture of income: piano lessons to the nobility, selling his music to various publishers, commissions from noble patrons and a stipend put together by several admirers, also noble. From then on, with the growth of the consumption of music by the middle-class, composers were less and less dependent on particular patrons and more on a larger group. Chopin, for example, played salon concerts in Paris and made a generous income from teaching piano privately. Rossini made a fortune from composing operas and retired at 37.
Claude Debussy, one of the most successful composers at the beginning of the 20th century, stitched together an income from public performances as both pianist and conductor, from publication of his music, and from writing music criticism. As the 20th century wore on, however, and as composers more and more drifted into a musical language that was more and more difficult for audiences to absorb, they came to depend on teaching, taking posts as professors of composition, and on commissions from institutions ultimately funded by governments. In Canada, for example, most composers are either employed by universities or conservatories to teach theory and composition, or survive on Canada Council grants and commissions. There is a network of Canadian Music Centres nationwide that contain libraries of scores by Canadian composers that may be loaned to performers.
From the 1970s, a few composers began to appeal to wider audiences, Philip Glass and Steve Reich in particular, and stayed out of academe by creating their own performing ensembles, winning commissions and making enough recordings to flourish as composers.
Now, in the 21st century, these models will continue, but we are likely to see new ones. The young American composer Nico Muhly, for example, has worked in collaboration with both Björk and Philip Glass. He manages to combine collaborations with popular musicians with commissions from classical ensembles.
One final note: for those of you who have wondered about the revisions of some of Stravinsky's early works decades later, perhaps the main reason for this was that, under the Soviet law of the time, the copyrights on these works were going to expire and this was a way of extending the copyright. Petrushka, written in 1911, was revised in 1947, largely for this reason.
Labels: composition, economics
Talent, Culture and Character
My anonymous commentor left a brilliant observation on my post On Musical Talent. Here is the basic argument:
Innate musical talent is undeniably a prerequisite for greatness. It's a requirement but one of many. Let's say that in any group of 10,000 people in the world, there is one person with the innate ability of Bach. (The plethora of painting geniuses in Renaissance Florence shows that this number is unlikely to be much bigger.) The likelihood of Bach is less than one in 1 billion (to restrict ourselves to 1000 years of Western music and assuming that Bach is the greatest and that the total population over 1000 years of Western history is over one billion, which must be the case), not one in 10,000. So assuming all these variables are independent (a big if, I know), we need to explain the remaining 1/100,000 likelihood. I think the rest is culture and character.
If talent is evenly distributed by genetics (not sure it is, but just for the sake of argument), then why doesn't every city have the artistic flourishing of Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BC? Names to note: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripedes. Or of 15th century Florence? Names: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Machiavelli, Brunelleschi (who designed the Duomo). Or 16th century London? Names: John Dowland, William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, Christopher Marlowe, William Byrd and Thomas Morley. And of course, 18th century Germany and Austria. This flourishing was less concentrated with Bach in Leipzig and Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in Vienna.
There are brief periods of intense flourishing surrounded by dull stretches of mediocrity. Some factors are undoubtedly historic. Wars, revolutions and social unrest undoubtedly drain resources and redirect talent away from the arts and humanities. But the role of culture and character also seems to be important. Some cultures seem to produce more art than others. Some kinds of character seem to produce more arts than others. The role of patronage also seems crucial. The society must be prosperous enough to support artists and must value the arts highly enough to support them. In Athens the whole population went to see the plays just as in Leipzig, the whole congregation heard Bach's cantatas. My commentator's assertion that a faculty of hard work and an intense curiosity both played a role is also correct.
I also think that artists compete with one another and learn from one another, which is why we get communities of artists that because of mutual influence produce more interesting work than they would have if they worked in isolation.
Well, this could go on and on, but I'll close here with this:
Labels: character, culture, talent
On Musical Talent
The post on the Bach family and a commentor got me thinking. Musical talent seems like such an obvious thing. Every time we read the biography of a musician we are likely to run across some indication that they have a special, i.e. inborn, talent. Is this so? This blogger doesn't think so. I have been a music teacher for many years and have had many different kinds of students. Some indeed seem to have a real facility, while others had to struggle for every advance. Some people have perfect pitch, others do not. Some have agile fingers, others do not. But here is an academic article questioning the whole idea of musical talent and suggesting that the idea is counter-productive to disciplined study: "practice, practice, practice".
Let me muse a bit. My mother was a fiddler who played entirely by ear. When I was a child there was a musical instrument case under and behind every piece of furniture in the house. She had fiddles, guitars, banjos, mandolins and even an upright piano. On occasion other musicians would drop by for a session. I took all this for granted, really. My interest didn't really get piqued until a pianist who could read music came by and I watched him sight-reading. Now that was interesting! How in heck do those dots get converted into sound? The music my mother and her friends played, jigs and reels, never really caught my interest. What did was birdsong. We lived in the wilds of northern Canada and I used to love to wander in the woods and listen to birds. My version of ear-training was trying to imitate their calls.
When I was eleven, my mother signed me up for piano lessons, but I never quite got interested and kept forgetting to go to the lesson. I think it was the repertoire that turned me off... When I was fifteen for some reason I started to listen to records. At first pop music and popular classics as that was all we had. Then I got the urge to play guitar. I started playing bass guitar in a band. I also wrote a lot of songs. Bob Dylan was a big influence. One day I got the urge to write songs with orchestral accompaniment, don't remember why. I realized that those guys needed everything written down, so I taught myself musical notation. I don't think I know of anyone else who has done that, offhand. When I showed the score to a music teacher all he said was, "normally, the accidentals go before the notes!" Heh.
When I got a real exposure to classical music, in my late teens, I set out to become a classical guitarist. But I always composed on the side. Often years would pass between compositions. But looking back now, some of them were not too bad. I just didn't think that was my real vocation. Now I do.
What do I think about musical talent? Well, some people do seem to have a real facility. But I think that what really matters is interest and discipline. You have to be really interested in what you are doing. This leads to wanting to do it well, which leads to discovering how to work: discipline. The biggest enemy you have is probably yourself: lack of self-confidence and emotional turmoil can really blind you to what you are doing wrong.
So I guess that while musical talent obviously does exist, the implications of it probably don't matter as much as you think. In the absence of interest and discipline it is worthless and with a lot of interest and discipline, you can pretty much make up for it. Occasionally through a confluence of talent, early exposure, being born into a musical family and being born at a time when all the historical forces seemed to be in harmony, you get a Mozart. But if Mozart had been born into a different family at a different time, his talents would probably have counted for much less.
Put it this way, if you play interesting music in an interesting way, I'll listen to you!
Labels: musical talent
The American music critic Alex Ross begins a post on Radiohead with the following, amazingly pompous, statement:
The English composers Radiohead are having a brief residency in New York.
C'mon Alex, they're a band, a rock band, that loosely remind me of Pink Floyd, and a rather dull one at that. I couldn't even listen to "Lotus Flower" all the way through. I have tried on several occasions to get into OK Computer as I keep hearing what a superlative album it is. But about the only cut that I enjoyed was "Fitter Happier".
Now it is entirely possible that I am as dull-witted as those early critics of the Beatles I was just trashing; after all, they sold 4.5 million copies of OK Computer. But I just find it dull, pretentious and annoying. Long-lasting unpleasant washes of electronic swirling is all I hear. Oh, and whiny politics, I hear that too...
Here's some Pink Floyd for comparison:
Both groups seem to specialize in making very little in the way of musical ideas seem like
...very little...
Labels: Pink Floyd, Radiohead
Bach Family Values
In Will and Ariel Durant's massive history there is a fascinating passage on Bach in volume viii, The Age of Louis XIV:
The Bach family was now entering upon the musical scene in bewildering profusion. We know of some four hundred Bachs between 1550 and 1850: all musicians, sixty of them holding important posts in the musical world of their time. They formed a kind of family guild, meeting periodically at their headquarters in Eisenach, Arnstadt or Erfurt. They constitute unquestionably the most extensive and remarkable dynasty in cultural history, impressive not merely by their number, but by devotion to their art, by a typically Germanic steadiness of purpose, and by their productivity and influence.
Jackson Five, eat your hearts out! The idea of a musical dynasty seems to have disappeared almost entirely since, with the possible exception of the Romero family of guitarists, now well into their third generation. A smaller musical family existed in France at the same time as the Bachs with the Couperins of whom the most famous are Louis and François, known as "le grand". But it is hard to imagine how thoroughly Bach's family penetrated the musical life of the day. In Erfurt, even when no Bachs remained, musicians were still referred to as "bachs". When he came to look for employment, J. S. Bach had uncles and great-uncles everywhere to consult. Three of Bach's sons were leading composers in the next generation: Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christian, and Wilhelm Friedemann, known respectively as the 'Berlin' Bach, the 'London' Bach and the 'Dresden' Bach from their places of employment. C. P. E. Bach was the most renowned as court musician to Frederick the Great of Prussia and for his treatise on keyboard playing which laid out the basic principles of fingering followed to this day. J. C. Bach was organist in Milan before settling in London where he became music master to Queen Charlotte. W. F. Bach, the eldest, was renowned for his organ improvisation--he had a difficult personality and died in poverty.
Here is the first movement of a cello concerto by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach:
And here is the first movement of a harpsichord concerto by Johann Christian Bach:
And finally a sinfonia by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach:
How about something by the father, J. S. Bach? Here is the Double Concerto in D minor for two violins:
Labels: Bach, Bach family
Not Everyone Loves the Beatles
Heh. Just read a hilarious little piece in the Wall Street Journal of quotes from various people on the Beatles. Some were from early on, the first wave of Beatlemania in 1964, but some others are from just a few years ago. Here is a sample:
"Musically, they are a near disaster; guitars slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of "yeah, yeah, yeah!") are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments."
—Newsweek reviewer, Feb. 24, 1964
And here is a comment on the article:
This article is a fine demonstration of why you should never listen to critics. The only trustworthy judge of music is your own ears.
A number of years ago the music critic Nicolas Slonimsky published a fascinating book titled The Lexicon of Musical Invective that was a collection of nasty things said about composers. Sample: "The music of a demented eunuch," writes one 19th-century critic of Wagner. No-one is immune: you would scarcely believe the incredible things people said about Beethoven during his lifetime.
However, neither the current article, nor the earlier book prove quite what the commentor thinks they do: that critics should never be listened to. Of course, as I complain sometimes, most music criticism today is really nothing of the kind. Instead it is just puff pieces to promote the latest fresh young thing, whether performer or composer. Or it is just the cranky ramblings of a curmudgeon--though I suspect that fewer and fewer of them even exist. By all means, feel free to ignore music critics. Unless they have something worth hearing. Some of them do. I have mentioned before the people that I think are real music critics and oddly enough, none of them have that actual job description. You should pay a great deal of attention to anything written about music by Richard Taruskin, Joseph Kerman or Charles Rosen. Taruskin is a musicologist who occasionally writes for the mainstream press, Kerman is a professor emeritus of musicology and writer and Rosen is a pianist and writer on music. I rather doubt whether they would have written anything so intemperate or ignorant as the things written about the Beatles in the article. Why not? I think that one mark of a good critic, or any good professional, is that you recognize the limits of your knowledge and understanding. I don't opine on Japanese calligraphy or break-dancing (or is it "dub-step" now?) because I know nothing about them. I do wander into pop music pretty frequently, but I think the fact that I grew up with the Beatles, played bass guitar, electric six-string and sang in a band when I was young and the fact that I have studied or listened closely to pop music for forty years does qualify me.
But most stuff written under the rubric "music criticism" is, as the commentor says, not worth reading. Other stuff is essential reading. Similarly with your ears: they may be trained ears or ignorant ears, in which case they may or may not be a good guide. Let's go back to that first quote. The Newsweek reviewer mentions a number of elements: "merciless beat" and "secondary rhythms" (that the beat "does away with"). Since he mentions "yeah, yeah, yeah", let's have a listen to "She Loves You" and see what he is talking about:
Hmm. Nothing 'merciless' about that beat and the song is stuffed full of "secondary rhythms". The leading theorist on the music of the Beatles, Walter Everett, regards this song as "the foremost example of the Beatles' ardent early works." He notes:
The surface of "She Loves You" is tension-filled. This is partly due to a strong rhythmic drive created by such devices as the strongly-accented beat-dividing syncopations in the strumming throughout and in the syncopated snare flams that follow the "yeah-yeah-yeah" motto within the chorus, the stop-time fourth beat rests near the end of the chorus, the unexpected repetitions of the final phrase of the last chorus ... and the suspension of the tempo at the song's structural, dramatically embellished V7. [score references omitted]
Oh yes, nothing but 'merciless beat' and no secondary rhythms whatsoever! I won't bother with the critic's sneer that the song has no melody or harmony, just to mention that Everett regards the song so highly that he spends six pages on it, much of it devoted to melody and harmony, in his two-volume monograph on the Beatles. The Newsweek critic simply knows nothing, including how to listen.
The only trustworthy guide to music is a trustworthy guide to music! Heh. That might be your own ears, if they happen to be highly trained and knowledgeable ones. Or they might be someone else's ears, likewise. Some music critics are excellent guides.
Let me close with one other quote from the article:
"The Beatles are not merely awful, I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music."
—William F. Buckley, author and commentator, 1964
This one rather saddens me because Buckley was such a stimulating and brilliant commentor on so many things. You have to love a guy who ran for mayor of New York with the campaign slogan "Don't immanentize the eschaton!" But here he is all wet, committing the fatal flaw of so many brilliant people of venturing opinions in areas in which they have no professional expertise.
Labels: Charles Rosen, Joseph Kerman, music criticism, Richard Taruskin, The Beatles
Giselle and Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon seems to me to be one of the most creative people in television. Responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly--the best science fiction ever--he has also shown a real talent for music not only in writing a respectable episode of Buffy in musical form ("Once More With Feeling"), but also in the handling of music generally. The bands that appear in various episodes of Buffy are often interesting in their own right and sometimes the music gets involved in the story. The episode "Conversations with Dead People" opens with a performance at the Bronze that turns into the soundtrack. But one of the most interesting uses of music is in the Angel episode "Waiting in the Wings" from season three. The episode is a homage to the ballet by Adolphe Adam and others. When Angel announces that, instead of buying tickets to a popular band that Gunn was looking forward to hearing, he has instead bought ones to the ballet Giselle, Gunn is horrified. What I find interesting is that over the course of the episode Gunn comes to love the ballet and starts a relationship with Fred. This is a pretty interesting transformation.
Here is the transcript for the scene where Gunn learns the horrible truth:
Gunn, entering the lobby: "Morning friends and neighbors. Ooh, are those the tickets? You got 'em?"
Angel: "Well, I got to the ticket place and..."
Gunn: "I'm paying you back. This one's on me."
Fred: "Morning."
Gunn: "Mahta Hari is the tightest band in LA. You guys are gonna be trippin' out."
Angel: "The only thing is..."
Gunn puts a hand on Angel's shoulder: "Look, I said I'm good for it, man. Don't have to worry about dippin' in the Connor college fund. (Takes the tickets from Angel) The time I saw the Mahta Hari at the Troubadour they where the (reads tickets) "Blinnikov World Ballet Tour. What's going on?"
Angel: "I was trying to tell you. I got to the ticket place and boom! Tonight only!"
Gunn: "But - you got ballet on my Mahta Hari tickets."
Angel: "This is the Blinnikov World Ballet Corps."
Cordy: "He's been saying that like it has meaning."
Angel: "This is one of the premier companies in the world. And they're doing Giselle! It's their signature piece."
Gunn: "This is all like some horrible dream."
Wes: "I think I've heard of them. Very ahead of their time."
Angel: "Oh, yeah. Yeah. I saw their production of Giselle in eighteen-ninety. I cried like a baby. And I was evil!"
Fred: "I-I think it sounds exciting!"
Wes: "Yes."
Gunn: "No. No! This is not Mahta Hari. This is tutus, and guys with their big-ass packages jumping up and down. This is just... (To Angel) I will never trust you again. The trust is gone."
Cordy: "Oh, get over it. Do we get dressed up?"
Angel: "Of course."
Cordy: "I'm in."
Angel: "Guys, seeing real ballet live it's... (sighs) it's like another world. Gunn, these guys are tight, and you're gonna be trippin' out."
Gunn: "Don't be usin' my own phrases when we lost the trust."
Cordy: "Come on, guys. Working day, cases to solve."
Gunn: "Okay. But I'm not still paying, right. Because this is... (Looks at the tickets) this is... It's like a nightmare."
The nightmare is having to listen to ballet when you expecting something else--perhaps something like Coolio, whose song "Gangster Paradise" was used in an episode centering on Gunn's back-story. Here it is:
Here, for comparison, is Giselle:
What you should do now is find the Angel episode and watch it all the way through. For copyright reasons it is not available from YouTube. I'll wait....
Back? Ok, I just want to look at how Gunn is won over and how his character is transformed by the music in this episode. The character of Charles Gunn is introduced in episode 20 of season one of Angel and adds diversity to the cast. He is a black man from a South-Central war zone of Los Angeles. Though a fighter for the good, he is deeply cynical about white people and the institutions of society. As the series unfolds, Gunn realizes that his truest loyalties are with Angel Investigations. In the current episode, "Waiting in the Wings", Gunn's movement from street thug to the powerful figure he becomes in season five is hastened and calibrated by two things: his social movement and the beginning of his relationship with Fred. The social movement comes in two stages. At the beginning of the show he is the street-smart rap-loving character, condemned to see the nightmare of ballet. But a kind of magic is cast, first of all, with costume. Everyone has to dress up, meaning that we see Charles Gunn in a tuxedo and, as Fred says, "my god, you're so pretty!" To which Gunn replies, smiling, "you know, there's not a lot of people could say that to me and live." This is a dual indicator of Gunn's social mobility: on the one hand, he is now in highly formal dress, and on the other, he references how he would have answered a remark like Fred's--but will no longer. This is the necessary transition to the next stage which is that, at the ballet, he loves it from the first notes. In season five, Gunn acquires, as a kind of bonus to his encyclopedic legal knowledge, the ability to sing Gilbert and Sullivan. This is another of Joss Whedon's jokes that contains a grain of truth.
Certain kinds of music are transformative: the development of an appreciation for, for example, ballet, can open out your character and give you access to different levels in society. A very old-fashioned view, of course, but not necessarily wrong.
Labels: ballet, Joss Whedon
Dance Me to the End of Love
Sometimes I just get the urge to put something up without much commentary. Such as this:
I lived in Montreal for over a decade and somehow part of the essence of that city seems to inhere in Leonard Cohen's poetry and music.
Labels: Leonard Cohen
Music and International Politics, Part 2
I see the controversy that I discussed previously here in this post is still going on. Let me underline what I was saying there and elaborate a bit. I am repelled by the intrusions of politics into music--especially guerrilla war tactics such as disrupting concerts and trying to get musicians banned from playing. One of the commentors on Norman Lebrecht's blog had this to say:
"music making is by its very nature a political act" and "any claim that music is apolitical should be contested, since such a claim is itself ideological through and through, a typical ploy by those in positions of power to repress those who are not."
I haven't read such blatant Marxism for years! Yes, it is certainly possible to use music for political ends, though this may result in an unfortunate distortion of the original intention of the songwriter as we see in the controversy over the Bruce Springsteen song "Born in the USA" during the 1984 US presidential campaign. But most instrumental music, despite claims to the contrary, simply does not have the capacity to instill particular political views. Thank god! Music making is only "by its very nature a political act" if you fail to understand the nature of both politics and music! Or only if you see every single human act as being political, in which case I really don't want to talk to you. Ah yes, Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier as well as Shostakovich's preludes and fugues are typical ploys to repress, or perhaps escape repression?
We have an international ban on the use of chemical weapons in war: can't we also have a ban on the intrusion of politics into music? Can't we make all musical concerts a politics-free zone? I have no interest in the political views of performing musicians or composers and I heartily wish they would shut up about them. Let them have complete freedom to express their political views as often and as loudly as they wish, but please don't mix that up with music!
Pop Noises
Hey, don't blame me, that's how they titled this article on sound-samples in pop music. This lengthy collection of examples demonstrates a number of interesting things about pop music: many of them unfortunate. One is the inability to categorize: instruments, electronic effects and playing techniques are all mashed together indiscriminately. On the other hand, sometimes the list offers some insights into the history of pop music. #26 Sequenced Bass, for example, identifies the origin of the annoying rigidity of pop music--what I usually, and ignorantly, call "drum machines". #25 Sax Solo, however just notices that some pop music has a solo for saxophone. #36 Sample Stutters unfortunately reminds me of some of Steve Reich's use of recorded voices--even in his recent work WTC 9/11. Alas! Nonetheless, the article is fascinating reading and listening because of the insights into pop music. Possibly into the decline of pop music if you look at things as I do!
What comes across is that the commercial pressures--or laziness!--felt by musicians often drives them to look for a unique and different sound. So we get over-emphasized Auto-Tune, or Leslie, or wah-wah, or staccato, or hand-clap or vocoder--anything! If it takes off, for a while lots of people do it, until everyone is truly sick of it. Then on to the next thing. I wonder if it was the continual technological experimentation of the Beatles that got all this going? I'm hoping not. I think the difference is that the Beatles were trying to realize a musical vision and experimenting with different ways of getting that across. The big orchestral glissando in "A Day in the Life" for example, which this article includes under # 11 Freakouts, has a definite musical purpose (for one thing, far from being a 'freakout', it is a precisely-measured 24-bar section). But most of the things listed in the article have no real musical function, but only add a particular color to an arrangement. No wonder they come and go.
I would love to see someone assemble a similar list of dumb effects in music videos.
Here is the example used for sequenced bass:
And if you didn't feel a bit queasy already, here is a curiosity I ran across: Donna Summer performing this same song in Belgium in 2005 and eviscerating a little Beethoven in the process.
CORRECTION: Don't know what came over me! It's not Beethoven that is being eviscerated in the Donna Summer concert; it is rather the Schubert "Unfinished" Symphony, in B minor. Silly me...
Labels: electronics, popular music
Mysteries of Composition
I just wanted to share some of the wonderment I often experience when I think about composing. I am reminded of a quote from an old Hollywood screenwriter to the effect that "writing is easy: you just stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood spring out on your forehead"!
It is probably best not to think too much about this--in fact I shouldn't even be writing this post, I should be finishing my set of bagatelles for solo guitar! But sometimes how mysterious composition is just hits me afresh. Think of it: every time you write a new piece you want to create something new. But at the same time, you know you can't. It is not the case that everything has been done. Theorists and critics have been claiming that for almost five hundred years and they are always wrong. Every decent composer comes up with something new. And every time we are astonished at how it is related to what has come before. True, a lot of experimental music in the last century appeared to be entirely novel, but if you look closely, you will probably notice that the entirely novel bits are not terribly musical. So composers are hung up in this dilemma. But the answer is not to think about it, instead to turn off that discursive, analytical part of your mind and just let it free-wheel.
Often it is the simplicity that astonishes us. How did so-and-so come up with that amazingly simple idea? My favorite example of this is Mozart:
Tonic--dominant--tonic. It would be very difficult indeed to write an opening phrase simpler than that one. But he spins a great piece out of it. Most composers, in sheer frustration, end up writing something that is needlessly complex to hide the fact that they haven't come up with something simpler! Paradoxical, I know, but compare it to writing. Most bad writing is bad because it is too long, too complex and too confused. Right? It takes more effort to boil down your thoughts into a simpler, clearer form. It is the same with composition. Let's imagine a very difficult exercise in composition: write a movement for string quartet. The melody has to be nothing but falling fifths in half notes and the other three strings just accompany with repeated chords in eighth notes. Yeah, right! However, one composer did just that:
...and it happens to be one of the best quartets he ever wrote! I'll leave you to ponder the mystery of how he managed that while I go off and work on my bagatelles...
Labels: composition
There was just an article in The Australian (hey, I read them all!) about crossover artists. I like talking about this sort of article, not to be a snob, but for two reasons: first, to get an insight as to how many people listen to music and second, to sort out what the actual aesthetic issues are.
The problem with most journalism is that it is confused. So often reading a story I feel as if I am fighting with the writer to try and squeeze out the basic facts of what happened no matter how jumbled the presentation. As for real intellectual clarity, that's not on the table. This article is actually less confused than most and even contains a couple of nuggets of actual criticism such as this one:
Exquisite melodies are reduced to a syrupy concentrate with no character except for being rhythmic and loud.
Yes, that describes a lot of crossover quite well! In the article the writer's basic point is that excluding semi-classical or crossover recordings from classical charts is mere snobbism. Perhaps that is true, but I recall looking at a supposed classical top ten chart not long ago and only finding one item that could clearly be called classical. Surely that is not a desirable situation? But from my point of view this is all slightly beside the point. I think to make sense of the musical universe it is necessary to dig deeper into what we mean by classical and pop. The writer of the article linked above, Matthew Westwood, comments that:
Music charts - pop or classical - are only a ranking of sales figures; they've never been a measure of musical excellence.
Which is very true. What actually matters is musical excellence. The sad truth is that much crossover is an attempt to fudge the excellence bit with costumes, lighting, glitz and shallow music. I talk a bit about how this is tending to creep into purely classical concerts in this post:
http://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2011/08/classical-music-with-pop-sensibility.html
Matthew ends the story with this comment:
And let's end the sneering about crossover music: Bach, Beethoven and Verdi have nothing to fear from Il Divo and the rest.
Quite right! For one thing, all three composers are quite dead and collecting no more royalty checks. But the never-ending battle is not between Il Divo and Verdi, but between quality and the lack of it; between good music and bad music. Here is "Regresa a mi" performed by Il Divo:
The original is by Toni Braxton:
I'm a little confused... I really don't hear any major, genre-busting differences here. The vocal style and production is different and Il Divo use strings, but the basic things that characterize the song--the chord progression and the color of the guitar part, both hinting at flamenco--are the same in both arrangements. What's crossover about this? What does crossover even mean? Matthew Westwood says:
...crossover is where famous artists, through a combination of vanity and their record companies' indulgence, are allowed to take their private hobbies into public: Michael Bolton singing opera arias on My Secret Passion, for example, or Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras doing West Side Story. And what about Sting's enthusiasm for John Dowland and Renaissance lute music?
Is Toni Braxton's music a "private hobby" of Il Divo? Nope, it is just a good song they could do well. And last time I looked West Side Story, while having qualities of a Broadway musical, is a piece by a real classical composer. Sting's enthusiasm for John Dowland is perfectly understandable and when you do a recording entirely devoted to him accompanied by nothing but Renaissance lute, I hardly think that qualifies as 'crossover'. The only thing atypical in that recording is that Sting's vocal production is very different from that of a classical singer. But then, I strongly suspect that the singers who sang Dowland in the 16th and 17th centuries had a very different kind of vocal production from that of a modern classical singer, trained mostly to sing 19th century opera. Here is Sting singing Dowland:
After all these musings I feel very much like a character in one of the early Platonic dialogues after Socrates has tied him in knots. Now I have no idea what 'crossover' actually means, unless it refers to a female artist wearing a miniskirt like Bond or Yuja Wang, or unless it refers to using one kind of vocal production in another kind of musical genre. But in that case, a countertenor doing Elvis Presley tunes would qualify.
No, at the end of the day the only thing really worth concerning yourself with as a listener is musical excellence. Quality.
Labels: classical-pop, crossover
The Who are one of the very few bands from the 60s that stand up well. Pete Townshend is an amazingly creative songwriter who was responsible for outstanding and influential tunes like this one:
Kinda makes most bands in performance seem rather dull, huh? But he could also write distinctive and unusual ballads like this one:
And is famous for having written a rock opera, later made into a film. Here is the overture to Tommy:
It's not Mozart (or even Rossini), but it's not bad! How many other rock songwriters could have done it? Not to mention, some very fine guitar-playing towards the end. But I think my favorite song by The Who and the one that got me back interested in them when I heard it on an episode of House, MD is this one:
Named "Baba O'Riley" after the respective spiritual and musical influences.
Bach Again
A cantata is a vocal work originating in the 17th century and though many composers wrote cantatas, the most well-known are by J. S. Bach. For many years Bach composed a cantata every week. They were performed as part of the Lutheran service every Sunday in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. They therefore comprise the bulk of his work as a composer. There is even a website devoted to them.
They range from the boisterous:
--which is an Italian concerto movement for trumpet and soprano...
To the formidable and imposing:
--which is a French overture with slow introduction and quicker contrapuntal section...
To the sorrowful and lamenting:
--which is a passacaglia with (harmonically) delicious Corelli seconds clashing mournfully...
To the effervescent and quirky:
--which is a lengthy choral fugue interrupted by a bass solo...
To the indescribable:
--which is one of the most beautiful oboe solos ever written...
Labels: Bach, cantatas
Pop Music as Liberalizing
Alex Ross writes an interesting post today about music and power. He poses the question:
In general, pop music is still seen as an irrepressibly liberating, liberalizing force. Is it so?
That was certainly the received wisdom of the pop music of the 50s and 60s. And it continued to be the received wisdom for long after. But surely, if it were ever the case, it is no longer? Here is what is near the top of YouTube at the moment:
Just off the top of my head, isn't this a compendium of things we might be better off liberated from? The synth, the drum machine, the make-up, the costumes, the need to spend half your life in the gym, the need to be constantly wagging the booty, the relentless surface of it all! Back in the 50s and 60s, the argument could be made that rock n roll was a nearly physical manifestation of sexuality:
But is this the same thing as being a liberating force? It might be if you still believe in the "sexual revolution" and the "Playboy philosophy". Honestly, whichever side you might be on, isn't this just an attempt to evaluate music by non-musical criteria? Now that, I'm not in favor of. Good song, bad song, sure, but as soon as you try and say liberalizing or not liberalizing, I think you drift away from the music and into politics. Music can be and is used for political purposes, but that should not be how we evaluate it.
Björk Guðmundsdóttir
Wherever one turns, it seems, one runs into Björk. Alex Ross was talking about her new project and the Wall Street Journal, of all people, posted her song "Crystalline" in their article about music played at the New York Fashion Week. Plainly Björk is the fashionably hip music. So I really want to see if I can see what is going on there, out of sheer curiosity. Here is "Crystalline":
And here are the lyrics:
Underneath our feet
Crystals grow like plants
Listen how they grow
I'm blinded by the lights
In the core of the Earth
Listen how they glow
Internal nebula
Rocks growing slow but
I conquer claustrophobia
And demand the lights
We mimic the openness
Of the ones we love
Daft till our generosity
Equalizes the flow
With our hearts
We kiss our quartz
To reach love
Octagon, polygon
Pipes up an organ
Sonic branches
Murmuring drone
Crystalizing galaxies
Spread out like my fingers
It's the sparkle you become
When you conquer anxiety
Sparkle you become
Conquer anxiety
In the first line it sounds as if she actually says "feets" not feet, but ok. The lines "We mimic the openness of the ones we love" and "It's the sparkle you become when you conquer anxiety" are rather effective. But what about the music? The accompaniment sounds rather like a synthesized gamelan, perhaps it is the new instrument she invented called a "gameleste" combining features from the gamelan with a celeste. Towards the end it sounds as if a drummer and a drum machine get into a battle to the death. The vocal melody certainly has its own character, rather like an over-declaimed, repetitive children's song. Full points for originality--this really doesn't sound like anything else. But the, to me, dull and repetitive nature of it doesn't make me want to explore any further. What do my readers think about Björk?
Labels: Björk
Composers and Musicologists
Lots of great fodder over at Norman Lebrecht's blog today. Here is one thought-provoking post. I love the title: "Teachers who think they know better than the composer". It is one of those phrases that presells the argument with a not-so-subtle ad hominem. Mere teachers vesus great composers? Well, let's not pre-judge it, shall we?
The New England Conservatory is going to put on a performance of the first Mahler symphony including a movement that Mahler later dropped. So, as several commentors have pointed out, that should be of historical interest. However, as other commentors have pointed out, this has already been done, both performances and recordings. So, not quite so historically interesting. Plus, as Norman Lebrecht points out, they are falsely promoting this as an "American Premiere". So it is really all about the marketing.
Seems to me as if there are plenty of errors to go around here! First of all, the fact that a composer does something is no guarantee of aesthetic quality. Just among the works of Beethoven we have Wellington's Victory, Fur Elise and the variations on God Save the Queen. And musicologists, to choose a more appropriate term, are not guaranteed to make poor choices. Let a hundred flowers bloom, I say. And we are all free to come to our own conclusions about Mahler's choices and anyone else's. The one principle that should be observed is that if important alterations have been made, the audience/listener be informed.
So let me issue my own confession. I have made modifications to a significant percentage of the music I have performed in my lifetime. Often it is just a case of making technical modifications to fix an awkward or unplayable passage written by a composer who was unsure of how to write for guitar. There are certain concertos, for example, that are modified by virtually every performer. But on occasion I have not hesitated to fix an example of compositional failure. There is a particularly clumsy modulation in a piece by Faure that I changed. And I'm not even counting countless examples of obvious and not so obvious misprints.
Let me offer one example where a little musicology would be a real benefit to performers. In the violin concerto by Alban Berg there is a passage, several bars long, where the engraver mistook the clef or something and placed the notes a fourth away from where they should have been. Given the complexity of Berg's harmonic language, it escaped notice and violinists have been playing these wrong notes for decades. Even Anne-Sofie Mutter does this. But a little research would reveal that a musicologist discovered this misprint quite some time ago. Another example: there are some wrong notes in the Villa-Lobos etudes for guitar that 'teacher' Abel Carlevaro discovered from studying the original manuscript. Quite useful to know, wouldn't you think?
But in the absence of clear evidence such as that, what guides me? Briefly, understanding the music. If you really do have a depth of musical knowledge, that will shape your taste. It should help you to make choices that can improve the performance. I have no idea if the New England Conservatory has made a good choice here, but I don't think we can say beforehand if they have or have not.
Let a hundred flowers bloom. Then pick the good ones.
Posted by Bryan Townsend at 12:16 PM 2 comments:
Music and International Politics
I post this with extreme trepidation as it sometimes seems as if the under the surface politics in music already threatens it to such an extent that discussing it overtly could only make matters worse! As you know if you read this blog, I am very focused on the music itself to the exclusion of everything else. But Norman Lebrecht recently posted this story about the suspension of four symphony players for writing a letter. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians seems to be taking place in London as well, as there were two recent incidents where concerts by Israeli musicians were disrupted by protests. As Norman Lebrecht points out in an earlier post:
A small group of musicians has sent a letter to the Independent newspaper calling on the BBC to cancel this week’s Prom by the Israel Philharmonic.
By "small group" it seems there were twenty-some signatories. The fallout from this, as recounted in the link above, is that four of the musicians signing the letter are members of the London Philharmonic and have been suspended for up to nine months by the board. The London Philharmonic is a player-owned organization and the board is a mixed group of players, executives and supporters. It seems as if the crux of the offence was in including their orchestral affiliation in the signature to the letter, making it appear that the orchestra itself supported the contents of the letter.
I really think we need a Geneva Convention to outlaw tactics like this from the world of music. Music has its own set of ethics and conventions that include everything from how to handle the resolution of a suspended fourth to proper attire for concerts (yes, I'm thinking of you, Yuja Wang). It would seem to me that the ethics of the musical universe should forbid trying to prevent the performance of fellow musicians for non-musical political reasons.
On the other hand, you might be able to make an argument for the banning of certain performances for good musical reasons...
Labels: Israel, London Philharmonic, Palestine, politics
I see that Alex Ross is putting up a link to a performance of this piece on a Dutch talk show. For some reason Blogger doesn't want to find it, so here is the link. Here is a version I can embed:
This is surely the definitive version, by the pianist who premiered the piece. I have written about this piece before, but it just keeps popping up. Like so much else from Cage it has an aura of mystic profundity at the heart of which is really just emptiness. Is it the profound emptiness of Tao? Or just vacuity? I once got into a three-day argument over the ontological status of the piece with a very learned philosopher. We finally declared an armistice by agreeing that this was not a piece of music as such, but a piece of 'meta-music', a piece, that is about music without actually being music. Perhaps the strongest argument for the piece is that it is absolutely original. Well, except that Erwin Schulhoff composed a piece exactly the same in 1919. Here is the third movement from Fünf Pittoresken:
Which consists entirely of rests. Cage's piece is a 'development' of this as he expands the concept to three movements. What do you think? A viable piece of music? Merely a dead end? An interesting concept?
Labels: 4:33, John Cage
Mozart's Requiem
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11 I posted a performance of the first part of the Requiem by Mozart. This was his last composition and was incomplete at his death. There is much controversy over the piece because it had to be completed by Mozart's student Franz Xaver Süssmayr. For a discussion of all this, read the article in Wikipedia.
Here are the first few bars of the Lacrimosa in Mozart's autograph:
A comment to my post mentioned the ascending scale in the Lacrimosa. This is a classic example of a terrific use of both an ascending and descending chromatic scale together. Here it is from a harmony text with first, a condensed version to show the harmony and then as it appears in the Lacrimosa:
For those of you who are harmony geeks like myself, I'll just sort out what he is doing here. First, going through the condensed version. The key is D minor and the first chord is the tonic, D minor. Then a chord that is a dominant 7th in last inversion of the subdominant. Then the subdominant--in major. The next chord is the very fancy German augmented 6th chord which leads to the dominant with a 6/4 suspension.
Now let me explain what I just said! There are three important chords in every key. I say "three important" even though there are actually seven possible chords in every key and each one may be presented in different ways. You can also add extra notes like 7ths to each chord. But the other chords are related to the three important ones. Basically it boils down to the chord of rest and resolution, the tonic, the chord of tension, the dominant and chords that precede or prepare the dominant, often to add even more tension. The basic progression in the reduction above is tonic, subdominant, dominant.
Believe it or not, this is the same chord progression as the one in "Twist and Shout": tonic, subdominant, dominant, or D, G, A. The difference is that here we are in D minor instead of D major. Another difference is that the subdominant and dominant, the G and A chords, are each preceded by a chord that sets them up. The subdominant is preceded by its dominant--a neat trick that composers have been using for a long time, and the dominant is preceded by that fancy augmented 6th chord. The augmented 6th is fancy because it moves to the dominant with extreme tension. It has a leading tone up to the 5th of the dominant and a leading tone down to the root of the dominant. What is very neat about it is that its origins are really very old--it goes back to the Phrygian cadence of modal harmony. To boil it down a bit, these extra chords that are added to the simple tonic, subdominant, dominant progression come about through voice-leading. The old principles that the monks discovered when they were inventing counterpoint a thousand years ago, are still being used.
Now let's hear this music. First, "Twist and Shout":
Three chords all the way through... Then Mozart:
The passage I have been talking about is from the 25 second to the 50 second mark.
Amazing how pieces of music as utterly different as these two turn out to have similar roots!
Labels: harmony, Mozart, requiem
Two Young Guitarists
Before you all go out and buy a copy of the well-promoted debut recording of Milos Karadaglic, I want to recommend two other guitarists who are well worth hearing. The first is Ana Vidovic, winner of the 1998 Tarrega competition, who has both CDs and DVDs available. Here is a selection. She is an excellent player and her debut recording on Naxos displays a fine selection of repertoire. As a player, she most resembles, perhaps, Manuel Barrueco, with her incisive clarity of touch. Everything, especially Bach, seems just a bit too fast. The complexity of Bach's harmonies, to my mind, needs a bit more room to breath. There are also terrific performances of the Sonata romantica by Ponce and the Five Bagatelles of Walton. She is an outstanding and musical player with just loads of technique. Here she is playing the last movement of Barrios' La Catedral. She actually sounds much better than on this scratchy, trebly recording:
The other player I want to recommend is the Quebec guitarist Jérôme Ducharme, winner of the 2005 Guitar Foundation of America competition. Here is his debut recording. Naxos really seems to be dominating the market these days. No Bach on this recording, but a fantastic version of the Tres piezas españolas of Joaquin Rodrigo. There is a lovely recording of perhaps the best piece of Canadian guitar music as well: the Suite, op 41 of Jacques Hétu. The sonata by Ginastera is also on the CD, but I just can't seem to come to love it! The real discovery, though, is the Fantaisie-Sonata, op A22 by Juan Manén, a piece I have read through many times and thought was quite remarkable, but have never heard anyone play before. Here he is, playing the Fandango from the Rodrigo. He too, sounds better than this. These YouTube clips always seem to have a harsh sound...
Labels: guitarists
Recordings for Composers
The 'Language' of Harmony
The Overrated Canon
Applied Music Criticism
Harmony Revisited, Part 2
Lute Fantasias
Guitar Repertoire
Nigel Kennedy and Electro-Vivaldi
Form in Music
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"In Ogre News..."
Breaking D&D Stereotypes: A Newbie’s Perspective
by Rosie Huck | Feb 16, 2018 | Opinion
D&D Stereotypes, Old and “New”
Socially awkward. Trouble-makers. Devil-worshippers. Outcasts and misfits.
These are a few D&D stereotypes that whirled about when I was a kid. Blame it on media influences at the time (the 80s were a notorious decade for discounting and literally demonizing D&D), or perhaps the fact that I knew it was something my religious parents would never approve of me playing.
I really knew nothing of the game itself. But being the impeccably squeaky-clean kid I was, I knew that if “authority” said it was bad, then it must be bad. And that was all I needed to know. End of story.
A change of direction
Fast-forward to February 2016.
While scrolling through my Facebook feed, I came across a post that featured a group of voice actors who play D&D and stream their game online. That got my attention. I had been curious about D&D for some time, but never really entertained the idea of learning how to play.
Rewind to the mid-90s.
In college, for one summer I worked and lived on campus in student housing as a summer conferences coordinator. One of the staff happened to be a Dungeon Master. One day while prepping for a group’s arrival, he asked if he and his friends could use the conference room that evening because they needed space to play a game. That game, of course, was Dungeons & Dragons.
I think I gave him a blank look, to which he extended an invitation for me to join. I kick myself now for not giving it a try then. Though, looking back, the idea of embracing anything that seemed remotely “geeky” wasn’t on my radar yet, even though I didn’t realize it was secretly brewing. I was trying to — unsuccessfully — figure myself out as a young adult, and I had the perception that playing D&D wasn’t something that others around me would approve.
Critical Role cast/players in the midst of a battle in the first campaign.
The adventuring begins
Fast-forward again to February 2016.
The previous year, I celebrated coming out of the geek closet, loud and proud. (Entering a certain middle decade of life got me to flip the “I’ve gotta be me already” switch!) So when I stumbled upon the Facebook post about the D&D show, it was the binding Force that pretty much cemented my geek status.
I started from the beginning with episode 1 of Critical Role (known as Campaign 1 — last month they started a brand-new campaign), when the group began streaming on Geek & Sundry online. At that time, they had already been playing the game offline for a couple of years, in the comfort of one of the member’s home, and the campaign was heavily established. So I had to watch a few episodes before I could grasp what they were doing and who their characters were.
What drew me in was not only the fact that I wanted to see how the game was played, but that they voiced and role-played their characters on the fly! The more I watched, the more the role-playing aspect became the defining factor for WHY I wanted to keep watching, and what led me to play for the first time. It was all storytelling, and I wanted more! (Disclaimer: because Critical Role is an online show, language is NOT censored, so if you’re sensitive to, or don’t want your young’ns to hear a fair amount of cursing, you’ve been warned!)
Above all, however, was that I saw for my own eyes that D&D wasn’t weird, and it wasn’t just a nerd thing. There were no creepy voodoo or satanic rituals involved. And women played, too! The D&D stereotypes I had believed in my youth no longer applied. D&D was for everyone!
My first D&D character, Faywyn the Hafling Bard.
Embracing the dragon
Fast-forward to May 2016.
By this time, I had caught up with all the past episodes of Critical Role, and I was faithfully watching the livestreams every Thursday night. My husband (you know him — that guy, Joe, who owns that store, The Ogre’s Den Gaming) started a campaign as DM for me and another friend. And while we only got to play a handful of times (life, man!), it was all I needed to confirm that D&D and tabletop role-playing games on the whole are awesome!
Since watching the show, and since I had a taste of creating my first character and playing her, I noticed an increase in both my need for creative expression and absorption. I started to write more, read more, and engage in crafty projects. Professionally, D&D helps me to look at alternatives, to expand my creative practices, and to not be afraid to try new ways of doing something.
Before I knew it, I was on my own path to breaking D&D stereotypes. I was embracing the “dragon” that people either ridiculed or abhorred.
A D&D scene from the first episode of the first season of Stranger Things.
Why is D&D so popular now?
It seems like all of a sudden, it’s cool to play D&D. I think much of this can be attributed to Hollywood “hype” in recent years. Shows like CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory”, Netflix’s “Stranger Things”, and of course, Geek & Sundry’s “Critical Role”, have nudged playing D&D (and tabletop RPGs in general) over to the cool kids table instead of being something dark and questionable.
Naturally, Hollywood’s cultural influences garner weight in popular culture. So when you learn that celebrities like Vin Diesel, Joe Manganiello, and many other creatives in the entertainment industry have played D&D their whole lives, you can’t help but reconsider those D&D stereotypes from the 80s. If they play, then maybe it’s not so weird after all!
Add to all this the release of the 5th edition of D&D in 2014, which from what I understand, is a massive improvement from the previous edition. Of course, Wizards of the Coast have released more manuals and new character classes since then, adding even more hype to both running a game as a DM and being a Player Character.
A family taking the Gaming 101: Intro to D&D class together.
Breaking the old D&D stereotypes and building new foundations
In this age of technology, where you can have a million “friends” but never have met a single one in person, there is more of a need for games like D&D to help humans authentically re-connect with one another through cooperative play and storytelling. Not to mention, it stimulates critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving.
D&D is becoming an educational tool, and an avenue for strengthening family bonds. It’s gaining steam as an acceptable outlet to encourage social bonding and face-to-face interaction amongst friends, kids, within families, and even between strangers.
We’ve offered the Intro to D&D class every month since August last year. Those who’ve expressed interest and signed up are typically family members who want to learn together. Parents tell us about how much they loved D&D in their childhood and now want to share it with their kids. Or, their kids have expressed interest in it and they want to learn together as a way to spend time with each other.
This is not a new concept.
Some final “newbie” thoughts…
I did feel somewhat awkward in my first session. At first, I was afraid of doing it wrong. But it didn’t take long before I was fully immersed in our little world of adventures. I learned that it’s not a matter of playing the “right” way, but letting yourself go, trying things, being inventive, and having fun while discovering what’s going to happen next!
If I remember correctly, when last we left off in our campaign, we were trekking through a wooded area on our way to a coastal village. I don’t know if my little Halfling Bard will ever return to her adventure with her Tiefling companion, but I hope she does.
How you can slay D&D stereotypes at The Ogre’s Den Gaming:
Take the Gaming 101: Intro to D&D class! It’s offered every month. It’s free. It’s even better when you can learn with a friend or family member!
Sign up to play. RPGs are offered every month, and are not limited to just D&D. (Pathfinder, Starfinder, Call of Cthulhu, and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire are just some possibilities). Check our calendar to see which ones you’re interested in, or join The Ogre’s DENizen Gamers Facebook group and see if a DM or GM is interested in running one.
Ladies, try out an RPG during a scheduled Lass & Lady Gamers Group. While we play different kinds of tabletop games (including board and card-based games), during certain months we focus on tabletop RPGs.
Start one yourself! Do you have the itch to run a game? We’re happy to schedule it, whether you want to run something long-term or offer a one-off.
For further slaying…
The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons & Dragons
The Great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons Panic
When Dungeons & Dragons Set Off a “Moral Panic”
Just Who Plays Dungeons & Dragons These Days?
How Matthew Mercer and Critical Role Changed Dungeons &
Rosie Huck is the Web Coordinator and Town Crier for The Ogre’s Den Gaming, and is married to Joe, the Den Master. Rosie loves to geek out regularly through several fandoms, including Star Wars, Harry Potter, Disney, and The Walking Dead. You can contact her via email at: rosie@theogresdengaming.com.
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By: Jaisal Noor | January 6, 2020
The United States’ assassination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq on Jan. 2 has drawn sharp international condemnation, with critics warning it moved the U.S. and Iran closer to war. On Monday, Jan. 6, as many as one million people mourned Soleimani’s killing in Iran.
The United States Defense Department said Soleimani was killed as a defensive action taken “at the direction of the President,” and alleged he was “actively developing” plans to attack Americans in the region. The White House has defended its actions but failed to provide any evidence, prompting comparisons to the claims of weapons of mass destruction that were used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commented on the killing: “We made the right decision to take out this terrorist. We watched him—we watched him continue to actively build out for what was going to be a significant attack. That’s what we believed and we made the right decision.”
On Sunday, Pompeo claimed on CNN that the U.S.’s assassination of Soleimani would be celebrated in Iraq.
“I saw there was dancing in the streets in parts of Iraq,” he said. “We have every expectation that people not only in Iraq, but in Iran, will view the American action last night as giving them freedom, freedom to have the opportunity for success and prosperity for their nations.”
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets of Iraq in protest. Many, including opponents of Soleimani, have expressed anger at Washington for killing him on Iraqi soil and potentially dragging their beleaguered country into another conflict.
The Iraqi parliament voted on Jan. 5 to order the U.S. to withdraw troops from the country, prompting the U.S. to threaten renewed sanctions against the country. In the 1990s U.S. sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.
U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted an image of the American flag to announce Soleimani’s assassination, and has doubled down on threats to bomb 52 locations if Iran retaliates, including Iranian cultural sites, which would be a war crime under international law.
Trump said he wouldn’t be changing his practice of announcing policy decisions through his Twitter account, tweeting out “These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!”
These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020
On Jan. 5, Iran announced it would not limit itself to the restrictions imposed by the historic 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif tweeted that Iran will continue cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Trump administration withdrew from the accord in May 2018 and imposed harsh sanctions claiming Iran had violated terms of the deal, but UN nuclear watchdogs reported Iran was in compliance.
On Jan. 5, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will introduce and vote on a war powers resolution this week to limit President Donald Trump’s military actions regarding Iran. Senator Tim Kaine will introduce a parallel war powers resolution in the Senate.
Over the weekend, over 60 U.S. and Iranian nationals were detained and interrogated at the U.S.–Canada border, according to the Council of American Islamic Relations.
Protests were held in the streets of cities like New York and Washington over the weekend to demand U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq, and against the possible war on Iran.
Answer Coalition Member Eugene Puryear told Reuters, “The strike on, and the assassination really, of Major General Qassem Soleimani was designed to box in Iran, to try to create more of war and danger; a drastic escalation that could spill over into many countries after the wake of 25 years following the 2003 invasion that’s been so destructive, certainly in the Middle East, but also for many people here in the United States.”
This story will be updated.
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Fear of FallingErasing Borders
Chamber Music For Everyone
BY Tristan Reynolds /Arts
The Lexington Chamber Orchestra (LCO) is premiering a new concert on the 2nd & 3rd of March, entitled European Postcards, promising a program that’s accessible to everyone—in both the musical and financial sense.
While classical music is often seen as dense or pretentious for the average listener, or as a pastime of the wealthy, the LCO program is full of pieces that promise clarity and a listening experience that anyone can enjoy. This accessibility is “incredibly important, for both the present and the future of classical music,” according to Eli Uttal-Veroff, the Managing Director of the LCO.
The program consists of three major pieces: the Haydn London Symphony, the Mendelssohn Italian Symphony, and the Vanhal Bass Concerto.
The Haydn London Symphony is one of the defining examples of the symphony as a genre—a genre that Haydn largely invented. While he wrote over a hundred symphonies in his life, the later works are by far the most-performed, and the London is one of Haydn’s most well-known works.
The London, like the other symphonies inspired by his trips to England (and adoration from the English public) is a diverting, witty work, containing hidden surprises, jokes, and tricks designed to keep an audience engaged—and always waiting for the next excitement. Because of this, Haydn is often thought of as a ‘family-friendly’ composer who can engage children in classical music.
The other symphony on the LCO program, the Felix Mendelssohn Italian Symphony, is characteristic of the Austrian composer’s style; he called it “the jolliest piece I have ever done.”
The Italian Symphony is a light, almost dancing bravura piece for the strings section of the orchestra, in which the winds and brass add color to the proceedings. You’ll be able to hear how Mendelssohn orchestrated—arranged which instruments would play which notes—with an eye towards simple and clear expressions of a few straightforward themes.
He maintains this delicate touch all throughout the Italian Symphony, culminating in a finale that’s easy to imagine as a joyous nighttime romp in the streets of Milan or Firenze, given interest by a mischievously swirling minor key. It’s the sort of music that kids and grandparents can enjoy together.
You can hear a performance of the Italian Symphony, performed here by the Berlin Philharmonic, and led by the austere conductor Herbert von Karajan.]
Played next to the Haydn London Symphony, you should be able to hear how Mendelssohn’s technique looks back at the balance and proportion of the Classical era as a model. In each case, the music should maintain a particular set of forms—ways of organizing the music so that the listener can easily understand what they’re hearing—and express a clear, but somewhat restrained and proper mood.
However, Mendelssohn couldn’t help but be influenced by the Romantic trends of his day, which emphasized passion, fury, and excitement beyond all proportion. As a result, a great deal of the fun of the Italian Symphony comes from the way that the music seems to bounce up and down against the bounds of the ‘proper’ Classical forms.
Lexington Chamber Orchestra
The relatively small size of the LCO, at ‘only’ 31 players, will likely help the listener understand this delicate, clear approach to emotive music, which can often otherwise get lost in the clamor of orchestras the size of battalions.
The remaining piece on the program is perhaps the most elusive. Unlike the Italian and London Symphonies, which are mainstays of the performance lists of most classical music groups, the Vanhal Bass Concerto is a lesser-known work by a composer that has been mostly left in the shadow of his contemporaries Haydn, Mozart, and eventually Beethoven.
However, Vanhal wrote some absolutely delightful music, including the Bass Concerto. The double bass is not often a solo instrument, as its normal range of pitches is too low to carry well in a large concert hall. Nevertheless, Vanhal deftly handles the upper ranges of the instrument to make the double sing, almost as though it’s a lyrical cello. In the hands of a talented bassist, the concerto is an experience both unexpected and tickling to the ear.
You can hear a modified performance of the Vanhal Bass Concerto here, by members of the London Symphony Orchestra. You can hear how Vanhal keeps to a Classical lightness of touch, while at the same time exploiting the wide range of the double bass to find emotional contrasts for the audience to latch onto.
Overall, the concert, led by Jan Pellant, Music Director, and featuring David Murray as guest soloist, promises an upbeat and enjoyable introduction—perfect for a curious audience.
If you go: The March 2nd concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. at Tates Creek Presbyterian Church (3900 Rapid Run Drive, Lexington). The March 3rd matinee begins at 3:00 p.m. at the Lyric Theatre (300 E. Third St., Lexington). A brief pre-concert talk will be given by Maestro Pellant 45 minutes prior to each performance. All concerts are FREE (suggested donation $10-$20). For more information, visit www.lexingtonchamberorchestra.com
Eli Uttal-VeroffHaydnLCOLexington Chamber OrchestraMendelssohnVanhal
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November 10, 2019 November 18, 2019 UnfilteredAdventures1 Comment on The dogs of war: strays on the streets of Sarajevo
An alien concept to most developed countries, stray dogs are often associated with poor, far-away lands. However, walking through the city streets, or driving through the countryside of former Yugoslavian country, Bosnia-Herzegovina, our four-legged friends can often be seen scavenging and making lives for themselves, independent of humans. Generations removed from domesticated pets, semi-wild, semi-feral yet semi-tame, how has such a perceived problem not been eradicated in places so close to the doorsteps of countries whereby they are beloved and revered as ‘man’s best friend’?
In a land of wild bears, residual landmines, and whose own experience of war and ethnical cleansing is still fresh in the memory of most, and plain for all to see in the damaged infrastructure to others, perhaps the threat of a few stray dogs is an inconvenience at most. Our own first-hand experience saw both street dogs so friendly and wanting for both affection and food, and packs of seemingly domestic dogs circling and, at least appearing to plan attacking people. Some tagged and healthy outside town cafes, some dehydrated and suffering in the summer Balkan heat, others less fortunate on rural roadsides. It’s hard to see of an animal so commonly associated with an affluent family home, adored by the whole family.
Sanja, from Dogs Trust Sarajevo, who work to educate and lobby for changes in the way dogs are treated in the Balkan country, explains the need for such work in the country.
“Opinions are divided on whether the dogs are a problem, or if it is an animal welfare issue. There are different points of view, including animal lovers, activists (a portion of them are not too high on welfare, and some are money driven), local non-government organisations, some of which are rather well organised and have shelters, and those who simply do not care and just want the dogs removed.
“The dogs themselves are largely friendly and approachable, but is that the case with all the dogs or have some truly gone back to nature? No, most dogs living on the streets are domesticated. We cannot confirm with the certainty, but there have been reports on a few dogs living near or in the woods. We hear of cases of brutality against the dogs, especially in rural and suburban areas, but it is not a regular occurrence.”
Despite being a poor country by European standards, “there are many citizens who feed and care for their community dogs, and there are street dogs very much loved by everyone.
“There are so many healthy, highly-quality dogs who simply just wait to get a forever home, on our streets.”
See more photos from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo by clicking here.
Back in communist times, which ended with the breakup for Yugoslavia and the resulting wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, starting in 1991 and with tension continuing to this day, “Bosnia and Herzegovina used to have the legislation and system which was based on mass destruction of stray dogs, as the way to control dog population.”
Since then, as with many things in Bosnia-Herzegovina, politics has provided a challenge to progression. In part due to its complicated and unique political system, in-fighting and conflicting priorities among those in charge, but also due to other challenges. In a country reporting as high as 40% unemployment, among other pressing issues as it comes to terms with its post-war transition to an independent nation, addressing the issue has fallen down the list of priorities, and despite a new state Animal Protection and Welfare Act coming into force in 2009, designed to be progressive and humane, forbidding destruction of healthy dogs among other measures, Sanja explains, “unfortunately, the local authorities are often inert and the act has not been implemented consistently, and in some places not at all. Considering that this is the country in post war transition and that by itself it has many socio economic and political issues to be resolved, the authorities have been mostly doing their very minimum.
“Some local authorities have sporadically financed mass neutering, but nothing continuous or as significant as Dogs Trust has been doing since 2012. The Animal Protection and Welfare Act prescribes the establishment of the Dog Register on a national level, and that this has finally been implemented this year, 10 years after the act was adopted.
In speaking with locals, the challenge seems to be a historic one that was never addressed, worsened by dogs either being left without owners and homes, or freed by owners who couldn’t afford to feed them during the wars that gripped the Balkan region in the 1990s. The UN for their part, have introduced schemes for microchipping, neutering and vaccination of some dogs in areas such as Prizren in Kosovo. But, it is the current failure to enforce the act sooner is recognised by Sanja as a key factor in Bosnia’s stray dog problem.
“The reason why dogs are on the streets is not a direct consequence of the war, but the failure to implement the legislation, as without the system there are no sanctions for irresponsible dog ownership and treatment, such as abandonment, unregistered breeding and abuse.
“There has been a period about four years ago when it seemed that there was almost a political campaign run against dogs, which may sound ridiculous. Local authorities rejected new, progressive legislation and claimed that the old way, mass culling, was the best way to deal with stray dogs. There was also a media trend to report only about the negative incidents involving the dogs.”
However, through the work of Dogs Trust in Bosnia-Herzegovina, progress is being made.
“We raise awareness about the importance of a humane approach through many ways, including educating about the benefits of dogs, responsibility of people, the need for humane systems and correlation between the health of family relations and the treatment of animals.
“Our research also shows that the number of dogs in packs have reduced drastically, mostly packs are of two dogs now, especially in Sarajevo where the number of stray dogs also dropped by 63% between 2012 and 2018, due to mass neutering campaigns.
“Public opinion has also evolved since we started with public campaigns. We have spread the word on the necessity of humane approach and systematic solutions. The attitude towards dog neutering at the beginning of our engagement, when the majority of dog owners rejected it ad hoc, only to have them calling us when there is a pause in the free neutering campaign to ask when it is going to start again.”
Karen Reed, who is Head of Dogs Trust Worldwide, says of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s dog problem, “It is not unique sadly, but replicated in many countries in Europe and wider.
“The challenges vary from country to country in terms of people’s acceptance and treatment of dogs on the street, the source of those dogs and the solution in each country. I believe we have been doing a very good job in Bosnia-Herzegovina, working through local people towards a solution. Similar interventions may well work in the wider Balkans, and even parts of Eastern Europe where problems may be similar.
“But, we have to really look deep into the source of problems in each country and not just look at managing the “symptoms”. One challenge in my personal view is educating those of us dog lovers in Western Europe on the wider ways around the world in which dogs live, not all of which are bad!”
Karen adds that her experience of supporting the dogs of the Balkans goes beyond Bosnia,
“I was based in Kosovo back in 2002 when the UN peacekeepers were heavily present and I was working for an animal welfare charity helping out with emergency support to local organisations who were helping farm animals and the sudden increase in street dogs, both of which were left abandoned as people had fled fighting.
“Of course, it is understandable that post-conflict countries have many other issues to contend with, often over several decades, though it was interesting that our initial foray into Bosnia was as a result of the UN asking communities what their biggest problems were, expecting them to say rebuilding houses, stable government etcetera, and one of the most frequent requests was to do something about all the street dogs!”
Why not read more about trip around Bosnia-Herzegovina? Click here.
Since beginning operations in 2012, Dogs Trust in Bosnia-Herzegovina have neutered over 70,000 dogs (52,000 of which were strays), provided thousands of workshops for local schools and supported the rehoming, fostering and training of dogs. This on top of their campaigns and lobbying for, and against, legislation changes for animal welfare in the country.
Sanja explains, “since we started with our programmes, which include education, as well as mass neutering campaigns based on the principle ‘catch-neuter-vaccinate-release’, all individually harvesting great results, there has been a noticeable change, especially in Sarajevo where we have been working the longest.
“There is so much more important work, including lobbying of local authorities, in order to reach our goals.”
“Education of school children is another valuable programme which runs in about 66% of the country in elementary schools for ages 7 to 11. These workshops are conducted by the trained educators and they teach children about safety principles in contact with, and around dogs, about their needs and the importance of responsible dog ownership. This is the investment in the future and a sustainable solution, with direct help for the most vulnerable group of the society. At the same time, this is making sure that dog welfare is going to be assured in the future, since children who are taught early about this topic will grow up to be responsible dog owners and citizens.”
A veterinary training programme, run in partnership with the University of Sarajevo and the Veterinary Chambers, has also been launched, in order to train experts who will later help to deliver the catch-neuter-vaccinate-release prorgamme, which has allowed Dogs Trust to ensure the mass neutering of stray and free neutering of all dogs, as well as the tagging and monitoring of strays.
“This has not only helped to reduce the number of dogs that would be born only to end up on the street, but also for the dogs to be healthier, and the community to be safer. This has helped local authorities with the monitoring of healthy and socialised dogs who live on the streets. This programme helps the dogs to stay healthy longer and also helps owners to have fewer costs for their medical care, and for the owners to be more responsible and manage their dogs better.”
Whilst the work done in the last few years is significant, Sanja doesn’t underestimated how much remains to be done.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is an economically challenged country, being in transition to European integrations after being torn by the war 1992 to 1995 which is why funds for these projects are not raised here. We involve audiences in raising awareness and as volunteers to help reach our common goal. Our work and its continuation is very important, particularly as Dogs Trust is the only international charity that has recognised the need and the potential for the dogs in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“The Dogs Trust team in Bosnia and Herzegovina has achieved so much and it is crucial to continue with this important work until the country is ready to run a humane system. This is not a short or an easy process, but it is so rewarding when we see the results!”
Karen adds how people in the UK can help to support the dogs of Bosnia, and worldwide.
“There is an opportunity for the veterinary profession in the UK, and elsewhere, to get involved as volunteers. The main way I am going to suggest people get involved is by fundraising for us! Although Dogs Trust is a large UK charity, Dogs Trust Worldwide is currently a very small arm of the work.”
You can learn more about Dogs Trust’s work in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and find ways to support them, by visiting their website: www.dogstrust.ba/en and Dogs Trust World Wide at: www.dogstrustworldwide.com.
Enjoyed this article? You may enjoy: The Restaurant Bears of Kosovo. Click here.
by Tom McBeth
Categories Articles & Features, Features, TravelTags advenrture, animal welfare, balkans, bosnia, canine, charity work, dog's trust, dogs, explore, former yugoslavia, herzegovina, Kosovo, nature, pets, rescue, strays, street dogs, Travel, volunteering, wildlife, work with animals, worldwide
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/ Declan McKenna | Interview
Since winning Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition in 2015, Declan McKenna has made a name for himself with sunny-sounding, socially-engaged indie-pop tackling subjects as diverse as xenophobia and FIFA corruption. We called the 18-year-old singer-songwriter to discuss his journey so far, and to find out more about his forthcoming debut album.
Preview Isombard
Isombard Declan McKenna 02/09/2016 From £0.99
What’s your earliest musical memory?
The one I always think about is probably the first proper concert I went to. It was in 2010, so I would have been 10 or 11. Anyway, I went to the Hop Farm Festival and I saw Bob Dylan and Ray Davies from The Kinks, and Mumford & Sons before they were the huge band they are now. I always think about that. I mean, getting to see Bob Dylan isn’t something everyone gets to do and to do it so young – before I really appreciated fully what he does and did – was pretty sweet.
Are you from quite a musical family?
Relatively, yes. All of us have at least dabbled in music. My dad plays guitar, my mum plays keys and the flute and stuff, and a couple of my siblings are really into music as well. I have five older siblings so I’ve had a lot of people influencing me.
People are still holding on to that idea that age and wisdom correlate, but I know a lot of young people who are a lot wiser than older people.
What kind of music were you hearing around the house, growing up?
My dad listens to a wide range of things but a lot of classic rock, the likes of Wishbone Ash, The Who and The Beatles. My mum loves a lot of different things, but [she played the] 80s pop she would have been into when she was younger. My older brothers got me into early-00s indie with The Strokes, and then eventually Vampire Weekend and stuff, and my sisters listened to a lot of pop – Christina Aguilera, Westlife and all that sort of stuff. I think all of that comes together and influences what I do
When did you begin writing music yourself?
I’ve been doing it for a long time. Me and one of my sisters and my cousin formed a band and would write songs when we must have been about eight, but I really decided to stick at it from maybe 11 years old. I was really trying to write songs and starting to listen to other songs and trying to improve through that.
Who are your songwriting heroes?
At this point in time, I’d say David Bowie, Jeff Buckley and Nina Simone.
It’s been a little over 18 months since you won Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent competition. Just how mad has life been since? Presumably your life has changed completely?
Yes. From February or March that year things started kicking off and then in April I won the competition. Everything has changed so much since, and it’s happened in a way that I would never have expected, especially so soon. I think it’s great to be able to do this rather than being stuck in school and doing stuff that I don’t really enjoy. At this present time, I’m only really worrying about things that will make me really happy and make me enjoy my life. I’m doing stuff on my own terms which I’m very happy about. So it’s been a great few months and I’m excited for releasing the album and all the stuff that comes after it.
Where are you at with your album?
I’m nearly finished. Now I’m back in the UK, I’ve got a couple more days of not doing anything and then I’m back in the studio running up to the end of the month. I think I’m going to do two more songs and then that will be it, really. So yeah, I’m very close to being finished and I’m just really excited.
You’re working with James Ford on the album. How’s he to work with?
Great. It’s cool working with someone who’s worked on some of my favourite albums. He’s really just improved all of the songs, and it’s been really, really, really fun working with him.
Are there any collaborations on the album?
I actually do have one. I haven’t really mentioned it yet, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to, but one of the tracks on the album I co-wrote and produced with one of my favourite artists...
But you can’t say whom?
Your singles so far have been extremely varied. To what degree is that diversity motivated by a desire to prevent people pigeonholing you?
I’d love to not be pigeonholed but there’s no way it’s ever going to not happen. Even the greatest of greats all had the start of their careers put into boxes or were told that they sounded like one artist or another. With all these crazy changes that have happened in the last two years when I’ve been writing this album, I just haven’t felt like I’ve had a stable enough world around me to make everything sound exactly the same. I think the album’s going to flow well but I’m trying to write a bunch of songs that I like, rather than focusing too much on things like genre, which I think a lot of bands get lost in. They’ll try to make their albums quite cool-sounding, but often get caught up in genre rather than the initial songwriting process.
It’s clear from the lyrics of songs like ‘Isombard’ that you’re extremely engaged with politics. It must have been really interesting spending so much time in the USA this year, in the run up to the presidential election?
Yeah, I was there when the election happened, on the day. Rather than being in my little north of London, Guardian-readers area and internet bubble, driving through Utah and Louisiana and Texas and seeing the genuine amount of support and people getting rallied up for Trump was kind-of scary. It was a tense time, that, but there was nothing particularly violent going on which was good. But it really puts things into perspective because I didn’t really fully understand the genuine support that Trump had in this election.
So you weren’t as shocked as you might have been Trump being elected?
I think I was still shocked. I still thought that it wasn’t going to happen. Me and my friends were saying how it could genuinely be like the plot of a TV show: the billionaire, glamorous dude who’s an absolute fool becoming president, but lo and behold. I still kind-of held onto the hope that it wouldn’t happen, but it did.
What with that and Brexit, it’s been a pretty surprising year, politically. Are you ending 2016 feeling hopeful?
I think I’m always hopeful. I think my generation is one to be hopeful about. Maybe again it’s from my own little social bubble, but I see a lot of my friends and their friends, and people around me who are young, and I see a lot of talent and a lot of people who want to speak out about things; artists like myself who want to make changes in the world. And I think people want change right now above everything.
We’ve had the recession, and some people are looking for change in the form of things like Brexit or voting for someone like Trump. I feel like my generation is slightly more level-headed in the sense that we want change through ourselves and our own actions, if that makes sense? Like, making people think about alternative ways that we can make the world a better place. I think that makes me hopeful most of all; the younger generation. And once we get the vote then I think things will look up as well.
Ideally, what age do you think people should be able to vote?
I’d say, for realistic reasons, 16. But I think in an ideal world you would be able to get every single person in the country to just have a chat with someone and they can judge if they should be allowed to vote or not. But I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. I was maybe 14 I wanted to vote, and I know a lot of intelligent kids who are much more informed on these things than older people, so I think 16-year-olds should be able to vote. People are still holding on to that idea that age and wisdom correlate, but I know a lot of young people who are a lot wiser than older people, if that makes sense. Obviously not all, but I know a lot. And a lot of people who listen to my music reply to my tweets about politics, and they’re all obviously engaged and probably around my age or younger.
Currently it feels like we see a lot of protest music in genres like rap and grime, but not so much in indie-rock. Would you agree?
I feel very proud of grime in a way. I think grime is something that my generation – and people a bit older – can hold as their own. It stands up for itself as something that can be very self-sufficient and intelligent. But a lot of my friends make political art, or they’ll show me their assignments that they’re doing at school and it will be based on political things. I love seeing my friends doing well, and speaking out about things for younger people.
So what’s the plan for 2017? When can we expect to hear the album?
Next year is just getting the album out, I’m going to say in March or April. I’m not 100%, but I think around then.
And then touring, probably for the full year, almost. There are going to be loads of festivals and lots of travelling, which I’m excited about. It’s just going to be really, really busy for me, which I think is generally a good thing.
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Tom Hamilton of Aerosmith has been forced to leave the band's current tour due to illness. The bassist has returned to the U.S. to recover.
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HUMN19250G
Villains in Literature and Film
Effective: Spring/Summer 2019
Course Leader or Contact: Jonathan Filipovic
Section I Notes: N/A
Students examine the popularity of villains in literature and film over the last 200 years. They compare the characteristics of classic and contemporary villains and evaluate the importance of the villain with respect to race, culture and gender and class. Students also examine how villains drive the plot of stories and why the conflict they initiate is an essential narrative ingredient. In addition, students analyze the role that technology plays in shaping villains in literature and film. Finally, students participate in a variety of interactive learning activities and assessments, including group presentations, quizzes, exams and written assignments.
This course is part of the General Education curriculum which is designed to contribute to the development of the students¿ consciousness of the diversity, complexity, and richness of the human experience; their ability to establish meaning through this consciousness; and, as a result, their ability to contribute thoughtfully, creatively, and positively to the society in which they live and work. General Education courses strengthen students¿ generic skills, such as critical analysis, problem solving, and communication, in the context of an exploration of topics with broad-based personal and/or societal importance.
By the end of this course, students will have demonstrated the ability to analyze the importance of villains to narrative in literature and film over the past 200 years.
Describe the characteristics of the villain in literature and film.
Compare the characteristics of classic and contemporary villains in literature and film.
Identify how villains drive the plot of narratives through conflict.
Analyze the representations of the villain in literature and film with respect to race, culture, gender and class.
Examine the role that technology plays in shaping villains in literature and film.
Examine how the extraterrestrial has achieved the status of villain in literature and film.
Evaluation Plan: IN-CLASS
Group Presentation 15.0%
Three film reviews (essay format) (3 @ 15%) 45.0%
2 Quizzes (1 @ 5%, 1 @ 10%) 15.0%
Final Exam 25.0%
TEST AND ASSIGNMENT PROTOCOL To encourage behaviours that will help students to be successful in the workplace and to ensure that students receive credit for their individual work, the following rules apply to every course offered within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. 1. Students are responsible for staying abreast of test dates and times, as well as due dates and any special instructions for submitting assignments and projects as supplied to the class by the professor. 2. Students must write all tests at the specified times. Missed tests, in-class activities, assignments and presentations are awarded a mark of zero. If an extension or make-up opportunity is approved by the professor as outlined below, the mark of zero may be revised by subsequent performance. The penalty for late submission of written assignments is a loss of 10% per day for up to five business days (excluding weekends and statutory holidays), after which, a grade of zero is assigned. Business days include any day that the college is open for business, whether the student has scheduled classes that day or not. 3. Students, who miss a test or in-class activity or assignment or fail to submit an assignment on time due to exceptional circumstances, are required to notify their professor in advance of the class whenever possible. A make-up test may be supplied for students who provide an acceptable explanation of their absence and/or acceptable documentation explaining their absence (e.g., a medical certificate). All make-up tests are to be written at a time and place specified by the professor upon the student's return. Alternately, students may be given an opportunity to earn the associated marks by having a subsequent test count for the additional marks. Exceptional circumstances may result in a modification of due dates for assignments. 4. Unless otherwise specified, assignments and projects must be submitted at the beginning of class. 5. Students must complete every assignment as an individual effort unless, the professor specifies otherwise. 6. Since there may be instances of grade appeal or questions regarding the timely completion of assignments and/or extent of individual effort, etc., students are strongly advised to keep, and make available to their professor, if requested, a copy of all assignments and working notes until the course grade has been finalized. 7. There will be no resubmission of work unless this has been previously agreed to or suggested by the professor. 8. Students must submit all assignments in courses with practical lab and field components in order to pass the course.
Interpersonal Skills - Interact with others in groups or teams in ways that contribute to effective working relationships and the achievement of goals.
Interpersonal Skills - Show respect for the diverse opinions, values, belief systems, and contributions of others.
Communication Skills - Respond to written, spoken, or visual messages in a manner that ensures effective communication.
Critical Thinking & Problem Solving - Apply a systematic approach to solve problems.
Personal Skills - Take responsibility for one's own actions, decisions, and consequences.
Arts In Society
Instruction Mode: In-Class
Required Textbook Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Coates, Ta-Nehisi & Brian Stelfreeze, Marvel, Print, 2016
Required Textbook All You Need is Kill, Takeuchi, Ryosuke, Sakurazaka, Hiroshi, Yoshitoshi, Abe & Takeshi Obata, Viz Media LLC, Print, 2014
Optional Other Abrams, M.H. & G. Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms (10th ed.). Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. 2012. Print
Optional Other Bender, Lawrence (Producer) & Tarantino, Quentin. (Director). Kill Bill Vol 1. United States. Miramax Films. 2003. Motion Picture.
Optional Other Butler, Octavia. Bloodchild & Other Stories. Seven Stories Press. 2005. Print.Ichikawa,
Optional Other Minami (Producer) & Anno, Hideaki and Shinji Higuchi (Directors). Shin Godzilla. Japan. Toho Pictures. 2016. Motion Picture.
Optional Other King, Stephen. Misery. Scribner, 2016. Print
Optional Other Utt, Kenneth (Producer) & Demme, Jonathan (Director). Silence of the Lambs. United States. Orion Pictures. 1991. Motion Picture.
Optional Other Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Scholastic. 2006. Print
Applicable student group(s): All students eligible to take General Education electives
Module 1: General Overview & A Brief Introduction to Classic Villains
Unit 1: Course Introduction & An Introduction to Villains in Literature & Film
Unit 2: Creating Evil: Classic Villains
Literary Analysis: Character, Setting, Plot & Tone
Reading: “The Black Cat” (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tattooer” (1910) by Junichiro Tanizaki (links available on Slate)
Film Clips: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) directed by F.W. Murnau, Ringu (1998) directed by Hideo Nakata
Module 2: Comic Book Villains
Unit 3: Constructing Conflict: How Antagonists Drive Plot
Literary Analysis: Theme & Point of View
Film: The Dark Knight (2008) directed by Christopher Nolan
Group Presentation (15%)
Unit 4: Politics, Revolution and Deceit
Reading: Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Group Presentation ctd…
Film Review 1 due (15%)
Unit 5: Heroes vs Villains
Reading: Black Panther ctd…
Quiz 1 (5%)
Module 3: Machines & Aliens as the Other
Unit 6: The Evils of Sentient Beings
Film: The Matrix (1999) directed by the Wachowskis
Unit 7: Villains from Space!
Reading: All You Need is Kill by RyosukeTakeuchi, Hiroshi Sakurazaka and Abe Yoshitoshi
Unit 8: How Technology Shapes Villainy
Reading: All You Need is Kill ctd…
Quiz 2 (10%)
Module 4: Representations of Culture
Unit 9: Demons, Curses and Nature
Film: Princess Mononoke (1997) directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Unit 10: World Building - Creating a New Mythology
Reading: “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler (link available on Slate)
Unit 11: What is Evil?
Reading: “Kin” by Bruce McAllister (link available on Slate)
Module 5: Villains in Popular Culture
Unit 12: The Stereotyped Villain
Film: Super 8 (2010) directed by J.J. Abrams
Unit 13: Final Exam (25%)
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Published on Friday, June 15, 2012
Published in Press Releases on June 15, 2012 (PDF)
JACKSON, Miss. – Dr. Ray J. Rodriguez has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of pediatrics and a subspecialist in pediatric allergy and immunology.
A 1979 graduate of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, Ponce, Rodriguez
received the M.D. from the Ponce School of Medicine in 1984. He did a transitional internship from 1984-85 at Damas Hospital, Ponce, a pediatric residency from 1988-91 at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas, and an allergy immunology fellowship from 1993-95 and a clinical laboratory immunology fellowship from 1995-96 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington D.C. [Enlarge Photo]
Rodriguez served as a general medical officer in the Second Medical Battalion at Camp Casey, Korea, from 1985-86 and in the General Outpatient Clinic at Dewitt Army Community Hospital, Ft. Belvoir, Va., from 1986-88. He also served on the pediatric staff at the Womack Army Medical Center’s Pediatric Clinic in Ft. Bragg, N.C., from 1991-93 and was chief of allergy immunology at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas, from 1996-97. Since 1997, he has had an allergy immunology private practice in Puerto Rico.
In 2002, Rodriguez received his master’s in public health from the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, and his master’s in business administration from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He received the juris doctor in 2007 from the University of Puerto Rico Law School in Rio Piedras.
A fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, Rodriguez is a member of several professional organizations, including the American College of Physician Executives and the American Bar Association. He has coauthored three articles for peer-reviewed publications.
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Read Next: What to Watch on TV This Week: ‘Picard' Premieres and 'Shrill' Returns
January 14, 2019 11:30AM PT
Heather Graham Drama ‘Hypnotist’s Love Story’ Ordered to Pilot at ABC
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ABC has given the Heather Graham-led drama “The Hypnotist’s Love Story” a formal pilot order, Variety has learned.
Graham will star in and executive produce the project. In the show, after a string of failed romances, successful hypnotherapist Ellen is optimistic about her current boyfriend. But then he reveals a disturbing truth: a stalker ex-girlfriend (Graham) has been following him for years. Ellen finds herself intrigued – and oddly thrilled by the stalker, entirely unaware that they’ve already met. ABC gave the project a put pilot commitment back in October.
The project is an adaptation of the Liane Moriarty book of the same name, with Moriarty attached as a producer. Katie Wech will serve as writer and executive producer. Along with Graham, David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, and Laurie Zaks of Mandeville Television will also executive produce. ABC Studios will produce.
Though she is primarily known for her acting, this marks Graham’s latest effort to work behind the camera as well. Most recently, Graham wrote, directed, and starred in the romantic comedy film “Half Magic,” which was released earlier this year. She also recently starred in the NBC series “Law & Order True Crime” and made appearances on shows like “Get Shorty” and “Angie Tribeca.” She is also known for her roles in films like “Boogie Nights,” “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” and “The Hangover.”
Should the project go to series, it would be the latest Moriarty work to be adapted for television. Most famously, HBO adapted Moriarty’s book “Big Little Lies” into an award-winning series starring and executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman. A second season of the show is currently in the works, with the plot based on an original idea by Moriarty.
Wech’s recent credits include “Jane the Virgin,” “Star,” “Rizzoli & Isles,” and “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.”
Graham is repped by Risa Shapiro, Paradigm for talent, APA for lit, and Morris Yorn. Wech is repped by Verve. Moriarty is repped by Intellectual Property Group, Curtis Brown Australia, and The Book Group.
Want to read more articles like this one? Subscribe to Variety Today.
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Welcome back to Tune In: our weekly newsletter offering a guide to the best of the week’s TV. Each week, Variety’s TV team combs through the week’s schedule, selecting our picks of what to watch and when/how to watch them. This week, “Star Trek: Picard” beams into existence on CBS All Access and “Shrill” returns [...]
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Venous News
Vascular News
The need for abdominal aortic aneurysm screening to include examination of the common iliac arteries
By Martin Björck
We know from the randomised controlled trials from the UK, Denmark and West Australia that screening elderly men for abdominal aortic aneurysm with ultrasound saves lives and is cost-effective. According to the latest results from the British MASS trial, screening decreases all-cause mortality by 3% (95% confidence intervals, 1–5%) in the overall screened population—an extraordinary result. These results are the rationale behind the establishment of national screening programmes for 65-year-old men in England and Sweden, and the US Medicare and the Society for Vascular Surgery recommendation of aneurysm screening of men and smoking women. Other countries such as Denmark, The Netherlands and Germany have decided, or are considering starting, aneurysm screening programmes. In Sweden the abdominal aortic aneurysm screening programme began in Uppsala in 2006, and reached national coverage by 2015. Sweden has a population of 9.9 million inhabitants.
Although the overall results of aneurysm screening are persuasive, there are details that still need to be defined. One such detail is whether only the aorta should be examined, or whether the common iliac arteries should also be examined. Most screening programmes are very strict in only examining the aorta, which is what the person invited to screening has consented to. Avoiding examination of the entire abdomen, looking for tumours, etc, is self-evident. We do know, however, that abdominal aortic aneurysm is a disease that often affects also the common iliac, and sometimes the internal iliac arteries and that some patients present with rupture of those iliac arteries.
Since the start of aneurysm screening in Uppsala in 2006 we have routinely examined the common iliac arteries in all subjects who have an aortic diameter ≥25mm. This routine was also used in our neighbouring county of Gävleborg. In total, 35,582 65-year-old men were invited, and 26,334 participated (86%). We used this material to study this controversial issue, Achilleas Karkamanis, vascular surgeon and PhD student in Uppsala, responsible for the investigation.
Among those examined 3% had a diameter ≥25mm, and of those, 79% were examined and had a reliable common iliac artery. A common iliac artery aneurysm was defined as a diameter ≥18mm, and 26% of those examined had an iliac artery aneurysm. As expected, those with abdominal aortic aneurysm (≥30mm) had a higher proportion of common iliac artery aneurysms (30%), compared with those with a common iliac artery diameter of 25–29mm (22%). Among 19 large iliac aneurysms, (≥30mm) requiring surgery, 17 had an abdominal aortic aneurysm. However, the largest common iliac aneurysm—with a diameter of 60mm—was found in a man with an aortic diameter of only 25mm (Figure 1).
In conclusion, most common iliac artery aneurysms would have been identified anyway, since most patients with large common iliac artery aneurysms also have abdominal aortic aneurysms. It does not add much work, however, to also investigate the common iliac artery in patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm or sub-aneurysmal aortas, since they are only 3% of those examined. The benefit of adding this routine is increasing patient safety.
For every man who is invited to and accepts abdominal aortic aneurysm screening and later dies from a ruptured aortic or iliac aneurysm, there is a great loss of confidence in the screening programme. From the perspective of mourning relatives, there is no difference as to whether the aneurysm was in the aorta or in the common iliac artery. As a result, we have decided to continue with this routine, and to continue to gather data in order to evaluate the long-term result of including measurements of the common iliac artery in subjects with an aortic diameter ≥25mm.
Martin Björck, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden
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← The Children of Israel
What the Conventional Wisdom Got Wrong About the Election →
Skyfall from Grace
(SPOILER ALERT: This review mentions specific scenes and themes from the movie, including the ending. If you want to be completely surprised, see the movie first, then read the review.)
Nearly every James Bond movie (Dr. No, the first, was the sole exception) starts with a pre-credit mini-adventure: a life-or-death struggle filmed against some exotic background. The purpose is to get the audience in the proper mood. The pre-credit scene is always fun, but rarely vital to the plot. In Skyfall, however, the 23rd Bond film, the pre-credit scene is vital. It establishes the story’s premise: maternal betrayal.
A villain has stolen a computer hard drive containing vital information. James Bond (Daniel Craig) chases him through the streets and rooftops of Istanbul, finally catching up with him atop a speeding train. Eve (Naomie Harris), a British female agent, follows the chase from a speeding vehicle, hoping for clear shot at the enemy. Both Eve and Bond are in radio contact with their boss M (Judi Densch), who is monitoring and supervising the chase from MI6 headquarters in London. In a few seconds, the train will enter a tunnel, and Eve’s last chance at a shot will end. But Bond and his opponent are grappling closely on the train and Eve cannot get a clear shot. Nevertheless, and fully aware of the risks, M orders Eve to “take the shot.” Reluctantly, she does. And James Bond goes hurtling off the train, falling, falling, to the river below, apparently to his death.
Well, of course, he doesn’t die. This is just the pre-credit scene and there are two hours of action to go. But the rest of the story plays out against the backdrop of betrayal. Bond knows that M is willing to see him die, if there’s even a chance that his death will advance the mission.
And her treachery doesn’t end there. After his apparent death, Bond hides out on a tropical beach, trying to drink and fornicate his misery away. But when MI6 headquarters are bombed by the same people behind the theft of the hard drive, he patriotically returns to London — where M betrays him a second time. Before he can be restored to active duty, Bond must pass a battery of physical and mental tests. After months of dissolute living, Bond is a wreck and he performs poorly on his tests. M reinstates him anyway, lying to him that he has passed “by the skin of his teeth.” Cavalierly returning the unready Bond to the field demonstrates that to M, he is not a man, but a mere instrument.
Every Bond villain personifies evil, and Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) is no exception. He is a terrorist and a sexual predator, and his hair is outrageously blonde. Despite their differences, Bond and Silva share a, well, bond. Silva too was an MI6 agent, and he too was betrayed by M. Years earlier, she handed him over to the Chinese, partly because she didn’t trust him and partly to obtain the release of several preferred agents. After months of torture at the hands of his captors, Silva tried to commit suicide by biting down on a cyanide capsule hidden in a molar. The poison disfigured him but failed to kill him. Now his sole ambition is revenge on M.
Silva and Bond figure as modern versions of Satan and the Son of God in the Paradise Lost of British Intelligence. With his formidable skills and charm – to say nothing of the blonde hair—one can see Silva as having once been the most beautiful of all the angel agents of the MI6 firmament, before his disfigurement and fall from grace. Now, an outcast, he has gathered about him a murderous band, preferring, as did Satan, to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven. Silva informs Bond of M’s treachery with the exams, and tries to seduce Bond ( in more ways than one) into joining the Dark Side. But Bond resists temptation, and proves willing to sacrifice himself to save M and MI6.
The final scene of the movie underscores the duality of the two professional progeny of M, both trained and betrayed by her. Silva has cornered her in a church (where else?). She is seriously wounded. He holds a gun to her head, but gently places her hand over the weapon, rests his head against hers, and urges her to shoot. One bullet will penetrate both skulls, killing them both in a final mortal act of filial unity.
Moments later, Silva is dead, killed by a knife thrown into his back by Bond. In a strange juxtaposition, a tearful Bond cradles the head of M, the same head Silva had just been holding, as she dies in his arms.
Skyfall arrived in theaters 50 years after the first James Bond movie, and 48 years after the death of Ian Fleming, his creator. Fleming might have been bemused by the duality of good and evil in the new movie. The Bond he created was no angel. As he recounted in a 1962 interview in the New Yorker: “When I wrote the first [Bond novel] in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument … when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard.” He later described his character as “a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.”
Fleming himself served in MI6 during World War II, and his experiences managing spies and agents unquestionably influenced his literary career. He briefly handled a Serbian character named Dusan “Dusko” Popov, whom many consider a model for Bond.
In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, Popov was living in Dubrovnik, practicing law, and conducting affairs with at least four women. He was recruited to work for the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, but he secretly loathed the Germans and volunteered to become a double agent for the British.
Popov led an interesting – and decidedly amoral – wartime existence. He made a small fortune, extracting money from his German employers, who dutifully paid him for the phony information he supplied. Unfortunately, he spent an even larger fortune, and was constantly in debt.
In 1941, the Germans gave him $70,000 in cash and sent him to the United States to spy on the Americans. The British informed the FBI in advance of his mission, and encouraged the Americans to use Popov as they were doing: as a vehicle for transmitting false information to the Germans. Within a few months of his arrival, he had spent the German money on a Park Avenue apartment, a Long Island summer house, a red Buick convertible, and ski trips to Sun Valley, Idaho. He also hired a butler, a Chinese man servant, and a team of gardeners. He conducted affairs with a French movie star and an English divorcee.
When he ran out of money, he requested, received, and quickly spent $10,000 more from the Germans. When the Germans refused to send more, he demanded a loan from the FBI, eventually running up a debt of $17,500. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover never trusted Popov. According to Double Cross, Ben Macintyre’s masterly history of the Britain’s double agents, “Popov was exactly the sort of person Hoover loathed: dissolute, extravagant, sexually voracious, and foreign.”
By the summer of 1942, both the Germans and the FBI were fed up with supporting his profligate life style. So Popov flew to Lisbon, and resumed his work as a double agent for the British. He continued to render these services for the duration of the war. After the war, he settled down and married an 18-year old French girl. The marriage didn’t last, and he later met an 18-year old Swedish student, whom he married the following year. For years after the war had ended, the British were still trying to straighten out his financial entanglements.
In Dusko Popov, we see neither Silva nor Bond, neither Satan nor the Son of God. We do not even see an amalgam of the black and white elements of those characters. We see, rather, the sort of grayish man Ian Fleming had in mind when he sat down before his typewriter to craft James Bond: a dull, blunt, amoral instrument, wielded ironically in the Miltonian struggle between good and evil that was World War II.
· politics, foreign policy, law, culture
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Back to dark days of 1970s
EDITS | Tuesday, June 14, 2011 | 2:03:11 AM
A Surya Prakash
The Congress’s fascist reaction to the anti-corruption movement shows the party still remains unchanged. Its misdeeds remind us of the 1975-77 Emergency.
The Congress-led UPA Government is sadly mistaken if it thinks that its ruthless Gaddafi-style midnight operation to evict Baba Ramdev and his supporters from Ramlila Maidan in the early hours of June 5 will crush the movement against corruption in the country. The Government’s action, which is reminiscent of the response of Mrs Indira Gandhi to charges of corruption in the mid-1970s, only goes to show that nothing much has changed within the Congress. It continues to function like a family-owned private limited company whose promoters have fascist tendencies and remain extremely vulnerable to charges of corruption.
Apart from ending the mass satyagraha at the venue in Delhi, the Congress has launched a vituperative attack on Baba Ramdev, calling him a “thug” and a “fraud” and raising questions about the funding of his organisation. There is nothing new in this. These very tactics were deployed against Anna Hazare and his team members in April. An identical operation is now on to paint Baba Ramdev in ugly colours.
The Government is rattled by Baba Ramdev’s movement because it strikes at the root of the problem — money stashed away in Swiss banks by politicians and businessmen. The Anna Hazare movement got confined to the limited issue of establishing a national ombudsman (Lok Pal) to deal with corruption at the highest level. But, the creation of such an institution is just one of the many initiatives that need to be taken. Since corruption is a hydra-headed monster that has affected all aspects of politics, governance and life, what is needed is a comprehensive anti-corruption agenda that seeks to tackle the problem at the root and throw up permanent remedies.
For example, money power has vitiated the entire electoral process since the beginning and the humongous amounts spent by candidates in State Assembly and Lok Sabha elections has made a mockery of the spending limits imposed by the Election Commission. Over the last two decades, the permissible spending in a Lok Sabha constituency in a large State has more than trebled.
Just three monmths ago, the Conduct of Election Rules were amended yet again to enhance the maximum election expenditure in Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies to Rs 40 lakh and Rs 16 lakh respectively. However, those who track election-spending are aware that even this revised limit will be observed more in the breach than than in the observance because in recent years the average spending by serious candidates in Lok Sabha constituencies is between Rs 3 crore and Rs 5 crore.
All of this is black money — some generated within the country and the rest brought back fromSwitzerlandand tax havens likeLiechtenstein. Therefore, any anti-corruption initiative must first deal with the issue of black money vitiating the electoral process and making a mockery of the democratic system. We need to accord high priority to this problem.
The second most important source of corruption is Government contracts. It is long established that those who run the Government and the ruling party get kickbacks on every deal. In the early decades after independence when the licence-permit-quota raj held sway, bribes and commissions were paid in Indian rupees. Later, after Mrs Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, the Congress chose a new route for political funding — kickbacks from international deals which are paid into secret accounts in Switzerland and other tax havens.
Those who have worked in Government at senior levels — for instance, Mr BG Deshmukh who was Cabinet Secretary during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister — have noted that since the 1980s, the Congress has found it more convenient to take commissions from foreign companies in international deals rather than pass the hat around among Indian businessmen and industrialists to collect party funds. This way, huge sums can be collected to fund the party without any obligation to industrial houses within the country. It was presumed that there would be no whiff of corruption if discreet payments were made to Swiss bank accounts.
This grand plan, however, went for a toss when the Swedish Audit Bureau reported that arms manufacturer AB Bofors had paid ‘commission’ to certain individuals in connection with the sale of field guns to India in 1986. Despite that embarrassment, there is no indication of any change in the attitude of the Congress towards collecting funds. This is also the reason why the party is dragging its feet on the black money issue.
When the pressure from the Supreme Court became unbearable, the Government cleverly announced the setting up of a “high-powered committee” to keep the court at bay. This committee is supposed to examine the problem and outline a plan of action to bring back the loot. The Government offered a similar bait to Baba Ramdev the other day, offering to set up “a committee” to draft a law to bring back black money.
After making this offer, the Government claimed that it had met “all the demands” of Baba Ramdev and wanted him to end his satyagraha. When he failed to oblige, the Government responded with police brutality. The use of brute force to end a peaceful agitation is reminiscent of the Emergency days. This was exactly how Mrs Indira Gandhi responded to Jayaprakash Narayan’s campaign against corruption 36 years ago.
In fact, the parallels between 1974-75 and 2010-11 are striking. Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement began with the campaign against corruption in Gujarat and with the demand that then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi probe the allegations against LN Mishra, a senior Minister in her Cabinet. Mrs Indira Gandhi did none of this. Instead, she used brute force to crush the movement.
Mr Manmohan Singh, too, has resorted to an Emergency-style operation to crush the satyagraha at Ramlila Maidan. Also, in typical Mrs Indira Gandhi fashion, he has defended the midnight police raid and said the Government had no option but to resort to such action. There are other eerie coincidences. It should be remembered that Mrs Indira Gandhi imposed her dreaded Emergency in 1975 after a massive Opposition rally which, incidentally, was held at Ramlila Maidan and in June.
This only shows that more things change, the more the Congress remains the same. The party continues to be extremely vulnerable when corruption is discussed and the party’s fascist tendencies come to the fore whenever its Government is cornered on this issue. That is why all those who believe in democracy need to be on high alert after Mr Singh’s Ramlila Maidan operation. Needless to say, eternal vigilance is the price of democracy.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/345653/Back-to-dark-days-of-1970s.html
Posted in Congress (Bharat), Congress Hooligans, Corruption, Corruption-Bharat, Election, Sonia Gandhi
Tags: Anna Hazare, anti-corruption, Baba, brutality, brute force, Congress, Corruption, emergency, eternal vigilance, fascist, fraud, Gandhi, Indira, Jayaprakash Narayan, Lok Sabha, movement, police, prime minister, Ramdev, ramlila, ruthless, satyagraha, Supreme Court, Swiss banks, tactics, Thug, UPA, vituperative
Sign the Petition: Open letter to Pres., India- Police Brutality at Ramlila Grounds
Date: Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 5:25 PM
Subject: [BSTUSA} Open Letter to the President of India – Sign Up Campaign against Delhi Police’s brutalities on hundreds of thousands peaceful Satyagrathies on June 4th Night at Ram Lila Ground
Please click the link below for Sign Up Campaign against Delhi Police’s brutalities on hundreds of thousands peaceful Satyagrathies on June 4th Night at Ram Lila Ground and please forward it to as many people as possible.
http://www.ravanlila.info
Shekhar Agrawal
Bharat Swabhiman Overseas Inc
<shekharagrawal@gmail.com>
www.bharatswabhimanusa.org
www.bharatswabhimansamachar.in
www.pyptusa.org
www.divyaproducts.com
Letter To President Of India
Smt. Pratibha Patil
Rashtrapati Bhavan,
Honorable Smt. Pratibha Patil:
This is to express our vehement condemnation of the merciless use of force on more than a hundred thousand Indian citizens including women and children who were unarmed, sleeping, fasting and exercising only their constitutional democratic rights to draw attention of Government of India by peaceful means to skyrocketing plundering and widespread corruption, during the “Satyagraha” against corruption on Ram Lila grounds in New Delhi on June 4th 2011.
The brutality of the police revisited the atrocities committed by British colonial rulers and emergency rule of Mrs. Indira Gandhi during 1975, which many of us have personally experienced and heard from our parents. Innocent, peaceful Satyagrahis assembled were tear-gassed, beaten up in lathi-charge and trampled by thousands of violent policemen under order from the UPA government.
The state-sponsored violence in a closed compound could have even led to an uncontrollable stampede resulting in the loss of an enormous numbers of innocent lives. This cannot be Democratic India; this cannot be Mahatma Gandhi’s India; this is not India governed by rule of law and a democratic constitution, ensuring the fundamental rights of all citizens for assembly and peaceful protest and demonstration.
These events have left the people of Indian origin around the globe, particularly here in the USA, shocked and horror-stricken. We are thoroughly embarrassed for our native land, asking in disbelief what indeed is the difference between Indian democracy under UPA leadership and the Chinese dictatorial system, where no peaceful demonstration is allowed and any legitimate criticism against the ruling Communist Party is crushed with brutal violence as in Tiananmen Square.
The irresponsible, callous, fascist and totalitarian attitude of the UPA government is evident from the fact that neither the UPA Chairperson Mrs. Sonia Gandhi nor Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh considers it necessary to provide an explanation and extend an apology to the nation. The prime minister even made a ridiculous statement that there was no other way except use of violence, near the samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi himself – a global beacon of non-violence.
This display of naked power clearly appears to be yet another attempt to crush the ever-increasing strength of anti-corruption movements by the masses all over India, unfortunately implying UPA government intense desire to preserve the culture of corruption among their own political ranks and within the thoroughly corrupt bureaucracy they control. These were the actions of people who do not believe in either human rights for their citizens, freedom of speech guaranteed by the Indian Constitution or Indian values.
This is a serious threat to the fundamental rights of our brothers and sisters in India. The entire Diaspora around the globe as NRI, PIO and responsible Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) unequivocally condemn this act by the Government of India. We are convinced now more than ever as to why the UPA government is trying to brutally crush any and all peaceful anti-corruption movements. Irrespective of our political affiliation, we are totally united in expressing our disgust and anger against unconstitutional violation of democracy and human rights.
Sreemati Patil, as the President of India you have the constitutional duty to uphold democratic norms guaranteeing the freedom and inalienable right of all Indian citizens for peaceful assembly and protest, and also to dismiss a corrupt government which has clearly exhibited no desire to curb rampant corruption and hence lost all moral authority to govern the country. We fervently hope that you will restore freedom, human rights and democratic rights of the citizens by dismissing the corrupt UPA government. People of India deserve a chance to democratically elect new leaders who will root out corruption.
Thank you for your consideration and thoughtfulness.
Posted in Baba Ramdev's Arrest, Congress (Bharat), Corruption, Corruption-Bharat, Injustice to Hindus, Sonia Gandhi
Tags: atrocities, Bharat, brutality, bureaucracy, callous, Chinese, citizens, Corruption, democracy, Diaspora, dismiss, emergency, fascist, force, freedom, fundamental rights, human rights, India, Indira Gandhi, irresponsible, mahatma Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, merciless, moral authority, peaceful, plunder, protest, satyagraha, Sonia Gandhi, Sreemati Patil, state-sponsored, Tiananmen Square, totalitarian, USA, violence
Vulgar display of power- Congress descends to foul-mouthed abuse
The Congress showed its fascist streak last Sunday night when it ordered Delhi Police to brutalise thousands of men, women and children who had gathered at Ramlila Ground to peacefully protest against the most venal cash-and-carry Government India has ever had and which is led by the party. Since then, the Congress has also demonstrated how low it can stoop by taking recourse to coarse bazaar language while defending the morally and legally indefensible police crackdown it ordered on sleeping protesters and then attacking the Opposition for taking up cudgels on behalf of the victims of Sunday night’s atrocity. High on the conviction that nothing or nobody can stop it from abusing power and misusing authority, the Congress has sought to tar the reputation of the RSS and the BJP, launching a scurrilous attack on both organisations and their leaders. The tone and tenor of those speaking on behalf of the party are not dissimilar to that of hoodlums who seek to scare people into submission; their loutish language makes the most scurrilous reportage of cheap yellow rags that made Page 3 popular among the under-classes appear sanitised and clean. The lexicon of political discourse, it would appear, in the case of the Congress has suddenly shrunk to terms of abuse as foul-mouthed spokespersons compete with each other, with more than a little help from ‘friendly’ media, to prove who is more boorish. Is this the new loyalty test set by the party president? For nothing else explains why Ms Sonia Gandhi has chosen to remain silent as her foot soldiers unleash volley after volley of uncouth verbal assault on the Congress’s political opponents. The political commentary, if at all this expression can be used given the low level of discourse, that emanated from the Congress on Tuesday when party leaders made shockingly disparaging remarks that can be construed to be repulsively sexist against the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Ms Sushma Swaraj, has left many people wondering whether Ms Gandhi endorses such vulgarity. It is a sad reflection of the state of affairs that prevails in India’s Grand Old Party that its president should maintain a stunning silence as her colleagues betray their true character and class.
Political debate can be acrimonious, but it should never descend to abuse and character assassination. Nor should parties seek to score political points by directing their ire at individuals, unless the issue merits such attack. The issue that agitates India at the moment is not about individuals but an institution, namely the Congress and the rampant corruption it has spawned in high places. Linked to this is the Congress’s arrogance, its criminally callous indifference to popular disquiet simply because it wields power and believes it can ride roughshod over the people of this country. The Congress forgets that it has been humbled by the people on more than one occasion in the past, that too when the party was led by stalwarts. Tragically, its current leaders have not learned any lessons from the party’s post-1975 history; worse, they have elected to become one with the hooligans who populate the Congress’s ranks. It’s a shame and a pity. The shame is entirely that of the Congress; it’s a pity that India should be saddled with a Government that has to depend on goons masquerading as Gandhi’s political heirs.
Posted in Baba Ramdev's Arrest, Congress (Bharat), Congress Hooligans, Sonia Gandhi
Tags: acrimonious, arrogance, assassination, atrocity, Baba, BJP, fascist, Gandhi, hoodlums, indifference, Ramdev, rampant, RSS, scurrilous, shame, Sonia, Sushma, Swaraj
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Patrick O'Reilly honored with emeritus status /
Current page: Patrick O'Reilly honored with emeritus status
Patrick O’Reilly, associate professor of teaching and learning in the School of Education in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, has been conferred the “associate professor emeritus” title by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
The title of emeritus may be conferred on retired professors and associate professors, administrative officers, librarians, and exceptional staff members who are specially recommended to the board of visitors by Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger. Nominated individuals who are approved by the board of visitors receive an emeritus certificate from the university.
A member of the Virginia Tech community since 1975, O’Reilly made significant contributions to the research on career and technical education, trade and industrial teacher education, and educational evaluations. He wrote more than 80 publications and directed numerous sponsored research and development projects.
He held leadership positions in a number of professional societies, including the National Association of Industrial and Technical Teacher Educators and as editor of the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education.
In addition, he served as director of the Center for Assessment, Evaluation, and Educational Programming in the School of Education.
O’Reilly received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Kansas State University and a Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University.
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Aug SEP Oct
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2002 Election Crawl from Alexa Internet. This data is currently not publicly accessible.
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Danny Lewin, co-founder and chief technology officer of Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, Mass., in August 2000. Lewin was a passenger on the first plane to slam into the World Trade Center. He grew up in Denver, a neighbor of News Assistant Business Editor Gil Rudawsky.
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At 29, a billionaire; at 31, a casualty
Denver native Danny Lewin: Internet genius, ex-commando, father. And on 9-11, quite possibly terrorism's first victim
By Gil Rudawsky, Rocky Mountain News
Danny Lewin didn't like to lose. In anything. And he rarely did.
No one will ever know for sure what happened between 7:59 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 took off with Danny in business class, and 8:48 a.m., when it slammed into the World Trade Center's North Tower.
But Danny's friends are convinced he didn't go down without a fight, that he was the passenger whose throat was slashed by terrorists - a killing recounted in a flight attendant's hysterical cell phone call.
Danny Lewin was 31, a Denver native turned Israeli commando turned MIT whiz kid turned Internet visionary.
And, most likely, Sept. 11's first casualty.
That might be Danny's legacy. But it's only a fraction of the story about my childhood friend.
Before that fateful flight on Sept. 11, 2001, Danny's life was one of contradictions and ironies: a billionaire living in student housing; an expert in complex mathematical algorithms who could bench twice his weight; a devout Jew who loved motorcycles and fast cars; a brilliant son who had difficulty earning the respect of his father; an Internet entrepreneur whose discovery would be given its toughest test on the day of his death; and a former commando in an elite Israeli anti-terrorism force who would die at the hands of those he had been trained to kill.
I grew up four houses down from Danny, on South Chester Court in suburban Denver. Until his family moved to Jerusalem when Danny was 15, we did everything together - sports, trick-or-treating, computer games.
Two years after Danny moved, I visited him in Jerusalem. He was having a hard time adjusting to life away from Chester Court. He asked me to send him anything American - T-shirts, tapes, ball caps.
Somewhere along the way, we lost touch. In the meantime, my childhood friend became obsessed with becoming the best at everything.
He called everything that got in his way obstreperous, a stumbling block. It was his favorite word.
Danny was labeled one of the world's 100 smartest people. There was talk that he would be Bill Gates' successor.
His master's thesis at MIT was the basis for an endeavor that became the model of a high-flying Internet company.
At age 29, Danny was worth $3.2 billion.
This is his story.
First confirmed victim
On Sept. 11, culling through the barrage of wire service stories about the attacks, I noticed a two-paragraph story. It was the first confirmation of a fatality.
"Akamai Technologies Inc., an Internet-technology company, said its co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Daniel Lewin was on a flight that terrorists hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center today.
"Lewin, 31, was on a Los Angeles-bound American Airlines flight, the first of two hijacked flights that crashed into the twin towers, which burned and collapsed."
He had taken the flight several times before, and this time he was on his way to an Internet conference.
Danny left behind his wife, Anne, and two young children, Eitan and Itamar, of Brookline, a Boston suburb; two brothers, Jonathan and Michael; and his parents, Charles and Peggy, of Jerusalem.
A week earlier, his father had traveled to Boston and begged Danny to return to Israel. He felt his business success should be secondary to being a devout Jew. He tried to convince his son that a man is measured only by his devoutness in the eyes of God, and part of that can be accomplished by living in the Jewish homeland.
Danny's mother, Peggy, secretly wanted him to stay in the United States, though, because she thought it was safer.
But on that Tuesday morning last September, he could not have been in more danger.
The final transmission from a flight attendant to air traffic controllers offers some clues about what happened on Flight 11.
She said a businessman sitting in the front of the plane had been stabbed to death. She gave the row number, but investigators refuse to disclose whether Danny was sitting there.
Marco Greenberg, one of Danny's close friends, has a pretty good idea what happened: "Given Danny's character and (military) background, I'm sure he didn't just sit there and I'm sure he fought back."
Greenberg, who owns a New York public relations firm that represents Akamai, said at Danny's memorial service: "Our friend is quite probably the first fatality in the first war of the 21st century."
100 miles and back
Every Israeli citizen must complete four years of military service. Danny didn't question it. And it didn't take long before he was chosen for an elite commando unit. His military exploits are legendary and, for the most part, secret.
In one training exercise, his unit was given three days to cross 100 miles in the desert with few provisions.
Danny did it twice.
His colleagues said that later, as a business executive, he would tell his staff about the run: "Just when you think you've hit your limits, you can find the inner discipline to keep going."
He became captain of a unit that trained to fight terrorism and he routinely led covert missions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, hunting down suspected terrorists.
South Chester Court
Danny's successes contrast with his childhood.
Life on South Chester Court was typical suburbia, a neighborhood filled with doctors, college professors, insurance salesmen and bankers. At night they would cluster on their driveways, sit on lawn chairs and watch their children play. Most families had children about the same age, born in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
The Lewin family was different, though.
Besides Danny, there were his psychiatrist father, Charles; his pediatrician mother, Peggy; and two younger brothers.
The Lewin boys were terrors, and Danny led the charge.
At one point, his family placed Danny in a private school after he stabbed a classmate with a pencil. One neighbor recalled the time Charles Lewin kept Danny in a sustained bear-hug because he didn't know how else to control him.
But what made the family different is that Danny's outbursts weren't attributed to a phase or normal teen-age rebellion. Instead, it was "an impulse control problem."
Charles Lewin, the psychiatrist, had attached a diagnosis and a solution. You never got scolded at the Lewin household. You were taken into another room and interrogated about the root of your problem.
The boys were very much loved by their parents. Each was a gifted musician. Danny took a liking to the violin. And the boys spent much time in the basement in front of a computer on a makeshift wooden desk.
Danny's brilliance was already starting to be noticed.
Next-door neighbor Mike Arthur, who was several years older, remembers when Danny asked for his help to put together a model airplane. Danny needed to completely understand how the model was supposed to be put together before he made any attempt at construction.
"He understood the instructions, but had difficulty translating it to actually putting the parts together - how much glue and the step-by-step nature of the process," Arthur said. "While at the same time, he blew through puzzles and other games that were much more cerebral in nature."
Aliya to Israel
One day, Charles Lewin announced to his family they were going to take a year-long "sabbatical" and move to Israel.
He promptly quit his practice and spent most of his remaining time in Colorado at home with his sons, taking them skiing. Peggy Lewin kept her thriving pediatric practice going.
Charles, the son of a banker, was Jewish but did not practice the religion as a young man. Colleagues in Denver say it was in mid-life that he embraced Zionism and Judaism.
Many say that Charles never intended to come back to the U.S. He had been bitten by the Israel bug, and wanted to make Aliya - a term that means "rising up" to live in the Holy Land.
He dragged the family to Israel kicking and screaming - almost literally. Danny was 15, just starting to fit in at high school. The night before the Lewins left, neighbors Sharon and Jim Menzel remember Danny coming to their house and crying.
Mr. Teenage Israel
Life in a new country wasn't easy for Danny.
He fought with his father and was sent to a kibbutz, or communal farm. But Danny was soon kicked out.
He found salvation in the gym. He could work out his frustrations by lifting weights. In three months, he transformed himself from an awkward teen-ager into a well-honed machine.
It was a turning point. Danny realized he could accomplish something on his own. He had taken control.
He entered a regional body-building competition and won. Then came other wins. Soon he was named Mr. Teenage Israel.
During his senior year, Danny visited Denver. He ended up at his old high school, Cherry Creek, watching the football players train in the weight room. The coach, thinking he was a new player, gave him an endurance test. Danny topped the charts.
One person likened it to the weakling returning as the bully at the beach.
Technical prowess
By the time Danny finished the military, he was ready for a new challenge. Always a good student, he was accepted to the Technion, Israel's premier technology university, as a full-time research fellow and project leader at IBM's research laboratory.
In 1995 he was named the university's outstanding student in computer engineering.
During this time Danny met his future wife, Anne, a Belgian who had moved to Israel after catching the Zionism bug.
Soon Danny's military exploits took a back seat to his intellectual prowess. He presented several breakthrough papers at conferences. His work at IBM and at the Technion got him accepted in 1996 to the prestigious master's and Ph.D. program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study applied mathematics under Professor Thomson Leighton.
Back to the U.S. and MIT
Danny shipped off to the U.S. and moved into family housing at MIT. He poured himself into his studies. It didn't take long for Leighton to realize Danny was special. He always wanted the hardest problems, ones that others couldn't solve. He became a top student among virtual geniuses.
In his first two years at MIT, Danny wrote several outstanding papers as well as a prize-winning master's thesis that became the basis of his company, Akamai.
Danny's life changed when Timothy Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, realized that congestion on the Internet was becoming an enormous problem. Berners-Lee issued a challenge to Leighton's research group: Invent a better way to deliver Internet content.
Danny's master's thesis solved the problem. An elegant set of algorithms would allow a Web site to distribute data and images from network servers, allowing pages to download faster than previously possible. Before, one server had to handle all the traffic.
To Danny it was just a problem that needed to be solved, rooted in theory. To Leighton, it was a breakthrough that would solve Internet bottlenecking.
Akamai: The beginning
Leighton decided to make Danny's theories a reality.
In 1998, the two established Akamai. Danny looked up the word clever in a Hawaiian dictionary, and Akamai was born. The new company entered a $50,000 MIT entrepreneur contest but came in second. The partners ended up scraping together enough money from relatives and venture capitalists to launch.
Danny got a $20,000 loan from an aunt in New York. Later she was given stock in return and reportedly cashed out for several million dollars.
In the early days of Akamai, Danny questioned every efficiency. After he was told it would take three months to install Akamai's first network, Danny himself installed 200 servers in 11 cities over Christmas vacation, Leighton told the Wall Street Journal.
Just two years earlier, Danny had been living in student housing with two young children on a graduate assistant's salary. He didn't own a credit card, Leighton recalled.
IPO Day
In October 1999, Akamai went public, rising 458 percent on its first day. By January the stock had doubled.
Danny's stake was $3.2 billion. He was 29.
All those around him had become millionaires, but it didn't matter to Danny. On IPO day, he broke up a party in the middle of the office and ordered everyone back to work. They still had to build a company.
Akamai's meteoric rise set the bar for Internet companies. It rode the Internet wave to its peak. Then it slid with the dot-com crash, falling from more than $300 a share to less than a dollar.
Danny sold about $50 million worth of stock. At the time of his death, his 7.3 million shares were worth about $26 million.
Friends said his lifestyle had changed little. He bought the house in Brookline and two motorcycles. He also decided to go back to school and complete his doctorate at MIT.
Danny was brilliant and devoted to his job when the company soared, and just as brilliant and devoted when it crashed. After coming up with the foundation of the company, Danny's role was to sell the idea to potential clients and to hire the best and brightest.
His financial backers and clients got more than just an evangelical salesman with Danny. He could talk both dollars and cents and network speak, unusual in the Internet world.
Todd Dagres, a partner in Battery Ventures, which backed Akamai, told Fortune magazine:
"He was the total package. It's rare to have that kind of technical genius and business acumen in one person."
Contacted this week, Dagres reiterated what he said shortly after Sept. 11, adding that his opinion of Danny has only strengthened.
Danny worked tirelessly.
He often said to his colleagues: "You're behind." It was his way of saying that the bar wasn't high enough, the standards not strict enough. He barked it at everyone, even his MIT professors, Akamai President Paul Sagan recalled in an interview with InfoWorld.
Akamai's true test came on Sept. 11, 2001.
Everyone there knew almost immediately that Danny had been on Flight 11.
His colleagues said it was tragic that Danny didn't see the culmination of his work. His vision helped the Internet get to a new level.
"(Sept. 11) was the most challenging day for our company," Leighton told the Boston Globe. "It was also the most successful day for our company."
Akamai's clients - CNN.com, Yahoo!, Nasdaq, Los Angeles Times - logged millions of hits, but users were not bogged down by slow pages or Internet traffic.
The company's competitors didn't have the same luck. Some of the sites that crashed that day are now Akamai's customers.
Behind it all was Danny's algorithm.
"The importance of Danny's vision became abundantly clear in the week of the terror attack. Virtually every major news Web site saw traffic increase 20 or even one-thousand-fold. They and many others relied on Akamai's network to meet audience demand," Sagan said in a tribute printed in Business 2.0.
"In that defining week, the Net took its rightful place alongside other media as a reliable source of news, critical emergency information and comfort, as people remained informed and stayed in contact with loved ones over e-mail and instant messaging. That's part of Danny's legacy."
Remembering Danny
According to Jewish law, families must mourn lost members for one year, and during this time Danny's family has not spoken publicly about him, other than to say that Danny's life was special: both the difficult times in Denver and his successes in the Israeli Army, university and business.
In honor of the Sept. 11 anniversary, Danny's Akamai colleagues will have informal remembrances, a company spokesman said.
Last September, Danny and other Akamai executives had established the Akamai Foundation to support math education in public schools.
A new foundation - the Daniel Lewin Scholarship Fund - was formed after his death. It provides scholarships to students pursuing careers in science.
More than 1,000 people showed up at a memorial service for Danny at MIT. MIT's Leighton tried to sum up Danny's life in his Business 2.0 tribute: "Changing the Internet by age 31 was just a taste of what he would have accomplished in a full lifetime."
Not a day goes by in which Marco Greenberg doesn't think about his friend, but he said Danny wouldn't have wanted him to dwell on Sept. 11.
"He'd look at the future with open eyes and fight this threat and win."
Gil Rudawsky is an assistant business editor. He can be reached at rudawskyg@rockymountainnews.com or (303)892-2562.
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Posts Tagged ‘Kate O’Flynn’
Mini-review and musings – A Taste of Honey – National Theatre
I was actually quite discouraged between the time I bought my tickets for A Taste of Honey at the National and the time I went to see it: the comments I saw on Twitter had been along the lines of “boring” and “stuck through the whole three hours but why.” But I’d made plans to go with a friend (who just wanted to see Lesley Sharp), so I felt stuck. How good could a play by a one-hit wonder be?
A few days after seeing it, I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed myself. It’s always easier to enjoy a show when your expectations are set low, but I had no problem making it through to the end: but I think this is a bit because of its relevance to me, and my cultural experience – but also, oddly, because of having just come from seeing Pests two nights before. How poor women interact with each other and live their lives was on my mind. So, instead of doing a review here, I’m going to talk rather more about why this play was interesting to me, and how it was similar (and different) to Pests.
The concept of a glamorous, poor, and self-centered mother is one that’s sadly familiar to me. Helen (Sharp) is a bit of an extreme, so gorgeous and well dressed she’s hard to believe; but a woman who puts making herself happy over looking after her children is not unfamiliar to me. Her daughter, Josephine (Kate O’Flynn), doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as a character; she’s just not really as rooted as you tend to be when money and looking after yourself are your top two musts in life. But, sadly, it was easy for me to accept that Helen would be pushing her young daughter out the door so that she could have better times with the men in her life; that’s just how things are for some people. And yet … I just didn’t feel sympathetic for Jo. She doesn’t treat the people in her life with affection – she doesn’t even seem to have feelings at all – and she whines constantly; she is grossly immature and so blocked into short-term thinking that you want to give her a slap.
But then … well, there were lines in the play I knew best from songs by the Smiths: “I dreamt about you last night/And I fell out of bed twice” (from “Reel Around the Fountain”) and “The dream is gone but the baby is real” (from “This night has opened my eyes”), and remembering those and the turbulent emotions of my teens, I was able to remember a lot of feelings Jo was probably having: experiencing (what you think is) love only through the hands of someone who wants to use you for sex; the horrible deadness caused by constantly having your dreams and aspirations shat on; realizing you’re really never going to get more than just the most damaging forms of happiness and going for it even though the consequences are likely to be a disaster for your life. Man, what a rollercoaster. I’m not sure why Morrisey picked on this play so strongly for influencing his own writing, but he and Sheelagh Delaney really captured that dead end miserabilism perfectly.
Side by side to this play about two women who sell each other out for sex (which I think is the “taste of honey”), I had a play about two sisters who actually do love each other to bits but who still utterly fail in the common sense department. Yes, I’m talking about Pink and Rolly, the two leavings at the bottoms of the garbage can of society who make up Pests. Pink is positively disgusting, crude, stupid, desperate to prove how much smarter she is than her little sister, and, as it turns out, nursing a deep and long held resentment against the things Rolly had as a child that she didn’t. Pink could easily be a modern Jo. But she looks out after her sister and genuinely cares for her; the ways she actively seeks to damage her sister’s life are, to her, only an attempt to not lose her. I couldn’t help but feel for Pink; she really does have nothing. The fact that she wants to make sure her sister has nothing, too, is awful; but Pink really seems to have convinced herself that she experiences happiness and there’s really nothing out there. And, even despite realizing the extent to which Pink has screwed her over, Rolly still loves and wants to look after her sister. It’s just heartbreaking. There’s no way you can’t see that these people have fallen even further down than the women of Taste of Honey: but it was Pests where I saw that real family love come out.
All in all, I think both of these shows were well worth my time; but I also recommend seeing them both together, and having a think about what it is that makes people tick. Kudos both to Delaney and Vivienne Franzman for making characters and situations that I could care about this much.
(This review is for a performance that took place on Monday, April 7, 2014. A Taste of Honey continues through May 11th and it really is a modern classic.)
Tags:A Taste of Honey, Kate O'Flynn, Lesley Sharp, Pests, shelagh delaney
Mini-review – Port – National Theater
I did not plan on going to see Port at the National Theater. The tag line, “two kids, largely abandoned and growing up in the deprived suburban shadows of Manchester,” made me think it was likely to be cutesy or preachy or maudlin and, even worse, feature child actors. However, when I got an invitation to go to press night for free, I’m afraid I wasn’t able to resist. Free theater! Starting at 7 PM! Hurray!
Unfortunately, I can’t say I enjoyed this play at all, though the impressions I got from the info on the National’s web site was pretty much entirely incorrect. I really thought it was going to be about an eleven and a six year old kid running wild, living under bridges and dumpster diving while they tried to keep together; instead, it was about some weird little kids growing up into profoundly fucked up adults in an environment where they could have learned some humanity at some point along the way but seemed to have nearly entirely failed. I’ve rarely seen a bleaker portrait of a sub-middle class existence; and although this would seem to be the same income level of the people that I grew up with in America (i.e. “trailer trash,” bottom of the barrel poor), for some reason either as life is lived in Stockport or as playwright Simon Stephens chose to portray his characters, I found myself utterly unsympathetic to these two near-animals. Kate O’Flynn was completely believable as Rachael Keats, but after watching her attack her grandmother in a nursing home garden I no longer was rooting for her (and had lost my taste for chocolate). There may have been a bigger political message that I, as a foreigner, was indifferent to: but as a play watcher, I got neither much of a plot nor really any other reason to be sitting in the dark while these horrors played out in front of me. I grew up in worse circumstances than this and not only clawed my way out, but kept my ties to my family and friends. These people, Rachael and her brother Billy (Mike Noble), I wanted nothing more than to get away from them and get out of the room and let them carry on with their misery far, far from me.
Was this play realistic? Probably. Was the acting good? Yes. Was it worth watching? I think not. As I dashed into the comfort of sleeting rain, I wondered why in the hell wasn’t The River done here and Port done at The Royal Court? Does the National just have really poor standards for script acceptance? Does the Royal Court have much better connections with people who know how to make good plays? The whole thing is a mystery to me, but there’s no doubt in my mine that Port was a waste of money and effort.
(This review is for opening night, which was Monday, January 29th, 2013. It continues through March 24th.)
Tags:Kate O'Flynn, lyttleton, Mike Noble, National Theater, National Theatre, Port, Simon Stephens, The Lyttelton Home of Bad Theater, Who fucking picks these shows anyway, Why the Lyttelton gives me PTSD
Mini-review – “One Day When We Were Young” and “Lungs” – Paines Plough Roundabout Season at Shoreditch Town Hall
It’s been almost a week and I’m feeling guilty about not getting up my review of this excellent set of shows currently taking place at Shoreditch Town Hall. There are actually three plays in the Paines Plough Roundabout Season – Nick Payne’s One Day When We Were Young, Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs and Penelope Skinner’s The Sound of Heavy Rain – and I’d bought tickets for all three (they play together on Saturdays and Sundays, and you get a £15 discount off of the series), but the night before I got an email saying that Rain had been cancelled because of a technical problem. Fortunately, this was the first show of the day (rather than the one in the middle), so what it wound up meaning was that I got to have a nice roast on a Sunday before heading over to Old Street – I was a bit irritated about not seeing all three but actually feeling a bit intimidated about being in the theater from 2 to 9PM (as opposed to my initial WAHOO response), so all things considered, I started the day feeling quite good – but must apologize for what I consider to be an incomplete review of the series as I have not been able to fit the show in.
What I did see was two two handers, both of which moved me quite a bit, and quite a bit more than what I was expecting. I came in expecting One Day When We Were Young to be the star in the crown, and it started off deliciously simply – two young lovers getting together for a fun night before the man headed off to war (the Asian theater for World War II), with lots of flirting and fun and positively the most sexual scene I’ve ever seen on a theater – I’m sure the actors both had their underpants on but it was rather a LOT like watching a live sex show and if you were planning on taking a member of the family I would NOT advise it. Otherwise: actually really hot, and with the two virgins trying to talk through just how what they were trying to do was supposed to work, just incredibly charming, a scene that really built a connection and affection to the characters, and something I have never seen handled on the stage before. It was really well done and will NOT be seeing the local high school auditorium any time soon.
As it turns out, this was one scene of three, and I don’t want to ruin any more surprises, but all scenes feature the characters aging and having to deal with each other as their lives and expectations change. At the very end, the woman said something to the man that about broke me … that she needed him for emotional support because there was nobody left. Imagine being eighty years old, with children, and yet having nobody to turn to for support in a crisis. I may have felt put off by the stiffness of the second act, but I felt a universal human quality to the last. It put me in a melancholy state of mind as I headed out the door, clutching the button I’d been given to indicate my random seat allocation. Thank goodness Ian and Paul were there, or I might have gotten into quite a mope. Instead, we went to the pub around the corner, got some pizza and beers and had us a good old visit. Ah, yes.
Ninety minutes later and we went back, changing to some front row seats in the wooden arena (borrowed, I was pretty sure, from <I>Cock</I>, but with an extra row on top – there is NO room for anything underneath your legs so take advantage of the free, serviced cloakroom). We managed to get in shortly before Sir Ian arrived with companion – sadly he would not sit next to us (“I’m not allowed to sit in the first row”) and wound up somewhere near the top. We, however, had a great view of the next play (including being close enough to see Kate O’Flynn squeeze real tears from her eyes – impressive!), which was an intense, ninety minute nearly breathless dialogue between a couple.
Now, I am going to take umbrage at the sad justice done this show by its National Theatre copy, which would have, frankly, in its banality, kept me from seeing the show if I’d bother reading about it beforehand. Instead, read what I have to say.
Lungs is a show about how couples fail to communicate with each other despite being so close you’d think they tie each other’s shoelaces. The two characters could be described as “quirky” if you want to use lazy shorthand but would be better described as “realistic,” “flawed,” and “like a few people I went to school with and no longer invite over for dinner because one half of the couple is so self-righteous I can’t stand her and the guy defeats his own intelligence with his utter lack of backbone.” Despite the fact that, as a couple, they made me want to shout, “NO FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T HAVE A BABY!”, the reality of their relationship was undeniable and became slowly, tricklingly, heartbreaking. Bad things happened, she broke, they failed to cope, and two people who clearly loved each other the way that trees love the sun crumbled into dust like a mummy’s hand. And then I actually felt bad for them, and what a pathetic situation they were in, and how heartbreakingly real it all was.
And then I realized I’d stopped feeling like I was in a play, watching actors mouth words written on a piece of paper. I cared, even though the people were irritating, even though there were some weird things going on (like the way they’d shift scenes by hours or months by just saying, “Hi, how have you been?” as if they’d ever actually stopped talking for a breath). Duncan Macmillan had taken me somewhere.
And at the end, it seemed, the world blew out of the auditorium, the light from the stage expanding out the cupola above me, all of the little sadnesses and disappointments that make up our tiny lives becoming universal, utterly transcending the theater in which we sat on a rainy Sunday night in October in a run down corner of an often unfriendly town. And I walked out into the night and thought about my own sadnesses, and fiddled with my little yellow button.
And it was good.
(This review is for a performance that took place on Sunday, October 7th, 2012. The Paines Plough Roundabout Season continues through October 27th, and you’d be a fool to miss it.)
Tags:Duncan Macmillan, Kate O'Flynn, lungs, Nick Payne, One Day When We Were Young, Paines Plough Roundabout Season, Shoreditch Town Hall
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Visa Showcases the Future of Money at New York Event
Payment Leader Unveils Applications for Android Powered Mobile Handsets, Readies First U.S. Trial of Mobile Money Transfer
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 25, 2008--Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) today hosted an innovation briefing in New York, during which the company showcased advances in electronic payments that are creating a future of "better money" that is more convenient, more reliable and more secure than cash or checks.
The payments industry leader was joined by a number of prominent innovators including Google, Intel, Nokia and Singapore Post Ltd., who are each expanding the benefits of electronic financial services to consumers in new and emerging marketplaces.
The Visa-powered innovations discussed and demonstrated at the briefing recognize several overall trends in the payments industry, including the convergence of electronic payments and mobile phones; the expansion of electronic payments into new acceptance locations including transit and vending machines; and the importance of extending electronic payments to the millions of "unbanked" and "underbanked" consumers around the world.
"For decades Visa has been changing the way people think about and use money with great success, but there is still tremendous opportunity to extend the benefits of electronic payments to consumers and business around the world," said Bill Sheedy, President, North America, Visa Inc. and host of the briefing. "Capturing that opportunity requires innovative products and ideas that deliver measureable benefits to meet the needs of consumers, merchants and financial institutions. Along with our partners, that's what Visa has shown today, and continues to develop every day."
The event was highlighted by four major announcements of innovative advances in electronic payments and services:
Visa Applications for Android: Visa announced it is developing a suite of mobile applications for the Android(TM) platform, which will be available for download on Android-powered handsets and initially available to Chase Visa cardholders. The services will allow Visa cardholders to receive notifications to their mobile devices about transaction activity on their accounts; obtain offers from a wide array of merchants; and use the built-in location-based technology developed by Google to quickly map nearby merchants where they can redeem Visa offers and locate ATMs that accept Visa. In addition, Visa is also developing a payment application that will enable consumers with Visa accounts to make mobile payments in retail locations nationwide, or while on the go, over wireless networks.
Visa - Nokia Collaborating on Next Generation Handset: Visa and Nokia (NYSE:NOK), the world's largest mobile handset manufacturer, announced plans today to deliver Visa payment and related services for Nokia's next generation Near-Field Communications (NFC) handsets beginning with the 6212 Classic, which is expected to be available in October 2009. The Visa applications will first be made available for trial use by interested financial institutions. Trials will allow consumers with the 6212 and a relationship with a participating Visa issuing bank to use their handsets for a variety of payment and related services, including remote payments, money transfer, and alerts and notifications.
Launch of U.S. Mobile Money Transfer Pilot: Visa and U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) today announced the launch of a mobile money transfer pilot program to allow participating Visa cardholders to use their mobile phones and PDAs to securely send funds directly to another Visa cardholder. The first phase of the program, which is expected to launch by the end of this year, will enable domestic money transfers within the U.S. and will involve key Visa issuers, led by U.S. Bank and as many as 6,000 Visa account holders.
Expansion of Visa's Prepaid Services: Visa also announced the expansion of Visa ReadyLink, its prepaid reload service, to enable the reload of eligible Visa prepaid products at ATMs across the U.S. Visa ReadyLink gives consumers a secure and convenient way to purchase and add funds to Visa reloadable prepaid cards, a significant advantage to financially "underserved" consumers - those without a traditional banking relationship or access to a payment card. Visa estimates there are more than 80 million financially underserved consumers in the U.S.
Visa also reported that it has completed stress-testing and optimization of VisaNet, its proprietary, centralized processing system, to ensure adequate capacity for the upcoming holiday shopping season. VisaNet stands ready to process 11,000 transaction messages per second, a rate 45 percent above the 7,387 transaction messages per second sustained during Visa's peak processing hour last year on December 22.
In addition, Visa is preparing for its second annual fall upgrade to its processing systems, a massive undertaking that involves the modification of nearly 5 million lines of code that effect 50,000 systems changes in multiple Visa data centers around the globe.
Visa and its partners displayed a number of payment innovations that are creating the future of money. Demonstrations included a variety of transactions using Visa payWave, Visa's next generation contactless chip technology: paying a fare at a transit turnstile, buying products in vending machines, and completing a purchase quickly at point-of-sale terminals. Using the new Nokia 6212 NFC-enabled handset, Visa demonstrated mobile payment services such as mobile offers, alerts and money transfer.
"Because thousands of financial institutions, millions of merchants and hundreds of millions of cardholders in 170 countries rely on Visa every day for secure, reliable and convenient payments, we simply can not afford complacency. We must continually drive ourselves to remain one step ahead of changing and increasing customer demands - that's our innovation imperative," Sheedy said.
Visa Inc. operates the world's largest retail electronic payments network providing processing services and payment product platforms. This includes consumer credit, debit, prepaid and commercial payments, which are offered under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink and PLUS brands. Visa enjoys unsurpassed acceptance around the world, and Visa/PLUS is one of the world's largest global ATM networks, offering cash access in local currency in more than 170 countries. For more information, visit www.corporate.visa.com
Elvira Swanson, 415-932-2564
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How Mamelodi Sundowns became Africa's trickiest customer
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How Mamelodi Sundowns became the CAF Champions League's trickiest customer
Sundowns beat Egyptian giants Zamalek in 2016 to win their only CAF Champions League title to date. Ibrahim Ramadan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Leonard Solms
Despite a mixed start to the 2019-20 domestic season, Tshwane giants Mamelodi Sundowns remain one of the teams to beat in the CAF Champions League, especially for unlikely rivals Wydad Casablanca.
Since becoming the second South African team to lift the title in 2016, the Brazilians have remained a thorn in the side of Africa's established giants, one of the few sides south of the Sahara to do regular damage to the northern teams.
Morocco's Wydad, who beat Sundowns in last season's semi-finals, were drawn alongside Pitso Mosimane's men in Group C this season. After hosting Petro de Luanda on 30 November, Masandawana are scheduled to visit Wydad at Stade Mohamed V on 7 December. It will be a ninth Champions League meeting between the sides since 2017.
When Sundowns visited Wydad in last season's group stage, they faced a hostile reception. "Pitso Mosimane: Great Country when teaching you, becoming corrupt when beating you" read a banner held aloft by the home supporters.
Mosimane, who attended a CAF Pro License course in Morocco in 2018, claimed last season that Wydad were "bullies" who could not handle defeat. His scathing words had upped the ante by a notch.
For Sundowns captain Hlompho Kekana, Wydad are on par with local giants Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates and SuperSport United as rivals. Nevertheless, his respect for the Moroccan mega-club is evident.
"Wydad has always been a stumbling block every time we've played in the Champions League," Kekana tells ESPN.
"We always wanted to beat Wydad and they always wanted to beat Sundowns.
"The rivalry shows when these two teams play. There is pride within these players and teams. It gives football lovers really exciting moments. We just want to make sure we win against them.
"We want to make sure we win home and away this time. We have never won that side. It will be nice if we win at Wydad this time around."
Sundowns and Wydad have always contested physical battles, but off the pitch the players have a good rapport. FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images
There is no love lost on the field when Wydad and Sundowns do battle, but off the pitch a competitive camaraderie between the two teams appears to be developing.
"At the end of the match, it comes back to humanity and trying to understand that it was just a part of the game that we just really needed to win," says Kekana.
"We've competed more than enough to understand each other. We talk after the match. It helps us understand how they manage their pressure and we tell them how we do things in South Africa.
"We are getting experience in that space. I use this Champions League not only to learn about football, but to learn about different cultures, different things in life."
In the eyes of former Sundowns goalkeeper Calvin Marlin, who left the club in 2013 -- months after Mosimane took over as coach -- 'Jingles' was the main instigator of Sundowns' African vision.
"We did have a couple of foreign coaches that came in and I think a lot of them battled with the whole South African setup and African way of doing things. It's not the same as Europe," Marlin says.
"Pitso made it a point that this [the CAF Champions League] is where we're going to be. He took them into Africa for pre-season. He already showed the players that this is their goal, this is what you want to achieve. Before, there was none of that.
"He came in with a mindset, and [Sundowns' president] Patrice [Motsepe] as well; I think gave him the opportunity and the time to do that. I think, at one stage, the fans wanted to get rid of him [Mosimane]. Patrice held fast."
Even if Mosimane was the modern mastermind of Mamelodi Sundowns' Champions League success, the class of 2001, who lost the final to record eight-time winners Al Ahly, cannot be ignored.
Pitso Mosimane has managed Sundowns since 2012, and is considered the architect of their continental success. PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images
Sundowns lifted three consecutive Premiership titles in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Glory in Africa, however, remained elusive.
Former Sundowns centre-back Matthew Booth was a member of the 2001 squad which fell at the final hurdle. He recalls the club placing significant emphasis on their Champions League campaign once they realised they had a shot at emulating Orlando Pirates' 1995 lone triumph.
"I don't remember any of our club owners or the coach saying to us in particular that the club wants to prioritise one or the other. I think that would be a very dangerous thing to do," Booth tells ESPN.
"But I think the players, as the season progressed, kind of sussed things out with regards to team selection -- which games were prioritised over the others.
"It was definitely a case of trying to rotate and starting to save your stronger team for the CAF Champions League the more we progressed in the competition.
"I think what sparked the hunger among the top teams was Orlando Pirates' win in 1995. I think the competition between the top club owners became quite fierce. They also wanted to have that star above their badge."
Even though Sundowns initially fell short of emulating the Buccaneers, their run to the 2001 final became part of their history.
The Brazilians fell on tough times after winning the 2006-07 Premier Division title, failing to lift it again until 2013-14. According to Kekana, Sundowns turned their fortunes around specifically because they became aware of what it meant to represent a club with such a successful past.
"When I joined [in 2011], we had so many good players, but we weren't a team that could compete. You know, you have to find a formula -- a team that can be together and fight together," Kekana admits.
"We were lots of individuals that were trying to play for the team, but we didn't find the thing that we had to fight for, to play for. We didn't find something that would drive us until we started realising the importance of playing for the badge.
"I think the turning point was [learning] that our time at Mamelodi Sundowns was very short and limited. So many players came and went and didn't win anything with the team. When we looked at the history of the team, they always competed to win trophies.
"At that time, when we started, we didn't really know much about the importance of competing with the team."
Sundowns captain Hlompho Kenana says even the players were surprised to reach the CAF Champions League final, let alone win it. Ihsaan Haffejee/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The 2013-14 league title was a turning point for Sundowns, according to Kekana. They have been South Africa's dominant force since, adding three more Absa Premiership trophies to their cabinet.
Even so, Kekana says that they did not expect to be crowned champions of Africa in 2016: "I'd lie if I said we really saw that one coming.
"To be honest, I think the turning point was when we went to [the Democratic Republic of] Congo for the first time when we participated in the Champions League," he said, referring to their 2015 3-2 aggregate first round defeat to TP Mazembe.
"We had just won the match at home here 1-0 and we went to DRC with the edge. I think the turning point was that match when we had to really see those guys. TP Mazembe had been in that space for so many years, so they were experienced. They bullied us.
"When we analysed and we saw how they did their pressing from the top, it was unbelievable and we really wanted to copy that and try again in the next Champions League, which turned out so well."
Sundowns have not looked back since. Having beaten Egyptian giants Zamalek in the 2016 final, they claimed revenge on Al Ahly in last season's quarter-finals with an astonishing 5-0 drubbing at the Lucas Moripe Stadium.
Egypt and Ahly goalkeeper Mohamed El-Shenawy has been quoted by KickOff as claiming that Ahly want another meeting with the Tshwane side -- a sure sign that Sundowns have rattled even Africa's most successful club.
Sundowns' Gastón Sirino told the same publication that winning the CAF Champions League is the team's priority this season. His skipper does not disagree.
"We have been knocked out in the semi-final [last season] even, and when we look at the teams that went to the final, I think we stand a chance of competing with them," Kekana says.
"Unfortunately, we couldn't win it, but we can try again this season. It's doable; we have done it before. I think we just have to try and put the whole focus on it and try to win it again."
Mosimane claimed earlier this year that Sundowns are "small boys" compared to Al Ahly, referencing the Egyptian giants' power in the transfer market.
Wise as it may be to avoid getting carried away, he and his players will know that with experience and enthusiasm in their ranks, the Mamelodi Sundowns mantra; "the sky is the limit," rings as true as ever.
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Laurie Dann – She should have been institutionalized years before
Laurie Dann
On May 20th, 1988, Laurie Dann, 30, went on a rampage that ended with two dead, a little boy, Nicholas Corwin, just 8 years old and herself by suicide. The rampage happened in Winnetka, an affluent suburb of Chicago, resulting in an uproar over gun control and higher security in schools.
Laurie Wasserman, born in the late fifties to Norman and Edith Wasserman seemed to have an unremarkable childhood. She was an awkward teenager until her parents helped transform her with plastic surgery. She emerged beautiful and brought attention from many suitors.
After graduating from New Trier East High School, she attended the University of Arizona for four years but never graduated. Not really after an education, but instead looking for a wealthy man to marry, Laurie thought she had found one in a premed student. Letting her schoolwork slide, figuring she would be married to a doctor, she was devastated when her “fiance” ended the relationship. Sadly, her obsession for this man would go on for several years. With very little interest in continuing her education there, she would return home to the Chicago area in 1980.
After returning home, she would occasionally attend adult education classes, never to finish. One fateful day, while working a summer job as a cocktail waitress at Green Acres Country Club in Northbrook, she met Russell Dann, a son of a wealthy Highland Park family. He was soon smitten by the beautiful, dark haired woman. She seemed a little shy but signs of her deteriorating mental state didn’t start coming out until after their September of 1982 wedding.
Starting a new life in a beautiful $230,000 Highland Park home, wedded bliss wasn’t to last. Russell started to notice little quirks about his new bride. She had no interest in decorating her new home or even cleaning it. When she did try to help by doing the laundry, she would fold it up sopping wet and put away in drawers, leaving them to mold. Makeup was kept in the microwave and cash was thrown in the back seat of her car like trash. Russell would come home after work to find the house a mess and dinner never waiting, while his wife spent her days watching television.
While the marriage would last several years, her husband would begin to notice her “quirks” worsening. She started doing little rituals such as tapping her foot on the ground at every stoplight and compulsive hand washing. She soon became a recluse not even liking to leave for her husband’s social engagements. As much as Russell loved his wife, she needed more help than he was able to give.
By May 1987, they were divorced following a separation, leaving Laurie with an $125,000 cash settlement.
Following the divorce, she moved back in with her parents in Glencoe. Her behavior grew increasingly erratic, obsessed with personal hygiene, compulsive hand washing and an aversion to being touched.
Laurie first came to the attention of the police in 1985 marital disputes.
In 1986, someone stabbed Russell Dann while sleeping, missing his heart by an inch. Although a store clerk identified Laurie Dann as buying an ice pick a few days before the stabbing, she was not seen entering or leaving the apartment of her husband. With nothing but circumstantial evidence, it came down to his word against hers. He failed a polygraph and she was well versed in playing the victim. Charges were dropped much to her husband’s chagrin.
About the same time as this incident, a Tucson physician (her ex college boyfriend) started receiving harassing phone calls and letters. The phone calls included death threats to the now married doctor and his family. She also claimed to be pregnant with his child even though she hadn’t see in him in five years. The harassment wouldn’t end until his lawyer sent a letter to Laurie’s parents asking that they control their daughter.
In January 1987, Laurie decided to try something new, babysitting. She posted flyers at a local grocery store and the Glencoe Library. Seemingly nice and a little shy, one mother didn’t hesitate to hire Laurie Dann. She also recommended her to friends.
The trusting parents began to notice things wrong after she would leave from a babysitting job. Leather sofas were slashed, rugs cut up, 2 electric garage door openers went missing. Laurie Dann of course, denied everything. After one couple reported it to the police, they were told of other reports. But with only circumstantial evidence, no charges were filed.
In the summer of 1987, Laurie Dann decided to have yet another new start. Her father sublet a dorm room on the northwestern campus. After complaints of leaving raw meat in sofa cushions to rot and stuffing students boxes with garbage, the university reached her father. He persuaded her to return home.
Returning to babysitting, she continued to hack up furniture and stole hundreds of dollars worth of food. Her father covering for her as he had been for years, would pay restitution for damages.
The final unraveling of her sanity would begin in January of 1988. She moved to Madison, Wisconsin to live near the campus of the University of Wisconsin. She was enrolled as a guest student and was welcome to monitor classes. She rarely left the dorm and became known as the elevator lady. She would ride up and down the elevator for all hours of the night, randomly pressing buttons.
She began to leave raw meat in the cushions of the tv room. She was regarded strangely by her peers for wearing gloves constantly and never touching metal. She would appear naked in the hallways and turned her dorm room into a public health hazard. Garbage and rotting food were strewed everywhere.
In March, she would be arrested for shoplifting. Released on a $200 bond, she was accepted into a first offenders program to avoid jail time. Later that month, one of the dorm rooms in her building was set ablaze. She was suspected but there was no proof.
In April, she began making more death threats to Tucson. Arizona officials contacted the FBI. The FBI then contacted Illinois authorities.On May 13th, the FBI notified Madison police, that she might own a gun. She did. In actuality, she owned three guns. Pistols that she obtained legally. Police tried to confiscate the weapons but her father refused to hand them over, claiming his daughter needed them for protection from her ex-husband.
May 14th, which marked the end of the semester, a fellow student found his clothes slashed and books destroyed. Laurie Dann was implicated. Later that night, she was found by a resident adviser in the garbage room, asleep in a garbage pile, naked in the fetal position. She was sweating profusely and covered with a garbage bag. The following day, when FBI came to question her about the death threats, she was gone.
Four days later, she appeared at the home of one of her babysitting clients in Glencoe. She was told she wouldn’t be needed as a babysitter because the family was moving to New York.
Apparently this family wasn’t aware of her instability because when she asked if she could take their sons to a fair the next morning, they agreed. She stayed up late that last night preparing for her big day. She made rice crispy snacks and prepared packaged juice drinks, apparently injecting them with arsenic, a syringe was later found in her room with traces of the poison.
She awoke early on May 20th, delivering her venomous treats to a couple of frat houses and six homes in Glencoe, Highland Park, and Winnetka. Arriving at her employers house to pick up the boys, she gave them tainted milk. The boys thought it tasted funny and threw it out while Laurie Dann wasn’t looking. After picking up the boys, Dann went on to a school and daycare center where her ex-sister-in-law had children enrolled. Setting a fire at Ravinia School with gas in a plastic bag, then to the daycare center with a can of gasoline where she was chased off by a daycare worker.
Returning the children to their home, she brought them down to the basement, where their mother was doing laundry. Laurie Dann mumbled something about having to leave and within secs of her departure, the basement stairs were aflame. The family managed to escape by breaking a small window and crawling through to safety.
By the time, the basement fire was started, Laurie Dann was well on her way to Hubbard Woods Elementary School, armed with two handguns.
Laurie Dann first shot a little boy in the stomach, in a school washroom. Next she headed to a second grade classroom where she began shooting wildly through the classroom. Nicholas Corwin, age 8, was killed instantly. She critically wounded five others.
Fleeing the school, she crashed her car into a tree on a one way street. Stripping her blood soaked shorts, she proceeded to run away wearing only a plastic bag tied around her waist.
She reloaded her .32 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver and crossed a back yard to enter the unlocked door of Ruth Andrews and her family. She told them that she had just been raped and shot her attacker.
Phillip Andrews
She claimed the police were after her for shooting the rapist and it was a misunderstanding. She held the family at bay for over six hours. Using their phone to call her mother, who tried to tell her to turn herself in, that everything would be okay.
After speaking with her, Phillip Andrews, 20, motioned to his family to leave, which Laurie allowed. The brave young man tried to wrestle the gun away from her only to be shot in the chest. He staggered out of the house and collapsed on the lawn. Laurie Dann fled to an upstairs bedroom and put the .32 into her mouth, killing herself instantly.
The aftermath of her rampage left seven people shot, one small boy dead and several non fatal poisonings. With no suicide note, it’s hard to say what finally caused her final snap. She had been seeing psychiatrists for many years and was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and thought to have “erotomania”, a disorder that is a pathological attachment to men she wrongly believed were in love with her.
Autopsy result revealed lithium (manic depressant) and Anafranil (anti depressant). Both drugs are sometimes believed to cause violence in patients. The truth is, her parents should have her institutionalized years before.
Mary Syeboldt – She Sent All Of Her Children To Heaven Via Strychnine
She killed her little girl and left her in a freezer… for a year.
Christine Malevre – Mercy Murders from the Madonna of Euthanasia
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New dealership driven by community
Posted: April 11, 2016, 1:04 p.m.
BY NATALIE WINTERS
Although Turlock's Ford dealership officially changed owners in June 2015, Price Ford officially celebrated its Grand Opening on Jan. 22 with members of the Turlock Chamber of Commerce, key executives from Ford Motor Company’s San Francisco Region, as well as other distinguished business leaders from the Turlock, Modesto and Stanislaus County area.
Owners James Figurell and David Price said they are proud to have become a part of the fabric of the local community in California’s Central Valley.
“My partner and I have known each other for years and we bought the store because of the community,” said owner James Figurell.
Formerly known as Patchett’s Ford, Figurell and Price took over June 2, 2015, following the retirement of Brian Garcia. Price Ford has made some big changes to the dealership, including tripling their inventory.
The ownership, management and staff anticipate a very bright future ahead as they continue to immerse themselves in the Turlock and neighboring communities with events such as the Drive One for Your School, a fundraising effort on behalf of Turlock High School on April 9 at the Stanislaus State campus.
“We’re pretty excited about getting involved in the community,” said Figurell. “The Drive One for Your School event is anticipated to raise about $6,000 for the Turlock High Bulldogs Aquatic Boosters toward an awning over their pool bleachers.”
Price Ford looks forward to continuing its primary mission of doing good business, as well as executing on its promise of contributing to worthwhile community projects. As a family-owned operation, the Price Ford team is committed to genuine customer satisfaction by providing premium service for their customers.
“We intend on trying to make the purchase experience clear cut and as transparent as possible,” said Figurell. “It’s our goal to be the premier dealership in the Central Valley.”
Price Ford is located at 5200 N. Golden State Blvd., in Turlock. It is open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week. For more information, call 669-5200.
The bright cider life
House of Random
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Veteran Speakers
Every year, thousands of people choose to serve the military. They make personal sacrifices to defend their nation, save lives and accomplish missions. Veterans are scarred for life.
Our military veteran speakers share their personal stories of serving the military and sacrificing their personal safety for their country. They are inspiring leaders, authors, experts and officers willing to share their incredible and arduous experiences from their time serving in the military.
See below for our inspirational veteran speakers
Book the perfect veteran speaker
Fill out the form and we will match your organization with the best veteran speaker. We will contact you shortly.
Edward Denmark
Keynote speaker Edward Denmark is the author of two bestselling books: one on his experiences in the British military, and...
Simon Weston CBE
In 1982 the Sir Galahad was destroyed in Bluff Cove on the Falkland Islands. Keynote speaker Simon Weston was on board...
Mike Abrashoff
Keynote speaker Mike Abrashoff took command of the worst-performing Navy ship in the Pacific Fleet and made it #1 in twelve...
Michael Schindler
Keynote speaker Michael Schindler is one of the nation’s leading experts on leadership development, team dynamics,...
Speakers about veteran speakers (11)
Paul de Gelder
Navy diver, shark attack survivor, author and motivational speaker touring the world sharing his fascinating story
A true adventurer, speaker Paul de Gelder has always enjoyed the thrill of a new challenge. However, his life was changed forever when he lost two limbs in a brutal shark attack in 2009. It was up to him to fight or...
Brent Gleeson
Recognized entrepreneur and best-selling author with a unique way of looking at business and corporate culture
Navy SEAL combat veteran and speaker Brent Gleeson is a truly inspirational individual. Brent is an accomplished entrepreneur and best-selling author who applies his learnings from the Navy to the business world in a motivating and entertaining...
Colin MacLachlan
Former SAS soldier Colin MacLachlan now working in the entertainment industry using his own story to inspire and motivate
Former SAS man turned author and keynote speaker Colin Maclachlan endured some of the most daring operations to date. He now works in the entertainment industry and speaks on motivation, risk, resilience, planning and determination, drawing on his...
U.S. Navy veteran and founder of Operation Military Family Cares specializing in leadership development
Keynote speaker Michael Schindler is one of the nation’s leading experts on leadership development, team dynamics, government relations, and veteran transition issues. A U.S. Navy veteran himself, Michael is passionate about enriching the lives of...
Nicole Malachowski
A 21-year veteran combat pilot of the U.S. Air Force, former advisor for the First Lady and security provider
USAF veteran and speaker Nicole Malachowski defies stereotypes. She is much more than a former jet fighter pilot: Nicole is a leader, the first woman pilot on the Thunderbirds and a White House Fellow. After a devastating illness leaving her unable...
British veteran and best-selling author inspiring his audience to tackle their challanges by sharing his personal story
Keynote speaker Edward Denmark is the author of two bestselling books: one on his experiences in the British military, and the other on his experiences growing up in poverty. He has spoken on national television a number of times and is frequently...
Leadership expert, decision-making master and bestselling author with captivating and engaging keynotes
Keynote speaker Michael Veltri is a battle-hardened entrepreneur, bestselling author, and business transformation speaker on a mission to teach successful professionals better decision-making skills to achieve peak performance with balance — not...
Falklands war veteran, author and motivational speaker speaks about overcoming adversity and positive mental attitude
In 1982 the Sir Galahad was destroyed in Bluff Cove on the Falkland Islands. Keynote speaker Simon Weston was on board fulfilling the Welsh Guardsman role, a name and face that was going to become well-known for his struggle to overcome his injuries...
The former Navy Commander and author tells his story about organizational transformation and innovative leadership
Keynote speaker Mike Abrashoff took command of the worst-performing Navy ship in the Pacific Fleet and made it #1 in twelve months – using the very same crew. This ship was actually, in many ways, an extreme example of some of the same problems...
Neil Laughton
Successful entrepreneur, climber and adventurer who is a former Captain and Troop Commander in the SAS
Speaker Neil Laughton is a former Royal Marine and SAS officer turned business entrepreneur. As an established speaker, Neil entertains and inspires audiences all over the world to think big, feel confident and act like champions. He often works...
Rob ‘Waldo’ Waldman
Leadership expert, Hall of Fame speaker and combat veteran sharing both military and corporate experience
Known as “The Wingman,” Lt Col (ret) and keynote speaker Rob 'Waldo' Waldman is a combat decorated fighter pilot, executive coach, and the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestseller Never Fly Solo. He helps organizations...
A Speakers made everything as easy as it could be to arrange a talk internally to our business. We thank them for their support.
IBM iX
No two stories are the same.
Millions of people have served the military sacrificing everything for our freedom. According to data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, there were around 20.4 million U.S. veterans in 2016.
Our military veterans share their thought-provoking stories of serving their country while sacrificing their personal safety. The veteran keynote speakers are comprised of inspirational personalities, including officers, experts, leaders and authors. Listen to personal stories about the ups and downs military people are facing when sacrificing their own lives to save others.
Being in war, away from family and friends, is not easy. Our incredible veteran speakers will share with your audience their unique, personal story of their time away to fight for their nation. No two stories are the same. Your audience will gain unique insight into the life of a veteran before, during and after war in thought-provoking keynotes. In addition, the female and male veterans share their valuable knowledge and insight on topics such as teamwork, resilience, leadership and military.
Military veterans are scarred for life, and some veterans are left with lasting psychological scars. Sadly, many veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Book an inspirational keynote and learn more about the impact of war. Honoring the veterans and the sacrifices they have made, they are given the opportunity to tell their story.
Contact A-Speakers today. Our professional consultants are ready to help you find the perfect veteran speaker for your next event.
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AICPA Advocacy
The CPA Advocate - Archived Articles 2018
Former AICPA Tax Executive Committee Chair Named to IRS Advisory Council
Patricia A. Thompson, CPA, PFS, MST
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced the appointment of former AICPA Tax Executive Committee Chair Patricia A. Thompson, CPA, PFS, MST to its Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council (IRSAC). She will serve a three-year term.
The IRSAC, established in 1953, is an organized public forum for IRS officials and representatives of the public to discuss various issues in tax administration. The council provides the IRS Commissioner with relevant feedback, observations and recommendations.
Thompson is a tax partner with Piccerelli, Gilstein & Company, LLP in Providence, R.I. She has extensive experience in complex tax transactions, including multi-state tax returns, real estate transactions and like-kind exchanges.
She has testified on numerous occasions before the United States Congress, the IRS and the IRS Oversight Board during her more than 20 years as a dedicated AICPA volunteer. She is currently the chair of the Relations with the Bar Committee and also chaired the AICPA Tax Executive Committee from 2011-2012. Thompson has served as a member of the AICPA’s Governing Council, the IRS Advocacy and Relations Committee, the Tax Legislation and Policy Committee, the Tax Reform Task Force, the Individual and Self-Employed Tax Technical Resource Panel and on a number of other tax committees and task forces.
In 2014, Thompson received the AICPA’s Arthur J. Dixon Memorial Award, the profession’s highest honor bestowed by the accounting profession in the area of taxation.
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When it comes to calculating a personal injury claim, our experience pays.
Calculating A Personal Injury Claim
When you file a personal injury claim, one of the most important things you would want to know is how much compensation can I claim and to get a good idea it helps to know how the compensation is calculated. This is not always straightforward or simple, especially if you’re suffering with an injury.
We’ve provided various examples below of what some claims may be worth, but as amounts can vary due to individual circumstances we suggest contacting us to discuss your injury in confidence with one of our solicitors or expert advisors who’ll be able to provide a more accurate assessment.
There are various different forms of personal injury actions that range from Road Traffic accidents to Medical Negligence. The general rule is that all of these forms of action pursue the same approach.
There are a few different factors that have to be considered when making a compensation calculation, which make it quite complicated. Making it even more difficult is the fact that all personal injury claims do not fall under a single branch of litigation. However, no matter how trying you find it, it is important to try and determine at least a “ballpark figure” as this could have a bearing on the outcome of your case.
How A Personal Injury Claim Is Calculated
The amount of compensation is usually directly proportional to the extent of injury that the pursuer has suffered. This generally means, the more severe your injury, the higher the amount of compensation you would expect to receive. For example, soft tissue damage would not receive the same level of compensation for severe brain damage.
Your personal injury solicitor will calculate an approximate figure based on two factors – the severity of your injury and any mental and emotional repurcussions of the injury. If you haven’t already found a solicitor then please contact us to speak with one of ours. An initial consultation is free and there’s no obligation to use our legal firm following the consultation.
The following kinds of personal injury compensation will allow you to get a basic understanding on how this is done so that you can calculate a rough estimate of your personal injury claim.
Different Kinds Of Personal Injury Compensation
Solatium/General Damages
General Damages are the damages that relate to the pain and suffering of an individual. In Scotland, general damages are referred to as ‘Solatium’. Strange though it may sound, there is actually a kind of ‘price list’ that has been created by our legal system. They use this price list as a kind of reference when calculating compensation for different kinds of injuries and diseases.
Although the figures mentioned are not the exact amount, there is a usual trend of asking for compensation within a certain band. The following are examples of the average amounts usually asked for while calculating different kinds of personal injury claims. For expert advice on what the true value of your claim could be worth you should contact a personal injury solicitor.
Compensation Amounts for Head Injuries
Any injury to the head is a major concern, especially as it also puts the brain at high risk of injury. A person suffering from minor head injury and no injury to the brain, may be entitled to claim compensation in the region of about £3,000 to £6,000. However, major damage to the head and brain can result in compensation that is upwards of £20,000.
There is no upper limit to compensation for brain damage. It usually depends on the extent of the damage.
Compensation Amounts for Mental or Psychological Injury
The amount of compensation that can be claimed for a mental injury will depend on the degree of “harm”. If the psychological harm is deemed to be temporary and the prognosis is that everything will return to normal soon, a typical claim of an amount between £4,000 and £10,000 isn’t unusal.
For mental and psychological injuries that are more severe or permanent, the compensation can approach up to £50,000.
Compensation Amounts for Injury to the Upper Body
Minor wounds to the upper body area (which includes the neck and the shoulders) can warrant compensation in the region of £4,000 to £6,000. More serious injuries may result in successful claims for above £10,000.
Compensation Amounts for Back Injury
Back injuries can be extremely painful and debilitating. Moreover, there is a high risk of spine damage when the back is injured. This could result in severe mobility restrictions or in extreme circumstances, paralysis. Compensation for back injuries could range from £6,000 to £20,000.
Compensation Amounts for Injuries to the Arms, Hands or Wrists
The tricky part with injuries to the arms, hands or wrists is that it can be difficult to calculate the potential loss that can be suffered by the person after getting injured in these areas. It is not uncommon for less severe injuries to fetch in the region of £3,000 – £5,000, meanwhile an injury that leads to a permanent form of disability or loss could lead to compensation in the region of £10,000 – £30,000.
Compensation Amounts for Lower Body Injury
The lower body area will include any kind of injury to the ankles, the knees, the hips and the legs. As in most other cases, the seriousness of the injury will help to determine the amount of compensation that can be claimed by the injured party.
Recovery claims for less serious injury that have a good chance of recovery can reach between £3,000 and £10,000. More serious injuries that lead to a permanent disability, loss of use or constant pain could potentially reach upto £25,000.
Claims For Loss of Earning
The law has been framed in such a way that if an injured person cannot continue to work due to the injury, they can ask for damages as a way of being compensated for the loss of income.
Personal Injury solicitors usually consult with medical professionals in order to determine the amount of time that their client would require to recover from the injury and how long before they would be well enough to go back to work. Based on this time, both during the pendency of the case as well as after, an amount is put forth to the court as fair compensation that should be awarded.
Expenses that are ‘Out of Pocket’
Any out of pocket expense includes all expenses that are made during the process of getting the injuries taken care of. So any transportation costs, extra living costs and other incidentals that were incurred while addressing the injury will be counted as out of pocket expenses.
Services Compensation
Services compensation is given to people who have been badly injured and require an extra level of care by any professional service for their care. In some cases, this compensation is even given to family members who need to take care of the needs of the individual who has been in the accident.
Loss of Society
This category of compensation will only apply to a few people such as those who have lost a spouse, a child or a parent.
If there is an accident which results in the death of a close family member, the remaining members of the family may be able to ask for a certain sum as compensation for this loss. Usually, the amount claimed is calculated using a particular formula by the solicitors.
Loss of Support
If a member who provided financially for the family dies, the rest of the family may ask for compensation as a way of repayment for this loss of financial support. For example, if a man who is the sole earner in the family passes away, his wife and children could ask for compensation under this category.
How Much Personal Injury Compensation Can I Claim?
As we have shown above, you can calculate to a degree how much compensation you might get for different kinds of personal injury claims. These could be for various accident claims such as work accident claims, car accident claims, whiplash claims, and so forth. Below is a table of figures that displays example personal injury compensation amounts that a claim might bring.
Compensation Amount
Achilles Injury Most Serious Approx: £32,780 A severed achilles tendon, restricted ankle movement.
Achilles Injury Serious £21,320 - £25,670 A complete division of the achilles tendon has been repaired succesfully but has left some disability with no further improvement likely.
Achilles Injury Moderate £10,750 - £17,970 Partial rupture of the achilles tendon/significant injury. Considered factors include treatment required, level of pain and suffering, any disability.
Achilles Injury Mild £6,200 - £10,750 Some damage to the achilles tendon where support to the ankle may be affected.
Ankle Injury Extremely Severe £42,710 - £59,480 The most severe ankle injuries that may cause deformity, degeneration of joints, and potentially amputation.
Ankle Injury Moderate to Severe £11,730 - £42,710 Fractures, extensive treatment, disability are just a few factors that will be considered when calculating the level of compensation for ankle injuries in this bracket.
Ankle Injury Mild Up to £11,730 Less serious ankle injuries such as ankle fractures, ankle sprains. Factors considered would be amount of recovery time, aching, scarring etc.
Arm Injury Extremely Severe £82,040 - £255,930 This range of compensation covers the amputation of both complete arms, the amputation of a single arm, or whether an arm is amputated partially or completely. Future restrictions will also be considered.
Arm Injury Severe £33,430 - £111,690 For major restriction and disability present in one or both the arms and causes significant pain and suffering.
Arm Injury Less Severe £16,380 - £33,430 The range shown is set for persons who have suffered a restriction in movement and/or disability in the arms but there is substantial recovery. Simple forearm fracutres would expect to be at the lower end of the bracket.
Back Injury Severe £33,080 - £137,330 Severe injury to the upper or lower back, possibly causing paralysis or any relating issues to organs in the lower parts of the body.
Back Injury Moderate £10,670 - £33,080 This range of compensation amounts might cover a wide range of back injuries such as compression of the lumbar vertebrae, ligament or soft tissue damage, any constant pain and/or any discomfort.
Back Injury Mild Up to £10,670 For less serious back injuries such as strains and sprains, soft tissue injuries, a slipped disc, muscle pain. Factors such as recovery time and treatment would also be considered.
Ear Injury Extremely Severe £77,430 - £93,540 Complete loss of hearing because of the injury.
Ear Injury Moderate to Severe £26,710 - £38,850 Complete hearing loss in one of the ears. The final compensation amount will depend on how the hearing loss affects the person.
Ear Injury Mild £££'s - £38,850 This range of compensation is awarded for hearing loss in one or both ears and for those that now suffer with tinnitus because of the injury or the work environment.
Elbow Injury Extremely Severe £33,430 - £46,780 Total restriction in elbow movement that has now caused a disability or that has needed surgery.
Elbow Injury Less Severe £13,360 - £27,320 Because of the injury to the elbow there is now restriction of movement in the arm but doesn't cause significant disability and major surgery is not required.
Elbow Injury Mild Up to - £10,040 An injury to the elbow that is mild to moderate which now causes pain but total movement will be possible.
Eye Injury Extremely Severe £46,780 - £229,260 Loss of sight in one eye and some loss in the other, or loss of sight in both eyes will receive the maximum compensation.
Eye Injury Moderate to Severe £7,780 - £46,780 This range of injury compensation is awarded with very restricted vision in a single eye or loss of sight in one eye.
Eye Injury Mild £1,880 - £7,460 Pain in an eye, vision problems or temporary loss of vision in an eye.
Eye Injury Temporary
£1,880 - £3,370 Temporary eye injuries where full recovery takes but a few weeks.
Very Severe £25,400 - £83,050 Facial disfigurement and severe scarring might warrant somewhere in this range of injury compensation. The severity of the injury shall determine how much compensation is awarded.
Less Severe £15,320 - £41,310 Facial disfigurement is substantial and there is significant psychological damage.
£7,780 - £25,670 Plastic surgery has reduced the worst scarring but not all and any psychological damage is not considered sgnificant.
Facial Scarring Mild to Less Significant
£1,460 - £11,730 These amounts cover what might be considered trivial scars to less severe scarring to .
Face Injury Mild to Severe
£1,990 - £31,350 This compensation range covers simple fractures to multiple fractures and breaks to the facial area, for example the nose.
Finger Injury Mild - Severe £££'s - £31,350 As compensation can vary so much depending on which fingers are damaged, the severity of the injury, whether there is impaired grip etc we would advise contacting us to discuss what kind of finger injury you have.
Foot Injury Extremely Severe £71,640 - £171,920 This range covers the amputation of one or both feet and how it might affect the persons life.
Foot Injury Moderate to Severe £11,730 - £59,730 Severe injury to one or both feet that causes restriction, fractures or disability to the foot.
Foot Injury Mild Up to £11,730 Covering injury to a foot that will recover.
Hand Injury Extremely Severe £120,040 - £171,920 This range of compensation amounts shall cover the amputation of one or both hands or if a hand is made completely useless due to the injury.
Hand Injury Very Severe £82,040 - £93,540 Injuries such as the total or effective loss of one hand that has been crushed and then amputated, or most of the palm and all fingers have been amputated.
Hand Injury Severe
£24,740 - £77,430 Injuries in this range might include finger amputations, major loss in function.
Hand Injury Less Severe
£12,340 - £24,740 Crush injuries to the hand, penetrating wounds, deep laceratons. The upper end of the brack would be in cases where the claimant has been left unable to use a hand properly.
Hand Injury Moderate
£4,780 - £11,330 Moderate crushing injuries, deep lacerations, penetration wounds.
Hand Injury Minor Up to £4,055 Minor soft tissue damage, penetration wounds, crush injuries where recovery time is usually 6 months or less.
Head Injury Extremely Severe £240,590 - £344,640 Victims who are unresponsive due to severe brain damage and are unresponsive or what might be referred to as a vegetative state.
Head Injury Moderately Severe £186,890 - £240,590 Servely disabled from brain damage, lost feeling in limbs, change in personality and/or a mental disability.
Head Injury Moderate £36,740 - £186,890 Cases where memory may be affected with a reduced ability to work to more severe cases where there is no chance of being able to work, change in personality, high risk of epilepsy.
Head Injury Less Severe £13,070 - £36,740 There may still be some issues such as an affected memory or a slight chance of epilepsy but overall a good recovery has been made. Factors considered include any disability, severity of the original injury.
Head Injury Mild £1,880 - £10,890 Head injuries which haven't caused brain damage or very minimal brain damage but the head injury might still have lasting effects.
Hip/Pelvis Injury Severest £66,890 - £111,690 Extremely severe injury involving multiple fractures of the pelvis which leads to other significant disability such as hip deformities, sexual dysfunction.
Hip/Pelvis Injury Severe £52,810 - £66,890 Very severe injury to the pelvis , examples being fractures and dislocations that may involve issues such as impotence or traumatic myositis ossificans.
Hip/Pelvis Injury Less Severe £33,430 - £44,790 Injury that leads to degenerative changes, leg instability, problems walking, possible future surgeries.
Hip/Pelvis Injury Significant £22,680 - £33,430 Severe hip injury but any disability isn't major.
Hip/Pelvis Injury Less Significant £10,750 - £22,680 Surgery to the hip or hip replacement, continuing symptoms deemed more severe than minor.
Hip/Pelvis Injury Moderate £3,370 - £10,750 Injuries that may have led to minor or no lasting disability.
Hip/Pelvis Injury Minor Up to £3,370 Soft tissue injuries that will heal completely.
Knee Injury Severe £22,340 - £82,080 Disability because of a knee injury, major damage to muscles, muscle wastage and soft tissue damage.
Knee Injury Moderate Up to £22,340 Minor disability because of the knee injury, damage to the muscle, cartilage, soft tissue, that causes pain and suffering.
Leg Injury Extremely Severe £83,590 - £240,590 Amputation of one or both legs. The compensation range also takes into consideration should the leg have been amputated below or above the knee.
Leg Injury Moderate to Severe £23,680 - £82,110 Injuries to the leg which has caused restriction in movement and disability that might have a life long prognosis.
Leg Injury Less Severe Up to £23,680 From simple leg fractures, breaks or soft tissue damage which has affected the muscle to leg fractures with an incomplete recovery.
Neck Injury Extremely Severe £38,800 - £126,550 Very severe neck injuries, those causing movement problems to other parts of the body.
Neck Injury Moderate to Severe £6,730 - £32,840 Neck fractures, causing pain when moving, causing stiffness and inability to use the full movement of the persons neck.
Neck Injury Mild Up to £6,730 Whiplash type injuries, can depend on the length of time the injury lasts, how painful the injury is and what the long-term prognosis is.
Nose Injury Severe £9,080 - £19,730 Serious/multiple fractures to the nose that will have resulted in permanent damage and/or requiring a number of operations to repair.
Nose Injury Less Severe £3,370 - £4,350 Example displaced nose fractures where there has been complete recovery after surgery.
Nose Injury Moderate £2,160 - £2,690 Moderate nose injuries such as displaced nose fractures that do not need surgery.
Nose Injury Minor £1,460 - £2,160 Example being simple undisplaced fractures with full recovery.
Shoulder Injury Severe £10,890 - £40,970 Paralysis, limb numbness, restriction in movement because of the injury in the neck and shoulder.
Shoulder Injury Moderate £6,730 - £10,890 Neck tissue damage that might last for a considerable length of time and that restricts the movement in the eersons arm and elbow.
Shoulder Injury Mild Up to £6,730 Damage to soft tissue that should recover within the year or slighly longer, and causes or has caused moderate pain.
Toe Injury Extremely Severe £31,150 - £47,830 Amputation of all toes. Depending on whether the amputation was traumatic or surgical can affect level of compensation.
Toe Injury Very Severe Approx: £26,710 Amputation of a big toe.
Toe Injury Severe £11,730 - £17,970 Severe crush injuries that lead to amputation of a single or more toes, partial amputations.
Toe Injury Serious £8,190 - £11,730 Multiple fractures, crushed toes.
Toe Injury Moderate Up to £8,190 Straightforward toe fractures.
Toe Injury Minor Up to £4,770 Minor toe injuries such as simple fractures that are expected heal fully and short-term injuries.
Wrist Injury Very Severe
Wrist injury causing complete loss of function.
Wrist Injury Significant £20,900 - £33,430 Wrist injury leaving significant and permanent disability, there is still some useful movement.
Wrist Injury Less Severe £10,750 - £20,900 Broken wrist causing some permanent disability such as continuing pain/stiffness.
Wrist Injury Moderate Up to £8,740 Wrist fractures, soft tissue injuries where recovery is complete or expected to be complete but may take longer than 12 months.
Wrist Injury Minor Up to £6,340 Uncomplicated Colles' fracture and minor wrist fractures.
*All figures in the table above are advised general damage compensation levels set by the Judicial College and should be used only as a guide as each individual personal injury claim is different as special damages compensation may need to be factored in. The difference between general and special damages is explained here. How much compensation you might get for your personal injury claim may differ from the figures shown so call us today to get a more accurate evaluation.
Updated: 4th September 2018.
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Prolonged Detention of Somali Torture Victim Unconstitutional
15 Months in Detention Causing Severe Psychological Deterioration
SAN DIEGO – The government’s prolonged detention without a hearing of a Somali man who was a victim of torture is unconstitutional, the San Diego ACLU said in a habeas corpus petition filed on November 3, 2009.
After facing a lifetime of persecution in his home country of Somalia, Abdala Warsame Abdille sought refuge in the United States. But like many traumatized asylum seekers, he was immediately detained in prison-like conditions, where he remains fifteen months later, without any hearing to determine whether his prolonged detention is necessary. The ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties filed a ground-breaking petition today challenging Abdille’s continued detention and calling on the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the Department of Homeland Security to justify his continued detention in a fair hearing.
In the petition for writ of habeas corpus, the ACLU claims that it violates the Immigration and Nationality Act and due process to incarcerate Abdille without a hearing where the government must justify his detention. The organization also claims that the government’s denial of Abdille’s request for release without a legitimate rationale constitutes an abuse of discretion. The ACLU seeks either Abdille’s immediate release from custody under reasonable conditions of supervision or a constitutionally adequate hearing before an immigration judge.
Abdille’s prolonged incarceration illustrates the flaws of an immigration system that disregards the welfare of survivors of torture and indiscriminately brands the victims of terrorism as “terrorists.” As an immigration judge determined, Abdille belongs to a Somali minority clan subjected to violence and inhumane treatment. He fled Somalia after militiamen claiming to belong to the Al-Shabaab group kidnapped him. The militiamen beat Abdille and shot and killed his cousin. The militiamen then forced Abdille to serve as a human decoy by standing in a road holding a gun that he did not know how to use or even if it was loaded. Nothing happened, and Abdille was able to escape after about a day and a half.
Yet the government opposed his application for asylum on the claim that he provided “material support” for a “terrorist organization.” The immigration judge found that Abdille had only acted under duress, but that he had nonetheless provided “material support” to Al-Shabaab and was therefore barred from obtaining asylum. The judge instead recommended that Abdille receive asylum under a discretionary waiver program administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a process which could take months or years.
Since first being detained upon arrival in the United States fifteen months ago, Abdille has been diagnosed as suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and acute depression. A 2003 study by the NYU/Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture found that the prolonged detention of asylum seekers who have been victims of violence, like Abdille, greatly exacerbates their mental suffering. Despite being aware of Abdille’s mental conditions and having the power under the immigration laws to release Abdille, the Department of Homeland Security denied a special request for temporary release made by Abdille’s immigration counsel.
“Prolonged detention without a hearing violates the core of due process protections guaranteed by our Constitution,” said Sean Riordan, staff attorney of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. “It is shameful that we subject victims of torture and war crimes like Mr. Abdille to years of detention without so much as a hearing to determine whether that detention is necessary.”
Mr. Abdille is represented in his asylum proceedings by volunteer attorney Kara Persson of Gordon and Rees LLP.
Habeas Petition
2009 11 03 Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus FILED COPY.pdf
LCCC Amicus Brief
Abdille v Baker Amicus Brief.pdf
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What Was In The Forbidden Box In The Family's Freezer For Decades?
St. Louis man makes horrible discovery days after his mother's death
Adam Smith's mother recently passed away. He said that there was a package that had been in the family's freezer for decades. Smith said his mother had told him the package was none of his business, so he had steered clear of the box that was nestled alongside the pot pies and frozen vegetables. Saturday night, he decided to open the package...
READ MORE: CLICK HERE
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Cup press release / Cup preview / NASCAR
Ragan Retires After Homestead
August 14, 2019 August 14, 2019 - by Leon Hammack - Leave a Comment
Veteran David Ragan, the affable and respected driver of the Front Row Motorsports No. 38 Ford, announced Wednesday morning that he would retire from full-time NASCAR competition following the 2019 season.
The 33-year-old said he will continue to race on a part-time basis in NASCAR and other series at his desire, but that he would officially step away from full-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series duty at the end of his 13th consecutive season at the sport’s highest level.
“I’ve prayed and heavily considered this decision, but for myself and my family, I believe this is the right thing to do,” Ragan said in a team statement. “I am a husband and a father to two young girls first, and I am a driver second. To compete in what I consider the greatest series in the world, you need full dedication of your time and focus. My children are growing up quickly, and I want to concentrate my time in being the best father and husband I can be. I feel this is where God is leading my life, and therefore I’m making this decision.
“There aren’t enough words to thank everyone who has helped me in my career and to all the fans who have supported me in this journey. It’s not over, but I’m ready to spend more time at home.”
Ragan has 457 starts in NASCAR’s top series entering this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, good for 10th most among active drivers. And of that total, 204 have come with Bob Jenkins, team owner of Front Row Motorsports.
Ragan is in his third consecutive year driving for the Jenkins-owned operation, and he previously drove for the team from 2012-14.
The team indicated it would announce its driver plans for the No. 38 Ford Mustang at a later date.
“We admire David for making what I’m sure was a very difficult decision,” Jenkins said in a team release. “We also commend him for his reason. David has always put family first, and as a father, I understand what it’s like to not be at that game or big event for your child. Throughout his time at Front Row Motorsports, David has always gone beyond what was asked of him — or even volunteering his own time to help grow our team. Now it’s time for him to give some of that back to his family and we totally support that. Our doors are always open for David and we’ll miss seeing him every week.”
Ragan has two wins at NASCAR’s top level, including the first-ever Cup Series win for Front Row Motorsports. In the twilight at Talladega in the spring of 2013, Ragan powered to the front of the pack on a green-white-checkered finish. He took the checkered flag thanks to a huge push from then-teammate David Gilliland, giving Jenkins and his organization an incredible 1-2 finish.
Ragan also won at Daytona International Speedway in 2011, when he drove the No. 6 Ford for team owner Jack Roush. Ragan got his start driving for Roush, who brought him into the Cup Series for a pair of races in 2006 when Ragan was 20 years old.
He would spend the 2006-11 seasons piloting the No. 6, notching 12 of his 15 career top-five finishes and 30 of his 40 career top-10 finishes during that span. Ragan’s best season came for Roush in 2008 at age 22, when he logged six top fives and 14 top 10s to finish 13th in the season standings.
A brief stint with Joe Gibbs Racing, replacing an injured Kyle Busch in the No. 18 Toyota, was a highlight of Ragan’s 2015, a year in which he also drove for Jenkins and Michael Waltrip.
Ragan also has two victories in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, both in 2009 for Roush, and also logged 29 starts in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series.
This notification is the first vacancy to be announced for the 2020 season. It is widely reported that Matt DiBenedetto is on his way out of the Leavine Family Racing ride to make room for the Joe Gibbs Racing phenom, Christopher Bell.
If that is so, DiBenedetto out and Bell in at LFR, then could DiBenedetto be a viable candidate for the newly announced vacant seat at Front Row Motorsports? Stay tuned sports fans!
TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!
Taggeddavid raganfront row motorsportsretirement
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Arshya’s Voice
Arshya Pankaj grew up in rural Australia and, encouraged by outreach schemes, is now working to become a doctor.
Having grown up in a remote area of Western Australia, I appreciate university can be a scary and unfamiliar concept to some, but it is important that students understand that their circumstances don’t have to define what they can do. Outreach programs like Aspire WA encourage students to think about their futures with open minds during crucial high school years, and can open doors that may not have been completely open to them before.
I was born in India and moved to Karratha, WA when I was 11, where I attended St. Luke’s College. Aspire UWA visited our school a couple of times and I was fortunate enough to be selected to join one of their camps in Perth. On both occasions, we spoke with university students about the different pathways available to us and that link to higher university education as early as Year 9 was definitely something that helped me keep university in the back of my mind during those early high school years.
I first started thinking of medicine as a career in Year 11 when I found a particular interest in human biology. Unfortunately, the lack of teachers available to teach high-level subjects – such as human biology and Year 12 maths – was a barrier, so I relied on online modes through SIDE (School for Isolated and Distance Education). This was a challenge but, having said that, there was plenty of support from teachers and mentors.
In 2012 I was accepted into the Rural Assured Medical pathway at The University of Western Australia (UWA). I was lucky in that my mum worked in Perth during my last few high school years, so I was able to move in with her and my sister while my dad continued living and working in the Pilbara, flying in on weekends. Even though I had immediate family support, it was difficult initially adjusting to a new city environment and lifestyle. Learning to be self-sufficient in my learning also took some getting used to.
Some of my peers stayed in university accommodation or share houses and had some of the best years of their lives. I almost feel that living with other students during the first year of university is a better way to make friends and explore the social aspect of university. On the other hand, living in student accommodation, and living out of home in general, can be isolating and difficult. It’s important to note that there are financial supports available, which is also something Aspire UWA helps students see as a resolvable barrier.
Aspire UWA had a massive positive impact on my perspective on university. I continued to stay in touch with the Aspire staff and ultimately joined the team as a Student Ambassador. I knew I wanted to be a part of a program that encourages students to consider options regarding university, despite coming from backgrounds and towns where higher education is not readily available and resources may be limited.
The program breaks down some of the barriers that come with being in a school/community within regional or remote WA that may have limited resources to an extent. I think it provides students with the opportunity to see what university is about, the several pathways to continue higher education, and the many support systems on offer. The program is broad, with pathways for schools that are challenged by resources, some that are challenged by distance, or both. It is a focused program that offers opportunities to students from schools that have low transfer rates to tertiary education and, therefore, it promotes the culture of academic achievement as well as the desire to continue learning and make a difference to the community.
I successfully completed my bachelor degree with distinctions in 2015 and am currently in my third year of postgraduate medicine with the Rural Clinical School in Albany. Medical practice in a rural community is rather different than in the metropolitan areas and I have been loving it so far. Once I graduate, I hope to work and train in rural towns as a doctor. That is another reason why I think Aspire UWA is a great program; by offering students in regional areas a view of university and making it an achievable goal, you often find that students end up heading back to their rural towns to be contributing community members. I have several friends who have graduated and returned to Karratha or other rural communities to pursue their careers.
I often run into people from my high school and previous teachers, and it is quite amazing to see how proud they are. There have been times when university studies and pressures were overwhelming, but working through it and sticking to my goals has been worth it, knowing I am going to hopefully make a difference and give back to the community one day. I hope to continue working through barriers and making my friends, family and myself proud. I also value the smaller successes. When a student in the Aspire UWA program tells me how my story helped them think about their own and consider their options, it’s a good feeling knowing I’m part of a program that makes a difference.
I think the community in Karratha is becoming more aware of university pathways and I am seeing more and more students from the Pilbara continuing tertiary education after high school. So I wonder if stories like mine and my peers’ have had a positive impact on the school students there.
I hope to graduate and work as a doctor in 2020 and hope to stay involved with Aspire UWA and similar programs in some way and continue to encourage students to see the potential within.
In my own experience, motivation, humility, effective communication, self-awareness and positivity are important qualities to achieve success, reinforced by a strong support network. The options are endless – be curious and seek answers.
This student voice story has been reproduced with the kind permission of the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE). NCSEHE provides national leadership in student equity in higher education, connecting research, policy and practice to improve higher education participation and success for marginalised and disadvantaged people in Australia. The original version of this student voice story is available at: https://www.ncsehe.edu.au/my-story-student-voice-arshya-pankaj/
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Reachin’ To Be Free: The Supremes and The Temptations’ ‘A Place in the Sun’
March 4, 2018 July 15, 2019 / Fiona McQuarrie
[This article has been updated and expanded in the book Song Book; it originally appeared in Shindig! issue 75]
1968 was a time of upheaval and change at Motown Records. The company had moved its Detroit headquarters into a soulless commercial building, and founder and president Berry Gordy was spending much of his time in Los Angeles. Gordy was also being criticized for his relative silence on racial inequality – which was not an abstract issue for the company; among other things, many Motown artists were regularly subjected to racist threats or attacks while on tour. Other Motown acts were expressing frustration at the company’s focus on entertainment rather than on social commentary.
But amongst that uncertainty came ‘A Place in the Sun’, a song that spoke profoundly both of struggle and of hope for a better world. Although it was first recorded in ’66, more than a dozen artists –including, jointly, The Supremes and The Temptations – covered it in ’68, which indicates its relevance to those troubled times.
Ron Miller and Bryan Wells, the song’s co-authors, both came to Motown through quirks of serendipity. Miller, delivering pizzas to pay the bills, happened to bring an order to Motown staff writer Mickey Stevenson, and took the opportunity to pitch him a few tunes. Stevenson subsequently set up a meeting between Miller and Gordy; in his autobiography, Gordy recounted that Miller’s first words to him were “Mr. Gordy, I don’t want to write that Blues shit”. Rather than being offended, Gordy saw potential in a songwriter whose tastes ran to Broadway musicals and “old standards” – and after a few false starts, Miller started churning out classics such as ‘For Once in My Life’.
Wells met Miller in May ’66, when, as a college student, he was playing an unexpected gig at a piano bar. “I was subbing for one of my agent’s other clients, and I was cramming for finals at the time so I didn’t really want to do it.” Miller approached Wells and asked if he had written anything himself. “So I played one, and then he told me who he was and that he was looking for someone to work with. And that’s how it started.”
In his songwriting partnership with Miller, says Wells, “there was a clear division of labour. I wrote the music first and then presented him with the melodies. And because we were both consummate professionals, it was impossible for him to write junk.” Some sources claim that ‘A Place in the Sun’ was inspired by the book and film of the same name, but Wells denies that – although, he says, they were glad to find out “that you can’t copyright a title.”
The song brought something different to Motown because, in Wells’ words, “it’s more of a country tune. Not like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, but the melody and the chord structure are like traditional country.” Wells and Miller wrote the song with Stevie Wonder in mind, but Clarence Paul, Wonder’s producer, seized upon it and recorded it himself. Paul took his version to one of Motown’s legendary “Friday meetings”, at which potential releases were presented and critiqued. Wells never attended those meetings – “those were for the executives and producers, I was too far down the totem pole” – but when Paul played his recording, Gordy’s response was, “No, this is for Stevie.”
‘A Place in the Sun’ debuted on Wonder’s ’66 album Down to Earth. “It really was a change from his earlier songs like ‘Fingertips’”, Wells recalls. “And for some people, that was too much of a departure. I remember the first time I heard it played on the radio, right after it finished there was a call-in. It was a teenage girl, and she said ‘Oh, I don’t like that at all’. And I thought, ‘Well, I’m doomed’”. Thankfully, that listener’s opinion was not widely shared, as the song charted in the US in ’66 and in the UK in ‘67.
The Supremes/Temptations collaboration, which began in ’66, was an example of the Motown strategy of “piggybacking” – putting two groups together to broaden each one’s audience. The hip, about-to-be-psychedelic Temptations could bring younger, cooler listeners into The Supremes’ older supper-club-and-Vegas audience, and vice versa. However, the pairing was not without its conflicts. Many within Motown suspected that Gordy’s real intent in teaming the two acts was to further promote his girlfriend Diana Ross as a lead singer – especially just after The Supremes had officially become “Diana Ross and The Supremes”. The members of The Supremes and The Temptations, most of whom had known each other since childhood, were also not particularly happy at being ordered to address the budding solo star as “Miss Ross”.
‘A Place in the Sun’ was chosen for inclusion on the first Supremes/Temptations album, work on which started in early ’68. Its progress was delayed when The Temptations fired lead singer David Ruffin; his replacement, Dennis Edwards, had to re-record Ruffin’s vocals on the tracks that had already been completed. Nevertheless, Diana Ross & The Supremes Join The Temptations was finally released in late ’68. The Supremes/Temptations’ ‘A Place in the Sun’ suffers somewhat from not sounding entirely unified – it’s more like the two groups are taking turns – but the vocal harmonies throughout are stunning.
‘A Place in the Sun’ was further covered in ’68 by acts in many different genres. Wells cites the versions by Glen Campbell and The Young Rascals as particular favourites. “The Young Rascals did an eight-minute-long version, it was an astonishing epic. And it was the only song on their record [Groovin’] that wasn’t an original. That was a great tribute.”
Wells and Miller subsequently wrote two more hits for Wonder: ‘Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday’ and ‘Someday at Christmas’. Miller passed away in 2007; Wells is now a jazz pianist in New York, where he “holds court” as a performer at the Palm restaurant in Manhattan. And it’s a tribute to the timelessness of ‘A Place in the Sun’ that, 50 years after it was composed, Wells still gets requests for it. “People will ask for it and I’ll play it. I’m not a vocalist, but there’s the delight of hearing the interpretation.”
With thanks to Bryan Wells
features, interviews, Shindig!
A Place in The Sun, Berry Gordy, Bryan Wells, feature writing, magazine writing, Motown, music, music writing, Shindig!, Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, the Temptations
← Maybe It’s the Best Thing: Jimmy Webb’s ‘The Worst That Could Happen’
You Don’t Own Me: 1968 and Women in Music →
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(from issue #88)
If you’ve read Shindig! over the last couple of years, you’ll be familiar with Fiona McQuarrie’s outstanding series of Song Book pieces. Written with an eye to the forensic and the surprising, with no small amount of ready wit, these potted histories provided both factual detail and critical analysis as a way of telling the stories of individual songs.
Now, in an expanded form and with new material, McQuarrie takes the concept to its natural and fulfilling conclusion, building on the original idea to produce a highly readable and well-rounded book. This is an engaging and playful product that avoids the obvious pitfalls of filler whilst digging down into the stories of a raft of releases – some familiar, some rare – put out between 1964 and ’74.
Whether she’s leading us through Jimmy Webb’s formative years, in her explication of the track ‘The Worst That Could Happen’, or unpacking the social attitudes that constrained Jackie DeShannon when she wrote ‘When You Walk In The Room’, McQuarrie’s light touch breathes vibrant life into every tale. Under her gaze every song becomes a captivating entity in its own right – a singular existence telescoping and morphing across the decades as each composition is taken up and interpreted by different artists.
And therein lies the alchemy: the moves, the moods, McQuarrie’s proposition that “the song is at the heart of what we love about music”, all combine with her lifelong fascination with trivia and obscurities to make this a remarkable study. – Greg Healey
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WSKG (https://wskg.org/npr_story_post/nra-sues-over-la-law-requiring-contractors-to-disclose-ties-to-the-gun-rights-group/)
NRA Sues Over LA Law Requiring Contractors To Disclose Ties To The Gun Rights Group
By NPR News | April 25, 2019
The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging a newly implemented ordinance by the city of Los Angeles that seeks to limit ties between city contractors and the gun rights group.
The lawsuit alleges that the ordinance, which took effect on April 1, violates constitutional protections for free speech and association under the First Amendment and the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment.
Under the ordinance, city contractors are required to fully disclose any sponsorship of, or contract with, the NRA. It was approved unanimously by the Los Angeles City Council in February. It allows the city to terminate a contract if the contractor does not disclose all ties with the NRA.
The ordinance cites the NRA’s blocking of “sensible gun safety reform” even in the aftermath of several mass shootings in the U.S. It says public funding provided to contractors with ties to the NRA “undermines the City’s efforts to legislate and promote gun safety.”
“I support this policy, I’m confident in it, and we’re not going to be bullied by the NRA,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti in an emailed statement.
Other supporters of the ordinance called the NRA’s lawsuit “desperate.”
“The NRA’s First Amendment rights remain firmly in place while the City chooses to exercise its own rights to require disclosing who has ties to the NRA, so residents of Los Angeles know how and where their tax dollars are being spent,” said council member Mitch O’Farrell, who originally introduced the measure, in an emailed statement.
In its lawsuit, the NRA claims the city is bringing political pressure to bully companies that support the group.
“The Ordinance has nothing to do with awarding contracts to the best candidates, fiduciary stewardship of public resources, or providing equal and open opportunities,” according to the lawsuit. “Instead, it is about discriminating against a lawful organization and its members and supporters because the City does not approve of their political speech.”
NRA attorney Chuck Michel said individuals who contract with city will be forced to choose between their NRA memberships or having their businesses placed on “this blacklist.”
“This is modern-day McCarthyism, and my clients are confident no judge will let it stand,” said Michel in an emailed statement.
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Top Songs & Albums The Human League
start radio stop radio
... read moreStarting out in the late '70s, the Human League was one of the first of the British synth-pop bands to take the world by storm in the post-punk era. The original quartet split into two factions, one half forming Heaven 17, the other continuing under the original banner, and both subsequently...
Key songs
Don't You Want Me
Anthology - A Very British...
Human (Extended Version)
Love Action (I Believe In Love) (Edit)
Love Action (12" Version)
(Keep Feeling) Fascination (Extended Version)
Key albums
Interview With Robin Ross 18/10/95
Romantic?
The Things That Dreams Are Made Of
photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images
photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images
photo by Jo Hale/Getty Images
Active: 1970s-2010s
Country Of origin: England
Group Members: Adrian Wright , Ian Burden
Synth pop's first international superstars, the Human League were among the earliest and most innovative bands to break into the pop mainstream on a wave of synthesizers and electronic rhythms, their marriage of infectious melodies and state-of-the-art technology proving enormously influential on countless acts following in their wake. The group was formed in Sheffield, England in 1977 by synth players Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh, who'd previously teamed as the duo Dead Daughters. Following a brief tenure as the Future, a period during which they added and lost synthesizer player Adi Newton and enlisted vocalist Philip Oakey, they rechristened themselves the Human League. The trio recorded a demo and played their first live dates. The slide presentations of "director of visuals" Adrian Wright quickly became a key component of their performances.
After they signed with the indie label Fast, the Human League issued their first single, "Being Boiled," in 1978. A minor underground hit, it was followed by a tour in support of Siouxsie & the Banshees. After a 1979 EP, the instrumental The Dignity of Labour, the group released its first full-length effort, Reproduction, a dark, dense work influenced largely by Kraftwerk. Travelogue followed the next year and reached the U.K. Top 20. Still, internal tensions forced Ware and Marsh to quit the group in late 1980, at which time they formed Heaven 17. Their departure forced Wright to learn to play the synthesizer; at the same time, Oakey recruited bassist Ian Burden as well as a pair of teenagers, Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall, to handle additional vocal duties.
The first single from the revamped Human League, 1981's "Boys and Girls," reached the British Top 50. Recorded with producer Martin Rushent, the slicker follow-up "Sound of the Crowd" fell just shy of the Top Ten. Their next single, "Love Action," reached number three, and after adding ex-Rezillo Jo Callis, the League issued "Open Your Heart," another hit. Still, their true breakthrough was "Don't You Want Me." The classic single, as well as parent album Dare!, both topped their respective charts in England, and went on to become major hits in the U.S. as well. A tour of the States followed, but new music was extremely slow in forthcoming. After a Rushent remix disc, Love and Dancing, the Human League finally issued 1983's Fascination! EP and scored a pair of hits with "Mirror Man" and "(Keep Feeling) Fascination."
The much-anticipated full-length Hysteria finally surfaced in mid-1984, heralding a more forceful sound than earlier Human League releases. The record failed to match the massive success of Dare!, however, with the single "The Lebanon" earning insignificant airplay. The group soon went on indefinite hiatus, and Oakey recorded a 1985 solo LP with famed producer Giorgio Moroder titled simply Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder. To the surprise of many, the Human League resurfaced in 1986 with Crash, produced by the duo of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. The plaintive lead single "Human" soon topped the U.S. charts, but the group didn't capitalize on the comeback success and disappeared from the charts for the remainder of the decade.
When the Human League finally returned in 1990 with Romantic?, their commercial momentum had again dissipated. The single "Heart Like a Wheel" barely managed to rise into the Top 40. The record was the band's last with longtime label Virgin. As a trio consisting of Oakey, Sulley, and Catherall, they ultimately signed with the EastWest label and teamed with producer Ian Stanley for 1995's Octopus. The album went largely unnoticed both at home and overseas, with the single "Stay with Me Tonight" issued solely in the U.K.
A resurgent interest in synth pop and post-punk during the early 2000s enabled the group's 2001 album Secrets, which saw the group update its early sound, considerable press coverage. In 2002, previously unreleased recordings of the Future and the embryonic Human League were compiled for The Golden Hour of the Future. Steady touring continued for several years, as documented on Live at the Dome. Additionally, there were performances of Dare! in its entirety and a Steel City Tour with Heaven 17 and fellow Sheffield natives ABC. The Human League remained connected to their local roots in the studio as well. Credo, released in 2011, was produced by fellow Sheffield natives I Monster. The career-spanning anthology A Very British Synthesizer Group was issued five years later, promoted with performance dates across Europe. ~ Jason Ankeny~ Rovi
80's on Tuesday
90 tracks • 83637 followers
69 tracks • 110892 followers
80's Throwback
375 tracks • 0 followers
All Time Pop
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Todd Humphreys Earns Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
Todd Humphreys, an associate professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics in the Cockrell School of Engineering, is one of five faculty members at The University of Texas at Austin selected to receive a Presidential Early Career award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for 2019. The PECASE is the highest honor given by the United States government to scientists and engineers beginning their research careers.
UT Austin is one of only eight U.S. universities to receive five or more of these awards. Universities in Texas received 11 PECASE awards overall, the remaining six going to professors at other University of Texas System schools, Rice University, Southern Methodist University and Baylor University. Recipients are chosen by the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies.
In addition to Humphreys, the other four UT Austin recipients include Whitney Behr, Jackson School of Geosciences; Namkee Choi, Steve Hicks School of Social Work; James Howison, School of Information; and Sarah Powell, College of Education.
“Whitney, Namkee, James, Todd and Sarah have each made remarkable research discoveries that are reshaping the way we understand, and interact with, our world and society,” said UT Austin President Gregory Fenves. “These faculty members have established themselves as leaders across a wide range of disciplines, and we look forward to even more accomplishments from them in the future."
Humphreys directs the Radionavigation Laboratory at UT Austin and specializes in satellite navigation, collision avoidance and autonomous systems. He leads efforts to protect autonomous control systems — the systems used by autonomous cars and aircraft — from malicious attacks and is an expert on GPS, developments in geolocation and their security implications.
Humphreys is a recipient of the UT Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award (2012), the NSF CAREER Award (2015) and the Institute of Navigation Thurlow Award (2015). He joined the Cockrell School of Engineering in Fall 2009.
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the edge of never
Create your account now to then get the "The Edge Of Never" book for FREE. Click the Button below the book, then Read or Download Book. Guaranteed you are satisfied, we are happy.
Author By : J.A Redmerski
Description Ebook: Discover the beloved New York Times bestseller about two lost souls who embark on an epic road trip and find love along the way. A New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling blockbuster! Twenty-year-old Camryn Bennett thought she knew exactly where her life was going. But after a wild night at the hottest club in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, she shocks everyone-including herself-when she decides to leave the only life she's ever known and set out on her own. Grabbing her purse and her cell phone, Camryn boards a Greyhound bus ready to find herself. Instead, she finds Andrew Parrish. Sexy and exciting, Andrew lives life like there is no tomorrow. He persuades Camryn to do things she never thought she would and shows her how to give in to her deepest, most forbidden desires. Soon he becomes the center of her daring new life, pulling love and lust and emotion out of her in ways she never imagined possible. But there is more to Andrew than Camryn realizes. Will his secret push them inseparably together -- or destroy them forever?
The Edge Of Always
Description Ebook: New York Times bestselling author J. A. Redmerski brings us the breathtaking sequel to her novel The Edge of Never. When everything falls apart, love remains . . . THE EDGE OF ALWAYS Camryn Bennett has never been happier. Five months after meeting on a Greyhound bus, she and her soul mate Andrew Parrish are engaged-and a wedding isn't the only special event in their future. Nervous but excited, Camryn can't wait to begin the rest of her life with Andrew, a man she knows in her heart will love her always. They have so much to look forward to-until tragedy blindsides them. Andrew doesn't understand how this could happen to them. He's trying to move on, and thought Camryn was doing the same. But when Andrew discovers Camryn is secretly harboring a mountain of pain and attempting to numb it in damaging ways, there is nothing he won't do to bring her back to life. Determined to prove that their love can survive anything, Andrew decides to take Camryn on a new journey filled with hope and passion. If only he can convince her to come along for the ride... (95,000 words) New Adult Romance
Woman On The Edge Of Time
Author By : Marge Piercy
Description Ebook: Hailed as a classic of speculative fiction, Marge Piercy's landmark novel is a transformative vision of two futures--and what it takes to will one or the other into reality. Harrowing and prescient, Woman on the Edge of Time speaks to a new generation on whom these choices weigh more heavily than ever before. Connie Ramos is a Mexican American woman living on the streets of New York. Once ambitious and proud, she has lost her child, her husband, her dignity--and now they want to take her sanity. After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a time of sexual and racial equality, environmental purity, and unprecedented self-actualization. But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a society of grotesque exploitation in which the barrier between person and commodity has finally been eroded. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow. Praise for Woman on the Edge of Time "This is one of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning. Whether you are reading Marge Piercy's great work again or for the first time, it will remind you that we are creating the future with every choice we make."--Gloria Steinem "An ambitious, unusual novel about the possibilities for moral courage in contemporary society."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "A stunning, even astonishing novel . . . marvelous and compelling."--Publishers Weekly "Connie Ramos's world is cuttingly real."--Newsweek "Absorbing and exciting."--The New York Times Book Review
Author By : William A. Kerig
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Description Ebook: Capturing the romance and risk of extreme big-mountain skiing, this non-fiction adventure follows 15-year-old Kye Peterson as he attempts to conquer the same mountain in Chamonix, France -- known as "the death sport capital of the world" -- that claimed the life of his father more than a decade earlier. Aided by some of the greatest ski mountaineers of the day, and followed by a documentary filmmaker and ski enthusiast, this book tells a story of surviving against nature, overcoming mental and physical challenges, and coming of age in a world of extreme adventure.
Author By : Jeff Giles
Genre : Young Adult Fiction
Description Ebook: "A sharp fantasy thriller." --People "Swoonworthy." --Time "Sharp, dark, thoughtful and romantic." --Cassandra Clare, #1 New York Times bestselling author When their worlds collide, X and Zoe are pushed to the edge of everything in this much-buzzed-about tour de force YA fantasy from Entertainment Weekly veteran Jeff Giles. For the perfect love, what would you be willing to lose? It's been a shattering year for seventeen-year-old Zoe, who's still reeling from her father's shocking death in a caving accident and her neighbors' mysterious disappearance from their own home. Then on a terrifying subzero, blizzardy night in Montana, she and her brother are brutally attacked in the woods--only to be rescued by a mysterious bounty hunter they call X. X is no ordinary bounty hunter. He is from a hell called the Lowlands, sent to claim the soul of Zoe's evil attacker and others like him. X is forbidden from revealing himself to anyone other than his prey, but he casts aside the Lowlands' rules for Zoe. As they learn more about their colliding worlds, they begin to question the past, their fate, and their future. But escaping the Lowlands and the ties that bind X might mean the ultimate sacrifice for them both. Gripping and full of heart, this epic start to a new series will bring readers right to the edge of everything.
Dancing On The Edge Of The Roof
Author By : Sheila Williams
Description Ebook: “Dancing on the Edge of the Roof kept my heart and mind dancing through the pages. Sheila Williams, with her talent for detailed storytelling, expertly takes the reader on a poignant and humorous quest for self.”–Lori Bryant-Woolridge, author of Read Between the Lies At forty-one, Juanita Lewis is running away from home, courtesy of a one-way ticket to Montana, a place that seems about as far away from the violence and poverty of the Columbus, Ohio, projects as the moon. She wants adventure and excitement–if such things exist for a pre-menopausal African American woman with three grown, deadbeat children. Juanita’s new life in Paper Moon, Montana, begins at a local diner where a culinary face-off with chef and owner Jess Gardiner finds Juanita in front of Jess’ s stove serving up home cookin’ that lures the townsfolk like a magic spell. And suddenly Juanita, who was just passin’ through, now has a job by popular demand. Out here in this wide-open space, Juanita’s heart can no longer hide, especially when she sees herself through the eyes of the wonderful and eccentric people of this down-to-earth town. She’s happy in Paper Moon; she’s found a home, but can she stay? And then there’s Jess. She has always dreamed of romance, but she never planned on falling in love.
The Edge Of Forever
Author By : Melissa E. Hurst
Description Ebook: In 2013, sixteen-year-old Alora is having blackouts. Each time she wakes up in a different place with no idea how she got there. The one thing she is certain of? Someone is following her. In 2146, seventeen-year-old Bridger is one of a small number of people born with the ability to travel to the past. While on a routine school time trip, he sees the last person he expected—his dead father. The strangest part is that, according to the Department of Temporal Affairs, his father was never assigned to be in that time. Bridger’s even more stunned when he learns that his by-the-book father was there to break the most important rule of time travel—to prevent someone’s murder. And that someone is named Alora. Determined to discover why his father wanted to help a “ghost,” Bridger illegally shifts to 2013 and, along with Alora, races to solve the mystery surrounding her past and her connection to his father before the DTA finds him. If he can stop Alora’s death without altering the timeline, maybe he can save his father too. Sky Pony Press, with our Good Books, Racehorse and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of books for young readers—picture books for small children, chapter books, books for middle grade readers, and novels for young adults. Our list includes bestsellers for children who love to play Minecraft; stories told with LEGO bricks; books that teach lessons about tolerance, patience, and the environment, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Author By : Duyhu Aban
Description Ebook: Twenty-year-old Camryn Bennett had always been one to think out-of-the-box, who knew she wanted something more in life than following the same repetitive patterns and growing old with the same repetitive life story. And she thought that her life was going in the right direction until everything fell apart. Determined not to dwell on the negative and push forward, Camryn is set to move in with her best friend and plans to start a new job. But after an unexpected night at the hottest club in downtown North Carolina, she makes the ultimate decision to leave the only life she’s ever known, far behind. With a purse, a cell phone and a small bag with a few necessities, Camryn, with absolutely no direction or purpose boards a Greyhound bus alone and sets out to find herself. What she finds is a guy named Andrew Parrish, someone not so very different from her and who harbors his own dark secrets. But Camryn swore never to let down her walls again. And she vowed never to fall in love. But with Andrew, Camryn finds herself doing a lot of things she never thought she’d do. He shows her what it’s really like to live out-of-the-box and to give in to her deepest, darkest desires. On their sporadic road-trip he becomes the center of her exciting and daring new life, pulling love and lust and emotion out of her in ways she never imagined possible. But will Andrew’s dark secret push them inseparably together, or tear them completely apart? (Due to sexual content and language, this book is recommended for 17+ – Adult Contemporary Women’s – New Adult Fiction) About the Author J.A. Redmerski is a Contemporary Fantasy and Young Adult(17+) writer - author of THE DARKWOODS TRILOGY and DIRTY EDEN. She's a werewolf & zombie fanatic, book addict and a happy hermit obsessed with the Universe and AMC's THE WALKING DEAD. She lives in North Little Rock, Arkansas with her three children and a Maltese. Some authors that inspire Jessica are Neil Gaiman, Anne Rice, Cormac McCarthy, Max Brooks, J.K. Rowling, Richard Matheson, William R. Forstchen, Carrie Ryan and Lisa Smedman.
On The Edge Of Gone
Author By : Corinne Duyvis
Description Ebook: A thrilling, thought-provoking novel from one of young-adult literature’s boldest new talents. January 29, 2035. That’s the day the comet is scheduled to hit—the big one. Denise and her mother and sister, Iris, have been assigned to a temporary shelter outside their hometown of Amsterdam to wait out the blast, but Iris is nowhere to be found, and at the rate Denise’s drug-addicted mother is going, they’ll never reach the shelter in time. A last-minute meeting leads them to something better than a temporary shelter—a generation ship, scheduled to leave Earth behind to colonize new worlds after the comet hits. But everyone on the ship has been chosen because of their usefulness. Denise is autistic and fears that she’ll never be allowed to stay. Can she obtain a spot before the ship takes flight? What about her mother and sister? When the future of the human race is at stake, whose lives matter most?
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"I help, aggregate, articulate and comprehend mutual interests. The art is to be able to make sure that both sides' interests are clearly met." Dr. Iván Völgyes
In memoriam of Dr. Iván Völgyes, the American Chamber of Commerce launched the Dr. Iván Völgyes Award for promotion of Hungarian-American Business Relations in 2005.
AmCham would like to thank to both Mrs. Völgyes and Synergon Rt. for their generous support in helping to establish this award.
This annual award is aimed to recognize those individuals who have played an outstanding and exemplary role in developing Hungarian-American business relations over the past years.
Those persons can be nominated who have contributed significantly to the development of the Hungarian-American business relations in the following, but not exclusive, areas of US investment such as through FDI or technology or knowledge or charity.
Dr. Iván Völgyes was a man credited by many as being the father of modern lobbying in Hungary. Born in Hungary, he moved to the United States in 1956, where, he acquired a BA and PhD in International Politics, he also worked on John F. Kennedy's election campaign as an undergraduate in 1959 and later on worked for the White House as an external Central-Eastern Europe expert. After the fall of the iron curtain, he became instrumental in bringing numerous U.S. based businesses to Hungary including the Gallup Organization and Reader's Digest.
As the chief advisor to General Electric in Hungary, Völgyes also assisted in bringing six of GE's 10 global core businesses, along with more than $1 billion in investment. Dr. Iván Völgyes lost his life in an airplane crash in June 2001.
Eszter Szabó, GE’s corporate communications and public affairs regional leader for CEE and AmCham board member between 2010-2014, knew him – she recalls their meeting in 1996 on her first day at GE. “He was the highly influential national advisor of GE in Hungary, and I was the freshly appointed communications leader, Central Europe at GE Lighting […]. After that I worked with Völgyes closely making GE a multi business investor in Hungary with other visionary Lighting executives also involved. Five years later I received a phone call from the Office of the Minister of Interior to tell me that Iván, who had left GE by that time, was involved in a plane crash.[…] He was an intercultural interpreter (as he usually referred to himself), the designer and an implementer of the common growth vision of global GE and Hungary, a truly high-impact advisor of the company.”
In 2018, the winners of the Iván Völgyes Award for outstanding contributions to improving the US-Hungary business relations are
Dr. László Ábrahám and Dr. Gábor Orosz
previous Recipients of this prestigious award are
(For detailed information on the recipients please scroll down)
2005 - Péter Hegedűs
2006 - Lajos Sápi
2007 - Ambassador András Simonyi
2008 - Thomas Ramsey, Consul General
2009 - László Czirják
2010 - István Gyarmati
2011 - Marcel Szabó
2012 - Charles Huebner
2013 - Robert Peaslee
2014 - Gábor Garai
2015 - László Metzing (posthumuos)
2016 - Ambassadors Colleen Bell and Réka Szemerkényi
2017 - Joerg Bauer
2018 - Dr. László Ábrahám & Dr. Gábor Orosz
Nomination and voting process
Only AmCham members in good standing can nominate an individual for this award. Each candidate should have at least three supporters from the AmCham membership in order to qualify. Each nomination should be accompanied by a maximum one page summary describing the achievements of the proposed individual.
Applications will be reviewed individually and voted on by the AmCham Board through a secret ballot.
1., Péter Hegedűs
Mr. Hegedüs was the ABB Group Representative for Hungary and President of ABB Kft. Before joining ABB Mr. Hegedüs was Chief Operating officer of Gilbert Commonwealth International Incorporated, one of the largest Engineer / Architect Consulting firms in the United States.
Mr. Hegedüs has contributed in several ways to the American-Hungarian business relationship. As President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hungary between 2002-2004 he actively and successfully promoted and assisted investment and commercial relations between the two countries. He participated in numerous conferences, business forums, roundtables and seminars where he always represented American values and pursued goals mutually beneficiary for both the US and Hungary. He was many times active member of high-level government delegations to the US contributing with his experience and knowledge to the success of negotiations. Under his leadership AmCham strengthened its position as the leading representative of US and international business in Hungary.
Mr. Hegedus, as an American businessman with a first-generation Hungarian background, has always been an advocate of charity and minority issues. During his years in Hungary, he has taken a very active role in promoting issues, which he believed contributed towards the positive development of Hungary both in the business and in the social spheres.
2., Lajos Sápi
In the middle of the 1980’s the Hungarian Glass Works intended to introduce a state-of-the-art flat glass manufacturing process in Hungary; that was how it got in contact with Guardian Industries (Detroit, Michigan), the third largest architectural glass manufacturer of the world.
The negotiations resulted in signing the Joint Venture Agreement in July 1988 and the same year the parties establed Hunguard Float Glass Co. Ltd, a joint venture company with 51% Hungarian and 49% foreign ownership, located in Orosháza. Within some years Guardian became the 100% owner of the company. In that period only a few joint venture companies existed in Hungary, so Hunguard was among the first 3 to 5 largest producing joint ventures in the country. Guardian undertook a pioneer role by realizing a US$ 105 million project in the region among the conditions prevailing at that time.
Lajos Sápi and Guardian got acquainted in the course of the joint venture negotiations. At the time of establishing the company he was appointed as managing director of the new company and has been in this position to date.
Guardian started its new float investment in 1995 in Thalheim, Germany. Lajos Sápi was charged with the management of the project and the initial operation of the plant. As Guardian’s glass plant investment began in Czestochowa, Poland, Lajos Sápi became Director of Central and East European Operations of Guardian. In 1998 Mr.Sápi became Guardian’s “Employee of the Year”, as the first non-American person in the several decade history of the corporation.
In 1998 he was awarded the Gold Cross of Merit of the Hungarian Republic.
3., Ambassador András Simonyi
He graduated from the Karl Marx University of Economics (now Budapest Corvinus University) in 1975. Holds a Ph.D. in political science. Wrote his thesis on Denmark’s security policy in the 20th Century. In the 8o’s he worked with different organizations in the field of youth exchange, in particular promoting East-West contacts, including programs with the American Council of Young Political Leaders.
In 1989, Joined the Foreign Ministry to work with the so-called Central European Initiative aka Pentagonale as a personal assistant to the Foreign Minister László Kovács. He also headed the Nordic department of the Ministry.
He was also Hungary’s representative to the Western European Union Council for five years. He is vice-president of the Hungarian Atlantic Council, co- founder of The Center for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy, and President of the Danish – Hungarian Friendship Society. He is also a frequent lecturer on security issues, trans-Atlantic relations, the problems of military reform, and NATO enlargement. He has published numerous articles on the accession process to NATO, trans-Atlantic relations and European security, the war on terror.This person is as widely known in Bruxelles as in America.
He is talented enough to achieve great respect not only in the White House, but in Jazz bars in New Orleans.
4., Thomas Ramsey, Consul General
After his arrival to Hungary in the summer of 2006 as Head of the Consular Section at the US Embassy Budapest, he has coordinated all matters relating to immigrant and non-immigrant visas, antifraud measures, as well as American Citizen Services.
He joined the US Department of State in 1991 and has focused on Consular issues throughout his career. His foreign posting prior to Hungary have included consular work in Taiwan, Ireland, China and Malaysia. Additionally, has served in the State Department’s Fraud Prevention headquarters in Washington D.C. and also worked on general policy coordination for New Zealand and Samoa.
He headed up bilateral negotiation efforts on the Visa Waiver Program Memorandum of Understanding with the Hungarian Government, as well as on the three major agreements required for Hungarian citizens to able to travel visa-free to the U.S.: information sharing agreements regarding terrorist activity, lost and stolen passports, and criminal activity. He was responsible for organizing the visits of several American delegations from the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department culminating with the recent visit of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who announced the November 17th start date for Hungarians to be able to travel to the U.S. without a visa for business and tourism. It has been just over a year since the U.S. Congress passed legislation making expansion of the Visa Waiver Program possible and it is no understatement to say that it is partially thanks to his tireless efforts and coordination that Hungary has so quickly negotiated and met all necessary requirements to be among the first countries to enter the new expanded Visa Waiver Program.
5., László Czirják
A long-time AmCham supporter, who is playing an outstanding and exemplary role in developing and furthering Hungarian-American business relations. He is a U.S.-born citizen holding dual U.S. and Hungarian citizenship and has resided in Hungary since 1992. He received a Master in Business Administration (MBA) and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering, both with honors, from Columbia University in New York. He is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of iEurope Capital, an investment firm focused on investing into early stage companies in Central Eastern Europe. As a venture capital investor, he has been instrumental in bringing investment into Hungary and the region and has helped grow numerous companies in revenue, employment, and taxes paid. Earlier in his career, he worked as Managing Director for Bankers Trust/ BT International in their London based investment banking group with co-responsibility for Central Eastern Europe and in parallel was also Chief Executive of Bankers Trust Rt. in Hungary. Here too he was instrumental in bringing investments into Hungary.
He is a former President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hungary, a former Vice President, a multiple term serving member of the Board of Directors, and Chairman of numerous committees including acting as the Chairman of the Corporate Governance Committee. The Committee, during his leadership, became the most active and efficient Committee of our organization. The committee’s mission is to improve the governance, transparency and integrity of non-profit, private and public sector practices, while encouraging entrepreneurship, to boost competitiveness, accountability and sustainability and to build a better next generation of leaders in Hungary. These activities greatly complement AmCham’s mission.
6., István Gyarmati
A devoted supporter of Hungarian-American relations since the early 80s. It brought him a lot of trouble for many years. First in the early 80s, when he supported the double track decision of NATO – a rather unusual position form a Hungarian diplomat those days. He was under police investigation for many years, his house and office were bugged (he found the bug in his house and framed it, It can be now seen in his office).
After the political changes in 1990 it was easier to be a friend of the United States. He was the main partner on the Warsaw Treaty side of the US delegation under Jim Woolsey (the first DCI of President Clinton), part of the negotiation that brought Hungary out of the Warsaw Treaty, the Soviet troops out of Hungary and Hungary into NATO.
In the early 90s he became friends with Iván Völgyes. Their families got together on a regular basis and he helped Iván to move his business forward, including bringing GE to Hungary. Their cooperation also extended to the promotion of Transatlantic relations in many ways, including joint conferences, etc.
He worked in the US between 2000-2003. After his return he became the founder and the first director of the International Centre for Democratic Transition, a really bipartisan institution in Hungary, which supports and promotes democratic change throughout the world. He is now working on creating its sister institution, the Tom Lantos Institute, to remember and carry on the legacy of his friend. These institutions are some of the few, which have enjoyed the full support of all democratic political parties in Hungary – as does he – and belong to the few Hungarian institutions, which have been publicly recognized and praised on several occasions both by the previous Republican and the current Democratic administration of the US, including President Bush, Secretary of State Rice and now Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
He is frequently called the “most pro-American Hungarian”, which never prevented him to be a strong critic of American policies. The best example of these positive critics was the famous open letter to President Obama by a number of Central and Eastern-European leaders, which expressed their concern that the then new Obama administration did not pay enough attention to this region, of which István was the principal author. The letter caused a lot of turbulence in Washington, but we think it is partially its achievement that the current US Administration recognized the importance of Central- and Eastern Europe and takes it much more seriously then in the first month of its existence.
7., Marcel Szabó
Marcel Szabó is an enthusiastic promoter of the Hungarian-American dialogue and cooperation.
He was teaching European Law at the San Francisco University and at Marymount College and was also the initiator and one of the founders of the Central-European Studies Program designed by the University of San Francisco and Pázmány University to introduce our region to American students.
While teaching international law in California in 2010, during a visit to the Ronald Reagan Museum and Library, he realized that the Centennial of President Reagan would be in the next year. After his return to Hungary, he suggested that a statute should be raised in Budapest to commemorate the achievements of President Reagan. As a result, a non-governmental Memorial Committee was set up and he was commissioned to organize the creation of the statute and all events related to it. He pursued a primordial organizational role in the fundraising, selection of the architect and the location, getting the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation involved with the event and arranging many details for the ceremonial parliamentary session and the unveiling of the statute.
8., Charles Huebner
Charles Huebner, as an investment adviser, investment banker and the first representative of The American Hungarian Enterprise Fund has done great deal for Hungarian-American commercial relations since the change in the system in 1990. He is also an active member and a past President of AmCham. He has been very active as a philanthropist and fund raiser for a number of important Hungarian cultural institutions.
Earlier in his career he worked at the United States Air Force and NASA’s Apollo program as an Officer, Project Engineer, and Manager. Later he joined the General Electric Company as a Senior Staff Executive responsible for businesses with revenues in excess of $10 billion. He has been in Hungary since 1990 when Dr. Huebner established, organized, staffed, and ran the operations of the Hungarian American Enterprise Fund (HAEF) in Budapest as the Executive Vice President and the Managing Director. Dr. Huebner received a Ph.D. from The American University in Washington, D.C. He earned an M.S. in Aero and Astronautics from M.I.T. and graduated first in his class, summa cum laude, from the University of Detroit.
9., Robert Peaslee
Mr. Peaslee is the Senior Commercial Officer at the American Embassy in Budapest and held this position since August 2009, and has had regional oversight over the Commercial Section in Zagreb, Croatia since July 2011. Since June 2013, Mr. Peaslee has also had responsibility for the Partner Post of Slovenia.
Mr. Peaslee was previously the Regional Senior Commercial Officer at the American Embassy in Doha, Qatar, where he established the office and directed the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Commercial Service programs in Qatar and in Pakistan.
He has also served as the Regional Senior Commercial Officer in Helsinki, Finland and the Principal Commercial Officer at the American Consulate General in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Mr. Peaslee was simultaneously the Senior Commercial Officer for Pakistan (resident in Dhahran), with responsibility for overseeing Commercial Service operations in Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore. Mr. Peaslee’s first diplomatic posting was as Commercial Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Rob earned a BA in Political Science (May 1989) from Colorado State University and earned an MBA in International Management and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico. He is fluent in Spanish, and conversant in Hungarian. Mr. Peaslee is married with two adult children.
10., Gábor Garai
Gabor Garai is a partner and business lawyer at Foley & Lardner LLP. He is chair of the firm’s Private Equity & Venture Capital Practice and co-chair of the Life Sciences Team.
Mr. Garai’s private equity and venture capital practice encompasses all legal and business aspects of structuring, financing and managing various types of investment funds; negotiating mergers, acquisitions and dispositions of portfolio companies; structuring investments in emerging companies; and participating in strategic decisions of funds and fund-owned companies.
Mr. Garai lectures and writes frequently to business-people and professionals on venture capital, private equity and mergers and acquisitions. In 2013 and 2014, Mr. Garai was selected to sit on the Law360 Private Equity Editorial Advisory Board. He recently co-edited "Buying and Selling a Privately Owned Business in Massachusetts" and "Middle Market Mergers and Acquisitions," both published by MCLE.
He graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1976, and earned a B.A. from Harvard College in 1973.
Mr. Garai is the Hungarian Consul General for New England and founder of the Hungarian-American Chamber of Commerce of New England. He received the Hungarian Civilian Cross, the highest recognition to non-residents awarded by the Hungarian president. During his work as Honorary Consul, Mr. Garai was awarded the Hungarian Order of Merit in 2005 and an award pro auxilio cirium Hungarum in 2007 to recognize his efforts for the protection of Hungarian citizens. In 2013, he was selected as honorary commercial attaché for Hungary.
11., László Metzing
Laci was called the “Rock” by many, as he was the foundation of what AmCham is today. In the 17 years he spent with the Chamber he helped build it into a great organization, with a strong and supportive staff and a vibrant membership community.
He studied Foreign Trade at the University of Economics where he met his future wife. At the beginning of his career he worked in foreign trade, later the food and cosmetics industry, and lived in the US in the early 90’s. He started working at AmCham in 1999 as Head of Administration.
László Metzing passed away on October 23, 2015 after a short illness at the age of 58.
His son, Árpád Metzing (picture on the left) accepted the award and said in his speech that "we are thankful to you, the AmCham community, for making AmCham a place, where my father truly loved to work, each day, every day."
12., Ambassadors Colleen Bell and Réka Szemerkényi
For the first time in the history of the award, the Board of Directors unanimously decided to award not one, but two great female leaders, Her Excellency Colleen Bell, United States Ambassador to Hungary and Her Excellency Réka Szemerkényi, Hungarian Ambassador to the United States.
13., Joerg Bauer
Joerg Bauer, President of GE Hungary is a respected leader and the currently the most senior GE representative in Hungary. Over many years he has contributed to AmCham through his vision and insight. Joerg himself is co-head of the Innovation Policy Task Force now since its formation. He shows his leadership by physically participating actively and doesn’t simply delegate duties. He has often led discussions in various events and forums representing the interests of AmCham as a whole.
Upon receiving the Award Mr. Bauer said: “This is a really great honor. I remember I was at Audi, working towards my pilot’s license, when I heard the news of the crash,” Bauer recalled. When he became President of GE Hungary four years ago, the position had been vacant for a period and he had no predecessor to learn from. But he said began “to get to know Iván” through talking to colleagues, and was impressed by his “win-win” mentality. “Sadly, I never got to meet him, but he became something of a guiding star for me, so thank you very much.”
14. Dr. László Ábrahám & Dr. Gábor Orosz
In 2018, the award was shared by two stalwarts of AmCham: Dr. László Ábraham, head of the Electronic Manufacturers’ Committee, and Dr. Gábor Orosz, who chairs the Regulatory Committee. Both are from National Instruments Hungary, and Lippai-Nagy said the company, too, deserved thanks for supporting the two men in dedicating so much time to AmCham. “I know whenever I call either of them I can be assured I will have the most professional, proactive and helpful assistance,” she said.
“I did nothing else, I did just my job,” said a surprised Ábraham, the firm’s managing director. “When I finished university, my professor said to me: ‘László, it is not enough to lay the egg, you also have to make some noise around it.’ I think it is different today. I hear a lot of clucking, but I see very few eggs.”
Orosz, Associate General Counsel and Legal Director of EMEIA for National Instruments, said he was “humbled”. “If you are a lawyer, and you do not want to be in politics, how can you do your best for your country? That’s how we came together eight years ago to form the regulatory committee.”
Driving Hungarian-American trade
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South Africa: Supreme Court ruling shows there can be no impunity for alleged war criminals
“The Supreme Court of Appeal’s ruling today upholds the rule of law and reinforces the country’s progressive laws aimed at ending impunity for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is a stinging rebuke to the government for its failure to abide by its domestic and international obligations to arrest President Bashir and surrender him to the International Criminal Court,” said Netsanet Belay, Amnesty International’s Research and Advocacy Director for Africa.
“The South African government’s decision not to arrest Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir during his visit to Johannesburg for the African Union Summit last year was a cruel betrayal of the hundreds of thousands of people killed and displaced during the Darfur conflict. The ruling that this decision was inconsistent with South African law is a small step towards justice for these victims and their families.”
“He should never have been allowed to leave the country, and South Africa must now take full responsibility for its failure to respect its own laws as well as the ICC, and accept that it has played a part in providing impunity to Omar Al-Bashir.”
The International Criminal Court issued two warrants of arrest against Omar al-Bashir in 2009 and 2010respectively. He is facing seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity as well as three counts of genocide.
Despite this, the South African authorities allowed him to freely attend the 24th African Union Summitin South Africa from 13-15 June 2015.
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Thousands protest U.S. military strikes on Libya as anti-war movement grows
posted by Answer Coalition | 7pt
Protestors outside the White House, July 9
Protestors at the July 9 demonstration at the White House to demand “Stop Bombing Libya!” A coordinated demonstration took place in San Francisco, Calif.
By Askia Muhammad - Senior Correspondent
WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - Buoyed by what they cite as reports from military analysts as well as rebel forces in Libya, hundreds of protestors organized by the International ANSWER Coalition paraded in front of the White House July 9, to protest U.S.-led NATO air attacks on Libya.
“This (demonstration) represents a turning of the tide,” Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition told The Final Call. “Public opinion is now running 2-to-1 in the United States against the bombing of Libya. We're now making the transition from a passive opposition, to an active opposition in the streets.
“The next step after this is a massive march in Harlem on Aug. 13, where Minister Farrakhan will be the keynote speaker,” Mr. Becker continued.
Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have challenged the lack of legal authority for the bombing campaign and failure to comply with the War Powers Act, and the administration is becoming increasingly vulnerable on the Libyan war issue. The Obama administration responded in June with a lengthy legal report claiming that the U.S. role in Libya does not constitute “hostilities” because no U.S. ground troops are involved, and therefore the War Powers Act does not apply to this so-called “non-war.”
“The NATO-U.S. bombing of Libya is not succeeding in overturning the Libyan government. In the United States, it is becoming more difficult for the Obama administration to maintain support for the effort, which is also costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars as jobless numbers rise,” the ANSWER Coalition said in a statement.
There was a small, counter-demonstration supporting the U.S.-led NATO action. They carried pre-revolution Libyan flags from the days of King Idris, American flags, and signs which read “Thank you NATO. Thank you Obama,” among others.
“The counter-demonstrators are a very small, narrow group of mainly affluent Libyans who have lived here for a very long time, who support regime change—maybe always favored it, there was a monarchy in Libya until the Libyan revolution—I think this is the class and social base of that old monarchy,” Mr. Becker said of them.
“We don't want war. The Libyan people do not want war,” Reem (first name only), a young Libyan-American woman and counter-protestor who was demonstrating with her mother, told The Final Call. “But unfortunately, (Libyan leader Muammar) Gadhafi is very brutal, and he has used all measures to bomb his own people. This is why we need NATO's help, unfortunately,” she continued.
“I understand ANSWER Coalition is always anti-war. Libyan people are anti-war as well, but they don't understand we need these measures in order to get rid of Gadhafi, because he's very brutal and the Libyan people don't have any weapons. And that's the way it is. The Libyan people want Gadhafi out, period,” Reem said.
Coalition supporters however, condemned the reliance on outside forces to resolve what should be internal political differences. “As much as we have suffered in America, in the 81 (year) history of the Nation of Islam, and many other groups in America, progressive groups, they have not invited an outside entity that had a beef with America to attack America because of the way America has treated us,” Abdul Akbar Muhammad, International Representative of the Nation of Islam told The Final Call.
“It should be a lesson for the Libyan people, when you invite an outside entity in to attack, bomb your people, bomb your infrastructure, in order that you can get rid of a leader, and plan an assassination on a leader, so that they can take control of your oil fields, unheard of. So Libya now becomes a stone of stumbling, an African nation, for the first Black president of America,” Mr. Muhammad said.
In addition to Nation of Islam members, the ANSWER Coalition included protestors from South Korea, Black and White U.S. citizens (including military veterans), members of an American-Iranian friendship committee, and protestors from the Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire), angry over outside intervention which installed Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara after a hotly contested election last year.
“They say they love NATO,” a member of the American-Iranian Culture Committee who did not reveal his name, told The Final Call. “They say they want the United States continue bombing Libya. What kind of Libyans are these people? I would never, never, even if I was in disagreement with my government, I would not call on an imperialist power to fight, bomb, my people,” the man said.
Navid Nasr is another Iranian. “I am here to demonstrate against the ongoing war on the people of Libya, and to let it be known that there are those of us here in the U.S. who oppose this war, and not just oppose it in words, but in deeds.
“We need to put a stop to this. I am very much disheartened and disappointed to see the members of the Libyan-American community out here today holding up signs saying things like: ‘NATO you're the BOMB. We thank you.' It's really unfortunate that exile communities and expat (expatriate) communities in the U.S. tend to embrace these kind of reactionary politics and to support the U.S. government in its policies in destroying and dismembering their own country. It's extremely short-sighted, and historically it's almost as if the last 60 years did not happen,” Mr. Nasr said.
ANSWER Coalition leaders said the group organized a simultaneous protest July 9 in San Francisco.
Major Event Anti War libya
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Posted on April 30, 2018 | Atlantic Business Magazine | 0 Comments
How a P.E.I. venture capital fund is helping local startups grow their businesses
P.E.I. ENTREPRENEURS searching for venture capital to grow their businesses now have a source in their home province.
That source is Island Capital Partners, a venture capital fund founded by four island heavy hitters who want to invest in startup companies from P.E.I.: ‘retired’ global tech CEO Stephen Nicolle; Ron Keefe, best known from his work with Diagnostic Chemicals Inc. and Biovectra Inc.; former CEO and executive partner of Grant Thornton LLP, Alex MacBeath; and, Paul Lypaczewski, a veteran tech executive and the first Canadian to receive the NASA Space Act Award for exceptional merit.
“There are not a lot of pools of capital here,” says MacBeath, the CEO of Island Capital Partners. “But there is a demand and a need for it in P.E.I.” The interest the fund has received since it was launched in the fall of 2017 corroborates MacBeath’s words. The $4 million fund ($2 million has come from over 20 private investors; the remaining $2 million was provided by the P.E.I. government for an equity stake in the fund) has already received 18 formal investment pitches from Island businesses. It has invested in four and is doing its due diligence on three others. As this magazine went to press, the fund had invested $820,000 in P.E.I. businesses to date.
When MacBeath retired from Grant Thornton and returned to P.E.I. in 2012, he noticed access to capital was an issue for island startups. That’s not surprising. Most of Canada’s venture capital funds are based in Toronto. When you come from a place with a population of just over 146,000 people, it can be tough to stand out among the global competitors vying for investor attention.
MacBeath says the benefit of having such a fund based in P.E.I. and run by Islanders is that it focuses on emerging businesses from the province. Island Capital Partners also differs from most venture capital funds in that it doesn’t just invest in companies; their staff are also mentors. “Many of the companies tell us they are looking for our advice as much as our capital,” says MacBeath.
Island Capital Partners is one of a small cadre of investment funds based in Atlantic Canada. Here are three others doing similar work in the region.
New Brunswick Innovation Foundation
Created in 2003, the Frederictonbased non-profit corporation specializes in providing venture capital to New Brunswick businesses and helps bring promising new business opportunities to life. The Foundation says it has invested over $85 million since its inception, although some of that includes research investments.
Build Ventures
Based in Halifax, this regional $65-million venture capital fund was launched in 2013 and is focused on “early-stage technology companies across the Atlantic region.” Unlike other funding bodies in Atlantic Canada that make investments between $100,000 to $900,000, Build Ventures goes bigger, investing chunks of $1.5 to $2 million.
Pelorus Venture Capital Limited
The St. John’s-based firm was launched in 2015, and it created the Venture Newfoundland and Labrador LP venture capital fund. Its goal is to invest in and partner with entrepreneurs with innovative technologies, to help get their products and services to market.
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Posted on April 30, 2018 | Gabby Peyton | 1 Comment
These four new(ish) CEOs are recharging Atlantic Canada’s economic energy with everything from award-winning gin to bionic knees
Here at Atlantic Business Magazine, we know it’s as important to look to the future as it is to live in the present. Which is why, in an issue dedicated to current Top 50 CEO award winners, we also went in search of the next generation of corporate all-stars. From those only a few years into their career to those who jumped straight from university to head of the class, the new wave of CEOs is as fierce as the breaking tide. From clean energy and bionic knees to record-smashing spirits and janitorial software, there’s a whole lot going on in those new c-suites. Here are four CEOs you should be keeping an eye on.
CHRIS COWPER-SMITH
Co-founder, president and CEO, Spring Loaded Technology
Bringing bionic technology to sports enthusiasts and putting a spring in the step of people with knee injuries
What happens when a neuroscientist, an engineer and a business student take an entrepreneurship class together? They create a bionic knee, of course. Halifaxbased Spring Loaded Technology was created in 2013 by a trio of knee-injury sufferers: Chris Cowper-Smith (the scientist); Bob Garrish (the engineer); and, Shaw Kewin (the business student). The trio’s communal pain inspired Cowper-Smith to create a brace “that could assist with mobility, rather than just providing stability.”
The basis of Spring Loaded Technology is the spring inside: “We just had the small task of reinventing the spring,” Cowper-Smith explains nonchalantly. After four years of development and prototypes, they created a compact spring small enough to fit inside a conventional knee brace. The Levitation bionic knee brace hit markets in 2016 with a sales model focused on selling directly to the consumer through digital advertising. Upon determining the user is a good candidate for getting the spring back in their step, a bracing specialist works with them remotely to measure for the right fit.
Next came the million-dollar contract with the Department of National Defense in which they produced 190 military-grade knee braces for the Canadian Forces. The yearlong pilot project concluded with positive reviews from injured military members and the company hopes to be supplying braces in forthcoming contracts. In the summer of 2017, they received $2.45 million in funding through ACOA’s Atlantic Innovation Fund, which they are using to build a human factors testing lab to assess actual usage of the brace. Currently the Levitation is 100 per cent assembled onsite by the company in Dartmouth’s Burnside Industrial Park: the only part brought in is the brace’s casing.
For Ontario ex-pat Cowper-Smith (Garrish and Kewin are no longer with the company), the transition from scientist to CEO has been a challenging endeavor: “There’s always that little bit of uncomfortableness, a discomfort, with being a little bit out of your realm,” he says. For him the key lies in creating support, and not just with the knee brace. Reinforcing the company’s leadership team has been at the forefront of his agenda: “There’s been incredible support in the community, and we’ve managed to attract some people who are a lot smarter than me that help me fill in the holes.”
“I think a background in science can be really useful for an entrepreneur starting a company, because ultimately what you are trying to do as an entrepreneur, at least in startup, is do a lot of different rapid experiments to figure out how this business is going to work,” says Cowper- Smith.
It looks like 2018 will be an aggressive scaling-up year: four of the 33 employees are currently setting up temporary sales locations across the country. The U.S. and international markets are next.
Co-founder and CEO, Swept Technologies
The Halifax cleaning company turned software developer that’s resetting the norm for janitorial services
There’s no sweeping it under the rug for Michael Brown. When the co-founder and CEO of Swept was growing up, he couldn’t help starting businesses. Heeding the advice of many to learn a trade, he spent a few years as a mechanic before attending SMU’s Sobeys School of Business as a mature student. And then he started another business.
The Parrsboro, Nova Scotia native and his business partner, Matt Cooper, initially started a cleaning business (Clean Simple) as a way to combine Brown’s trade background and Cooper’s software and marketing experience. The Halifaxbased company developed an app to help the client have a smooth booking process while simultaneously providing cleaners with more information so they could do a better job. Throughout the first year and a half of cleaning and expanding into three cities, Clean Simple got down and dirty: “I would be the person, if the cleaner didn’t show up at 2 or 3 in the morning, I would be the one to go out and clean that office or that restaurant, so I have had many shifts, many hours scrubbing toilets,” says Brown.
By 2015 they realized it wasn’t cleaning that was their business; it was the software they had created. “Swept, essentially, is remote team management. Think of Slack (the internal team messaging app), but on steroids, focused specifically on the janitorial industry,” explains Brown.
Shifting gears necessitated completing the ACOA-funded THENEXTPHASE program (which helps entrepreneurs with growth and financing) as well as the Propel ICT accelerator (where “we went in as a cleaning company and came out as a software company,” says Brown). Making the switch from janitorial company to SaaS (Software as a Service) facilitated the attraction of venture capitalists like iNovia Capital, which invests in early stage entrepreneurs, and San Franciscobased Afore Capital. Between the two, Swept attained more than $2.5 million in investment.
The companies using Swept are typically small to medium-sized operations located all over the world: 90 per cent are in the United States with the remainder in seven other countries. While international in use, the 20 employees working for Swept are based in Atlantic Canada—something Brown is really proud of. Rather than brush off its Nova Scotia roots, Brown wants to expand his company and its employee base in the province.
For Brown, maintaining the human connection is as important as the software: “If we can ensure cleaners want to use this, that’s our way in. How do we support the cleaner?” As CEO, Brown is focused on building a strong leadership team for the company as they attempt to make Swept the industry standard in janitorial services.
JORDAN KENNIE
Co-Founder and CEO, Stash Energy
Saving the planet—and consumer wallets—one heat pump at a time
Jordan Kennie wants to get rid of the baseboard baseline for energy consumption in Atlantic Canada. While electric baseboards and oil heat have historically been the norm in home heating on the east coast, Kennie saw the rise in popularity in heat pumps (a home heating/cooling device) as a way for his company’s energy storage system to save money and the environment. As CEO of Stash Energy, one of Atlantic Canada’s newest tech startups, his career turn has found him moving from a student’s desk to the C-suite without much time in between.
Unlike Stash co-founders Daniel Larsen and Erik Hatfield, Kennie wasn’t passionately tinkering with technology throughout his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at UNB. It wasn’t until the Stash trio started the Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (TME) Program at UNB that things started to click. “That’s where I fell in love with engineering as a business,” says the 25-year-old Frederictonian.
What sparked the idea for Stash? A radio interview with Maritime Electric about how heat pumps were taking over P.E.I. The pumps were efficient but required electricity to operate and the island burned oil to generate electricity. Realizing Maritime Electric was proposing to build a $70-million diesel-run plant that would cost $1 million a year to operate provided Kennie et al with the opportunity to develop an alternative.
“We are trying to make the next standard for heat pump,” says Kennie. Stash’s product stores energy to reduce demand for electricity during peak periods of the day—when people first wake up in the morning and when they come home from work at night, blasting the heat while they cook supper. “The biggest motivation for us is renewable energy,” he explains. “We are trying to make sure we use as much wind and solar and non-carbon emitting power as possible. Storage is a very key piece in doing that. You can’t just turn on the wind, right?”
While completing their masters in TME, Stash Energy secured a pilot program with Summerside Electric; owned and operated by the City of Summerside on P.E.I., the utility is one of the most environmentally-advanced energy producers in North America (46 per cent of their energy comes from wind power). Stash found that using their device with a heat pump could save consumers on their home heating costs: from $400-$500 using heat pumps to upwards of $1,500-$2,000 with oil heat. After progressing through a series of startup accelerators and leveraging funding through Opportunities NB and ACOA—as well as a $200,000 investment from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation—Stash plans on launching more programs with Maritime Electric in P.E.I. in the fall of 2018 and with New Brunswick Power in 2019.
Kennie, Startup Canada’s 2017 Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Atlantic Region, is currently participating in the Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) in Denver, Colorado, cavorting with other tech startups focused on clean energy. “That’s the two biggest things for us. Make sure there is clean technology in the world and try to get rid of coal and diesel generator plants as much as we can. And try to save people money while doing it so we can grow our economy.”
Co-founder and president, Nova Scotia Spirits Company
This rapidly-growing Pictou County spirits company is bringing Nova Scotia flavours to the international cocktail scene
‘Willing to Learn’ is more than just the name of the gin he makes, it’s a way of life for this research-driven company. After spending years working in the hospitality and food and beverage industries on the west coast, Alex Rice wanted to head home. He was impassioned by the idea of investing in the economy of Atlantic Canada.
In 2014, Rice and his business partner, Evan MacEachern, started their distillery just outside Trenton in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Inspired by a job notice on the door of their rental, the names of the booze came from “Local lobster fisherman from Ballantyne’s Cove, Antigonish Co. is interested in hiring a helper for the summer. Basic requirement: sober, alert & willing to learn.” With that notice in mind, they named their new products Blue Lobster Vodka, Fisherman’s Helper White Rum, and Willing to Learn.
“We hit the market at the right time. We had an everyday-priced product, which was our target. A product with a price point that’s approachable to people within the market is something that you can afford to purchase as opposed to just at Christmas or a birthday.” Winning three awards at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2016 also helped: “We noticed an immediate lift in our sales. It kind of gave us credence as to the quality of our product.”
Local spirits take on a whole new meaning for Nova Scotia Spirits: 100 per cent of the workforce are Atlantic Canadians and Rice is emphatic they will stay true to their roots. “We are able to create domestic jobs here in rural Nova Scotia that means a lot to the economy, and we’re replacing an international brand with some made here locally.” Their plans are to expand and become a bar staple across Canada, while staying Nova Scotia proud with their branding and product.
Their business model is working: Nova Scotia Spirits was ranked 13th on Canadian Business’ Canada’s Fastest Growing Companies in 2017 list with a laughingly appropriate 902 per cent revenue growth in 2016 (the area code for Nova Scotia is 902).
With stable revenue flowing in, Rice is taking his company to the next level with a new venture and a new town. Painted Boat Beer Company, now in the final planning stages, will focus on the one-beer model (think Steam Whistle or Alexander Keith’s) with a few small-batch offerings at their new brewery in Stellarton, Nova Scotia. They have recently purchased old Scotsburn dairy facilities to serve as the new location and have even rehired some of the previous facilities’ workers.
They currently have 16 full-time employees who are all from Nova Scotia (with one in PEI), and 15 part-time seasonal workers. In the new facility, they hope to hire at least 20 more people and 30 more in the tourist season. “We’ve been super lucky to find the skill, the hardworking team of people right here regionally. We haven’t had to look that far,” says Rice.
1 Comment to “Ones to watch”
» Atlantic Business: Ones to watch // May 15, 2018 at 11:56 am // Reply
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Lousy Jobs Hurt Your Health by the Time You’re in Your 40s
Early Job Satisfaction Has Strongest Impact on Mental Health
Job satisfaction in your late 20s and 30s has a link to overall health in your early 40s, according to a new nationwide study.
While job satisfaction had some impact on physical health, its effect was particularly strong for mental health, researchers found.
Those less than happy with their work early in their careers said they were more depressed and worried and had more trouble sleeping.
And the direction of your job satisfaction — whether it is getting better or worse in your early career — has an influence on your later health, the study showed.
The good news is that people whose job satisfaction started low but got better over the course of their early career didn’t have the health problems associated with consistently low or declining satisfaction.
“We found that there is a cumulative effect of job satisfaction on health that appears as early as your 40s,” said Jonathan Dirlam, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at The Ohio State University.
Dirlam conducted the study with Hui Zheng, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio State. They presented their research at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
Zheng said the results showed the importance that early jobs have on people’s lives.
“You don’t have to be near the end of your career to see the health impact of job satisfaction, particularly on your mental health,” Zheng said.
The researchers used data from 6,432 Americans who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, which followed adults who were between the ages of 14 and 22 when the survey began in 1979.
The NLSY79 is conducted by Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For this study, the researchers examined job satisfaction trajectories for people from age 25 to 39. These participants then reported a variety of health measures after they turned 40.
Participants rated how much they liked their jobs from 1 (dislike very much) to 4 (like very much).
The researchers put participants in four groups: consistently low and consistently high job satisfaction, those whose satisfaction started high but was trending down and those who started low but were trending higher.
The average score of those classified as the low group was nearly 3 (indicating they liked their job “fairly well”), Dirlam noted. But there was a lot of variance in that group, meaning that it included all the people who said they disliked their jobs somewhat or very much.
About 45 percent of participants had consistently low job satisfaction, while another 23 percent had levels that were trending downward through their early career.
About 15 percent of people were consistently happy at their jobs (nearly 4 on the scale) and about 17 percent were trending upward.
Using those who were consistently happy as the reference, the researchers compared how the health of the other three groups compared.
Mental health was most affected by people’s feelings about their jobs.
People who were in the low job satisfaction group throughout their early careers scored worse on all five of the mental health measures studied, study results showed.
They reported higher levels of depression, sleep problems and excessive worry. They were also more likely to have been diagnosed with emotional problems and scored lower on a test of overall mental health.
Those whose job satisfaction started out higher but declined through their early career were more likely than those with consistently high satisfaction to have frequent trouble sleeping and excessive worry, and had lower scores for overall mental health. But they didn’t see an impact on depression scores or their probability of being diagnosed with emotional problems.
Those whose scores went up through the early career years did not see any comparative health problems.
The physical health of those who were unhappy with their jobs wasn’t impacted as much as mental health. Those who were in the low satisfaction group and those who were trending downwards reported poorer overall health and more problems like back pain and frequent colds compared to the high satisfaction group. But they weren’t different in physical functioning and in doctor-diagnosed health problems such as diabetes and cancer.
As was true for mental health, no effects were seen on physical health for those trending upward.
Zheng said it is important to remember that participants were studied when they were only in their 40s.
“The higher levels of mental health problems for those with low job satisfaction may be a precursor to future physical problems,” Zheng said.
“Increased anxiety and depression could lead to cardiovascular or other health problems that won’t show up until they are older.”
Dirlam noted that the study ended before the Great Recession.
“The recession almost certainly increased job insecurity and dissatisfaction, and that could have resulted in more negative health effects,” he said.
About the American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.
The paper, “Job Satisfaction Developmental Trajectories and Health: A Life Course Perspective,” was presented on Aug. 22 in Seattle at the American Sociological Association’s 111th Annual Meeting.
To obtain a copy of the paper; for assistance reaching the study’s author(s); or for more information on other ASA presentations, members of the media can contact Daniel Fowler, ASA Media Relations Manager, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.
Jeff Grabmeier, The Ohio State University, wrote this press release. For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact Grabmeier at (614) 292-8457 or grabmeier.1@osu.edu.
Papers presented at the ASA Annual Meeting are typically working papers that have not yet been published in peer-reviewed journals.
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Contact: Johanna Olexy
Email: communications@asanet.org
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Infusing Institutes are content-centered programs that combine broad introductions to Asian cultures and societies with more fine-grained investigations, both of which are useful in developing humanities and social science curriculum modules. In keeping with this, the presenting faculty with both scholarly and teaching excellence in mind are thoughtfully selected.
Presenting Faculty for the Institute: Shana Brown, Cathy H. Clayton, Xu Di, Stanley Murashige, Yun Peng, Franklin Perkins, Michele Yeh, Ka Zeng.
Institute Director:
Peter HERSHOCK is Director of the Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP) and EducationSpecialist at the East-West Center (EWC) in Honolulu, Hawai’i. His work with ASDP over the past the past twenty years has centered on designing and conducting faculty- and institutional-development programs aimed at enhancing undergraduate teaching and learning about Asian cultures and societies. As part of the EWC Education Program, he has collaborated in designing and hosting international leadership programs and research seminars that examine the relationship among higher education, globalization, equity and diversity. Trained in Asian and comparative philosophy, his main research work has focused on using Buddhist conceptual resources to reflect on contemporary issues of global concern. His books include: Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in Ch’an Buddhism (1996); Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age (1999); Chan Buddhism (2005); Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence (2006); Changing Education: Leadership, Innovation and Development in a Globalizing Asia Pacific (edited, 2007); Educations and their Purposes: A Conversation among Cultures (edited, 2008); Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future (2012); Public Zen, Personal Zen: A Buddhist Introduction (2014); and Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence (edited, 2015).
Goqing, 19th Century, Amoy Province, China. Institute Presenters:
Photo Credit: www.metmuseum.org
Shana BROWN focuses on 19th- and 20th-century China, in particular intellectual and cultural history. A Fulbright scholar, she has degrees from Amherst College and the University of California, Berkeley, and was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Dr. Brown researches Chinese politics and visual culture, collecting practices, and gender. Publications include Pastimes: From Art and Antiquarianism to Modern Chinese Historiography (University of Hawaii, 2011); “Chinese Women as Collectors and Bibliophiles at the Turn-of-the-Century,” in Material Women: Consuming Desires and Collecting Objects, 1770-1950, (Ashgate, 2009); and “Sha Fei, the Jin-Cha-Ji Pictorial, and the Ideology of Chinese Wartime Photojournalism,” in Visual Culture in Wartime China (Institute of East Asian Studies, 2012).
Cathy H. CLAYTON is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Asian Studies Program at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. She has lived and worked in China for nearly ten years since 1986. Her teaching and research explore questions of Chineseness – how and why it becomes a compelling form of collective subjectivity at different points in time and space. Her first book, Sovereignty at the Edge: Macau and the Question of Chineseness, won the 2010 Francis Hsu Award for best new book on East Asia from the Society for East Asian Anthropology. Her forthcoming book examines the Cultural Revolution-style protests in Macau in 1966 that nearly toppled the Portuguese colonial administration. She has studied at Williams College, Stanford University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz; held an An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center; and taught at the University of Macau from 2001-2005.
Stanley MURASHIGE is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he taught from 1993 until 2014. Though officially retired from SAIC, he help lead an SAIC study trip to Japan this summer. He continues to teach part-time in the History/Art History Dept. at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, CA. In 2005-2006, he received the SAIC’s Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award for Excellence in Teaching. He holds a B.A. in Art History from Stanford University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the history of Chinese Art from the University of Chicago. Professor Murashige’s research and teaching concentrate on philosophical aspects of Chinese and Japanese art, in a quest for resources in the past that offer interesting answers for questions our we have today. His goal is to uncover narratives that challenge patterns and habits of thinking. An important part of this work has been taking students to Asia, which he has been doing annually since 2000. He has contributed an essay, "Philosophy and the Arts in China" to the Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, edited by Antonio S. Cua, and his article, "Rhythm, Order, Change and Nature in Guo Xi's Early Spring," was published in Monumenta Serica.
Yun PENG is Assistant Professor at the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from University of Minnesota, and MA degrees in Philosophy and Women’s Studies, respectively, from Peking University and the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests include modern Chinese literature, Chinese cinema, literary criticism, and film theory. Her current work focuses on contemporary Chinese documentary and independent films. At UHM, her teaching focuses on 20th century Chinese literature and film, including courses on the city in literature and visual culture. At present, she is completing a book on modern Chinese realism.
Franklin PERKINS is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa. His main teaching and research interests are in early Chinese philosophy, early modern European philosophy, and in the challenges of doing philosophy in a comparative or intercultural context. He is the author of Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light (Cambridge 2004), Leibniz: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury 2007), and Heaven and Earth are not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy (Indiana 2014), and he was co-editor of Chinese Metaphysics and Its Problems (Cambridge 2015) (with Chenyang Li). His books have been translated into Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese.
Michelle YEH received her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Southern California. Currently she is Distinguished Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis. She has published books and articles on modern and classical Chinese poetry, Taiwan literature, comparative literature, and aromatics, as well as literary translations, including three books of poems, respectively by Yang Mu (in English), Huang Xiang (in English), and Derek Walcott (in Chinese).
XU Di is Professor in Education Foundations in the College of Education at the University of Hawaiˋi, Manoa. Dr. Xu Di has more that two decades teaching and administrative experiences in teacher education, education foundations, multicultural and international education. Since earning her doctorate from Harvard University and prior to coming to UHM, she taught at the University of West Florida, Peking University in Beijing, and National Kaohsiung University in Taiwan. She has he has published widely on teacher education, educational foundations, multicultural education, international education, and ESL education. Dr. Xu Di is committed to live the philosophy she is teaching and is actively involved in community service in Hawaii as well as in the U.S. and the world through her non-profit organization, Operating Infinity. Her publications include: Chinese Philosophy on Teaching and Learning: Xueji in the 21st Century (edited with H. McEwan, 2016) and A Comparison of the Educational Ideas and Practices of John Dewey and Mao Zedong in China (1992).
Ka ZENG is Professor of Political Science and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Arkansas. Her research focuses on China’s role in the global economy, in particular Chinese trade policy, China’s behavior in the World Trade Organization, and China-related trade dispute dynamics. Dr. Zeng is the author of Trade Threats, Trade Wars (University of Michigan Press, 2004), co-author of Greening China (University of Michigan Press, 2011), editor of China’s Foreign Trade Policy (Routledge, 2007), and co-editor of China and Global Trade Governance (Routledge, 2013). She is a contributor to journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, World Development, Journal of World Trade, International Interactions, China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Social Science Quarterly, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, and Journal of Experimental Political Science. Dr. Zeng is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations.
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Colorado Lawmakers Advance 5 Bills To Improve School Safety. Here’s What They’ll Do
By Scott Franz • Nov 1, 2019
Lawmakers agreed to advance five bills at the final school safety committee meeting on Thursday.
Originally published on November 1, 2019 9:15 am
State lawmakers are advancing a bipartisan response to the deadly shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch that occurred in May.
On Thursday, lawmakers on a new school safety committee approved five bills they think will make schools safer in the wake of that shooting.
All of the measures are heading to the full legislature, which will decide whether to pass them when the session kicks off in January.
Here’s a breakdown of their proposals:
Mental health days
Currently, students in Colorado cannot be excused from school for mental health reasons. Sen. Rhonda Fields (D-Aurora) said the existing rules have been on the books since 1963 and should be updated.
“It’s time we (remove) this stigma that’s associated with kids who have issues associated with some kind of sadness,” she said.
She said the bill would allow students to be excused from school for a variety of behavioral health reasons, including grieving the loss of a relative or pet.
High school students recently pushed a similar bill through the Oregon state legislature.
The state of Colorado already trains teachers and school staff to identify mental health issues in their schools. But some lawmakers want to see this program expanded to reach more schools around the state.
The measure would increase the teacher training program budget by $1.5 million starting next school year.
This bill sparked the only drama at Thursday’s hearing.
Republican state senators Paul Lundeen and Bob Gardner opposed the measure, saying they wanted a new school safety working group to decide whether this is the best approach.
Sen. Fields strongly objected to deferring the decision.
“Our kids can’t wait,” she said. “We have kids who are coming into our schools with a variety of different issues. Some of them are coming to school maybe their lights are not on. Maybe they did not eat. Maybe there’s family domestic issues that are happening at home. And they show up in our classrooms. And we’re going to reduce the opportunity for teachers and educators and staff to be trained on how to identify behavior health to a committee?”
The bill passed the committee 6-2. Some members of the audience could be heard voicing their approval when the measure advanced.
Improving Safe 2 Tell
Lawmakers want to spend an additional $50,000 to better advertise the state’s anonymous tip line where students can report threats. The tip line received more than 20,000 tips last school year, and has been replicated in other states.
Lawmakers tabled another proposal that sought to allow police to learn the identity of people who abuse the tip line to make a false report.
New working group
This summer, the state auditor released a report saying a patchwork of school safety programs is creating "gaps in services and challenges in determining their reach and impact." The state spent $75 million on school safety programs in the last two years.
To remedy this, lawmakers are advancing a measure that would create a new school safety working group to better coordinate efforts across the state.
The working group will have members from several state agencies, as well as four lawmakers.
Mental health options for juveniles
State Rep. Susan Bekcman (R-Littleton) thinks the state currently lacks the resources to help children who are facing a mental health crisis.
She notes that since 2009, the state has cut about 60 beds in residential mental health treatment centers for juveniles due to budget constraints.
A measure Beckman and other lawmakers advanced would study this issue to see if the number of beds should be increased in the future.
Capitol Coverage is a collaborative public policy reporting project, providing news and analysis to communities across Colorado for more than a decade. Eleven public radio stations participate in Capitol Coverage from throughout Colorado.
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Birthday in January
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Horoscope of celebrities born on February 20
You will find on this page all the celebrity horoscopes for a birth on February 20, sorted by decreasing popularity.
You can either access the photo and detailed natal chart by clicking on the thumbnail, or read the comprehensive horoscope by clicking on "Display his/her horoscope with biography and chart".
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164 celebrities or events were found for February, 20.
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Born: Saturday, February 20, 1988
In: Saint Michael (Barbados)
Sun: 1°06' Pisces AS: 15°11' Aries
Moon: 11°07' Aries MC: 11°35' Capricorn
Dominants: Aries, Capricorn, Sagittarius
Neptune, Saturn, Moon
Houses 9, 12, 11 / Fire, Earth / Cardinal
Chinese Astrology: Earth Dragon
Height: Rihanna is 5' 8" (1m73) tall
Popularity: 701,936 clicks, 7th woman, 16th celebrity
Biography of Rihanna (excerpt)
Rihanna (pronounced /riːˈɑːnə/, born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20, 1988 (birth time source: Imdb http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1982597/bio.ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm "Born on a Saturday at 8:50 AM.")), is a Barbadian singer. She also serves as the cultural ambassador for Barbados. She is the first Barbadian artist to win a Grammy Award.
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Born: Monday, February 20, 1967
In: Aberdeen (WA) (United States)
Sun: 1°49' Pisces AS: 23°21' Virgo
Moon: 13°24' Cancer MC: 21°47' Gemini
Dominants: Pisces, Virgo, Cancer
Uranus, Mercury, Pluto
Houses 6, 7, 10 / Water, Earth / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Fire Goat
Height: Kurt Cobain is 5' 7" (1m70) tall
Biography of Kurt Cobain (excerpt)
Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 (birth time source: Craft, Astrodatabank, BC) – c. April 5, 1994) was the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the Seattle-based rock band Nirvana. Cobain was born in Aberdeen, Washington and grew up with a troubled childhood, which he frequently addressed in his songs and interviews.
Born: Sunday, February 20, 1966
In: DeKalb (IL) (United States)
Sun: 1°45' Pisces AS: 22°33' Cancer
Moon: 5°58' Pisces MC: 3°53' Aries
Dominants: Pisces, Cancer, Capricorn
Moon, Mars, Venus
Houses 9, 7, 8 / Water, Earth / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Fire Horse
Height: Cindy Crawford is 5' 9" (1m75) tall
Popularity: 165,451 clicks, 102nd woman, 219th celebrity
Biography of Cindy Crawford (excerpt)
Cynthia Ann Crawford (born February 20, 1966, in Dekalb, Illinois (birth time source: Craft, Astrodatabank)) is an American supermodel, MTV television personality, celebrity endorser, cover girl, and actress. Early life Born in DeKalb, Illinois, to Dan Crawford and Jennifer Crawford in 1966, Cindy Crawford's trademark is a visible mole on her face (although most people refer to it as a "beauty mark").
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In: Gottwaldov (Czech Republic)
Sun: 1°02' Pisces AS: 24°52' Scorpio
Moon: 0°37' Sagittarius MC: 14°50' Virgo
Dominants: Pisces, Sagittarius, Aquarius
Moon, Pluto, Mars
Houses 3, 1, 9 / Water, Fire / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Earth Ox
Height: Ivana Trump is 5' 11½" (1m82) tall
Popularity: 52,814 clicks, 469th woman, 1,076th celebrity
Biography of Ivana Trump (excerpt)
Ivana Trump was born Ivana Marie Zelníčková in Gottwaldov, Czechoslovakia (now Zlín, Czech Republic) on February 20, 1949. She is a former Olympic athlete and fashion model noted for her marriage to mogul Donald Trump and celebrity brand. Early years In 1968, Ivana Zelníčková was selected as an alternate on the 1968 Czechoslovakian Olympic Ski Team which allowed her several opportunities to travel outside the Communist Bloc.
Born: Wednesday, February 20, 1974
In: Boulogne-Billancourt (France)
Sun: 1°36' Pisces AS: 8°18' Leo
Moon: 13°47' Aquarius MC: 20°12' Aries
Dominants: Aquarius, Pisces, Leo
Uranus, Sun, Mars
Houses 8, 7, 10 / Air, Fire / Fixed
Chinese Astrology: Wood Tiger
Height: Ophélie Winter is 5' 7½" (1m72) tall
Biography of Ophélie Winter (excerpt)
Ophélie Kleerekoper-Winter (born February 20, 1974 in Boulogne, France) is a French singer and actress. Her father David Alexander Winter, was a Dutch pop singer during the 1970s, while her mother was a French fashion model, who is now currently her agent.
In: Moscow (Russia)
Sun: 1°41' Pisces
Moon: 8°25' Pisces
Dominants: Pisces, Aries, Scorpio
Pluto, Neptune, Mars
Water, Fire / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Wood Ox
Height: Julia Volkova is 5' 2" (1m57) tall
Popularity: 33,339 clicks, 902nd woman, 2,120th celebrity
Biography of Julia Volkova (excerpt)
Yulia Olegovna Volkova (Russian: Юлия Олеговна Волкова born 20 February 1985), better known by the alternative spelling of Julia, is a Russian singer, recording artist and actress, best known for being a member in the Russian girl group t.A.T.u., along with Lena Katina.
In: Soweto (South Africa)
Moon: 18°46' Libra
Dominants: Scorpio, Aquarius, Pisces
Pluto, Neptune, Sun
Water, Air / Fixed
Chinese Astrology: Wood Rat
Height: Trevor Noah is 5' 11" (1m80) tall
Popularity: 32,794 clicks, 1,255th man, 2,179th celebrity
Biography of Trevor Noah (excerpt)
Trevor Noah (born 20 February 1984) is a South African comedian He has also been a radio DJ, actor and TV host. Background Trevor Noah was born to a South African (Xhosa) mother and a white European (Swiss) father. His mixed-race heritage, his experiences growing up in a Soweto township, and his observations about race and ethnicity are leading themes in his comedy.
In: Leeds (AL) (United States)
Moon: 17°57' Capricorn
Dominants: Pisces, Capricorn, Aquarius
Pluto, Sun, Saturn
Earth, Water / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Water Rabbit
Height: Charles Barkley is 6' 6" (1m98) tall
Biography of Charles Barkley (excerpt)
Charles Wade Barkley (born February 20, 1963) is a retired American professional basketball player. Commonly nicknamed "Sir Charles" and "The Round Mound of Rebound", Barkley established himself as one of the most dominating power forwards in the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
In: Miami Beach (FL) (United States)
Sun: 1°27' Pisces AS: 8°54' Libra
Moon: 19°31' Libra MC: 9°05' Cancer
Dominants: Pisces, Libra, Cancer
Pluto, Venus, Moon
Houses 6, 5, 1 / Water, Air / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Fire Rabbit
Height: Sidney Poitier is 6' 2½" (1m89) tall
Popularity: 29,841 clicks, 1,467th man, 2,501st celebrity
Biography of Sidney Poitier (excerpt)
Sir Sidney Poitier KBE, (born February 20, 1927), is an Academy Award-winning Bahamian American actor, film director, and activist. He broke through as a star in acclaimed performances in American films and plays, which, by consciously defying racial stereotyping, gave a new dramatic credibility for black actors to mainstream film audiences in the Western world.
Laure Guibert
Born: Tuesday, February 20, 1968
In: Nantes (44) (France)
Sun: 0°42' Pisces AS: 26°24' Aquarius
Moon: 19°31' Scorpio MC: 14°05' Sagittarius
Dominants: Aquarius, Virgo, Pisces
Sun, Jupiter, Mercury
Houses 1, 7, 12 / Air, Water / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Earth Monkey
Height: Laure Guibert is 5' 5½" (1m67) tall
Popularity: 26,627 clicks, 1,230th woman, 3,010th celebrity
Biography of Laure Guibert (excerpt)
Laure Guibert, born on February 20, 1968 in Nantes (birth time source: Astrotheme, acte n° NA02/359), is a French actress, former TV host, and artist. Filmography Television 2012 : Le Jour où tout a basculé (série TV) - J'ai hérité d'un trésor volé (Sophie Dupré) since 2011 : Les Mystères de l'amour (série TV) - (Bénédicte Da Silva) 2009 : Comprendre et pardonner (série TV) 2008 : Pat et les filles (série TV) - (Elle-même) 2007 : Baie des flamboyants (série TV) - (Jessica Alban) 1999 : Island détectives (série TV) - (Karine) 1996 - 2007 : Les Vacances de l'amour (série TV) - (Bénédicte Beaulais) 1995 - 1996 : Le Miracle de l'amour (série TV) - (Bénédicte Breton)
In: Giffnock, Scotland (United Kingdom)
Moon: 12°53' Leo MC: 4°43' Capricorn
Dominants: Pisces, Libra, Leo
Neptune, Uranus, Saturn
Houses 12, 6, 5 / Water, Fire / Cardinal
Chinese Astrology: Metal Rabbit
Height: Gordon Brown is 5' 11" (1m80) tall
Popularity: 24,328 clicks, 2,052nd man, 3,478th celebrity
Biography of Gordon Brown (excerpt)
James Gordon Brown MP (born 20 February 1951) is the 52nd and current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, the current Member of Parliament for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and the Leader of the Labour Party.
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In: Avignon (84) (France)
Moon: 27°45' Pisces MC: 20°35' Aries
Dominants: Pisces, Aquarius, Leo
Uranus, Sun, Venus
Houses 6, 8, 11 / Water, Air / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Water Rat
Popularity: 24,285 clicks, 2,061st man, 3,491st celebrity
Biography of Pierre Boulle (excerpt)
Pierre Boulle (20 February 1912 (birth time source: Didier Geslain, birth certificate) – 30 January 1994) was a French novelist largely known for his combination of psychology and adventure, most famously in The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963).
In: New York (NY) (United States)
Sun: 0°43' Pisces AS: 16°32' Taurus
Moon: 0°05' Virgo MC: 26°59' Capricorn
Dominants: Sagittarius, Pisces, Taurus
Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn
Houses 8, 11, 5 / Fire, Earth / Mutable
Height: Gloria Vanderbilt is 5' 7" (1m70) tall
Popularity: 23,028 clicks, 1,540th woman, 3,781st celebrity
Biography of Gloria Vanderbilt (excerpt)
Gloria Laura Vanderbilt (born February 20, 1924 in New York City, New York) is an American artist, actress, and socialite most noted as an early developer of designer blue jeans. Early life and heiress status Vanderbilt is one of few child of railroad heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880-1925) and his second wife, Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan (1904-1965).
Born: Friday, February 20, 1987
In: Downingtown (PA) (United States)
Moon: 23°01' Scorpio
Dominants: Pisces, Scorpio, Capricorn
Water, Earth / Mutable
Numerology: Birthpath 11
Height: Miles Teller is 6' (1m83) tall
Popularity: 22,657 clicks, 2,301st man, 3,890th celebrity
Biography of Miles Teller (excerpt)
Miles Teller (born February 20, 1987) is an American actor. Teller was nominated for the Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actor at the Chlotrudis Awards 2011 and the Discovery Award at the Savannah Film Festival for his role as Jason in the 2010 film Rabbit Hole.
Carlos (singer)
In: Paris 5e (France)
Sun: 0°57' Pisces AS: 22°13' Gemini
Moon: 3°34' Virgo MC: 19°43' Aquarius
Dominants: Gemini, Aquarius, Pisces
Mercury, Uranus, Sun
Houses 12, 9, 10 / Air, Water / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Water Goat
Height: Carlos (singer) is 5' 6" (1m68) tall
Biography of Carlos (singer) (excerpt)
Yvan-Chrysostome Dolto, sometimes called Jean-Christophe Doltovitch, better known as Carlos, was a French singer and humorist, born February 20, 1943 in Paris (birth time source: Didier Geslain, birth certificate), died January 17, 2008 in Paris. He was the son of French psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto and Boris Dolto.
In: Beauvais (60) (France)
Moon: 12°21' Libra MC: 21°38' Aquarius
Dominants: Pisces, Gemini, Leo
Neptune, Sun, Venus
Houses 10, 11, 4 / Water, Air / Mutable
Height: Hubert de Givenchy is 6' 6" (1m98) tall
Popularity: 19,321 clicks, 2,943rd man, 4,911th celebrity
Biography of Hubert de Givenchy (excerpt)
Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy (born February 20, 1927 (birth time source: Didier Geslain, birth certificate), died on March 10, 2018) is a French aristocrat and fashion designer who founded the The House of Givenchy in 1952. He is famous for having designed much of the personal and professional wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn, as well as clothing for clients such as Jacqueline Kennedy.
In: Paris 18e (France)
Sun: 0°40' Pisces AS: 1°59' Scorpio
Moon: 25°19' Aries MC: 11°38' Leo
Dominants: Aquarius, Leo, Taurus
Pluto, Mercury, Venus
Houses 4, 7, 9 / Fire, Air / Fixed
Chinese Astrology: Water Horse
Popularity: 18,940 clicks, 3,033rd man, 5,052nd celebrity
Biography of Claude Miller (excerpt)
Claude Miller (February 20, 1942 (birth time source: Didier Geslain, birth certificate) - April 4, 2012) was a French film director, producer and screenwriter. Career Claude Miller was born to a not religious jewish family. A student at Paris' IDHEC film school from 1962 through 1963, Miller had his first practical cinematic experience while he was in uniform, serving with the Service Cinéma de l'Armée.
Sun: 1°55' Pisces AS: 4°14' Virgo
Moon: 8°22' Libra MC: 0°27' Gemini
Dominants: Pisces, Libra, Virgo
Venus, Sun, Mercury
Chinese Astrology: Wood Horse
Height: Patty Hearst is 5' 3" (1m60) tall
Popularity: 18,578 clicks, 2,071st woman, 5,200th celebrity
Biography of Patty Hearst (excerpt)
Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954), now known as Patricia Hearst Shaw, is an American newspaper heiress and occasional actress. The granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, she gained notoriety in 1974 when, following her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army, she ultimately joined her captors in furthering their cause.
In: Glencoe (IL) (United States)
Moon: 7°55' Cancer
Dominants: Pisces, Cancer, Scorpio
Moon, Venus, Jupiter
Height: Lili Taylor is 5' 5" (1m65) tall
Biography of Lili Taylor (excerpt)
Lili Anne Taylor (born February 20, 1967) is an American theater, film and television actress. Taylor, the second youngest of six children, was born in Glencoe, Illinois to Marie, a professional babysitter, and Park Taylor, a folk artist and hardware store operator.
Jay Hernández
In: Montebello (CA) (United States)
Moon: 6°30' Leo
Dominants: Pisces, Leo, Aquarius
Sun, Uranus, Venus
Chinese Astrology: Earth Horse
Height: Jay Hernández is 5' 8½" (1m74) tall
Popularity: 17,843 clicks, 3,337th man, 5,522nd celebrity
Biography of Jay Hernández (excerpt)
Jay Hernandez (born February 20, 1978) is an American actor. Height: 5' 8½" (1.74 m) Hernandez was born Javier Manuel Hernandez, Jr. in Montebello, California to Isis (Maldonado), a secretary, and Javier Hernandez, Sr., a mechanic. He has a younger sister, Amelia, and two older brothers, Michael and Gabriel.
Born: Thursday, February 20, 1975
In: Lexington (KY) (United States)
Sun: 1°00' Pisces AS: 1°41' Sagittarius
Moon: 12°40' Gemini MC: 15°25' Virgo
Dominants: Pisces, Sagittarius, Gemini
Jupiter, Neptune, Mercury
Chinese Astrology: Wood Rabbit
Height: Brian Littrell is 5' 8" (1m73) tall
Biography of Brian Littrell (excerpt)
Brian Thomas Littrell (born February 20, 1975 (birth time source: Viktor E., Astrodatabank, birth certificate)) is an American singer, best known as a member of the Backstreet Boys. He is also a contemporary Christian recording artist, and released a solo album, Welcome Home (You), in 2006.
Jennifer O'Neill
In: Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Sun: 0°26' Pisces AS: 26°37' Sagittarius
Dominants: Sagittarius, Gemini, Pisces
Jupiter, Moon, Uranus
Houses 12, 3, 7 / Fire, Air / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Earth Rat
Height: Jennifer O'Neill is 5' 8" (1m73) tall
Biography of Jennifer O'Neill (excerpt)
Jennifer O'Neill (born February 20, 1948) is an American actress and author. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the daughter of a Spanish-Irish businessman and his English wife. As a teenager, O'Neill worked as a fashion model and appeared in television commercials and on magazine covers.
Natacha Lindinger
Moon: 17°50' Leo MC: 19°43' Libra
Dominants: Pisces, Sagittarius, Aries
Mars, Jupiter, Venus
Houses 2, 4, 10 / Fire, Water / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Metal Dog
Biography of Natacha Lindinger (excerpt)
Natacha Lindinger is a French actress, born February 20, 1970 in Paris 17e (birth time source: Astrotheme, civil registrar, acte n° 383). Filmography Movies 1995 : Ainsi soient-elles de Patrick Alessandrin et Lisa Alessandrin : la jeune femme sur la terrasse 1997 : Double Team de Tsui Hark : Kathryn Quinn 1998 : Mes amis de Michel Hazanavicius : Carla 1998 : La Ballade de Titus (le rêve de la carotte) : Jeanne 1999 : Cleves Land 2002 : Quelqu'un de bien de Patrick Timsit : Virginie 2003 : Ni pour ni contre (bien au contraire) de Cédric Klapisch : Caprice 2005 : Vive la vie de Yves Fajnberg : l'ex-femme
In: Sheffield (AL) (United States)
Moon: 4°36' Taurus
Dominants: Taurus, Aquarius, Pisces
Moon, Pluto, Venus
Earth, Air / Fixed
Height: Mitch McConnell is 5' 9½" (1m76) tall
Biography of Mitch McConnell (excerpt)
Addison Mitchell "Mitch" McConnell, Jr. (born February 20, 1942) is the senior United States Senator from Kentucky. A member of the Republican Party, he has been the Minority Leader of the Senate since January 3, 2007. Following the 2014 Senate elections, he is set to become the Senate Majority leader.
In: Bayonne (64) (France)
Sun: 0°41' Pisces AS: 5°39' Capricorn
Moon: 23°43' Aries MC: 2°30' Scorpio
Dominants: Virgo, Aries, Capricorn
Pluto, Saturn, Neptune
Houses 8, 3, 2 / Earth, Water / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Metal Monkey
Height: Imanol Harinordoquy is 6' 3½" (1m92) tall
Biography of Imanol Harinordoquy (excerpt)
Imanol Harinordoquy (born 20 February 1980 (birth time source: Astrotheme, acte n° 372)) is a French rugby union player who typically plays as a number 8 for France internationally and Biarritz at club level. Before signing with Biarritz for the 2004-05 season, he played club rugby at Pau.
In: Boulogne-Billancourt (92) (France)
Sun: 1°17' Pisces AS: 23°45' Pisces
Moon: 10°05' Aquarius MC: 27°21' Sagittarius
Dominants: Pisces, Aquarius, Sagittarius
Saturn, Neptune, Jupiter
Houses 12, 4, 7 / Air, Water / Mutable
Height: Fred Testot is 5' 11½" (1m82) tall
Biography of Fred Testot (excerpt)
Fredéric "Fred" Testot (born 20 February 1974 in Boulogne-Billancourt (birth time source: Astrotheme, civil registrar, acte n° 363)) is a French actor, humorist and filmmaker. He has collaborated extensively with Omar Sy as the comedy duo Omar and Fred. Life and career
In: Chillicothe (OH) (United States)
Moon: 2°48' Cancer MC: 5°49' Capricorn
Dominants: Aries, Cancer, Pisces
Moon, Mars, Saturn
Houses 3, 12, 1 / Water, Fire / Cardinal
Chinese Astrology: Fire Ox
Biography of Nancy Wilson (excerpt)
Nancy Sue Wilson (February 20, 1937 (birth time source: Gauquelin, birth certificate) – December 13, 2018) was an American singer whose career spanned over five decades, from the mid–1950s until her retirement in the early–2010s. She was notable for her single "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am" and her version of the standard "Guess Who I Saw Today".
In: Kansas City (MO) (United States)
Moon: 22°28' Capricorn MC: 22°59' Leo
Dominants: Scorpio, Aquarius, Leo
Neptune, Saturn, Mercury
Houses 3, 4, 1 / Water, Air / Fixed
Height: Robert Altman is 6' (1m83) tall
Popularity: 12,557 clicks, 5,402nd man, 8,941st celebrity
Biography of Robert Altman (excerpt)
Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his work with an Academy Honorary Award.
In: Camden, London (United Kingdom)
Moon: 1°23' Libra
Dominants: Pisces, Libra, Sagittarius
Venus, Sun, Saturn
Water, Air / Mutable
Height: Anthony Head is 6' 1" (1m85) tall
Popularity: 11,969 clicks, 5,818th man, 9,623rd celebrity
Biography of Anthony Head (excerpt)
Anthony Stewart Head (born 20 February 1954) is an English actor and musician who has appeared in theatre, television and films. He is most widely known for his role as Rupert Giles in the American television drama series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as the Prime Minister in the British comedy show Little Britain, as Dr.
Rudi Garcia
In: Nemours (77) (France)
Moon: 0°42' Gemini MC: 16°06' Pisces
Dominants: Pisces, Virgo, Gemini
Pluto, Moon, Neptune
Chinese Astrology: Wood Dragon
Height: Rudi Garcia is 5' 9" (1m75) tall
Biography of Rudi Garcia (excerpt)
Rudi Garcia, (born 20 February 1964, in Nemours, France (birth time source: Didier Geslain)) is a football manager. He is currently coaching Le Mans UC72.
In: Oakland (CA) (United States)
Height: Chelsea Peretti is 5' 7½" (1m71) tall
Biography of Chelsea Peretti (excerpt)
Chelsea Peretti (born February 20, 1978) is an American stand-up comedian, actress and writer. Peretti currently co-stars as Gina Linetti on the FOX comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Personal life Peretti was born in Oakland, California. Her father is Italian-American and her mother is Jewish (Peretti's stepmother was African-American).
Richard Cocciante
In: Saïgon (Vietnam)
Moon: 16°48' Libra MC: 14°49' Capricorn
Dominants: Libra, Cancer, Pisces
Mars, Moon, Saturn
Houses 4, 11, 6 / Water, Air / Cardinal
Chinese Astrology: Fire Dog
Popularity: 11,619 clicks, 6,121st man, 10,106th celebrity
Biography of Richard Cocciante (excerpt)
Riccardo Cocciante, also known in French-speaking countries as Richard Cocciante (born February 20, 1946 (birth time source: Steinbrecher, Paddy de Jabrun, Astrodatabank (wrong timezone on Astrodatabank)), is a French-Italian singer-songwriter and actor. He was born in in Saigon, French Indochina, now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to a French mother and Italian father.
Moon: 4°19' Leo MC: 13°04' Libra
Dominants: Aquarius, Sagittarius, Pisces
Uranus, Neptune, Jupiter
Houses 2, 12, 8 / Air, Fire / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Water Tiger
Biography of Ansel Adams (excerpt)
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West. His studio, which is owned by the Adams family, is the “Ansel Adams Gallery.” Life Childhood Adams was born in the Western Addition of San Francisco, California to distinctly upper-class parents Charles and Olive Adams.
In: New Haven (CT) (United States)
Sun, Uranus, Neptune
Height: Lauren Ambrose is 5' 6" (1m68) tall
Popularity: 11,011 clicks, 4,333rd woman, 11,034th celebrity
Biography of Lauren Ambrose (excerpt)
Lauren Ambrose (born Laura Anne D'Ambruoso, 20 February 1978) is an American film and television actress, best known for portraying the character Claire Fisher on the popular HBO drama Six Feet Under. Biography Personal life Ambrose was born in New Haven, Connecticut of Italian descent on her father's side, and attended Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, Wilbur Cross High School, High School in the Community, and the ACES Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven.
Moon: 12°07' Aries MC: 10°29' Aries
Dominants: Aries, Capricorn, Leo
Moon, Venus, Saturn
Houses 10, 6, 8 / Fire, Water / Cardinal
Height: Sophie Tapie is 5' 6" (1m68) tall
Popularity: 10,712 clicks, 4,511th woman, 11,543rd celebrity
Biography of Sophie Tapie (excerpt)
Sophie Tapie, born February 20, 1988 in Paris (birth time source: Astrotheme, civil registrar, acte n° 855), is a French actress and TV host. She is the daugther of French businessman, singer, politician, actor and comedian Bernard Tapie.
In: Henderson (TX) (United States)
Sun: 1°22' Pisces AS: 5°26' Aries
Moon: 23°12' Libra MC: 3°20' Capricorn
Neptune, Mars, Venus
Houses 12, 7, 4 / Water, Air / Cardinal
Height: Sandy Duncan is 5' 4½" (1m64) tall
Popularity: 10,652 clicks, 4,549th woman, 11,652nd celebrity
Biography of Sandy Duncan (excerpt)
Sandra Kay "Sandy" Duncan (born February 20, 1946) is an American singer and actress of stage and television. Her most notable trademarks are her pixie blonde hairdo and her perky demeanor. She was born in Henderson, Texas. Among her most prominent roles is playing Sandy Hogan on the sitcom The Hogan Family.
Brenda Blethyn
In: Ramsgate, Kent (United Kingdom)
Venus, Neptune, Uranus
Height: Brenda Blethyn is 5' 2" (1m57) tall
Popularity: 10,595 clicks, 4,584th woman, 11,760th celebrity
Biography of Brenda Blethyn (excerpt)
Brenda Blethyn OBE (born 20 February 1946) is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning English film, stage, television and voice actress, and writer. Blethyn performs predominantly in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from comedies and dramas to historical films and crimes.
André van Duin
In: Rotterdam (Netherlands)
Sun: 1°00' Pisces AS: 3°30' Cancer
Moon: 24°08' Aquarius MC: 28°07' Aquarius
Dominants: Aquarius, Pisces, Cancer
Moon, Sun, Mars
Houses 9, 10, 12 / Air, Water / Fixed
Chinese Astrology: Fire Pig
Popularity: 10,471 clicks, 7,325th man, 11,991st celebrity
Biography of André van Duin (excerpt)
André van Duin (pseudonym for Adrianus Marinus Kyvon; born 20 February 1947 in Rotterdam) is a Dutch actor (in comedy and theatre), singer, writer and program creator. History Television, radio and theatre Van Duin was discovered in 1964 when he won the AVRO talent contest show Nieuwe Oogst, which gave him the opportunity to debut on television alongside singing father and daughter Willy and Willeke Alberti.
In: Paris (France)
Sun: 1°12' Pisces AS: 0°41' Taurus
Moon: 4°21' Gemini MC: 13°39' Capricorn
Dominants: Capricorn, Taurus, Pisces
Venus, Saturn, Mars
Houses 6, 10, 11 / Earth, Air / Mutable
Popularity: 10,462 clicks, 7,333rd man, 12,005th celebrity
Biography of Georges Bernanos (excerpt)
Georges Bernanos (February 20, 1888, Paris – July 5, 1948, Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to what he identified as defeatism leading to France's defeat in 1940.
Pichaya Nitipaisalkul
In: Bangkok (Thailand)
Mars, Pluto, Neptune
Height: Pichaya Nitipaisalkul is 5' 7" (1m70) tall
Biography of Pichaya Nitipaisalkul (excerpt)
Golf & Mike, more often credited in Thailand as Golf-Mike (Thai: กอล์ฟ-ไมค์), is a Thai pop duo artist consisting of brothers Pichaya "Golf" Nitipaisalkul and Pirat "Mike" Nitipaisalkul, formed under Thailand's biggest entertainment company, GMM Grammy. Members Pichaya Nitipaisalkul (Thai: พิชญะ นิธิไพศาลกุล; RTGS: Phitchaya Nithiphaisalakun) or Golf, born February 20, 1987
Karl Albrecht
In: Essen (Germany)
Dominants: Pisces, Leo, Scorpio
Neptune, Saturn, Mars
Popularity: 10,349 clicks, 7,478th man, 12,234th celebrity
Biography of Karl Albrecht (excerpt)
Karl Hans Albrecht (20 February 1920 – 16 July 2014) was a German entrepreneur who founded the discount supermarket chain Aldi with his brother Theo. He was for many years the richest person in Germany. Karl and Theo Albrecht were raised in modest circumstances in Essen.
In: Madrid (Spain)
Moon: 19°59' Cancer MC: 20°06' Capricorn
Dominants: Cancer, Pisces, Capricorn
Moon, Saturn, Venus
Houses 11, 4, 9 / Water, Earth / Cardinal
Chinese Astrology: Wood Rooster
Biography of Cruz Beckham (excerpt)
Cruz David Beckham, born February 20, 2005 in Madrid, Spain, is the the son of footballer David Beckham and his wife, ex Spice Girl Victoria Beckham (born Victoria Adams). He has two brothers, Brooklyn Joseph Beckham born March 4, 1999 in London and Romeo James Beckham, born September 1, 2002 in London.
René Dubos
In: Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt (95) (France)
Moon: 18°56' Pisces MC: 27°39' Capricorn
Dominants: Pisces, Capricorn, Taurus
Saturn, Venus, Uranus
Houses 11, 10, 9 / Earth, Water / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Metal Ox
Popularity: 9,499 clicks, 8,908th man, 14,336th celebrity
Biography of René Dubos (excerpt)
René Jules Dubos (February 20, 1901 – February 20, 1982) was a French-American microbiologist, experimental pathologist, environmentalist, humanist, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book So Human An Animal. He is credited as an author of a maxim "Think globally, act locally".
Pierre Quinon
In: Lyon (69) (France)
Moon: 7°33' Virgo MC: 2°55' Scorpio
Dominants: Aquarius, Pisces, Virgo
Saturn, Pluto, Venus
Houses 2, 1, 8 / Water, Earth / Fixed
Height: Pierre Quinon is 5' 11" (1m80) tall
Biography of Pierre Quinon (excerpt)
Pierre Quinon (born February 20, 1962 in Lyon (birth time source: Didier Geslain, birth certificate), died on August 17, 2011 in Hyères) is a retired pole vaulter from France. He was born in Lyon. On August 28, 1983 he set a new world record with 5.
Georges-Joseph Toutée
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In: Saint-Fargeau (89) (France)
Moon: 21°30' Aries MC: 12°25' Aquarius
Dominants: Pisces, Gemini, Aquarius
Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune
Houses 11, 10, 12 / Water, Air / Mutable
Popularity: 9,234 clicks, 9,510th man, 15,201st celebrity
Biography of Georges-Joseph Toutée (excerpt)
Georges-Joseph Toutée, born February 20, 1855 in Saint-Fargeau, died in 1914 (some sources give 1927), was a French military, general, politician, and explorer in Africa. He was also an author, and has written Dahomé, Niger, Touareg, Récit de voyage (1897), Du Dahomé au Sahara and La nature et l'homme (1899).
In: Toronto, Ontario (Canada)
Moon: 2°25' Aries
Dominants: Aquarius, Aries, Pisces
Mars, Uranus, Saturn
Fire, Air / Fixed
Chinese Astrology: Fire Snake
Height: Gail Kim is 5' 4" (1m63) tall
Popularity: 9,224 clicks, 5,701st woman, 15,222nd celebrity
Biography of Gail Kim (excerpt)
Gail Kim (born February 20, 1977) is a Canadian-born professional wrestler of Korean descent, valet, model, and actress. She is currently signed with World Wrestling Entertainment. In WWE, she is a former one time Women's Champion, having won the title on her debut match for WWE.
In: Long Island (NY) (United States)
Moon: 2°51' Scorpio
Dominants: Pisces, Virgo, Scorpio
Water, Earth / Fixed
Chinese Astrology: Wood Snake
Height: Ron Eldard is 5' 10" (1m78) tall
Popularity: 9,203 clicks, 9,563rd man, 15,281st celebrity
Biography of Ron Eldard (excerpt)
Ronald Jason Eldard (born February 20, 1965) is an American film, television and stage actor known for his understated character roles on both the screen and the stage. Early life Eldard, the second youngest of seven children, was born in Long Island, New York.
In: Caracas (Venezuela)
Moon: 21°41' Virgo
Dominants: Aquarius, Pisces, Libra
Mercury, Neptune, Venus
Air, Water / Mutable
Chinese Astrology: Metal Rooster
Popularity: 9,191 clicks, 5,727th woman, 15,326th celebrity
Biography of Majandra Delfino (excerpt)
Majandra Delfino (born Maria Alejandra Delfino on February 20, 1981 in Caracas, Venezuela), is an actress who is best known for her role as Maria DeLuca in the cult television series Roswell. Delfino was nicknamed "Majandra" by her elder sister, Marieh, who is also an actress.
In: Piapot Reserve (Canada)
Moon: 27°48' Sagittarius
Dominants: Taurus, Pisces, Sagittarius
Jupiter, Mars, Pluto
Earth, Fire / Fixed
Chinese Astrology: Metal Snake
Popularity: 9,119 clicks, 5,791st woman, 15,548th celebrity
Biography of Buffy Sainte-Marie (excerpt)
Buffy Sainte-Marie (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, February 20, 1941 or this date in 1942) is an Academy Award-winning Canadian First Nations musician, composer, visual artist, pacifist, educator and social activist. Personal life Buffy Sainte-Marie was born February 20, 1941 on the Piapot Cree Indian reserve in the Qu'Appelle valley, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Gérard Hamel
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In: Sourdun (77) (France)
Moon: 15°16' Gemini
Dominants: Aquarius, Gemini, Pisces
Neptune, Mars, Pluto
Popularity: 9,098 clicks, 9,801st man, 15,615th celebrity
Biography of Gérard Hamel (excerpt)
Gérard Hamel (born February 21, 1945 in Sourdun (Seine-et-Marne)) is a member of the National Assembly of France. He represents the Eure-et-Loire department, and is a member of the Union for a Popular Movement.
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NYC Tops U.S. Rental Rates Survey
New York City had the highest rental rates for the cheapest available rental car, according to Cheap Car Rental's survey. Photo via Wikimedia.
For the cheapest available rental car, New York City had the highest average rate at $76 per day, according to Cheap Car Rental’s recent survey that compared 50 popular U.S. destinations based on their car rental rates from June 2013 to May 2014.
Detroit came in second place with an average daily rate of $69 while Memphis followed close behind with a rate of $67, according to the survey.
With an average rate of $25 per day for the most affordable car, Orlando was ranked as the least expensive U.S. car rental city. According to the survey, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas were also ranked low with an average daily rate fell below $30.
Because costs fluctuate heavily for some of these destinations, the rental prices are average rates, says the company. For example, during the off-season, Miami travelers could find a rental car for less than $20 per day. But during the high season, they may have to pay $60 or more.
Here are the 10 most expensive and 10 least expensive U.S. car rental destinations. Each respective city's airport was chosen as the pickup and drop-off location, according to Cheap Car Rental.
10 most expensive: New York City ($76); Detroit ($69); Memphis ($67); Baltimore ($65); New Orleans ($63); Buffalo ($62); Kansas City ($62); Boston ($62); Charlotte ($60); Houston ($59)
10 least expensive: Orlando ($25); Tampa ($26); Fort Lauderdale ($26); Las Vegas ($27); San Diego ($28); Los Angeles ($29); Miami ($31); Salt Lake City ($36); Philadelphia ($37); Atlanta ($37).
For the survey’s full list of the 50 U.S. cities, visit: http://www.cheapcarrental.net/press/usa2014.html
Read more about New York City Rental Rates Orlando Cheap Car Rental
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Energy, IL lawyers (132 results)
Bridget Lawler
Energy Attorney
Bridget Lawler graduated from St. Louis University with a B.A. Following her graduation from St. Louis University, Bridget graduated from Southern Illinois University Law School with a J.D. and was admitted to the Illinois State Bar in 2000. After...
David Lawler
I am a Southern Illinois University School of Law alumni who has been practicing is Southern Illinois since 2010. I was a prosecutor with the Williamson County State's Attorney office. I handled a variety of criminal cases ranging from drug posses...
Daniel Klingemann
Daniel Klingemann graduated from the Southern Illinois School of Law in December of 2014 and became licensed to practice law in May of 2015. After graduating Daniel and his family decided to remain in Southern Illinois as they had fallen in love w...
Joseph Cervantez
Joseph A. Cervantez is a Graduate of Southern Illinois University School of Law. Joseph had the privilege of beginning his career as an Assistant State’s Attorney with the Williamson County State’s Attorney’s Office where he gained valuable court ...
Michael Benson is a St. Louis / Southern Illinois bankruptcy attorney. Michael received his Juris Doctorate (JD) degree from the Saint Louis University School of Law in 2004. Prior to working in the field of law, Mr. Benson worked as a Certified P...
Mark Prince
Review: “The only other attorney I had ever worked with was for my Aunt's will. Mark was a great help and made me know that my case mattered to him. I really have to credit an attorney who will give you his cell phone number...
Shane Aden
Winter Campanella
Review: “Winter takes the time to understand your situation. Then she determines the best course of action for your situation. Her advice was excellent and during a very emotional time, she was the constant who kept us (as a famil...
Ryan Hoak
Brandon Mayberry
Brandon C. Mayberry grew up in Jonesboro, Illinois. After high school, Brandon attended Shawnee Community College where he earned an Associates of Arts degree in 2010. He then attended Southern Illinois University, where he earned a B.A. in Par...
Kreig Taylor
Jennifer Aden
Bruce Kugler
Attorney Bruce Kugler has an extensive legal background to effectively represent clients in bankruptcy, personal injury, workers’ compensation, and immigration. He has practiced law for more than 25 years. Attorney Kugler attended Valparaiso ...
Wendy Cunningham
Angela Kochan
Kochan & Kochan, P.C. is a full service law firm committed to providing our clients with the highest quality legal representation possible. The firm is made up of the husband and wife team of Mark and Angie Kochan, who practice law across the Sout...
Winston Throgmorton
Winston Throgmorton handles cases in Criminal Defense and has an office in Marion, IL. This attorney attended University of Puget Sound and has been licensed for 35 years.
Elisha Deen
Christopher Osman
lawyers in cities near Energy, IL
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Burnt-out car identified as stolen Jaguar F-Pace as police appeal for witnesses
A BURNT OUT car left abandoned next to the A30 has been identified as a stolen Jaguar.
Police say the F-Face model car, worth around £36,000 brand new, was stolen following a burglarly in Kempshott in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Robbers broke into a home in Kempshott and took the expensive car off the driveway.
They made off with the car and hours later, it was found by the side of the A30 on fire.
A witness found the car ablaze by the westbound carraigeway at the traffic lights near Junction 7 of the M3 at around 4.30am of that morning.
"I was one of a few that called the fire brigade, the fire brigade (was) aware and their fire engine turned up a few seconds later," said Marie Gibbs, who was passing-by whilst the blaze was in progress.
"The car was fully encased in flames and the heat had started to burn the surrounding bushes, but I was unable to see if anyone was inside.
"From where it was, the only other person around the flaming car was another car driver travelling at the time."
Hampshire Fire and Rescue said that a call came in at around 4.20am on Sunday, 25 August, and that one crew from Basingstoke attended to extinguish the fire.
They added: "One private vehicle was 100% destroyed by fire."
One hose reel, two breathing apparatus and two tanks of water were used.
The only part of the vehicle to not be destroyed was the tyres, with the rest of the metal shell reduced to ashes.
The seat frames were visible, along with parts of the engine, whilst two of the doors were lying next to the carcass.
Police told the Gazette they were called to the scene just after 7.41am.
Police are asking anyone with any information regarding the fire or the theft to contact them on 101, quoting reference number 44190301678.
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Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples
Pilgrimage to Mount Hornaday
High-Profile Allies in the Abortion War
Today's post is from Carole Joffe, author of Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us. Joffe is a professor in the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco (however, the views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily state or reflect those of the Regents of the University of California, UCSF, or the UCSF Medical Center). This post originally appeared at RHRealityCheck.
“…there is now an unprecedented and sweeping legal assault on women’s reproductive rights. New legislation is being introduced, and sometimes passed, in state after state that would roll back access to abortion and contraception, mainly by intruding on the relationship between doctor and patient…..But where are the doctors? They have been strangely silent about this legal assault, even though it directly interferes with medical practice.”
The above statement is important not just because of the insightful words being said, but because of who is writing these words, and where these words are published. The writers are Marcia Angell and Michael Greene, and the piece they wrote on current abortion restrictions appears in USA Today, the newspaper with the largest circulation in the United States. Dr. Angell, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, is the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine; Dr. Greene is professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and chief of obstetrics at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Why do the credentials of the writers, and the place of publication, matter? The significance of these issues becomes clear if one takes into account the longstanding marginalization of abortion — and abortion providers — in the United States. As I learned in researching a book on the first generation of doctors who provided abortion after Roe v Wade, these pioneers acutely felt their isolation from mainstream medicine. Most hospitals did not establish abortion services, most professional organizations did not set guidelines for abortion care, very little training of residents in abortion procedures was taking place, and many individual providers told me of sanctions they experienced because of their involvement with the abortion issue. I heard numerous stories of academic advancement denied, difficulty in getting research published, but perhaps most poignant of all, the lack of colleague-ship they felt with their fellow physicians. As I speculated, the memories of the “back alley abortionists” were still so strong in the period immediately after Roe that even ethical and competent doctors, such as those I interviewed, were tainted with that legacy. In short, a majority of physicians then (as now) have supported legal abortion — but there was less support for the abortion provider.
To be sure, much has changed for the better since 1973 in U.S. medicine with respect to abortion. The number of training sites has considerably improved; such technological developments as medication abortion (formerly known as RU-486) and an improved device for Manual Vacuum Aspiration have brought many primary care doctors and, where legally permitted, nurse practitioners, midwives and physician assistants to offer early abortion care; perhaps most importantly, organizations such as Medical Students for Choice and PRCH (Physicians for Reproductive Choice in Health) have facilitated collegial contact between numerous clinicians who go on to become abortion providers, or who are already doing so, and clinicians in other fields who, while not performing abortions themselves, firmly support those who do.
However, while the stigma surrounding abortion within medicine may have lessened, in the larger society it has only worsened — as we see from the unprecedented number, and character, of the restrictions proposed in the last year and a half. In fact numerous states even mandate that abortion patients be told misleading or downright untrue facts, such as the links between abortion and breast cancer or infertility — while a number of states have passed, or are proposing, laws that shield doctors from lawsuits if they withhold accurate information, such as the results of prenatal diagnosis that might lead a pregnant woman to seek an abortion.
Back to the forceful statement by Drs. Angell and Greene. They are not the only voices within medicine to object to these egregious measures. The Pennsylvania Medical Society and the Wisconsin Medical Society, for example, are on record as opposing restrictive laws in those states because they interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. Dr. Pippa Abston, a pediatrician in Alabama, has become an outspoken critic of Alabama's mandated ultrasound law, speaking at rallies and making a video of her opposition, and others have voiced objection as well. But given the cultural stigma that now surrounds abortion, the fact of two high profile physicians at one of the country’s leading medical institutions, speaking out in such a widely read newspaper, is a particularly welcome blow against the legislative persecution of abortion providers. To me, it is especially encouraging, given the past marginalization of this field that I have described, that the two physician-writers have not themselves built careers around abortion.
Angell and Greene mince no words in denouncing the assault on medical ethics that such laws represent, and make clear their understanding that the stakes in these battles go well beyond abortion care. “Physicians…have ethical commitments to patients that they cannot and should not be required by state law to set aside. Prominent among them is the responsibility to place the welfare of their patients above all other considerations.” But their statement does not only call for the proper treatment for patients. They end their piece with a call for the relevant medical professional organizations — too timid till now, in their view — to support their members who are caught in this war on those who serve women.
Posted at 10:58 AM in Carole Joffe, Dispatches from the Abortion Wars, Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality, Public Health, Medicine, and Science | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Christian author Shane Claiborne teams with Ben & Jerry’s to battle the Pentagon
Shane Claiborne, a Christian activist and author based in Philadelphia, has teamed up with liberal activist Ben Cohen — the “Ben” of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream — to denounce U.S. military spending.
They’ve launched a “Jesus, Bombs and Ice Cream Tour” in which they address their left-of-center viewpoint on American military spending. During appearances, they rail against violence, war and federal spending, according to the Blaze news website.
Claiborne encourages audiences to “Imagine a world with fewer bombs and more ice cream.”
Such a sentiment is certainly attractive, regardless of one’s political leanings. He continues:
“We’re here because it’s time to re-think our world and our federal budget.
“There’s no better way we can imagine honoring the [9/11] anniversary than by having hope that another world is possible.
“If we’re going to have fewer bombs and more ice cream, we need to shift our budget to what helps people live instead of killing people.”
Facebook co-founder will fight North Carolina ban of homosexual marriages
Anti-Trump Republicans Mock Evangelical Supporters in 'MAGA Church' Ad
A new video by The Lincoln Project, a newly formed Republican organization against Donald Trump, mocks Trump supporters for worshiping “The MAGA Church.” The ad intertwines clips of Trump talking about faith with videos of him speaking crudely. It also features Bible verses, such as Matthew 7:15 which states “Beware of false prophets, which come […]
Republican Congressman Compares Trump’s Impeachment to the Trial of Jesus
Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk is generating a lot of buzz right now for comparing the impeachment process of President Donald Trump to the Trial of Jesus. Loudermilk whose district covers a large part of Atlanta’s northern suburbs, spoke at Trump’s impeachment hearing and made these controversial remarks: “When Jesus was falsely accused of Treason, Pontius […]
Fewer Americans are Donating to Charity, May Be a Result of the Decline of Religion
Less Americans are giving to charity and it may not be for the reason you’re thinking. Giving has dropped significantly between 2000 and 2016 according to a study released from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and Vanguard Charitable. This decline points to 20 million fewer households donating to charity versus 2000. Money […]
Trump’s Values Are Not Christian Values, But Do We Care?
By Kenneth Foard McCallion Impeachment has often been described as a political process. But the current impeachment inquiry unfolding in Congress is also, in a fundamental sense, a moral and ethical challenge for all Americans. Before we can take a position as to whether a sitting president should be impeached and removed from office, we […]
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Home World Europe News Gerard Depardieu hands back his French passport in tax exile row
Gerard Depardieu hands back his French passport in tax exile row
Gerard Depardieu announces he is handing back his French passport after Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault criticized him for moving to Belgium to avoid taxes.
In a letter to a newspaper, Gerard Depardieu, 63, lambasted the French government for punishing “success, creation and talent”.
Last week Gerard Depardieu announced he was moving to the small Belgian town of Nechin just over the French border.
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault described the decision as “shabby”.
Next year, the top rate of income tax in France is due to become 75% on earnings above 1m euros. It is currently 50% in Belgium.
“I am not asking to be approved of, but I could at least be respected. All of those who have left France have not been insulted as I have been,” Gerard Depardieu said in the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche.
Gerard Depardieu announces he is handing back his French passport after Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault criticized him for moving to Belgium to avoid taxes
Gerard Depardieu accused the government of Socialist President Francois Hollande of driving France’s most talented figures out of the country.
“I am leaving because you consider that success, creation, talent, anything different, must be punished,” he said.
Depardieu said that during his long career he had paid 145 million euros to the French taxman.
“At no time have I failed in my duties. The historic films in which I took part bear witness to my love of France and its history,” he said.
Referring to Jean-Marc Ayrault, Gerard Depardieu asked: “Who are you to judge me in this way?”
The prime minister had suggested that Gerard Depardieu’s move to the town of Nechin, just over the border from the French city of Lille, was unpatriotic at a time of cutbacks.
“I find this quite shabby. All that just to avoid paying tax,” he said on France 2 TV channel.
“Paying a tax is an act of solidarity, a patriotic act.”
Belgium is an attractive option for wealthy French people.
Three months ago France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, announced plans to relocate to Belgium although he denied it was for tax reasons.
jean marc ayrault
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Our CompanyBAE Systems, Inc.Inc. LeadershipJerry DeMuro
Jerry DeMuro
Tom Arseneault
Terry Crimmins
Guy Montminy
Al Whitmore
Alice Eldridge
Travis Garriss
Curt Gray
Caitlin Hayden
Scott Howat
Leslie Jelalian
Frank Ruggiero
Chief Executive Officer of BAE Systems, Inc.
Jerry DeMuro is chief executive officer (CEO) of BAE Systems, Inc., the company’s U.S.-based, international defense, aerospace, and security company with more than 33,000 employees that generated sales revenues of approximately $10.8 billion in 2018. BAE Systems, Inc. ranks among the top 10 prime contractors to the U.S. Department of Defense and delivers a full range of products and services across a broad and diverse portfolio for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced electronics, commercial avionics, security, IT solutions and support services. In addition, DeMuro is an executive director on the BAE Systems plc Board of Directors, a member of the company’s Executive Committee, and an officer director on the BAE Systems, Inc. Board of Directors.
Throughout his career, DeMuro has led the transformation and successful operation of complex global organizations responsible for fulfilling critical and challenging missions worldwide in the national security, technology, and aerospace industries.
Before joining BAE Systems in 2014, DeMuro served as a corporate vice president at General Dynamics and executive vice president of the more than $11 billion, 44,000-employee Information Systems and Technology group. DeMuro joined General Dynamics when GTE Government Systems was acquired in 1999. While at GTE, DeMuro held a number of senior leadership roles. Earlier in his career, he served for nearly a decade as an acquisition official at the U.S. Department of Defense.
DeMuro has been actively involved with several associations and nonprofit organizations, including the Aerospace Industries Association, where he is currently a member of its Executive Committee, the Association of the United States Army, the MILCOM Conference Board, and AFCEA International, where he served on the Board of Directors as an Executive Committee member and as chair of the Audit Committee. He has also served on the boards of the National Science Center and the Boys and Girls Club of Taunton, Massachusetts.
A native of Philadelphia, DeMuro earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
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Ingushetia
North Ossetia
OBC Events
Our Prizes
The results of OBCT (2018 figures)
A Balkan Odyssey
Related materials:
Belgrade, on the trail of refugees 13/10/2015
Balkan Trail: arrival in Preševo 21/09/2015
The Balkan Trail: resting in Belgrade 21/09/2015
The Balkan trail: Orban's wall 22/09/2015
Business on the Balkan Trail: Macedonia 17/09/2015
The march towards the Berkasovo crossing point (Foto AOR)
The flow of migrants and refugees along the Balkan trail is turning into a humanitarian crisis, with no recognition of the needs of vulnerable categories. Reports of violence by the Bulgarian police
27/10/2015 - Andrea Oskari Rossini
A group of Afghan boys comes out of the forest heading towards the identification centre in Dimitrovgrad, southern Serbia. They are ragged, dirty, carrying nothing but a plastic bag, if that. The stories they tell about Bulgaria, which they have just crossed, sound like a horror movie. "The border guards’ dogs chased us", tells me Zabiullah, from Nangahar. "Policemen were shooting, fifteen of us were caught, one died. We were in the forest for four days without food." The others nod. The interpreter presses him in Farsi: "You're sure he’s really dead?" "Yes, sure. It happened on Sunday."
Stories about the possible new murder of a migrant in Bulgaria lack a name and a place to prove it. But all stories, even those made by other groups that we meet, are consistent in describing a framework of systematic violence perpetrated by the police of that country towards refugees, particularly in the bordering area with Turkey.
Salar, 25, who works as a volunteer in Dimitrovgrad, tells me that he’s been listening to these kind of stories for days. "They say that when the police catches them in Bulgaria, they take everything from them, money, phone, everything. You can see by yourself, what condition they arrive in.”
Some boys show signs of beatings, and dog bites. A Syrian Kurd, Ibrahim, from Qamishli, coming out of the Serbian identification centre with his wife and children, joins us to explain that he was detained for days in Bulgaria "for no reason". It is not clear in what kind of facility he and the family were held.
Dragana Golubović, of the Serbian Commission for Refugees, explains that between 1,500 and 2,000 people arrive in Dimitrovgrad on an average per week, mostly young people, many minors. She does not allow us into the identification centre where, according to the volunteers outside, conditions are "very basic". The stay usually lasts a few hours. After identification, the refugees are given a 72-hour permit to cross Serbian territory. Outside the centre there are buses and some taxis. To get to Belgrade costs 25 Euros by bus, 200 by taxi. Cash is flowing on the Balkan route thanks to the migrants, even in this remote town of southern Serbia. Many Afghans, however, have nothing but clothes covered with mud, and some look around bewildered. The volunteers try to help, but do not seem too welcomed by the locals, who perhaps consider them as competition. The police arrives, and makes a "no border" tent dismantle, that had been put up next to a van full of clothes and basic provisions. In the evening, the situation seems to improve.
In Preševo, 200 kilometres from here, on the border between Serbia and Macedonia, the situation is different. The influx is much larger. "On Monday [19 October] 8,000 people arrived, but the average is 5-6,000 per day,” explains Slobodan Savović, responsible of the "One Stop" identification centre for the Serbian Commission for Refugees in this town. "Since 8 July, when we opened", says Savović accompanying me through the centre, "200,000 people have come by".
Berkasovo, at the border crossing between Serbia and Croatia (Photo AOR)
The refugees line up in long queues outside the former tobacco factory. After checks with metal detectors, and a bag of food provided by the Serbian Red Cross, people are registered and receive the 3-day permit. "They can also apply for asylum”, explains Savović, “but in practice nobody does".
Unlike Dimitrovgrad, the vast majority of people here comes from Syria. They have families, and there are lots of children. For the Syrians, the nightmare was not Bulgaria, but the short stretch of sea between Turkey and Greece. The amount payable to the traffickers, to board the rafts, varies between 1,000 and 1,500 dollars apiece. The mafia men, however, do not board. They explain how the engine works, and give directions. "We were saved by the Greek navy”, explains a man waiting in line with his children. “The boat was sinking, they took us to Mytilene."
Even in Preševo conditions are very basic. The whole reception system is based on expectations that the refugees will stay only a few hours. Outside the identification center, people selling tickets for the Croatian border wait impatiently. The trip costs 35 euro. Buses, several dozen of them, keep on leaving. Information, and comfort, are provided mainly by volunteers. Among others there are also Vjoleta and Goran, of the Belgrade Women in Black, ("We were in solidarity with the refugees from the Balkan wars, we are in solidarity with the migrants"), and Vanya, a Bosnian girl who arrived in Switzerland many years ago as a refugee herself, and now decided to leave Zurich to come and help migrants through her organisation, BorderFree.
Berkasovo
Berkasovo (Photo AOR)
Preševo, a town of just over 10,000 inhabitants, predominantly Albanian, is the main entry into Serbia along the Balkan route. The different streams, the one from Macedonia and the one from Bulgaria, then converge in Berkasovo, just north of Šid, where refugees enter Croatia. If upstream, in Austria or Slovenia, borders close, or the transit slows down, in Berkasovo the situation becomes chaotic. Here migrants have to travel a few kilometres on foot to get to the border crossing that, last Thursday, resembled a Dantesque circle.
Mud, dirt and debris surround a few tents leading to the fences and police lines delimiting the Croatian border. People amass, push, cops yell trying to pass people in small groups. Inevitably, families get separated, while volunteers from both sides of the barricades try to reunite children with their group. It is the children, along with the women and the elderly, who suffer the most in this situation. There is no priority access for them, or for the most vulnerable categories. They remain for hours under the awnings, in the cold and dirt, waiting to be able to continue the journey. If they had to wait more than a few hours, no one knows exactly what would happen.
The flow of refugees and migrants crossing the Balkans is slowly turning into a humanitarian crisis of major proportions. The conditions on the road are not improving, but worsening, along with the weather conditions. But the looks of the people on the run are not changing. The Syrian women, exhausted, walking with children in their arms, stare as if they were on a mission. The Afghan boys have the same gaze. They were given hope. Nothing will stop them, neither the sea, nor the beatings of the Bulgarian police, nor the Orbán wall.
OBCT is a operational unit of:
Municipality of Trento
Municipality of Rovereto
Trento University
Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa is a publication registered at the Court of Rovereto n. 256 on 26 May 2004 - Editor in Chief Luca Zanoni
Copyleft 2020 Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa License | Terms of use
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HomeComplete list of Cabinet Ministers and Portfolio
Complete list of Cabinet Ministers and Portfolio
Complete list of Cabinet ministers & portfolio | Narendra Modi Government
Current Affairs being an indispensable piece of the test, we are giving you the rundown of the Complete list of Cabinet Ministers and Portfolio of India 2019 that might appear in any of the upcoming examinations. Companions, static is a section wherein you need to contemplate in bits and parts. So do peruse it on a light note and overhaul it following a few days and we can guarantee that you will hold the names and their states till the test.
Cabinet Ministers and Portfolio:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Prime Minister and in charge of Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions; Department of Atomic Energy; Department of Space; all important policy issues; and all other portfolios not allocated to any Minister.
Minister for Defence.
Minister for Home Affairs.
Minister for Road Transport and Highways; and Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers.
Minister for Finance; and Minister for Corporate Affairs.
Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.
Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare; Minister for Rural Development; and Minister for Panchayati Raj.
Minister for Law and Justice; Minister for Communications; and Minister for Electronics and Information Technology.
Minister for Food Processing Industries.
Thaawar Chand Gehlot
Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment.
S. Jaishankar
Minister for External Affairs.
Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’
Minister for Human Resources Development.
Minister for Tribal Affairs.
Minister for Women and Child Development; and Minister for Textiles.
Minister for Health and Family Welfare; Minister for Science and Technology; and Minister for Earth Sciences.
Prakash Javadekar
Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change; and Minister for Information and Broadcasting.
Minister for Railways; and Minister for Commerce and Industry.
Dharmendra Pradhan
Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas; and Minister for Steel.
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi
Minister for Minority Affairs.
Minister for Parliamentary Affairs; Minister for Coal; and Minister for Mines.
Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.
Arvind Sawant
Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprise.
Minister for Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries.
Minister for 'Jal Shakti'.
Ministers of State (Independent Charge)
Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Labour and Employment.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation; and Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Planning.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH); and Minister of State in the Ministry of Defence.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region; Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office; Minister of State in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions; Minister of State in the Department of Atomic Energy; and Minister of State in the Department of Space.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Minority Affairs.
Prahalad Singh Patel
Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Culture; and Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Tourism.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Power; Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.
Hardeep Singh Puri
Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs; Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Civil Aviation; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Mansukh L. Mandaviya
Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Shipping; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers.
Ministers of State
Faggansingh Kulaste
Minister of State in the Ministry of Steel.
Minister of State in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Shri Arjun Ram Meghwal
Minister of State in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises.
General (Retd.) V. K. Singh
Minister of State in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
Krishan Pal
Minister of State in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
Raosaheb Danve
Minister of State in the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.
G. Kishan Reddy
Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Purushottam Rupala
Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.
Ramdas Athawale
Minister of State in the Ministry of Rural Development.
Minister of State in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
Sanjeev Kumar Balyan
Minister of State in the Ministry of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries.
Dhotre Sanjay Shamrao
Minister of State in the Ministry of Human Resource Development; Minister of State in the Ministry of Communications; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
Anurag Thakur
Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
Suresh Angadi
Minister of State in the Ministry of Railways.
Ratanlal Kataria
Minister of State in the Ministry of Jal Shakti; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
V. Muraleedharan
Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs.
Minister of State in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.
Minister of State in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Minister of State in the Ministry of Food Processing Industries.
Minister of State in the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries.
Minister of State in the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
!!! All the Best !!!
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Best Self Articles
Meet the Mobile Movement for Autism Awareness
By Nicole Letts
The Cain family consists of five go-getters. There’s mom, Mañana, a commercial and residential realtor with
Keller Williams and owner of Bridge Boutique. There’s dad, Khari, an esteemed record producer known throughout the music industry as “Needlz.”
There’s big sister Amani, 15, an up-and-coming performer in her own right with a song on iTunes called “U Need Me Too,” and there’s little brother Nasir, 9, who, with a talented supportive family like his, is well on his way to discovering his own spot in the Cain dynasty. And then, there’s middle child Makayla, 11, an inspirational young lady whose story has laid the foundation for something much bigger than she can possibly imagine.
At just 18 months old, Makayla was diagnosed with autism, and after further genetic testing, was eventually diagnosed with Phelan-McDermid syndrome, also known as PMS. PMS is a rare genetic condition in which the 22q13 chromosome is deleted, causing weak muscles as well as other medical and developmental delays.
With a diagnosis in hand, Mañana and Khari dove headfirst into getting Makayla the necessary care she needed. That meant a lot of research, a lot of meetings, and a lot of cash. “We ended up paying $6,000 to $8,000 a month for therapy,” explains Khari. It was then that the family realized that their work with and for Makayla would be a marathon, not a sprint, and that unlike others who may find themselves in a similar situation, the Cain family was armed with the resources to give Makayla what she needed. “A lot of people don’t have a lawyer or advocate to help them. A lot of people don’t even know what an individualized education program [IEP] is, and those who do know, leave it up to the school to dictate their IEP. So for us, a lot of what we do is trying to bring awareness to this issue,” says Mañana.
That’s where the Cain family’s latest initiative comes in:
Makayla Moving Autism, a traveling state-of-the-art bus equipped with seasoned, licensed professionals who will conduct screenings, provide parent education, implement therapies, and encourage advocacy. The plan is that in 2020 the bus will be seen around the city at various festivals and events but will primarily be an educational resource in communities of color.
According to research conducted for Makayla Moving Autism, statistics are alarming for autism spectrum disorder diagnoses in children of color. For example, African-American children are over five times more likely to be misdiagnosed with conduct disorders before being diagnosed with autism. Additionally, white children are roughly 19% more likely than African-American children and 65% more likely than Hispanic children to be diagnosed with autism. That means white children not only end up with more access to additional therapies, education and resources, but they’re also more likely to be given access at an earlier age.
The Cain family wants to make a dent in these statistics and change them for the better. While the Cains and their talented partners won’t be able to formally diagnose children on the bus, they can spread awareness and point people in the right direction for getting the answers they deserve, and the support they need. “We want people to return. We don’t want it to be a one-time experience.
We’re all about developing relationships with these families,” Khari says.
Makayla Moving Autism, the traveling autism education resource, will be Makayla’s legacy as well as a legacy for the entire Cain family. For now, the Cains have launched their fundraising efforts, which are live on a GoFundMe page, but even more information about the Cains and their plans can be found on their website, www.aslongasigotyou.com. Events and updates will be posted regularly, and soon enough, website visitors and donors will also be able to view a short documentary film of the same name about Khari and his family. “[The bus] is really about our journey to provide a better life for Makayla, and it’s turned into this big thing. She’s a big a part of it, and it’ll be great for people to meet the person who inspired it all,” says Khari.
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Author: Laura Jones
Everything you need to know to find the perfect diamond for you. At Biagio's the Jewellers, we can find you the perfect stone at a price that suits your pocket.
All diamonds are precious and those possessing the highest quality of cut, colour, clarity and carat weight (the four Cs) are the rarest and most valuable, but we believe there is a fifth C - confidence. Confidence in the source and craftsmanship of the diamond. This is as important as the essence of the stone itself.
Diamond necklace, £1,414.00
As the supreme gemstone, the diamond owes its name to the Greek adamas, meaning invincible. Invincible for the power believed to be granted to the wearer; invincible for being the hardest mineral known to man; and invincible for its brilliance.
Diamonds were created almost 80 million years ago, when pipe-shaped accumulations were pushed upwards at huge speed from inside the earth by a series of violent explosions, creating conditions favourable to the crystallisation of diamonds from whatever carbon was available.
Diamonds have been used in jewellery from very early days, but it wasn’t until diamond cutting was developed in the late 17th century that their beauty was revealed. The brilliant cut, today’s standard cut, has 58 facets, their size and shape and the angles between them intricately calculated to create both internal and external reflecting and refractive surfaces, with the aim of providing the maximum brilliance.
Diamond is the birthstone for April.
Diamonds were thought by the Greeks to protect the wearer from evil particularly if they were worn on the left-hand side.
It is thought that early inhabitants of South Africa used diamonds to etch their famous rock engravings.
Although diamonds are mostly colourless, they can be found in any number of delicate shades.
Only about 20% of diamonds mined are suitable for gemstones, and during the cutting process, these lose more than half their weight.
Diamonds are traditionally given on a 60th wedding anniversary.
Round brilliant diamond ring, £1,785.00
Of the four Cs, Cut is the only one of the four Cs influenced by man.
There are many different types of cuts to choose from; a good, round brilliant cut releases the life and sparkle of a diamond through the arrangement and proportion of its 57 or 58 facets. Light reflects from facet to facet and disperses through the top of the stone, creating a display of brilliance.
While most diamonds appear white, many display hints of colour barely discernible to the naked eye. The closer a diamond approaches colourlessness, the rarer and more valuable the stone.
Diamonds with a strong pure colour are extremely rare and are called ‘fancies’. Amongst them can be found pink, blue, green, orange, yellow and even black. The rarest are blue and pink.
The scale defined by the European Gemological Laboratory (EGL) is divided into steps between D and Z, D being the clearest and most valuable:D-E: exceptional white; F-G: rare white; H: white; I-J: slightly tinted white; K-L: tinted white; M-Z: tinted colour.
A diamond’s clarity is determined by the degree to which it is free from naturally occurring inclusions, often called ‘nature’s fingertips’. The number, type, colour, size and position of the internal birthmarks can affect a diamond’s value, however, many are invisible to the naked eye and require magnification under a standard 10x magnification loupe. The fewer inclusions, the rarer the stone.
The EGL Scale of Clarity refers to the amount of inclusion in a stone when viewed through a 10x magnification loupe. FL/IF equals flawless or internally flawless, VVS1 and VVS2 very, very slightly included, VS1 and VS2 are very slightly included, SI1 and SI2 slightly included, I1, I2 and I3 are included.
18ct princess cut diamond halo ring, £4,100.00
Carat refers to weight and therefore the size of the diamond. One carat is divided into 100 points. A diamond weighing 50 points equals half a carat. Two diamonds of equal size can have very different values, depending on their cut, clarity and colour.
All diamonds are precious and those possessing the highest quality of cut, colour, clarity and carat weight (the four Cs) are the rarest and most valuable.
The Fifth C - Confidence:
Established for over 30 years, we work hard to make sure our customers can feel absolutely confident with their diamond purchases. We pride ourselves on a personalised service delivered by our friendly team of diamond and jewellery experts and we believe the more you know, the better equipped you are to make the right decision
Along with offering our wedding rings and diamond engagement rings collections, we source loose diamonds to help customers create any bespoke design.
Rigorous quality checks are carried out throughout every phase of design and manufacturing to achieve complete customer satisfaction. We also are members of The National Association of Jewellers, who iare commited to ensuring that every NAJ member abides by the NAJ’s Code of Conduct, which based on honesty, integrity and professionalism, so you can gain peace of mind and confidence by purchasing from your diamonds from Biagio the Jewellers.
Discover our full collection of diamond and gemstone jewellery - explore the store today.
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Picture Study Bible with Maps and Background Information
Isaiah 18:6 They will be left together for mountain birds of prey, And for the beasts of the earth; And the birds of prey will spend the summer [feeding] on them, And all the beasts of the earth will spend harvest time on them.
< Isaiah 18:5
Isaiah 18:7 >
6. birds . . . beasts--transition from the image "sprigs," "branches," to the thing meant: the Assyrian soldiers and leaders shall be the prey of birds and beasts, the whole year through, "winter" and "summer," so numerous shall be their carcasses. HORSLEY translates the Hebrew which is singular: "upon it," not "upon them"; the "it" refers to God's "dwelling-place" (Isa 18:4) in the Holy Land, which Antichrist ("the bird of prey" with the "beasts," his rebel hosts) is to possess himself of, and where he is to perish.
JFB.
Questions Related to this Verse
Where in scripture does it mention the desolation of Ethiopia?
Where in scripture does it mention the evils of War?
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Isaiah Images and Notes
The Book of Isaiah
Isaiah 6:1-3 - In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, [is] the LORD of hosts: the whole earth [is] full of his glory.
Isaiah 9:1-7 - Nevertheless the dimness [shall] not [be] such as [was] in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict [her by] the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, [and] not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, [and] as [men] rejoice when they divide the spoil. For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every battle of the warrior [is] with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but [this] shall be with burning [and] fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of [his] government and peace [there shall be] no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.
Isaiah 53:1-7- Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, [there is] no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were [our] faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he [was] wounded for our transgressions, [he was] bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
The Old Testament - A Brief Overview
Bible Survey - Isaiah
Hebrew Name - Yeshayahu "Yah is salvation"
Greek Name - Esaias (Greek form of the Hebrew)
Author - Isaiah (According to Tradition)
Date - 760 BC Approximately
Theme - The kingdom of the Messiah
Types and Shadows - In Isaiah Jesus is the suffering servant
The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III. Discovered at Calah now in the British Museum. The Obelisk stands nearly 7 feet tall and is about 2 feet thick. On each of the 4 sides there are 5 panels with carvings of various kings bringing tribute to king Shalmaneser III. The second panel from the top of the obelisk reveals king Jehu of Israel bowing at the feet of Shalmaneser of Assyria. This is the same Jehu who is mentioned in Scripture, and this carved relief is the only image in all history of one of the Hebrew kings. On the panel Shalmaneser is offering a libation to his god. The cuneiform text around the panel reads:
"The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri: I received from him silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king [and] spears."
The Jehu Panel on the Black Obelisk
Summary of The Book of Isaiah
Isaiah prophesied during one of the worst times in the history of Israel. The Israelites had become so corrupt God was going to remove them out of His sight. He raised up the Assyrian army to be an unmerciful, barbaric, ruthless, an unstoppable war machine. Their military tactics are still applauded today by those who understand the art of war. God called them from their distant land to come and destroy the Jews living in the north, and take them away from their homeland. Isaiah was living in Judah, in the city of Jerusalem during a time when King Uzziah had died. Isaiah prophesied during the reign of King Uzziah, King Jotham, King Ahaz, King Hezekiah, and probably King Manasseh of Judah. His prophetic ministry lasted from about 760 BC until about 720 BC. Isaiah chapter 6 records a powerful vision that Isaiah received of God the King on his throne, and the king called Isaiah to prophesy to His people. This was Isaiah's call to ministry as a prophet of God and it is interesting that it was at a time when king Uzziah had just died. King Uzziah was faithful servant of the Lord and people felt secure under his leadership, but when he died there was almost a panic. This is when the Lord showed Isaiah who was really on the throne. Isaiah was terrified at the sight of God's holiness (Isaiah 6) and when the Lord called him and asked him who will go with this message and Isaiah said "here am I, send me." Isaiah warned Jerusalem about her idolatry, and her foreign alliances, but they scorned him. They did not listen to his warnings and quickly destroy their instruments of idolatry. He prophesied about the Assyrians who would destroy the northern kingdom, they were also good to come to Jerusalem but God would deliver them. But he also told them that eventually the city will be destroyed and captured by the Babylonians, and that a Persian ruler named Cyrus would release the Jews from captivity. Isaiah prophesied more about the Messiah than any other book in the Old Testament. He also described in great detail the blessings of the future kingdom of the Messiah. His coming would be as a lion bringing the day of God's wrath, but he would also first come as a savior who would die for the sins of the people. This was Isaiah's message, the humility and beauty of the Savior. - The above text is © Rusty Russell - Bible History Online and must be sourced for use on a website.
"Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Isaiah Isaiah 53:4-6
The book of Isaiah contains the prophecies of Isaiah who was the son of Amoz (Isaiah 1:1). Isaiah prophesied during the reign of King Uzziah, King Jotham, King Ahaz, King Hezekiah, and probably King Manasseh of Judah. His prophetic ministry lasted from about 760 BC until about 720 BC. Isaiah chapter 6 records a powerful vision that Isaiah received of God the King on his throne, and the king called Isaiah to prophesy to His people. This was Isaiah's call to ministry as a prophet of God and it is interesting that it was at a time when king Uzziah had just died. King Uzziah was faithful servant of the Lord and people felt secure under his leadership, but when he died there was almost a panic. This is when the Lord showed Isaiah who was really on the throne. Isaiah was terrified at the sight of God's holiness (Isaiah 6) and when the Lord called him and asked him who will go with this message and Isaiah said "here am I, send me."
The word prophet in the Hebrew means a "mouthpiece", and Isaiah was truly the mouthpiece of God. He was entirely dedicated to this cause even in the midst of rejection (Isaiah 6:9-13). As his ministry developed he warned the people about various problems within the kingdom. Judah had gone through many reforms, but had become corrupt along the way forgetting about the great privilege of being chosen by God, and their religious ceremonies became vain rituals. Uzziah's son Jotham succeeded his father on the throne and try to encourage the people to worship Yahweh, but failed to break down the high places of idolatrous worship. After him Ahaz followed on the throne of Judah and he was determined to bring about the heathen idolatrous practices of the nations around him. He was rebuked by Isaiah and chose to lead the people further into idolatry which ultimately would bring about their ruin. Then Hezekiah came to the throne and he was the greatest king to ever reign in the southern kingdom of Judah. He began ruling by "removing the high places and breaking down the pillars, and cutting down the Asherah (2 Kings 18:4, 22). Hezekiah restored faith in Judah and the people celebrated in Jerusalem a Passover that would be remembered forever in history. Isaiah was respected as a prophet of the Lord and King Hezekiah made Isaiah famous in the land and his prophecies were encouraged. But the kingdom of Judah had not fully recovered from their past ways. It was during the time of Hezekiah that the northern kingdom of Israel, Judah's brothers, were carried away into captivity in 722 BC. Judah had barely escaped destruction by paying heavy tribute to the Assyrian king. Later Sennacherib of Assyria sent his armies to destroy many nations and their lands and he came to the land of Judah to reproach the living God (2 Kings 19:16). When Hezekiah heard the words of the king of Assyria he sought the Lord and prayed. That night the angel of the Lord (God himself) came into the camp of the Assyrians and slew 185,000 soldiers (2 Kings 19:35). King Sennacherib returned back to his palace at Nineveh without his mighty army and while he was worshiping his gods, two of his sons slew him with the sword. Many of the details surrounding this event have been verified historically with the discovery of Sennacherib's Hexagonal Prism discovered among the ruins of ancient Nineveh. It contains the war campaigns of this king and this time period and can be seen today on display in the British Museum in London. The Southern Kingdom of Judah had their moments of glory during certain times after this, but it was just a matter of time until the seeds that had been sown would reap a harvest of destruction. Judah would come to an end and Jerusalem and her Temple would be destroyed, which took place in 586 BC under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Isaiah had prophesied throughout this whole time period and even spoke of the coming kingdom of the Messiah.
There is little information about the personal life of the Prophet Isaiah. He was married to a woman called the "prophetess" (Isaiah 8:3), she bore him two sons (Isaiah 7:3 and Isaiah 8:3). According to Jewish tradition Isaiah was martyred by the wicked King Manasseh who placed him in the hollow trunk of a carob tree and was sawn in two. many believe also that it was Isaiah who was referred to in the book of Hebrews in the New Testament regarding a hero of faith "sawn asunder" (Hebrews 11:37).
Was There a Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah?
There have been many critics who challenged the historicity of the Scriptures, and implied that the Bible is not the word of God. This is also true with the book of Isaiah, critics have identified problems in the books unity and authorship. A large number of critics make a case that Isaiah 1-39 and Isaiah 40-66 are two separate books written by two entirely different men. They refer to the second book as "Deutero-Isaiah" or "Second Isaiah" and they speculate that it was written during the Babylonian captivity, and the people that the author is addressing our different than in the first book. They also maintain that Isaiah is never mentioned as the author in the second book. but there are too many reasons for believing that Isaiah was the author of the whole book from Isaiah 1 through Isaiah 66. Jewish history and Jewish tradition never recognized anything other than one book, and one author. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls identify Isaiah as one scroll, and thus one book. Judaism and Christianity also recognize Isaiah as one book and one author. The writing style of Isaiah is seen throughout both sections, and the people who are being addressed would apply more to Judah went to those captive in Babylon. There is also mention of Temple services in existence, which were not in existence what they were captive in Babylon. For these reasons and others, and for the fact that Jesus never recognized more than one Isaiah we must conclude that Isaiah was the author of his one book. It is important to understand this about the book of Isaiah because critics are always looking for something in which they might attack the Bible, especially the book of Isaiah because there are so many prophecies pointing to the life and ministry and even the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Quick Reference Map
Map of Israel and Judah in the Book of Kings (Click to Enlarge)
The contents of Isaiah may be outlined as follows :
Outline of the Book of Isaiah
Section 1: Isaiah 1:39
1 ) Prophecies centered around Judah and Jerusalem (Isaiah 1:1-12:6). Included in this section are a description of the glories of the Messianic Age (Isaiah 2-4 ) and the account of the call of Isaiah (Isaiah 6 ). In Isaiah 7-12, although Isaiah is dealing primarily with various invasions which threaten Judah, reference is made to the wonderful child "Immanuel" and to the glorious age when a king of the Davidic line would institute a benevolent rule over a world without discord and wars.
2 ) Prophecies of judgment on the foreign and hostile nations of Babylon, Philistia, Moab, Damascus, Ethiopia, Egypt, Dumah, Arabia and Tyre (Isaiah 3-23 ).
3 ) The Apocalypse of Isaiah: the judgment of God against the world's sin and the ultimate destruction of the earth (Isaiah 24-27). Despite the dreadful nature of the punishment which was to come, this section is marked by a note of triumph and trust (see Isaiah 26).
4) Prophecies concerning the relations of Judah and Jerusalem to Egypt and Assyria (Isaiah 28-33). In this section is contained a series of six messages of woe, directed first against one and then another of the weaknesses of Judah's national life (Isaiah 28:1-29; 29:1-14; 29:15-24; 30:1-17; 31:1- 32 : 20; 33 : 1-24). The character of the Messianic Age is also further described (Isaiah 32:1-18).
5 ) The doom of Edom and the redemption of Israel (Isaiah 34-35). Isaiah 35 is a beautiful picture of the ultimate triumph of the spiritual Zion.
6 ) The reign of Hezekiah (Isaiah 36-39 ). This section is in the nature of an historical appendix recording the overthrow of the Assyrian army (Isaiah 36- 37), Hezekiah's sickness and recovery (Isaiah 38), and containing a prophecy of the Babylonian captivity (Isaiah 39 ).
Section II: Isaiah 40-66
7 ) God's sovereign and providential control over history, which will be manifest in his ultimate overthrow of Babylon at the hands of Cyrus (Isaiah 40:18). Two passages of especial interest in this section are the first "suffering servant" passage, apparently alluding to the office of the Messiah (Isaiah 42:1-9), and Isaiah's sarcastic appraisal of the folly of idol worship (Isaiah 44:6-23).
8 ) The redemption which is possible through suffering and sacrifice (Isaiah 49-55).. This division centers mainly around the three "suffering servant" passages which it contains The first is concerned with the difficulty of his task and his rejection by those to whom he is sent (Isaiah 44:1-13). The second (Isaiah 50:4-9) speaks of the obedience and trust of the "servant" and the blessings which are to follow his work. The third is the classic passage from Isaiah 52:13-53:12, which describes the life, suffering and ultimate triumph of the servant.
9 ) The triumph of the kingdom of God and God's universal reign (Isaiah 56-66). The sins which are prevalent in Isaiah's day are discussed in chs. 56-59. A glorious song of the Messianic Age fills Isaiah 60-62. The book closes, with a prayer for mercy and pardon (Isaiah 63-64) and God's answer to this prayer in the form of the promise of a new heaven and a new earth (Isaiah 65-66).
Quick Reference Maps - Isaiah
Judah During the Time of Hezekiah
The New Babylonian Empire and Isaiah
Sites and Events in 2 Kings
Israel and Judah - The kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the period of the kings can be seen on this map. After Solomon had died there was a civil war and 10 tribes took to the north and were called the northern kingdom of Israel, and every king was evil and forsook the LORD. The remaining 2 tribes stayed in the south and were called the southern kingdom of Judah, several of those kings trusted in the LORD.
Mesha's Kingdom - The Bible reveals that Mesha, the king of Moab rebelled against Jehoram the king of Israel (2 Kings 3:4-5). Jehoram requested the help of Judah and Jehoshaphat allied with him, he sought Elisha the prophet and victory was predicted, only because of the faith of Jehoshaphat. Mesha sought the god Chemosh and sacrificed his own son (2 Kings 3:27).
Israel and Syria Naaman the leper, captain of the Syrian army was healed by a miracle at the command of Elisha the prophet (2 Kings 5). At that time Aram (Syria) was a dominant fighting machine in the north under the leadership of Ben-Hadad, who was later murdered by Hazael (2 Kings 8:15).
Syria at Its Height - 2 Kings 10 reveals that Hazael of Syria smote all the coasts of Israel and the east Jordan territory expanding the kingdom of Damascus. Jehu knew that he would need to rely on a foreign power for help and he turned to Shalmanessar IV, King of Assyria.
The Kingdom of Jeroboam II - 2 Kings 14:25 indicates that Jeroboam II, fourth king from the line of Jehu, brought the northern kingdom of Israel to its greatest extent in the north. This was just after Syria was severely crushed by the Assyrians who had recently returned home to regroup.
Habor, the River of Gozan - In 2 Kings 17:6 the Bible says that the King of Assyria (Sargon II) conquered Samaria and took away the remaining inhabitants of Israel as prisoners to Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gorzan, and in the cities of the Medes. The river of Gorzan is identified as the river Khabur, a tributary of the Euphrates river which flows into it from the north from southern Turkey.
The Cities of Samaria and the Surrounding Lands - The Bible records in second Kings 17:24 that the King of Assyria (Sargon II) brought colonists from many of the cities within the Assyrian Empire: Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed the inhabitants within the cities of Samaria to replace the children of Israel who would been taken into captivity.
The Assyrian Empire When Sennacherib Came to Power - Israel was destroyed, Judah was left and Hezekiah a man who sought the LORD had come to power in 720 BC. He offered tribute to Sennacherib but Jerusalem was was still a target for the Assyrian ruler.
The Assyrian Empire During the Reign of Esarhaddon - Esarhaddon marches into Egypt and extends the Assyrian Empire. 2 Kings 19
Necho Battles Josiah - Pharaoh Necho on his way to the Euphrates slays King Josiah at Megiddo. 2 Kings 23
The Captivity of the Ten Tribes - The ten tribes in the northern kingdom of Israel were conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC and taken to the land of Assyria as captives.
Judah Captives in Babylon - The remaining remnant of Judah were taken as prisoners to Babylon as predicted by Jeremiah the prophet.
The Babylonian, Mede and Persian Empires - Pharaoh Necho is defeated by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon who also destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC. Later the Mede and Persian Empires defeated Babylon and governed the world in the sixth century BC until Alexander the Great.
Isaiah Resources
The Divided Kingdom
The Northern Kingdom of Israel
The Southern Kingdom of Judah
The Assyrian Captivity
The Return From Babylon
More About the Book of Isaiah
Isaiah in the Picture Study Bible
Timeline of the Ancient World
Back to the Old Testament
Back to Bible History Online
Bible History Online Picture Study Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society: www.bible-history.com, 1995-2013. Bible History Picture Study Bible. Jan 21, 2020.
© Bible History Online
Many Thanks to The British Museum, The Louvre, The Oriental Institute, Dr. Amihai Mazar, Dr. Dan Bahat, Dr. Craig Johnson, Yaacov Kuc, Chuck Smith, Jim Darden, Ron Haaland, The Translators of the KJV, and many others including Jesus, the Word of God.
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Sen. Marcos sponsors first committee report in the Senate under 16th Congress, seeks okay of bill to scrap SK polls
Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos, Jr., has urged his colleagues in the Senate to approve Senate Bill No. 1186, which he had filed, aimed at scrapping the Sangguniang Kabataan elections scheduled on October this year.
In a sponsorship speech on Tuesday (Sept. 4, 2013), Marcos, chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Government, presented on the floor Committee Report No. 1 containing justifications to approve the bill established during his panel’s public hearing last September 3.
“Your Committee on Local Government, after seriously considering the many appeals for reforms of the Sangguniang Kabataan, hereby strongly recommends the postponement of the Sangguniang Kabataan elections scheduled on 28th of October this year,” Marcos said. The report is the first in the 16th Congress.
While expressing belief that the postponement is necessary to give Congress reasonable time to craft legislation that would institute the necessary reforms of the present structure of the SK, the senator clarified that he is not for the abolition of the SK, although he supports calls for its restructuring.
Marcos noted that during the hearing of his committee there was unanimous support for the postponement of the SK polls from the various stakeholders.
Among those who backed the passage of SB 1186 included the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), the National Youth Commission (NYC), the Sangguniang Kabataan National Federation, and the League of Cities.
He said that the SKNF itself has admitted that the SK system has developed many flaws over the years, which generated criticisms against it.
Among the criticisms are:
1. That the members of SK are ineffective, not mature enough, or are unprepared to take on leadership roles;
2. That the activities of the SK are limited to “pa-liga” or sports related projects only;
3. That many of the SK have become “absentee officials”; and
4. That the members of the SK only engage in local politics and do not serve the interests of the Filipino youth, nor do they address the needs of the younger population; 5. That the SK serves as a breeding ground for errant, corrupt, and “traditional politicians” or “trapo” youth leaders.
“My colleagues in this august body, the proximity of the scheduled elections requires us to act promptly on this legislative proposal for the immediate guidance and implementation of all stakeholders, especially the Commission on Elections, which is now in an advanced stage of its preparations for the October 28 elections,” Marcos said.
He said that it was the consensus of committee members that the postponement of the SK polls should not last more than one year, during which the SK Reform Bill will be crafted and deliberated upon by Congress.
However, the senator said it might be better to let the schedule of the new SK elections be embodied in the SK Reform Bill.
Sen. Bongbong Marcos’ opening prayer for the Senate session 2 September 2013
Senate approves on 2nd reading SK polls deferment
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Search Results: 35 books from 1 publisher. Learn more ›
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Publisher: ABDO ISBN: 9781617851681
Explores the Battle of the Little Bighorn and how that event has sculpted societies, the sciences, and politics.
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This title examines an important historic event, the Dust Bowl. Readers will learn the history of the United States leading up to the Dust Bowl, key players and happenings in the Dust Bowl, and the event's effect on society. Color photos, detailed maps, and informative sidebars accompany easy-to-read, compelling text. Features include a timeline, facts, additional resources, web sites, a glossary, a bibliography, and an index. Essential Events is a series in Essential Library, an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company. Grades 6-9.
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Eminem: Grammy-Winning Rapper
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This title examines the fascinating life of Eminem. Readers will learn about Eminem's childhood, family, education, rise to fame, trouble with drugs and the law, his time in rehab, as well as controversies over his lyrics and songs. Colorful graphics, oversize photos, and informative sidebars accompany easy-to-read, compelling text that explores Eminem's early interest in music and talent in songwriting that led to his freestyle raps and eventually the release of his albums Infinite, The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show, Encore, Relapse, and Recovery. Eminem's acting debut in the move 8 Mile, his Grammy Awards, and his Oscar for Best Original Song are also described. Features include a table of contents, glossary, selected bibliography, Web links, source notes, and an index, plus a timeline and fun facts. Contemporary Lives is a series in Essential Library, an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.
Jay-Z: Hip-Hop Mogul
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This title examines the fascinating life of Jay-Z. Readers will learn about Jay-Z's childhood, family, time as a drug dealer, rise to fame, and relationship with Beyoncé. Colorful graphics, oversize photos, and informative sidebars accompany easy-to-read, compelling text that explores Jay-Z's early interest in music that led to the release of his albums Reasonable Doubt, In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life, Vol. 3...Life and Times of S. Carter, The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, The Blueprint, The Blueprint 2: The Gift and the Curse, The Black Album, Kingdom Come, American Gangster, his record label Roc-A-Fella Records, his clothing brand Rocawear, his Grammy Awards, his time as Def Jam's CEO, which included signing stars such as Rihanna, Young Jeezy, Ne-Yo, Nas, and the Roots, and his philanthropic efforts. Features include a table of contents, glossary, selected bibliography, Web links, source notes, and an index, plus a timeline and fun facts. Contemporary Lives is a series in Essential Library, an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.
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The moped gangs are here to stay…
Ian Malone 2017-10-31
Ian Malone · 31/10/2017
0 9k 2
More and more low end criminals are jumping on mopeds to commit crimes
Unless the UK’s Criminal Justice System changes, moped gangs are not going to be deterred enough to give up.
Some months ago we pointed out that the only way to deal with the scourge of moped riding criminals was dedicated tactical motorcycle teams.
The news that multiple police forces around the country are taking motorcycle crime seriously, with specialist teams on highly manoeuvrable bikes now set up in Bolton, Sheffield and London is hugely welcome.
The large operation in the West Midlands that saw 53 people arrested in 28 dawn raids across the region is also fantastic news.
So the police are doing their bit. Now we need the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales to step up too.
© Met Police. The Met’s new team for dealing with moped gangs
We recently covered the story of a Biker & Bike reader who caught a bike thief, getting threatened with an angle grinder and stabbed in the process. The reward for his actions? A paltry six-month sentence for the criminal. Hardly a deterrent, especially as they will likely be out in three months.
In May 2017 there were 2,280 moped-related offences recorded in London. A suspect was charged in only 1.7% of cases.
The truth is, unless there is a significant change to the criminal justice system – and that is unlikely – then the moped gangs are not only here to stay, their perceived success means that more criminals will adopt their methods.
We are talking specifically here of the gangs who steal motorbikes and mopeds from streets, using peds to scout for bikes or bike jacking opportunities and then push stolen bikes away from the theft location.
These people are also involved in street muggings and wider crime, such as attacks on high-value stores like jewellers.
Until recently they were pretty much limited to London. Now they operate in other major cities including Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Manchester.
There are two reasons why they are doing it and getting away with it:
It is almost impossible with current police resources to respond to an attack by a moped gang. By the time someone has placed a call to the police the attackers are long gone.
Forces like London’s Metropolitan Police have set up special operations, such as Operation Venice, to focus the limited manpower they have left after drastic cutbacks on gathering data on known suspects and then arrest them after the fact.
Anecdotally in London, at least, there seems to be no significant impact. Near the Biker & Bike offices in Central London, you can see moped teams operating openly without having to wait too long for them to go by.
With the new dedicated team announced this week, plus a 24/7 operations room dedicated to reports of moped-enabled crime, we hope there will be a change. But the single team of four riders is not enough to cover a city of London’s size.
Under 24 rule
The other significant reason is that criminals arrested under the age of 24 are unlikely to go to prison. Unless they have committed a significant crime such as a stabbing, acid attack or it can be proved they have been responsible for many bike thefts, they are being kept out of jail by the Criminal Justice System. It is geared towards giving young offenders not just second chances but has meant that suspects have been arrested 80-100 times without receiving custodial sentences.
As there is no room in British prisons, unlike the Dutch penal system which is closing jails because there aren’t enough offenders to fill them, we don’t see this situation changing.
Because of this, even if the police’s guidelines on pursuits are eased, as they look certain to be, individual officers must think long and hard before engaging in pursuits that could lead to injury or death, when actually it’s just not worth it. In the words of a serving officer, “Why take so much risk, when there is so little chance the guy we are chasing will go to jail?”
To use a topical example, Henry Hicks wasn’t involved in a police pursuit. He died by losing control of his vehicle when the police were some distance away. Yet you only have to look at the vilification and prosecution of the police officers who were conducting a legitimate ‘follow’ operation to understand why other officers will stand down as soon as they perceive a danger to themselves, the public or the suspect they are following.
That said, we have been told a Bill is soon to be put in front of Parliament that will have a significant affect on pursuits. We will, of course, support it fully. It’s just not the full solution.
The bike manufacturers won’t play ball
We have been critical of the role motorcycle manufacturers play in bike crime. While the Master Scheme should be lauded, it’s not enough.
But here’s another reality check. The motorcycle industry is a global business, and other countries have nowhere near the same problems as the UK. We’ve even seen social media posts where bikes are left with the keys in, in some countries.
Not in the UK though. It’s us that has the problem. While we think there is much that the industry can and should do, especially with electronic and mechanical devices that can properly disable a stolen bike within seconds of a theft, the reality is the global market has other technology demands, such as traction control and anti-wheelie kit.
Why should the managers in Japan, Italy and even our own manufacturer in Hinckley place so much emphasis on security when it is only a few markets that have a real problem?
More Tactical Motorcycle Teams needed
We very firmly believe that, when moped gangs are openly operating on major city’s streets, the only solution is to have police tactical motorcycle teams. We have said this before, and others believe the same.
This is why we are openly supporting the Met’s new ’scrambler’ team and call for at least four more teams with the same equipment and training.
© Met Police. The success of a dedicated team in Islington has led to permanent team.
We also ask that they are allowed to conduct stop and search. They will find weapons of the kind described by many bikers on the receiving end of bike-jackings: machetes, hammers and bottles filled with acid; and the tools used for stealing motorbikes: bolt-croppers and battery-powered angle grinders.
And we ask that these same teams are set up in all major cities, to prevent the moped gang disease spreading any further. In our humble opinion, no other measures are going to significantly deal with these gangs.
If they know there is very little chance of being caught and even then they get nothing more than a slap on the wrist, the only thing left to do is hound them off the streets.
We want to see their mugging and TWOKing operations disrupted so frequently there’s little chance of them not spending 24 hours in custody at least two to three times per week. By sheer persistence, piss them off so they go and find another, less tiresome, activity.
Wake up, Home Secretary
Disrupting the gangs’ activities is clearly not going to be enough to stop the rot. Moped gangs are going to increase in number under the current Criminal Justice System – because even with increased arrests, there is no custodial incentive for them to give up.
Now the police are doing their bit; the Home Secretary must do the same, and call for significant sentences to be handed out to anyone who continues to persist in motorcycle related crime.
Anything less and all the work being done by the cops at street level is going to be wasted.
Biker's Bucket ListLife on bikes
The hero who stopped a bike thief in his tracks
Finding bikers to ride with
Ian Malone
Ian is the Editor and a co-founder of Biker & Bike.
He is obsessed about bikes to the point that he often starts conversations with new people by saying, "Please don't get me onto the subject of bikes. We'll be here all day."
Inevitably, the next question asked is nearly always, "What bike have you got, then?"
He's 'down' to three bikes at the moment:
'97 Triumph Daytona T595
'11 Triumph Tiger 800
'13 Triumph Speed Triple R
He's not even a huge Triumph fan, it just turns out that's how the stable is filled at the moment.
Having been on every continent except Antartica (as long as Cuba kind-of qualifies as South America) he is a big fan of travelling. However, to his deep but hopefully not eternal shame, he's only ever explored Europe on two-wheels and only started doing this a few years ago.
His main mission now is to explore as much of the world on two wheels as possible, at the same time as trying out as many new motorcycling experiences as he can and go on to inspire other bikers to do the same.
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Lonely Planet Names Edinburgh’s Fishmarket One of The World’s Top New Food Experiences
The Fishmarket at Newhaven Harbour has been named one of the ten ‘Best New Food Experiences’ in the world in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2019, the highly anticipated annual collection of the best travel destinations, trends, journeys and experiences to have in the year ahead.
The new listing places The Fishmarket amongst some of the most highly regarded restaurants in the world including Noma in Copenhagen and The Civilisations Supperclub in London.
The Fishmarket opened in May this year and is the joint venture between renowned seafood chef, Roy Brett of Ondine in Edinburgh and Gary Welch of Welch Fishmongers.
Lonely Planet is the number one guidebook publisher in the world and has been producing titles for over 40 years. This is the first time a restaurant list has been included in the travel authority’s bestselling Best in Travel.
Lonely Planet believes that food and drink are an intrinsic part of travel and have included restaurants this year to enable travellers to discover the most delicious foodie hotspots around the world. The guide states that: "The world is not just your oyster, in 2019 it’s a smorgasbord of delicious discovery.”
Director of The Fishmarket, Roy Brett said: "We’re very excited to have been named in the ‘Best New Food Experiences’ list in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2019. Our team has been working hard since we opened in May and it’s great to see that our food and restaurant have been recognised in this way.”
"It’s fantastic for us to be able to share the very best Scottish seafood at The Fishmarket with customers from nearby and further afield. We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone for their continued support since we opened our doors earlier this year, ” added Gary Welch, Co-Director of The Fishmarket.
The full list of restaurants included in the ‘Best New Food Experiences For Travellers in 2019’ can be found online here. Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2019 guidebook is available to purchase both online and at retailers across the UK.
The Fishmarket is open every day from 11am – 10pm offering freshly cooked fish suppers to sit in or takeaway, oysters and high tea. For more information visit www.thefishmarketnewhaven.co.uk. Follow The Fishmarket on social media on Instagram @TheFishmarketNewhaven and Twitter @TheFishmarketNH.
Read what Bite thought here
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Root canal treatment — also called endodontics (“endo” – inside, “dont” – tooth) — is a set of specialized procedures designed to treat problems of the soft pulp (nerve) tissue inside the tooth. While some mistakenly think of it as an unusually painful treatment, in most cases the procedure is no more uncomfortable than getting a filling. It's actually one of the most effective ways of relieving some kinds of tooth pain.
A root canal procedure becomes necessary when infection or inflammation develops in the pulp tissue of the tooth. Pulp tissue consists of blood vessels, connective tissue and nerve cells — which explains why a problem here may cause you to feel intense pain. In time, the pain may go away... at least temporarily. Without treatment, however, the infection won't. It can lead to a dental abscess, and may even contribute to systemic problems in other parts of the body.
Root Canal Treatment Is Your Friend
We've all heard the gag: “I'd rather have a root canal...” This comedy line, comparing the procedure to something truly undesirable, may be funny — but putting off needed endodontic treatment is no joke. The idea that a root canal procedure invariably comes with complications and pain is a shopworn myth. It's certainly true that infection or inflammation in the tooth's pulp can be excruciatingly painful. But you should remember that having a root canal results in eliminating this acute pain and is not the cause of the pain.
Need another reason not to delay root canal treatment? How about this: A natural tooth that's saved via root canal treatment and restoration helps you avoid the problems that commonly occur when teeth must be removed. These include unwanted tooth migration or shifting, which can lead to difficulties in chewing; the need for bridgework or dental implants, which may be costly and complicated; and even the eventual loss of bone structure from the area of the missing tooth.
Causes of Root Canal Problems
Root canal problems stem from infection and inflammation of the tooth's pulp tissue. One potential cause of infection is deep tooth decay. Untreated dental cavities eventually allow bacteria to work their way down to the center of the tooth, where they may infect the pulp tissue. Another path by which bacteria may come into contact with pulp is via chipped or cracked teeth. Any opening in the protective enamel coating has the potential to allow bacteria access to the tooth's pulp.
Trauma to the tooth — the kind that might result from a sports injury or automobile accident, for example — is also a major cause of pulp tissue damage. In this case, it's essential to seek treatment immediately, both to try and save the tooth, and to prevent future problems.
In some cases, extensive dental work itself may cause damage to the pulp tissue that will need to be treated via a root canal. Having multiple fillings or restorations on the same tooth increases the chances of this type of injury. Occasionally, common procedures like crown preparation or orthodontics may eventually lead to root canal problems.
What to Expect During Root Canal Therapy
If an examination shows that you do need root canal therapy, don't worry — it's one of the most routine and effective procedures in the arsenal of dental treatments and can often be accomplished in just one visit.
The root canal process generally begins the same way as a filling does, and with no greater discomfort: an anesthetic is administered to numb the tooth and the surrounding area. For many patients, the worst is already over.
Next, a small opening is made in the surface of the affected tooth to give access to the pulp chamber and root canals. Tiny instruments are used, sometimes with the aid of a microscope, to remove the dead and dying pulp tissue from inside these narrow passageways. The chamber and empty canals are then cleaned, disinfected, and prepared to receive a filling of inert, biocompatible material. Finally, adhesive cement is used to seal the opening in the tooth, preventing future infection.
Following root canal treatment, your tooth may feel some sensitivity or tenderness for a few days. Over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen are generally effective in relieving discomfort, but prescription medications may also be given if needed. During this period, it may help to avoid biting hard on the affected tooth. All of these symptoms, however, should be temporary.
To further protect the tooth and restore it to full function, it's usually necessary to have a crown or other restoration placed on it. Restorations can take many forms, from traditional gold crowns to tooth replicas made of high-tech tooth-colored material. In any case, you will have made an investment in preserving your dental health for years to come.
Signs and Symptoms of Root Canal Problems
How do you know when you need a root canal? Sometimes, it's painfully obvious. If you feel constant and severe pain and pressure in your mouth, or noticeable swelling and extreme sensitivity in your gums, then it's clear you need an evaluation and treatment right away. Another telltale symptom of pulp tissue damage is sharp pain when you bite down on food. Lingering pain after eating hot or cold foods is also an indication of potential trouble. If you notice any of these symptoms, you need to have an examination as soon as possible.
“I'd Rather Have a Root Canal...” We've all heard that expression, but how true is it? Is root canal treatment really something to be feared, or does it actually offer relief? In this article, a common misconception is demystified. Get the real story about this much maligned procedure that eases pain, rather than causes it... Read Article
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PROVIDENCE — Partners HealthCare on Tuesday halted its two-year effort to acquire Care New England Health System, Rhode Island’s second-largest hospital operator, after Governor Gina Raimondo called on local hospitals to come up with a solution for health care in the state.
With Raimondo’s urging, Care New England, Lifespan, and Brown University said they would begin negotiations to create a Rhode Island-based academic health care system.
Boston-based Partners owns several Massachusetts hospitals, including Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s. Its foray into Rhode Island had stoked concerns that local patients would face higher costs and would have to travel to Boston for care. Lifespan even launched a public relations campaign to formally oppose Partners.
The development is a setback for Partners, which has been working aggressively to expand beyond Massachusetts. But it could be temporary: If the Care New England-Lifespan talks crumble, Partners could resume its bid to acquire Care New England.
And if Care New England and Lifespan eventually reach an agreement, they could — together — discuss a partnership with Partners.
Lifespan and Care New England are longtime rivals that have failed to reach a merger agreement in the past. But now, Raimondo said, they are ready to work out a deal.
“I’ve decided to step up and take an active role and say to these parties: ‘Get to the table and see if you can get this done for Rhode Island,’ ” she told reporters Tuesday.
Raimondo’s comments come as Partners and Care New England were deep into the merger negotiation process. Care New England had worked to improve its finances over the past two years — even closing one struggling hospital — to help keep the Partners deal alive. The two systems had filed an application numbering thousands of pages and were awaiting state approval to complete their deal.
Tuesday’s announcement was the latest twist in Rhode Island’s long-running health care saga, and it came in an unusual joint statement from the governor, the hospital systems, and Brown.
“In order to give this effort the best possible chance for success, and to provide maximum flexibility to the governor and the leadership of these three institutions, we will be withdrawing our application to acquire CNE,” said Partners’ interim chief executive, Dr. Anne Klibanski.
“We look forward to reengaging at the appropriate time — especially with a fully integrated local system,” she said in the statement.
The Partners-owned Brigham and Women’s Hospital plans to keep its existing clinical affiliation with Care New England.
Partners, Massachusetts’ most powerful health care system, has also been working on deals in New Hampshire. In May, officials at Mass. General said they planned to form a regional health care system with Exeter Hospital and Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in New Hampshire’s Seacoast region.
Raimondo, a Democrat in her second term, was initially supportive of Partners coming to Rhode Island. But after speaking with representatives from Partners, Care New England, Lifespan, and Brown over the last six months, she decided she preferred a “local solution.”
The governor said she wants the Rhode Island hospitals and Brown to work quickly over the summer to hammer out a deal.
At the State House on Tuesday, Raimondo noted that the concept of a Rhode Island-based academic health system was discussed more than a decade ago when she was a member of the board of Care New England-owned Women & Infants Hospital, long before she ran for public office.
“For whatever reason, it’s never been able to happen — personalities, clash of cultures,” Raimondo said. “And so what I am saying to the parties is let’s put all that aside, let’s put any history aside. And let’s come to the table and keep our eye on what’s best for Rhode Island.”
Care New England’s chief executive, Dr. James E. Fanale, said he’s optimistic that a deal among the Rhode Island entities is possible.
“We’re really going to work hard this time and ignore the issues of the past,” Fanale said in an interview.
“When the governor calls and says, ‘Listen. we’d like to bring a Rhode Island option to the table’ . . . I think we have to go to the table. We have to earnestly work with Brown University and with Lifespan.”
Brown president Christina Paxson said in a statement that she looks forward to the discussions.
Lifespan officials said they were pleased the governor “has taken this important first step to achieve a vision that has eluded the state for more than two decades” — but they declined to comment beyond a brief statement.
Lifespan officials had argued that Partners’ plan to acquire Care New England would shift local jobs to Massachusetts, among other ills. (Raimondo on Tuesday called Lifespan’s public criticism of Partners “unfortunate” and suggested it didn’t sway her decision to call for a local health care collaboration.)
Lifespan, the state’s largest health care provider, operates Rhode Island Hospital, Hasbro Children’s Hospital, The Miriam Hospital, Bradley Hospital, and Newport Hospital.
Care New England’s network includes Women & Infants, Butler Hospital, and Kent Hospital.
The Rhode Island Foundation and the Partnership for Rhode Island, a business group, threw their support behind Raimondo’s comments Tuesday and said they will collectively spend $300,000 on consultants to help Lifespan, Care New England, and Brown reach a deal.
If Lifespan and Care New England merge, the vast majority of health care services in Rhode Island would be controlled by just one company.
In a statement Tuesday, representatives of District 1199 SEIU New England, a health care workers union, predicted that such a consolidation would likely lead to job losses and said state officials must safeguard patient care and local jobs amid the negotiations.
“It was clear that some of the powers that be in Rhode Island want to maintain a Rhode Island-dominated health care system,” said David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group, a Boston consulting firm.
“I don’t think it’s actually going to solve any of their economic problems,” Williams said, “and I think it’s reasonably likely that Partners will be back at the table in three to six months after Rhode Island determines that going it alone is not viable.”
Priyanka Dayal McCluskey can be reached at priyanka.
mccluskey@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @priyanka_dayal.Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @danmcgowan.
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Smith – N’Dam, Taylor – Persoon, Buatsi – Periban, Algieri – Coyle Final Press Conference Quotes
Matchroom Boxing - May 29, 2019
Eddie Hearn, Matchroom Boxing Managing Director:
“Welcome welcome and what an honour it is to be sitting here in Madison Square Garden in the theatre, where I’ve only managed to get to the theatre, in terms of promoting. I’ve promoted at this great venue right here, twice, Danny Jacobs winning the IBF Middleweight World championship, also Demetrius Andrade defending his World title in January, but now we upgrade to the big daddy, the Mecca of boxing at Madison Square Garden – the big arena.
“You will see one of the great atmospheres in this country for boxing on Saturday night. Around 8,000 Brits are coming here to sing Sweet Caroline, to drink your bars dry and to show you how to create an amazing atmosphere. There’s just a few hundred tickets left now, we will have a complete sellout on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. If you haven’t got your tickets, you need to get them very quickly. We needed to produce an undercard that we could all remember. I’m so excited, I can’t even imagine how excited these people are to get the chance to box there in, for some of them, career-defining fights. As always, it will be streamed live on DAZN in America and for the UK fans Sky Sports Box Office. What a night you have got in store.”
Adam Smith, Head of Sky Sports Boxing:
“It’s another special sporting weekend ahead. What a special arena this is, the most famous in the world. AJ is here lighting up New York with posters everywhere, I thought the workout at Brookfield Place was fantastic yesterday down in the financial district. There’s a real buzz around the city and it’s an honour to be here again and it’s magnificent to have so much talent on display on Saturday night.
“Tommy Coyle is bouncing around like a little boy, he’s so happy to be here. It’s a fantastic story, the boy from Hull who’s come all the way here to New York and tackling Chris Algieri, a great talker and a great fighter himself. What a way to get things started, I’m really looking forward to seeing two of our great hopes Joshua Buatsi and Josh Kelly in action, I believe both of them are going the whole way. It’s wonderful having Katie Taylor attempting to become the undisputed champion and saving the toughest until last in the WBC Champion Delfine Persoon, that is going to be some fight and some test for Katie.
“Callum Smith the leading Super-Middleweight after that terrific display in the World Super Series against George Groves. It is time to get Callum back on our screens, it has been a long time but we’re really looking forward to getting him going again and he’s got a tough challenge in Hassan N’Dam, who I’ve known a long time. What an opportunity they’ve all got on the big stage before the big boys go to work. Enjoy it everybody. It’s going to be a super event on Sky Sports Box Office on Saturday.”
Callum Smith – Liverpool, England – 25-0, 18 KOs – defending his WBA World ‘Super’, WBC Diamond and Ring Magazine Super-Middleweight titles against Hassan N’Dam:
Luke Keeler: Demetrius Andrade DELUDED in looking beyond me
“I feel good, I feel excited. This is a new chapter of my career. Everything previously was the journey to become a World Champion and now I’ve achieve that let’s see what more I can achieve.
“There’s no better place to start my journey as a World Champion than Madison Square Garden. It’s such an iconic fight venue with a lot of history. To add my name to a lot of the Brits that have boxed here over the years is going to be special for myself.
RESULTS: Vladimir Shishkin decisions Ulises Sierra
“I’m excited and I’m looking forward to putting in a big performance. I’ve been out a little longer than I would have liked to be but I want to make up for lost time. I want to get back and remind people how good I am.
“There is talk of massive names to fight in the future but to secure them fights I’ve got to win this weekend. Big fights excite me and motivate me. I want to maximise my potential and achieve as much as I can. All of that starts on Saturday.
“Hassan is a good fighter, very experienced, a former World Champion himself and only the better fighters have beat him. I believe I am the best Super-Middleweight in the world and if that’s true I should beat Hassan, and beat him well, looking good doing it.”
Hassan N’Dam – Monte Carlo, Monaco – 37-3, 21 KOs – challenging Callum Smith for the WBA World ‘Super’, WBC Diamond and Ring Magazine Super-Middleweight titles:
“Hello everyone. First of all I would like to thank Eddie Hearn. Thanks to my team for all of the work they do for me. Thanks to my wife and thanks to everyone for being here this morning for this press conference.
“My trainer told me: ‘You tell me everyday you want to face the best in the world. Why do you need to think about this? You have an opportunity to fight on a big card at Madison Square Garden. Make your dream come true!’
“He has something that I want. I want to be ‘Super’ champion.
“This is my first time at this level at Super-Middleweight so I don’t know how I’m going to feel. But I feel good right now. I think I have experience for this kind of match and this event. Madison Square Garden is somewhere that everyone dreams of fighting at. My experience will be very important to this match.”
Katie Taylor – Bray, Ireland – 13-0, 6 KOs – fighting Delfine Persoon for the Women’s Undisputed Lightweight Championship of the World:
“The minute I turned professional I wanted to become the undisputed champion, this was always my goal. I nearly pinch myself that I have this opportunity at the Mecca of boxing Madison Square Garden, it can’t get any bigger than this. I’m ready to make history and I’m ready to perform on Saturday night. This is what I’ve always wanted.
“Delfine Persoon is a fantastic champion and this is exactly what boxing needs, it’s champion against champion, the best vs. the best. This isn’t just what women’s boxing needs, this is what boxing needs. I’m definitely expecting the toughest test of my career but I do feel prepared for this challenge. I’ve had a really tough training camp over the last two months preparing for this fight.
“We’re both here to make history for our nations, we’re both here to perform and it’s going to make for a very exciting fight. This is by far the biggest night of my career, this is the pinnacle of boxing to have all five belts, the Ring Magazine belt is up for grabs as well, this is what every fighter dreams of. I understand how big this fight is and the magnitude of this event. This is why I box, these are the fights that I always wanted and I’m ready to make history.”
Delfine Persoon – Roeselare, Belgium – 43-1, 18 KOs – fighting Katie Taylor for the Women’s Undisputed Lightweight Championship of the World:
“Belgium is a small country, I think New York is bigger than Belgium! Boxing as a sport in Belgium is not recognised so I’m the first boxer that can make history for the Belgian boxing sport. For me it’s very exciting.
“I think I will be the first Belgium boxer that can take all of the belts. I like it, its my passion. I want to do everything for it. I never thought I’d have the chance, we are ready and we go for it.
“Im expecting a tough fight, she has a lot more experience in amateur fighting, there was no national team for me in Belgium so it was no possible for me to go to World or European championships.
“Katie Taylor is an Olympic champion. I can compete with an Olympic champion and hopefully beat an Olympic champion.”
“I want to do everything in my boxing career and now I have the chance to do this.”
Josh Kelly – Sunderland, England – 9-0, 6 KOs – defending his WBA International Welterweight title against Ray Robinson:
“I feel blessed to be here and to get a chance to perform on a World stage like this is truly a blessing. Not many kids from Sunderland get this chance so I’m taking it with both hands. I’ve worked hard and I feel I’m ready for this step up. I know Ray couldn’t be here today because of family problems, family first and I wish him all the best with that.
“I’m here now and I’m ready to put a performance on on Saturday. I really can’t wait to get in there and dance underneath those lights. It’s a bit surreal but I’m excited, I’m going to enjoy it, I’m going to take it all in and I want to perform – that’s the main thing. I can’t wait.
“The last fight he had was against Kavaliauskas and he was ranked highly. He was a tough opponent for Ray and a lot of people thought he won that fight. This is a big step up. Ray Robinson will give me a test. There won’t be any room for complacency in there on Saturday and I’m going to get the job done and come away with the W, sit back and watch the rest of the card and hopefully the rest of the British fighters do the same.”
Joshua Buatsi – Croydon, England – 10-0, 8 KOs – defending his WBA International Light-Heavyweight title against Marco Antonio Periban:
“This is a good opportunity. Like you said, Periban is a well-known Mexican fighter. He’s going to come and bring experience to the table. People are curious and everyone is intrigued to see what is going to happen so it’s up to me to go out there and put on a good show. I was hoping he would be here because I haven’t seen him but we’ll see each other face-to-face at the weigh-in and Saturday night it happens.
“I think anyway it comes man. I’ve prepared to do ten rounds, if it goes the distance cool, if I sense any vulnerabilities or any opportunities there I’ll be there to take them. If it goes the distance cool, if it doesn’t then happy days.
“It was good being in Miami. It was the first time I’ve been in the US overall so it was a good experience seeing how Joshua does things leading up to a fight like this. As always I’m observing and seeing how things are done so one day when I’m in that position I can do the same thing.”
Chris Algieri – New York, USA – 23-3, 8 KOs – defending his WBO International Super-Lightweight title against Tommy Coyle:
“I just want to first of all thank Eddie Hearn and Matchroom Boxing for putting on this amazing event and to my promoter Joe Deguardia from Star Boxing, as well as Sky Sports which it is going to be great to be exposed to a whole new fanbase out there. Also to DAZN which is the premier platform for all things boxing now, and a bunch of other things as well. I think it really is the way of the future in terms of where we are right now where networks are starting to fall and apps are starting to become the major thing.
“This fight is a huge opportunity. This is exactly why I came back to the sport. I want to be a World Champion, this fight puts me back in that position so I’ve got to go out there and not only win, but look impressive and angle myself for another World title run. This is why I am here. I’m feeling great, this training camp has been fantastic. I have an opponent in Tommy Coyle that gets me excited to go out there. I really think it’s going to be a fantastic fight. Make sure you tune in.
“There’s been a lot of talk about a lot of the stuff that I have been doing outside of the ring but I want to go back to everybody talking about what I do inside the ring so on Saturday night I’m looking forward to putting on a great show and coming out with the victory and moving forward.
Joe Deguardia, promoter of Chris Algieri:
“Its a pleasure to be here, this is something really special this fight between Tommy and Chris. I don’t know if it’s going to be the battle of the mics or the battle of the ring, because both of them are great speakers. Chris Algieri’s history is something special, we are as a team pleased to be here Eddie, thank you. DAZN are taking over boxing, it’s the perfect place to watch and be sure to tune in early on DAZN because this is going to be on early. It’s going to be a great fight leading into the World Championship here at Madison Square Garden, the Mecca of boxing. It’s always spectacular to be fighting at MSG, there’s no place in the World like it. I’m really looking forward to this fight between Tommy and Chris.
“Chris has been something special behind and outside the ring, between his interviews, between what he’s done as a nutritionist working with all of the fighters. Inside the ring he has been something special as well. I know Chris is hungry to get his title back, he’s never lost at 140lbs and Tommy is standing in the way. Eddie has it right, the winner of this fight probably fights for the championship of the World next.”
Tommy Coyle – Hull, England – 25-4, 12 KOs – challenging Chris Algieri for the WBO International Super-Lightweight title:
“I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be fighting at the Mecca of boxing which is Madison Square Garden. I’m so so excited but it’s a huge huge opportunity for me to go on and do something which I probably thought would never happen in my career.
“With opportunity comes pressure, but without pressure you don’t get diamonds and I genuinely think Saturday night I’m going to go in there and shine like a diamond. I think it’s the right time for me, I’ve improved as a fighter, I’m really coming into my own now and I’m just mega excited. I keep laughing to myself, waiting for someone to tell me that it’s a prank. I’m usually pulling the pranks but it’s happening, I’m here and it’s going off.
“100% this is a very winnable fight. It’s a great fight. Chris Algieri is a fantastic fighter, he’s a better dresser, he dresses fantastic – I like his style. I really really think this is a fight for me where I can really look good. I’m not going to have to go and find him, I just think the styles will gel fantastically and I know I’ve got too much inside.”
Souleymane Cissokho – Bagnolet, France – 8-0, 6 KOs – fighting Vladimir Hernandez in a eight round Super-Welterweight contest:
“Thanks Matchroom, thanks Eddie, thanks everybody. I’m very happy to be here. It’s a very great fight card. I had a great training camp and I can’t wait to show you all who I am. Thanks.”
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You are here: Home / Boxing News / Smith – N’Dam, Taylor – Persoon, Buatsi – Periban, Algieri – Coyle Final Press Conference Quotes
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Spalletti: "Inter have improved since last season"
11 May at 16:00
Inter Milan manager Luciano Spalletti believes that the club has improved a lot since last season, despite their probable inability to finish inside the top four.
The nerazzurri are currently fifth in the Serie A table, two points behind Roma and with two games to go, there still is a chance that the nerazzurri finish inside the top four. That is the target that was set out for them and Luciano Spalletti early on in the season and it seemed to be going very well during the first half of the season, when Inter seemed intent on challenging for the title, let alone top four.
In his recent pre-game press conference, Luciano Spalletti has expressed his belief about how the club has improved from last season. He said: "Last year on the 32nd matchday, Inter did not have this chance for qualification.
"We have 10 more than Atalanta and 9 more than Milan, and from our numbers you have to see this as an improvement for Inter or a worsening of the others. "
He also said: "We struggled a bit but now we are very close to being a very strong team. "
Kaustubh Pandey(@Kaus_Pandey17)
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The 2019 Audi R8 Supercar Won't Get a V-6 Engine
The Audi R8 will stick with a V-10 engine, the company confirmed to C/D.
By Mike Duff
We've been telling you about Audi's plans to produce a version of the R8 with a turbocharged V-6 engine since this generation was launched in 2015, with the anticipation being that it would arrive at the same time that the junior sports car received its mid-life facelift.
But now we bring sad news: the smaller engine is definitely not going to happen. The company has confirmed to C/D that there is no chance this R8 will be offered with anything other than the naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V-10 that currently powers both regular and Performance versions.
"No, absolutely no, never," a company spokesman told us at the launch of the revised R8 when we asked if we could expect to see a downsized powerplant anytime soon.
While the mighty deca-pot has been given a modest power increase for 2019, with the new range-topping Performance version upgraded to 602 horsepower, the space below the regular model will remain unfilled, despite the extensive work that was done on engineering a version of the R8 that would have used the turbocharged engine from the Audi RS5. Company insiders admit there are both engineering and marketing reasons for the decision to stick with the V-10.
The original R8 was pitched as an alternative to the Porsche 911 and had a V-8 engine in base versions that allowed it to compete with the lower reaches of its rival's range. But the second-gen R8 shares much of its underbody structure with the Lamborghini Huracán, making it far harder to make a case for a substantially cheaper version.
But a bigger problem was the potency of the TT RS and its 400-hp five-cylinder engine. Although the front-engined TT is less technically sophisticated than the R8, it is devastatingly effective at going quickly—we recorded a 3.4-second zero-to-6o-mph time in testing—with Audi reckoning it would be too hard to create a V-6–engined R8 that could sit between its V-10 sister and the TT in terms of performance.
"There just isn't space between those cars," the spokesman told us.
There are currently no plans for a direct replacement for the R8, although the PB18 e-tron concept that was shown at this year's Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance suggests that serious consideration is being given to an electric car in the same part of the market.
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Dr Kerry Moore - Pobl - Prifysgol Caerdydd
Dr Kerry Moore
BA (Wales), MA (Sunderland), PhD (Cardiff)
Ysgol Newyddiaduraeth, y Cyfryngau a Diwylliant
moorek4@cardiff.ac.uk
+44 (0)29 208 76199
1.39, Sgwâr Canolog, Caerdydd, CF10 1FS
Addysgu
My research explores media and political discourses surrounding migration, racism and social injustice. I have published extensively in these areas, including the co-edited book Migrations and the Media with Bernhard Gross and Terry Threadgold (2012, Peter Lang) and a special issue for Jomec Journal on the Meaning of Migration (2015). My most recent published work focuses on European press coverage of the migration crisis in the Mediterranean; immigration politics, populism and Brexit, human rights in refugee news and constructions of racism in UK crime news. Currently, I am leading a collaborative project with journalists and third sector communications professionals in Wales exploring contemporary news media narratives on poverty in the English and Welsh language news media.
I am a founding Co-Editor of the JOMEC Journal, Reviews Editor for the journal Social Semiotics and serve on the editorial board of the journal Journalism and Discourse Studies. I am also Chair of Research Ethics for the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies and sit on the School Research Ethics Committee for Cardiff School of Architecture.
PhD Supervisions:
Dr Liezel Longboan: Mediating Indigeneity in Virtual Communities (completed 2013)
Marina Morani: Research: New media and new Italians: an analysis of online intercultural projects
Alida Payson: ‘Inhabiting Her: Reconfiguring Refugee Identity’
Xin Zhang: ‘The identities of Chinese ethnic minorities in the UK’ (2011-)
Muhammad Ilyas: The assassination of bin Laden in the UK and Pakistan press: a comparative study
Michal Tuchowski: Diaspora and ethnic media in the age of migration. The role of the Polish ethnic media in the process of integration of Poles in the United Kingdom after May 2004
Carrie Newman: How can Arts and Heritage projects better represent minority groups and individuals in their displays of ethnic minority story, history and position?
Lijie Yang: The image of female asylum seekers and refugees in the British media
Examination of PhD Students:
Gill Abousnnouga: Visual and Written Discourses of British Commemorative War Monuments (2012)
Dafina Paca: Neither Here nor There: Exploring 'identity' amongst Kosovo Albanians in the UK (2016)
Moore, K.et al. 2020. Reporting on poverty: news media narratives and third sector communications in Wales. Cardiff: Cardiff University Press.
Moore, K.et al. 2019. Exploring the news media narrative on poverty in Wales. Oxford: Oxfam. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10546/620743
Moore, K. and Greenland, K. 2018. Racism as a crime in Britain's right-wing press. In: Bhatia, M., Poynting, S. and Tufail, W. eds. Media, Crime and Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 213-233.
Moore, K., Berry, M. and Garcia-Blanco, I. 2018. Saving refugees or policing the seas? how the national press of five EU member states framed news coverage of the migration crisis. Justice, Power and Resistance 2(1), pp. 66-95.
Moore, K. 2017. Media, human rights and refugees. In: Tumber, H. and Waisbord, S. eds. The Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights., Vol. 1. Abingdon, Oxon, UK & New York: Routledge, pp. 446-455.
Moore, K. 2016. Wales, immigration, news media and Brexit. In: Jackson, D., Thorsen, E. and Wring, D. eds. EU Referendum Analysis 2016: Media, Voters and the Campaign. Bournemouth: The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community, pp. 28.
Berry, M., Garcia-Blanco, I. and Moore, K. 2016. Press coverage of the refugee and migrant crisis in the EU: a content analysis of five European countries. Project Report. [Online]. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/56bb369c9.html
Moore, K. 2015. Editorial: The meaning of migration. JOMEC Journal(7), pp. 1-6. (10.18573/j.2015.10001)
Moore, K. 2015. Immigration coverage and populist cultural work in the 2015 General Election campaign. In: Jackson, D. and Thorsen, E. eds. UK Election Analysis 2015: Media, Voters and the Campaign: Early reflections from leading UK academics. Bournemouth, UK: The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community, Bournemouth University, pp. 20-21.
Moore, K. 2013. 'Asylum shopping' in the neoliberal social imaginary. Media, Culture & Society 35(3), pp. 348-365. (10.1177/0163443712472090)
Wahl-Jorgensen, K.et al. 2013. Breadth of opinion in BBC output. Project Report. [Online]. BBC Trust. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/editorial_standards/impartiality/breadth_opinion.html
Moore, K., Gross, B. and Threadgold, T. R. eds. 2012. Migrations and the media. Global Crises and the Media Vol. 6. New York: Peter Lang.
Moore, K. 2012. “Asylum Crisis”, national security and the re-articulation of human rights. In: Moore, K., Gross, B. and Threadgold, T. R. eds. Migrations and the Media. Global Crises and the Media Vol. 6. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 65-88.
Moore, K. and Jewell, J. 2012. Black role models and the news. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics 9(2/3), pp. n/a.
Lewis, J. M. W., Mason, P. and Moore, K. 2011. Images of Islam in the UK: The representation of British Muslims in the national press 2000-2008. In: Petley, J. and Richardson, R. eds. Pointing the Finger: Islam and Muslims in the British Media. Oxford: Oneworld, pp. 40-65.
Moore, K. 2011. Asylum shopping and the politics of postcolonial neo-liberalism. Presented at: No borders? Exclusion, justice and the politics of fear - 39th Annual Conference of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control, Université de Savoie, Chambery, France, 3-7 September 2011.
Moore, K., Jewell, J. and Cushion, S. 2011. Media representations of black young men and boys: Report of the REACH media monitoring project. Project Report. [Online]. London: Crown. Available at: http://lx.iriss.org.uk/sites/default/files/resources/2113275.pdf
Jewell, J. and Moore, K. 2011. Black role models and the news. Presented at: How can mainstream media engage effectively with Black and Ethnic Minority audiences?, Birt Acres Lecture Theatre, Bute Building, CardiffUniversity, 16 June 2011.
Moore, K. 2010. Cultural study of asylum under New Labour. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.
Lewis, J. M. W., Mason, P. and Moore, K. 2009. Islamic terrorism and the repression of the political. In: Marsden, L. and Savigny, H. eds. Media, Religion and Conflict. Religion and International Security Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 17-38.
Moore, K., Mason, P. and Lewis, J. M. W. 2008. Images of Islam in the UK: the representation of British Muslims in the national print news media 2000-2008. Working paper. Cardiff: Cardiff University. Available at: http://jppsg.ac.uk/jomec/resources/08channel4-dispatches.pdf
Moore, K. and Gross, B. 2008. Refugee and asylum discourse in British broadcast news. Presented at: MeCCSA Conference 2008, School of Journalism Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University, 9 – 11 January 2008.
Moore, K. and Clifford, S. 2007. The gendered use of the media by asylum seekers in Britain. Gender and Development 15(3), pp. 451-466. (10.1080/13552070701630616)
Gross, B., Moore, K. and Threadgold, T. R. 2007. Broadcast news coverage of asylum April to October 2006: caught between human rights and public safety. Project Report. [Online]. Cardiff: Cardiff University. Available at: http://cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/resources/BroadcastNewsCoverageofAsylum.pdf
Moore, K. 2005. Policing the 'asylum crisis', anti-detention campaigns and counter discourse on asylum in the UK. Signs of the Times Collective 2005(13 Apr)
BA Modules:
Media Power Society
Media, Racism and Conflict
Doing Media Research
Racism and racialised crisis discourse
Representations of religious and cultural difference
Poverty and social injustice
Discourse theory and analysis
Using Research findings about the Media Narrative on Poverty in Wales to Build Journalist-Third Sector Communications Networks Principal Investigator (May 2016-April 2017) Project using research findings from the project, ‘Exploring the News Media Narrative on Poverty in Wales' to improve fair and accurate public representation of the issues, reduce stigma, and build sustainable and mutually supportive communication networks between journalists and the third sector organisations in Wales working to support socio-economically marginalised groups and address economic inequality. The impact of the project will be to establish new connections between the third sector and news professionals to improve reporting of the issue of poverty and economic inequality in the Welsh and English language news media. Funded by an Economic and Social Research Council Initiator Accelerator Award (ESRC IAA)
Exploring the News Media Narrative on Poverty in Wales Principal Investigator (2016) Project investigating the coverage and production of news surrounding poverty in the English and Welsh language news media in Wales. Funded by a coalition of 10 NGOs based in Wales, coordinated by Oxfam Cymru.
Poverty, NGOs and the News Media in Wales Principal Investigator (2016) Project investigating practices of communications professionals working in the third sector in Wales seeking to influence the news agenda on poverty. Funded by Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP).
News Media Representations of Migration in Five European Countries: Co-Investigator (2016) Project investigating the representation of immigration during the 2014-5 crisis in the national press of 5 European countries (UK, Sweden, Germany, Spain & Italy), with Dr Inaki Garcia Blanco and Dr Mike Berry, funded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
The Meaning of ‘Racism’ in the UK Press 20 Years After the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Principal Investigator (2014) Project developing interdisciplinary work with Dr Katy Greenland (SOCSI) examining the construction of racism in the UK national press, funded by Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programmed (CUROP)
BBC Impartiality Study: Co-Investigator (2014) Project investigating and reviewing the breadth of opinion in BBC news coverage across three areas (Migration, Europe and Religion) with Professor Karin Wahl Jorgensen, Professor Richard Sambrook, Dr Mike Berry, Dr Lucy Bennett, Dr Jonathan Cable, Dr Inaki Garcia-Blanco, Dr Jenny Kidd, Dr Lina Denzic & Dr Arne Hintz, funded by the BBC Trust.
DOC 360: Principal Investigator (2013-)
Collaboration with creative partners On Par, to explore audience engagement with documentary when presented within an immersive environment, funded by REACT.
REACH Media Analysis: Principal Investigator (2009-10)
Project with Dr John Jewell and Dr Stephen Cushion to explore constructions of young black men and boys in the news media, funded by the Department of Communities and Local Government, 2009-10
Images of Islam: Principal Investigator (2008)
Project with Professor Justin Lewis and Dr Paul Mason to explore the coverage of Muslims and Islam in the UK, funded by Channel 4 for the Dispatches documentary, ‘It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim’, broadcast July 7th 2008.
Broadcast Coverage of Asylum Seekers and Refugees: Research Assistant (2006-7)
Project with Professor Terry Threadgold and Bernhard Gross exploring the construction of asylum and refugee issues in the UK broadcast news media, funded by Oxfam.
Proffiliau allanol
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Carroll’s Furniture celebrates century of business
From the April 15, 2019 Sheridan Press
SHERIDAN — This year, Carroll’s Furniture celebrates 100 years of business. A century ago, Robert E. Carroll opened the business as the population of Sheridan grew following World War I.
Carroll and his friend, Bob Thirlwell, opened a furniture store in 1919, initially calling it “Bob’s Place.” Eventually, the store moved into the current location of Carroll’s Furniture at 340 N. Main St., where Carroll bought Thirlwell’s share of the business in 1925. The store then became “Carroll’s” as it is known today.
Robert E. Carroll’s sons, Bill and Clifford Carroll, worked in the store throughout their youth. Clifford Carroll took on the business in 1931, working there for 52 years, and Bill Carroll joined soon after returning from World War II, working there for 65 years. In 1959, Clifford Carroll’s oldest son, Robert B. Carroll, returned from the Navy and began the third generation for the furniture store. Under Robert B. Carroll’s leadership, the furniture store underwent some major changes, from purchasing more space from the Rainbow Bar in mid-60s to a devastating fire in 1967 that destroyed everything inside. Since rebuilding in 1968, Carroll’s Furniture has experienced little change.
Robert B. Carroll passed the business on to his son, Chris Carroll, in 2000 after 41 years of ownership. Chris Carroll has been the owner of the store for 19 years, carrying on the Carroll family tradition for the fourth generation. Through all of this, Carroll’s has served an important role in downtown Sheridan. The business has been a member of the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce since 1968. Office manager Chuck Magera has been working at Carroll’s Furniture for almost 20 years and has seen the changes the last two decades have brought the business. As the online market increases in the town and encroaches on local storefronts, the store has adapted.
“Recently, we’ve been doing more special orders instead of holding all of the products in store,” said Magera. “Carroll’s has remained in business because of a combination of good employees, quality products, and attention to detail.”
Chris Carroll, current owner of Carroll’s Furniture, also noticed changes in the business since he began 19 years ago.
“There’s more competition with the internet today than there was 15 years ago,” Carroll said. “Still, people want to touch and feel and sit in the products before they buy them.”
The internet doesn’t necessarily pose a threat to the business, though.
“Carroll’s is important to Sheridan because it is such an old staple here. It would be shocking to drive past and see that we’re not open,” Carroll said.
Many people attest to the level of service that Carroll’s Furniture supplies and its importance to the town. Dixie Johnson of the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce expressed interest in Carroll’s success.
“They’re very good at customer service,” Johnson said. “Carroll’s has always been an important downtown business.”
Magera agreed.
“We’re always focused on customer service and being active in the community,” Magera said. “It’s important to keep business downtown, and we are a cornerstone business for North Main.”
Carroll and his staff take pride that, despite increases in internet shopping for household items, Carroll’s storefront has weathered 100 years of changing economies and doesn’t anticipate stopping anytime soon.
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fun casino review
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26 Ghar Id-Dud Street
SLM1573
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Seizure of Private Border Land Without Just Compensation (Until Years Later)
By David Bier
The House Homeland Security Committee will markup and likely pass the Border Security for America Act (H.R. 3548) today. Among the bill’s 95 pages is this:
The Secretary of Homeland Security shall take such actions as may be necessary (including the removal of obstacles to detection of illegal entrants) to construct, install, deploy, operate, and maintain tactical infrastructure and technology in the vicinity of the United States border to deter, impede, and detect illegal activity in high traffic areas.
Media outlets are describing this as codifying Trump’s “border wall.” I have previously detailed the numerous problems with building a border wall, including the fact that it would require huge amounts of private land along the Southern border. This deprivation of the right to private property is serious, but it’s compounded by the fact that the government seizes the land first and only then, many years later in some cases, provides just compensation. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has long ago signed off on this procedure. It’s a problem that Congress must fix.
The Problem of Seizing Private Land
Figure 1 is a map of the border that shows the federally owned portions in green. Tribal land, which comes with its own restrictions, is green with black stripes. The existing border fencing is in black and yellow. The yellow portions are vehicular barriers, and the bolded black is the pedestrian or “real” fence. The dotted line in Texas is the Rio Grande River. As you can see, most of Texas is without any barriers and is almost entirely privately owned.
Border Fencing and Federal Land
One reason why Congress built the fences where it did is due to the problems associated with seizing private land. In July 2007, Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Michael Friel explained to The Seattle Times that the fences “were going up first in New Mexico, Arizona and California, where much of the land already belongs to the federal government.” He added, “We realize that in Texas there are folks that own property, that have land on the border. That dynamic is different.”
DHS’s Inspector General (IG) concluded in 2009 that “acquiring non‐federal property has delayed the completion of fence construction,” and that “CBP achieved [its] progress primarily in areas where environmental and real estate issues did not cause significant delay.” The IG report again:
For example one landowner in New Mexico refused to allow CBP to acquire his land for the fence. The land ownership predated the Roosevelt easement that provides the federal government with a 60‐foot border right‐of‐way. As a result, construction of fencing was delayed and a 1.2‑mile gap in the fence existed for a time in this area. CBP later acquired this land through a negotiated settlement.
The IG found more than 480 cases in which the federal government negotiated the “voluntary” sale of property, and up to 300 cases in which condemnation would be sought through the courts.
Legal Process and Legal Authority to Seize Private Land
Congress has already given the administration authority under a 1996 law and a 2006 law to condemn and seize land using eminent domain to build barriers. One way to address eminent domain along the border is simply to ban it. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D‑AZ) has introduced a bill today that would do so. This would be effective, but it may not be politically feasible, given the wall fever that has descended on Congress.
Another approach would address the process. Right now, when Border Patrol wants to take someone’s land, they send them a letter offering them a nominal low sum of money for their land and threatening to file condemnation proceedings against them if they don’t accept it. In 2006, when the Secure Fence Act fences were built, many property owners accepted the low offer because they did not understand their right to negotiate over just compensation in court. Just compensation is a constitutional guarantee. Under the 5th amendment, “private property [cannot] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
Just compensation refers to the fair market value of the property seized — what you could get for the land if you attempted to sell it — but less than what you would demand to receive in a voluntary sale. But in many cases, the seizure of a single strip of property in the middle of someone’s property can depreciate the value of the entire land. For this reason, it is necessary to present evidence in a court of the total impact of the seizure to the landowner. Other issues that may arise in this process are the exact boundaries of someone’s property and who exactly holds financial interests in the land. These issues also take time to sort out.
Seizures without Just Compensation
Here’s the problem: under the eminent domain statute, the federal government can seize property almost as soon as they file a condemnation proceeding — as soon as the legal authority for the taking is established — then they can haggle over just compensation later. It’s called “quick take.” Quick take eminent domain creates multiple perverse incentives for the government. 1) They can quickly take land, even when they don’t really need it, and 2) they have no real incentive to compromise or work with the land owner on compensation. The land owner’s bargaining power is significantly diminished. The federal government already possesses the property.
This means that for years, people who are subject to a border wall taking go without just compensation. The government is supposed to compensate the landowner for this time by paying interest on the agreed amount. But in the real world, many people cannot survive for years being deprived of income that they might have from the land. According to an NPR analysis of 300 fence cases, the resolved cases took more than three years to resolve. In other cases, the process took seven, eight, or even 10 years. Some cases are still pending a decade on.
Congress could rectify this injustice by requiring the federal government to work out just compensation before the wall is built or, better yet, before the land is taken. That would give the landowner a fair position to negotiate with the government and give the government a reason to respect their rights. That it would slow up a pointless waste of taxpayer dollars is just an added bonus.
International Economics, Development & Immigration, Constitution, the Law, and the Courts
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Japanese billionaire looking for 'life partner' to fly with him to the moon
Posted: Jan 13, 2020 12:05 PM CST
(CNN) -- It sounds like the plot of a science fiction movie — but Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is serious about his search for a special someone to join him on a space voyage to the moon.
Having recently split up with his girlfriend, fashion mogul Maezawa has launched an online appeal for a female "life partner" to accompany him on SpaceX's maiden tourist voyage — a slingshot trip around the moon tentatively scheduled for 2023.
"As feelings of loneliness and emptiness slowly begin to surge upon me, there's one thing that I think about: continuing to love one woman," 44-year-old Maezawa wrote Thursday in an online appeal.
"I want to find a 'life partner.' With that future partner of mine, I want to shout our love and world peace from outer space."
Maezawa, who founded Japan's popular online shopping site Zozotown, is worth an estimated $2 billion, according to Forbes.
A rare, eccentric figure among Japan's usually conservative entrepreneurs, he made global headlines in 2018, when Elon Musk's SpaceX revealed that he had chartered a flight aboard the company's Big Falcon Rocket.
The Big Falcon Rocket, which was subsequently renamed Starship, has a launch target of this year, according to the SpaceX website.
Widely known as a high-rolling art collector, Maezawa announced in 2018 that he planned to take six to eight artists with him on the moon voyage and inspire them to create new art — a project he called "Dear Moon."
"What I want to do is show the people of Earth just how beautiful our planet is by taking artists up there, so that they can convey that beauty to the world," he previously told CNN.
'A special someone'
Writing on his website, Maezawa said he thought the lunar trip was a good chance to "seriously face up the idea of 'continuing to love one woman' which I'd only really had a hazy image about."
According to the conditions listed on the website, applicants must be single women aged 20 or over, with a "bright personality" and always positive, have an interest in going to space — and "wish for world peace."
The deadline for applications is January 17, with the final decision scheduled to be made by Maezawa at the end of March.
Applicants are asked to provide their height, job, hobbies, "special skill" and "selling points," their impression of Maezawa, and a photo of themselves.
The matchmaking search will be filmed for a new documentary, "Full Moon Lovers," which will be shown on streaming service AbemaTV.
Eccentric billionaire
Maezawa is no stranger to attention-grabbing stunts.
On New Year's Eve, he announced on YouTube that he will give away more than $9 million to 1,000 of his Twitter followers to see if it makes them happier. All they had to do to stand a chance of winning the money was retweet his original post before midnight on January 7. A lottery will determine the winners.
The billionaire orchestrated a similar contest in January 2019, giving away 100 million yen ($910,000) to 100 Twitter followers. They ended up with a bit more than $9,000 each. His January 2019 tweet was the most retweeted Twitter post ever at the time, with 4.7 million retweets.
™ & © 2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
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Top CEOs say running a company isn't only about the stock price
By MoneyWatch.com
August 19, 2019 / 4:58 PM / CBS/AP
A business group representing many of the nation's top CEOs said a corporation's main purpose isn't only about maximizing profits for shareholders, signaling a shift in the ethos that has long guided corporate America.
Corporations also need to deliver value to customers, invest in employees, treat suppliers ethically and promote sustainable business practices, according to the Business Roundtable
One former CEO and critic of executive compensation says it's in the group's "enlightened self-interest" to spread the benefits of capitalism.
Some of the nation's top chief executives say their job must involve considering the well-being of society at large, not just maximizing profits for shareholders—a shift in the business ethos that has guided corporate America for decades.
A statement issued Monday by the Business Roundtable, a leading group representing CEOs that is chaired by JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon, puts shareholders on more equal footing with others that have an interest in a corporation—so-called stakeholders that includes workers, suppliers, customers and communities.
"Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity," the statement reads.
To that end, the CEOs declared themselves committed to delivering value to customers, investing in employees, and treating suppliers fairly and ethically. They also resolved to engage in environmentally sustainable practices and to strive to generate long-term value for shareholders.
"The American dream is alive, but fraying," Dimon said in a statement.
A Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis analysis found corporate profits have far outpaced employee compensation since the early 2000s. And a recent study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that CEO compensation rose 940% from 1978 to 2018, compared with a 12% for the average American worker during the same period.
"This new statement better reflects the way corporations can and should operate today," said Alex Gorsky, chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson. "It affirms the essential role corporations can play in improving our society when CEOs are truly committed to meeting the needs of all stakeholders."
Of the 192 current members of the Business Roundtable, 181 signed the statement, which at minimum represents a symbolic switch in the organization's viewpoint by reshuffling its stated priorities. It also coincides with expanding income inequality that has cast CEO compensation in a negative light, an issue that's not addressed by the group, noted one corporate governance expert.
"If they were so concerned about communities and workers, they'd take a three-quarters pay cut and give some of it back, but they're not," said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
"It's political and self-serving," Elson added. "By coming up with these standards, they don't have to be accountable to anybody."
Another critic of CEO compensation noted that the revamped view of a public company's role comes in response to the political climate, but offered a more benevolent take of the Business Roundtable's objective.
What CEOs earn at America's biggest companies
"It's in their enlightened self-interest to try and get capitalism to work for more than 1% of the people," said Steven Cliffords, the former of CEO of King Broadcasting and National Mobile Television.
"Having seen the results of years of shareholder value, you may have sort of a 'tragedy of the commons,' where it's better for each individual CEO to adopt shareholder value theory but worse for all collectively when everyone does," added Cliffords, author of "The CEO Pay Machine, How it Trashes America and How to Stop It."
Some of the companies that did not sign the statement were ineligible to do so, as they had an interim CEO in place or were in the midst of transitioning to another leader, the Washington Post noted.
A Business Roundtable spokesperson told the newspaper a non-signature did not necessarily signify the CEO disagreed with the group's statement. Those non-signers include Roy Harvey at Alcoa; Stephen Schwarzman at private equity firm Blackstone; Larry Culp at General Electric; Bernard Tyson at Kaiser Permanente; Thomas Williams at motion-control tech maker Parker Hannifin; and Michael Tipsord at State Farm.
First published on August 19, 2019 / 4:58 PM
© 2019 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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" document.write(adsrc) } catch (err) { console.log (err.message) } } FLEET SPEAK: 5 October 2011 - Help us to reward the best
Blogs and Comment
FLEET SPEAK: 5 October 2011 - Help us to reward the best
Paul Barker is editor of BusinessCar
It's always exciting to launch the BusinessCar Awards, and as you'll have seen from the front cover of this issue, voting for the 2012 awards is now open at www.businesscar.co.uk/vote.
Completely decided by the readers of BusinessCar, the awards are the industry's chance to pick the products, services and suppliers that best serve their business.
The biggest award is the Business Car of the Year prize, which goes to the most popular corporate model launched during 2011. This year's choice is more diverse than ever, with the likely front-runners including, predictably, the Audi A6, BMW 1-series, VW Passat and Ford Focus, as well as several dark horses such as the electric Nissan Leaf, Hyundai's excellent i40, the hybrid Lexus CT200h and the surprisingly impressive Peugeot 508. Or maybe it'll be something else altogether.
The service supplier category is always one of the most hotly contested, with the wide variety of firms involved meaning votes are spread around a host of equally worth winners, and it's a prize that many big names have collected in recent years.
But it's not just the star names that can win prizes - BusinessCar's readers can too. By voting you'll be entered into a draw to win a case of champagne, which should get to you in time to help see in the New Year. A couple of minutes of your time at www. businesscar.co.uk/vote is all it takes. Your favourite firms will appreciate it, and in several categories last year just a handful of votes was enough to separate the winners from the rest.
From BusinessCar on TWITTER
FLEET SPEAK: 6 September 2011 - Starting out on the road to recovery
FLEET SPEAK: 20 September 2011 - Judging the balance of power
FLEET SPEAK: 1 November 2011 - Pointing out the problems
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'They should be held accountable': Andrew Cuomo rails against local Democratic lawmakers who opposed Amazon HQ2 in Long Island City
John Haltiwanger
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday slammed local politicians who spoke out against a plan for Amazon to build a new headquarters in Long Island City.
AP Photo/Richard Drew
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is furious with local politicians in his state who opposed a plan for Amazon to build a new headquarters in New York City.
The vast majority of the local lawmakers who fought against the plan are Democrats, like Cuomo.
Cuomo said the local leaders who weren't in favor of the plan should be "held accountable for the lost economic opportunity."
Amazon on Thursday announced it was backing out, citing "a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence" as a large part of its decision.
The new Amazon headquarters would've been build in Long Island City in the borough of Queens.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday slammed local politicians — the vast majority of whom are Democrats, like Cuomo — who opposed a plan for Amazon to build a new headquarters in New York City after the company scrapped the deal.
"A small group of politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community … the state’s economic future and the best interests of the people of this state," Cuomo said in a statement.
Cuomo said the New York state Senate has "done tremendous damage," adding that those who opposed the plan should be "held accountable for the lost economic opportunity."
—Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) February 14, 2019
The New York governor's comments echoed an earlier statement from Amazon on the decision to bail on the plan, which also pointed the finger at local politicians.
"After much thought and deliberation, we've decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens," Amazon said.
Read more: New York politicians appear stunned but defiant over Amazon's abrupt cancellation of move to Long Island City
"While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City," the statement added.
According to a study commissioned by Cuomo, the new Amazon headquarters would've brought $27.5 billion in tax revenue for the state and city. Amazon also claimed the plan would bring 25,000 new jobs to the country's largest city.
But a number of local politicians opposed the plan because the city and state had promised to give Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives and they didn't think it was worth it.
New York City Council speaker Corey Johnson, who was one of the most outspoken opponents of the deal, seemed enthused by Amazon's decision on Thursday. "I hope this is the start of a conversation about vulture capitalism and where our tax dollars are best spent," Johnson said in a statement.
Meanwhile, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio appeared to suggest that Amazon was making a big mistake.
In a statement, de Blasio said, "You have to be tough to make it in New York City. We gave Amazon the opportunity to be a good neighbor and do business in the greatest city in the world … If Amazon can't recognize what that's worth, its competitors will."
The new Amazon headquarters would have been built in Long Island City in the borough of Queens.
SEE ALSO: 'Queens is not for sale': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York activists celebrate Amazon's decision to cancel HQ2 in Long Island City
More: Andrew Cuomo Bill de Blasio New York New York City
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Home Finance Uber lost $5....
Uber lost $5.2 billion in 3 months. Here’s where all that money went.
Graham Rapier, Troy Wolverton, Business Insider US
Uber posted a $5.2 billion loss on Thursday, its largest ever, sending shares plummeting.
A major chunk of that loss was a consequence of two things: stock-based compensation and driver rewards, both stemming from the company’s initial public offering in May.
Other major costs for Uber include research and development, on things like self-driving cars, and sales and marketing, in order to keep growing.
Uber lost a whopping $5.2 billion in the second quarter of 2019, the company revealed on Thursday, its deepest quarterly loss ever, thanks to an expensive initial public offering earlier this year.
It’s a tremendous amount of money for any company, though a major chunk was thanks to one-off expenses, and the spending is set to decline in coming periods, the company said. Still, investors weren’t happy with the results, and the stock plunged as much as 8% when markets opened Friday morning.
“The big picture is we want to be there any way you want to get around your city, and I think we’re well on a path to do so in a profitable way,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told analysts on a conference call following the results.
Most Wall Street analysts viewed the quarter as in line with what they expected, even as certain line items might have disappointed. Some even suggested the big sell-off was a buy-the-dip opportunity.
“We see Uber shares as one of the best long-term stories in the Internet and would take advantage of the weakness to add to positions,” Lloyd Walmsley, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, told clients. “We think a continued improvement in unit economics and better visibility into the path to profitability could draw more investors to do the work, and given compelling potential upside in a bull case, near term and long term, we would not wait to get involved.”
Here are the costs that led to Uber’s massive loss in the second quarter:
Stock-based compensation: $3.9 billion
This was, by far, the largest factor in Uber’s loss. The company’s income statement included $3.9 billion of such expenses, nearly all of it related to its IPO in May. Uber had handed out restricted shares that vested when it completed its offering; the value of those shares comprised $3.6 billion of its total stock-based compensation expense for the quarter.
Many of the recipients of these shares will be eligible to sell their stock soon, depending on when their specific lockup period ends. Lyft, Uber’s biggest US competitor, moved its date for that period to end forward to August 19 from a date in September that coincided with the company’s earnings quiet period.
In the next quarter, Uber expects its stock-based-compensation charges to fall dramatically.
“For Q3 2019 stock-based compensation, we expect an expense of $450 million to $500 million,” Nelson Chai, the company’s chief financial officer, said on the call.
Regardless, many investors ignore the expense of stock-based compensation because it is, at least initially, a noncash cost.
Driver rewards: $299 million
The driver-appreciation reward cost Uber $299 million.
Uber also spent heavily on driver rewards connected to its IPO. The company spent $299 million in another onetime charge for those driver payments.
Khosrowshahi told CNBC on Friday morning that these one-off charges, while painful, were well-deserved and important to retaining drivers and talent.
“The IPO for us was a once in a lifetime moment,” he said. “And it was a really important moment for the company. Some of what we did, like the driver-appreciation reward, almost $300 million that we put in the hands of over a million drivers globally, was really important for us to do. It created a messy P&L from an accounting standpoint that I think is hiding underlying trends that are actually very, very healthy for the company.”
Research and development: $3.06 billion ($2.6 billion from stock-based compensation)
Research and development was Uber’s biggest operating expense on its income statement. But much of that expense – $2.6 billion of the $3.1 billion total – came in the form of stock-based compensation, and that figure ballooned because of IPO-related vesting of certain restricted shares.
Still, Uber is investing heavily in R&D. Between its Advanced Technologies Group, which is developing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, Toronto, and San Francisco; New Mobility, which is launching new e-bikes and adding public-transit options to Uber’s app; Elevate, the unit dedicated to making flying taxis a reality; and improvements to its core ride-hailing business’ dispatching, routing, and fare algorithms; there’s plenty to spend money on.
Read more: Uber has raised another $1 billion for its self-driving unit, which is now valued at more than $7 billion
Here’s how Uber defines its research and development spend in regulatory filings:
Research and development expenses consist primarily of compensation expenses for engineering, product development, and design employees, including stock-based compensation, expenses associated with ongoing improvements to, and maintenance of, our platform offerings, and ATG and Other Technology Programs development expenses, as well as allocated overhead. We expense substantially all research and development expenses as incurred.
General and administrative: $1.6 billion ($768 million from stock-based compensation)
Uber’s general and administrative spend includes rent for office space around the world, legal counsel, and human resources. As with its research-and-development expenses, its administrative costs spiked, thanks to the IPO’s effect on stock-based compensation.
“We expect that sales and marketing expenses will increase on an absolute dollar basis and vary from period to period as a percentage of revenue for the foreseeable future as we plan to continue to invest in sales and marketing to grow the number of platform users and increase our brand awareness,” the company said in regulatory filings. “The trend and timing of our brand marketing expenses will depend in part on the timing of marketing campaigns.”
Sales and marketing: $1.2 billion ($212 million from stock-based compensation)
Reuters / Valentyn Ogirenko
Perhaps not surprisingly, Uber spends massive amounts of money on marketing. Even despite laying off 400 employees from its marketing department in July (a move that wasn’t counted in this earnings report but will be reflected in the third quarter), the company said this number likely wouldn’t be going down. Unlike its research-and-development and administrative costs, relatively little of its sales-and-marketing expenses were in the form of stock-based compensation, so they weren’t affected as much by the IPO-related vesting of shares.
Read more: Uber marketing employees describe this week’s ‘bloodbath’ when the company laid off 400 employees in more than a dozen countries this week
“The reorganization [of the marketing department] is about improving effectiveness, and it’s about thinking about where we’re going to be for the next five years of the company versus where we come from,” Khosrowshahi said on the call. “My expectation is that our marketing spend, I can’t speak to the – for the second half of the year, but our marketing spend for the next few years is actually going to both increase and be more effective as a result of the changes that we’re making in the marketing organization.”
In regulatory filings, Uber said its sales-and-marketing spend consisted “primarily of compensation expenses, including stock-based compensation to sales and marketing employees, advertising expenses, expenses related to consumer acquisition and retention, including consumer discounts, promotions, refunds, and credits, Driver referrals, and allocated overhead. We expense advertising and other promotional expenditures as incurred.”
Operations and support: $864 million ($404 million from stock-based compensation)
Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
This line includes many of the driver-focused employees in operations support centers, like Greenlight Hubs, throughout the world. This amount, though small, is likely to decrease going forward, Uber said, as it becomes more efficient in “supporting platform users.”
It also spiked upward in the quarter because of the IPO-related stock-based-compensation costs.
Depreciation and amortization: $123 million
As time goes by, certain assets may lose value. For physical things, like buildings, vehicles, or machinery, this reduction is known as depreciation. For intangible assets, this is called amortization and is slightly more concrete to calculate.
Unlike tangible items, assets that amortize do so on a “straight-line” basis, according to Investopedia, meaning the same amount decreases from an item’s value every period until it reaches zero. Examples of assets that might amortize include costs from capital raises, patents and trademarks, and other intellectual property.
Investors often ignore depreciation and amortization expenses because they’re not considered to be a core part of companies’ ongoing operating costs and don’t necessarily represent current expenditures of cash.
BITranspo
ride-hailing
Uber earnings
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CEO Climate Dialogue
The CEO Climate Dialogue
This is a great space to write long text about your company and your services. You can use this space to go into a little more detail about your company. Talk about your team and what services you provide. Tell your visitors the story of how you came up with the idea for your business and what makes you different from your competitors. Make your company stand out and show your visitors who you are.
Q: What is The CEO Climate Dialogue?
The CEO Climate Dialogue (the CEO Dialogue) is a group of leading companies and NGOs working together to advance climate action in the U.S. Congress. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and broader scientific community continue to provide overwhelming evidence why policymakers must accelerate action to reduce carbon emissions that meet or exceed the goals of the Paris Agreement in order to mitigate climate change-related costs and risks. These include costs and risks associated with extreme weather, drought, floods, and failing crops, which disrupt supply chains and markets and exacerbate competition for scarce resources.
We believe legislation is necessary to drive down greenhouse gas emissions, thus reducing climate-related costs and risks and creating the certainty that business leaders need to make the investments that will accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy. We have agreed on a set of Guiding Principles for federal climate action and share the goal of passing federal legislation consistent with those principles as soon as possible.
Q: How is The CEO Dialogue different from other collaborations between businesses and environmental groups that aim to advance federal climate policy?
The fact that there are several business coalitions working to advance federal climate legislation demonstrates that demand for U.S. climate action is growing, and that a wide range of companies are keen to drive progress in Congress.
There are a number of characteristics that distinguish The CEO Dialogue:
We offer a set of Guiding Principles as a starting point for a larger dialogue with policymakers and other stakeholders that can lead to legislative action
We are not prescriptive on how a federal carbon pricing policy should be structured. We are open to a variety of solutions and are committed to working directly with lawmakers to develop and advance climate policies consistent with our Guiding Principles
We are a bipartisan effort, and we offer an entry point for companies and other stakeholders to explore all viable solutions for enacting carbon pricing legislation
As our name implies, the CEOs of the organizations involved in The CEO Climate Dialogue are personally involved and committed to our goal and Guiding Principles
Other business coalitions have played an important leadership role in raising awareness of climate policy on Capitol Hill and getting to where we are today. Several members of The CEO Dialogue are also involved in those other groups.
Q: Is The CEO Climate Dialogue an organization?
No. Each member of The CEO Dialogue maintains its independent positions and activities related to climate policy. However, we have agreed we will work together to build support for the Guiding Principles and urge Congress, individually and collectively, to enact an economy-wide price on carbon. Our participation in this effort is an expression of our belief that we as a country can work together to meet the challenge of climate change, and we intend to lead by example.
Q: Now that you’ve announced the initiative and the Guiding Principles, what are your next steps?
In the near term, we aim to demonstrate that business needs and supports predictable and effective climate policies including an economy-wide price on carbon. We will build support for climate legislation consistent with our Guiding Principles with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., in their home states and districts and in the public sphere. We invite like-minded companies to join us.
Q: Where can I learn more?
Please reach out to Tim Mealey at Meridian Institute (tmealey@merid.org).
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Port Vale Preview
Port Vale are Saturday's visitors for Ernie Moss Day at the Proact Stadium, a match which both sides will be looking to win to squeeze themselves into the play-off places.
Moss is Chesterfield's record goalscorer, with 191 goals over three spells and close to two decades, with the Spireites legend also having a spell at Vale Park, winning player of the year for the Valiants in 1982.
Moss is currently suffering from Pick's Disease, a rare form of dementia, and throughout the day money will be raised for the Dementia UK charity.
As part of the occasion, limited edition badges - available at the Club Superstore for a minimum donation of £3, with all profits going to charity - have been produced and a special edition of the Inspire matchday magazine contains exclusive features on Moss as well as a pull-out poster.
Brampton Brewery have produced a special 'Ernie 8' ale which will be available in the concourses, with 20p from every pint going to charity, and Moss himself will be presented to supporters at half time.
The match itself finds two teams in good form and separated by just goal difference a mere point behind the play-off positions.
The Spireites have spent the week on FA Cup duty, winning away at MK Dons in the second round replay, before travelling to Scunthorpe and recovering from a two goal deficit at the interval to earn a further replay.
Since the Spireites grabbed a 2-1 win at Vale Park in late August, Saturday's visitors have brought in former Wales defender Rob Page as manager and have been heading up the league table, winning three of their last four games.
The Chesterfield squad came through the Glanford Park match with no new injury concerns, so while captain Ian Evatt remains on the sidelines, Jimmy Ryan is the only other player struggling for fitness ahead of the game, with a late decision expected on the midfielder's thigh injury.
Ahead of the Proact Stadium clash Paul Cook spoke about how his team has faired with players being absent over the course of the season.
He said: "I live in the area and people love talking about the club. Sometimes we think that if we have an injury or suspension it will affect us really greatly and we won't know what to do without them.
"But I think the squad's proved over the last few weeks that we can cope without anyone and our club is a strong club."
Having changed their manager since the last match between the sides Cook went on to talk about his impression of how Page has done so far in the hot-seat.
"Rob's done a fantastic job," said Cook. "Obviously he was on Mickey's [Adams] staff, Mickey's moved on and Rob's taken over. He'll have his own style of management and his own ethos on the game.
"Rob was an international footballer, he had a fantastic career and everyone's lucky to be a manager. You have highs and lows but Port Vale are in a fantastic league position today, then can go above us if they win tomorrow, if we win we'll go a little bit clear, then we'll move on to the next game.
The match at Vale Park earlier this season was a feisty affair, with Chesterfield's captain Evatt being dismissed for two yellow cards during the game. Cook spoke about clubs and their desire for victory.
He said: "You've got to be competitive, in modern football we speak about a will to win, but we must all want to win.
"Ourselves, Port Vale, we all want to win. Unfortunately, come 5 o'clock tomorrow evening we can't all win and you can only prepare your team and do what you think's right.
"Port Vale will be like ourselves thinking they can get into the play-offs, so we look forwards to an entertaining game tomorrow."
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Patrick Reed becoming known for more than ‘Captain America’
By Doug Ferguson
| MELBOURNE, Australia
This might be the end of that Captain America business.
If it wasn't his finger-pointing interview after the Ryder Cup in France, a few swipes of sand in the Bahamas should make it a little more clear. Patrick Reed is not doing or saying the things that should make American golf want to rally around him.
Not that Reed cares what anyone thinks.
All he wants to do is play and win, and those qualities endear him to the old-school crowd that believes golf is getting too chummy and less cut throat. Reed is the kind of player who wants the ball for the final shot. The other Americans on this Presidents Cup team like that about him.
His post-match rant at the Ryder Cup was troublesome because he was quick to assign fault with the U.S. captain Jim Furyk for sitting him and Jordan Spieth for breaking up their partnership, without recognizing he couldn't find the fairway at Le Golf National during a fourballs match with Tiger Woods.
More difficult were his actions — and then his curious explanation — at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas.
From a sandy waste area left of the 11th fairway in the third round, video clearly showed his ball in a rumpled foot print. Reed set his club behind the ball, drew it back and scraped back some of the sand behind his ball. Then, he did it again, swiping away more sand.
It looked bad.
"If that's not improving your lie, I don't know what is," NBC analyst Paul Azinger said when it was shown on replay. "He knows better. I don't know why that happened or what he was thinking."
More telling was Rickie Fowler, who walked out of the scoring area toward a group of reporters and looked up at the television when it was being shown again.
His eyes widened.
"Whoa," Fowler said. "What is that?"
It's improving the line of play, and it comes with a two-shot penalty, which Reed was given and accepted.
Whether he intended to improve his line is not relevant as it relates to the rule.
Intent is relevant as it relates to his integrity, and only Reed can speak to that.
He says he did not cheat, a dirty word in golf that was brought up twice during his interview Tuesday.
“If you're intentionally trying to do something, that would be considered cheating,” he said. “But I wasn't intentionally trying to improve a lie or anything like that. Because if it was, it would have been a really good lie and I would have hit it really close.”
The outrage was predictable on social media, because social media thrives on outrage, especially for someone that rubs people the wrong way.
But this raised questions.
Reed told reporters in the Bahamas that while he accepted the penalty — how could he not when presented with video evidence like that? — a different camera angle would have indicated that his club wasn't as close to the ball as it looked. He held his hands about 8 inches apart to illustrate. No one was buying.
"When I take my practice swings, anyways, I don't ever put the club directly behind the ball because I'm always scared of the ball moving," Reed said. "I'm always going to give myself some room, especially on practice swings."
It's a classic case of he said, they said.
In this case, "they" stretched all the way down to the Australian Open.
Marc Leishman, the leading qualifier for the International team at the Presidents Cup, said he saw it and “it didn't look too good for him.”
Cameron Smith was more blunt the following day.
"If you make a mistake maybe once, you could maybe understand, but to give a bit of a (expletive) response like the camera angle," Smith told Australian AP. "I know Pat pretty good and he's always been nice to me, so I don't want to say anything bad about him. But anyone's cheating the rules, I'm not up for that."
So much for not saying anything bad about him.
U.S. captain Tiger Woods didn't sound overly concerned when he finished up in the Bahamas, and he switched into Bill Belichick mode in Melbourne, twice saying effectively, “We're on to the Presidents Cup.”
The real measure is what happens when golf returns to the individual game that it is for all but one week of the year.
This isn't the first time Reed has been under scrutiny.
There were allegations in the book, “Slaying the Tiger: A year inside the ropes on the new PGA Tour,” of Reed cheating during college qualifying while at Georgia. Reed denied them.
Video emerged over the weekend from another incident of Reed placing the club directly behind the ball in a waste area in 2015 in the Bahamas. There was Bay Hill in 2018 when he tried to get relief from a palmetto bush, and after being denied twice, said, "I guess my name needs to be Jordan Spieth."
Latest National Sports
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When titles are tarnished by cheating but not taken away
Such history doesn’t make this harder to forgive as much as it makes it harder to forget.
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Climate code red: now available
Friends of the Earth (Australia) has released "Climate code red: the case for a sustainability emergency". A sumary and full report are available here.
It's about 100 pages and includes responses from a wide range of climate activists and organisations as part of a conversation about how we can campaign for a very fast transition to a post-carbon, climate safe future.
The report includes an updated version of The big melt: lessons from the Arctic summer of 2007 which was first published in October 2007.
"Climate code red" featured as the front-page, lead story Report attacks climate policy in the Canberra Times on 2 February.
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Where Does Fado Fit?
Edd Norval
If you walk around Lisbon you’ll eventually hear some Fado music or see somewhere selling fado CDs - you don’t even need to head to Alfama, the city’s historic district and home of the genre. If you do choose to go to Alfama though, the music haunts the cobbled streets tuning in and out at every corner - but for how much longer?
In the evening, especially if it isn’t the weekend, Alfama is quiet. Here, your ears are a better friend to you than TripAdvisor could ever be. The streets are winding, small and disorientating, without the lights to guide you, graffiti and posters are your best points of reference. To find a show, unless you know people locally, just listen.
Within a few minutes of following false leads, you’ll find yourself outside a bar or restaurant, usually with its door closed. A quick look through the window will confirm that it is in fact, the place. Standing up in front of a captivated audience is the singer, accompanied by a nylon stringed guitar and a Portuguese guitarra, the twelve stringed round-bodied instrument that’s seen in most pictures of fado performances.
Fado constitutes one of Portugal’s ‘Three F’s’ (the other two being Football and Fatima). These were the preoccupations of the population during the country’s time under an authoritarian regime, they were popularized as an opiate for the masses. That’s not how it began though.
Although the origins are hazy, it seems to have stemmed from early 19th-century music that was thematically coherent with a focus on the life of the poor and the stories of men at sea. As Lisbon was a popular trading port, the romanticism and heartbreak that surround seafaring was instrumental to the development of the genre’s themes.
These feelings, related to loss and nostalgia are associated with the Portuguese word saudade. These themes, relatable and transcendent, are just what might keep the music alive in a quickly changing city.
A lot of Lisbon’s appeal lies in its history, not necessarily the stories, but more the impact that the city’s long life has had on it and its inhabitants. Proudly claiming the title of Europe’s oldest capital city, Lisbon has changed greatly over time, but nothing like the change that has washed over the city over the last decade, or even less.
Of the ‘Three F’s’, Fado’s evolution in a new Lisbon is the most interesting. Football will only grow as a result of the city’s growth and religion, all across Europe, is in decline. So where does this leave Fado, the traditional music from the traditional parts of town in a place that is moving forward at eye-watering speed?
On one hand the music could try to evolve, but that wouldn’t make much sense. On the other hand, if it doesn’t, it could easily become a tourist-only experience, no longer a part of the city’s tapestry. It would be a shame, for both city and tradition, if it were to become a show that exists only as part of an industry. It’s the feeling of the guitars in unison, of the powerful voice of the lone singer and the mesmerized crowd watching on that makes it.
These things tend not to last - the next generation of fadistas are as likely to be in it for a quick buck as for keeping a tradition alive. But to keep it alive only for the tradition, not the love, would be to kill it entirely. The beautiful beast risks becoming an endangered species, held in captivity for our viewing pleasure.
New niches pop up through generational change. The most recent and noticeable is the longing for something real, meaningful and permanent in our lives - the result was the culture of the ‘artisanal’ and ‘handcrafted’. As cities grow, especially partly based on their attractive historical customs and traditions, a new market pops up – there’s money to be made there. Fado must do all it can to combat this.
In 2011, Fado became a part of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list consisting of skills and traditions passed down through generations, considered important to the way they shape a country’s culture, both historic and contemporary. Mariza, one of the faces of contemporary fado led the campaign stating, “People shall have a far greater desire to care for, understand and nourish (Fado) as they begin to understand that this is not some lesser culture, but rich and deep and able to be performed anywhere in the world”. To her, the genre seems partly undiscovered even by the Portuguese people – this may be the key.
If fado is to be nourished in a growing city, then it is important that the genre seems attractive, that it is understood and that young people are enticed into keeping it alive for what it really is, a rare gem that remains greatly unchanged from its inception - it is a portal back to a world untouched by modernity. If the poetry and the craft is to bleed through, if the demand is going to keep growing, then future performers must be nurtured, for they are the gatekeepers of the city’s past and the torchbearers for its future.
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Colectivo Licuado - Direct Connection
Colectivo Licuado, through their connection to each other, powerfully capture the essence of human connection.
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Swedish Church Drones to Drop Bibles on Iraq's ISIS-Controlled Areas
CP Current Page: World | Saturday, August 06, 2016
By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor | Saturday, August 06, 2016
Shi'ite fighters hold an Islamic State flag which they pulled down as they celebrate victory in the town of Garma, Iraq, May 26, 2016. | (Photo: Reuters/Thaier Al-Sudani)
An evangelical church in the Swedish city of Uppsala plans to drop thousands of small, electronic Bibles into areas controlled by the Islamic State terror groups using drones "to pass on the hope and love of the Christian gospel."
The Word of Life Church told the local television channel SVT about its plan to fly drones high in the sky over the territory of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, and throw the Bibles, according to The Local.
The church's mission director Christian Akerhielm was quoted as saying that the Bibles are the size of pill boxes and have a display, and that they require no electricity.
"Our ambition is to pass on the hope and love of the Christian gospel to a population living in closed areas where they are being denied human rights," the church said on its website. "We start our project in a few weeks and hope to drop thousands of Bibles."
The church also said that its contacts and the congregations and organizations it works with have testified "unanimously" that there is "a huge spiritual awakening in the Middle East, where millions of people turn to the Christian faith and the need and demand for Bibles is gigantic," according to Premier.
"It is this need, we want to help meet this demand through the effort," it said. "To disseminate Bibles and therefore knowledge of the Christian faith, is something the Christian church has done since the invention of printing – in recent years also closed or inaccessible areas of the Soviet Union, China and North Korea. This is not something new, with the exception of the practical approach. The project is done in consultation and collaboration with local partners in the area, with great knowledge of the conditions and terms. It occurs in parallel with humanitarian efforts, medical team in refugee camps and distributing food and clothing to the needy."
Word of Life is "way more than a church building," the church says on its website. "It's a home for thousands of people from all walks of life. A place where we come together to meet with Christ and one other, to share His life and be transformed by His love. We are all about missions and reaching the corners of the world with the Gospel, but just as much about reaching the corner closest to home with that amazing and unfailing love of God," says Senior Pastor Joakim Lundqvist.
ISIS is an offshoot of al Qaeda, and wants to establish a caliphate in the Levant region and beyond.
While the Sunni terror group is losing territory in Iraq and Syria, from where it mainly operates from, it still has 18,000 to 22,000 fighters there despite some 13,000 airstrikes by the international coalition led by the United States, according to CIA director John Brennan.
The group uses brutal methods to torture and punish those who it considers to be its enemies, including Muslims who do not believe in its version of Islam. However, Christians and other minorities are among its main targets.
In its English propaganda publication, ISIS last year sought to justify its barbarity, saying it is "Islamic" to capture and forcibly make "infidel" women sexual slaves.
"Before Shaytan [Satan] reveals his doubts to the weak-minded and weak hearted, one should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shari'ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur'an and the narration of the Prophet … and thereby apostatizing from Islam," stated the IS' propaganda magazine "Dabiq."
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3-Y-O Swedish Boy Blows Himself Up After Mom Takes Kids to Syria to Join ISIS
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Iran bulldozes over grave of pastor executed for converting to Christianity after seeing Jesus in dream
Pushing doctor assisted suicide to increase organ transplants is wrong, doctor says
China creating ‘system of persecution for the future,’ Open Doors warns
Historic home of famous Christian writer GK Chesterton threatened with demolition
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2006 Chrysler 300C SRT-8 Information
2006 Chrysler 300C SRT8: Momentum Continues, with a Dose of SRT Performance and 6.1-Liter HEMI Power:
It wasn’t long after the debut of the HEMI powered Chrysler C300 in 1955 that it became known as the “banker’s hot rod.” The key characteristics of that car-a powerful HEMI V-8 engine, performance-tuned ride and handling and premium amenities-are also key to the 2006 Chrysler 300C SRT8. And, there’s quite a bit more.
Introduced in 2005, the Chrysler 300C SRT8 was the first Street and Racing Technology (SRT) vehicle to be powered with the 6.1-liter HEMI V-8, which offers 85 more horsepower 25 percent more power than the 5.7-liter HEMI. But SRT performance is more than just straight-line quickness.
There’s no other premium sedan that delivers the comfort, convenience and performance numbers that the 2006 Chrysler 300C SRT8 delivers,” said Jeff Bell, Vice President-Chrysler Marketing, Chrysler Group. “In terms of affordability, no one else even comes close to delivering the Chrysler 300C SRT8’s combination of performance and value.
The 2006 Chrysler 300C SRT8 is a complete package for the customer who wants awesome performance in an award-winning sedan loaded with comfort and style,” said Dan Knott, Director Street and Racing Technology. “With its SRT-engineered 6.1-liter HEMI engine and Brembo brakes, it’s engineered for incredible acceleration and stopping power.”
For 2006, the Chrysler 300C SRT8 is available in a new Silver Steel exterior color. Also new for 2006 are a standard tire pressure monitoring system, an available Kicker high-performance audio system and available rear-seat video system.
The Chrysler 300C SRT8 exemplifies the SRT formula of all-around performance at a very attractive price, with expressive yet functional design, stunning performance and near-luxury refinement. The Chrysler 300C SRT8 offers key SRT attributes in functional, performance-oriented styling; world-class ride and handling across a dynamic range; race-inspired interior appointments; benchmark braking; and an SRT-engineered, 425-horsepower, 6.1-liter SRT HEMI engine.
Source Of Information And Photos: Chrysler Archives
Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6
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Cattle or Climate - We Can’t Have Both
By Chloe Vande Kamp
Being that the globe is in the midst of an environmental crisis, dietary lifestyles—particularly regarding meats and dairies—are vital to the very survival of future generations. While low incomes can make dieting a less viable option, those living in the middle to upper class situations, such as the Temecula area, options are open. The choice is available to choose: to be more environmentally conscious, or to remain ignorant to the negative impacts of the food industry. The choice is pertinent to choose: to take up the responsibility thrust upon Generation Z by previous generations, or to fall into the same patterns of pushing the problem beneath the floorboards.
Even if the argument against animal cruelty proves too motivation-lacking for a switch, the impacts of animal agriculture remain, particularly in raising cattle specifically (keep this in mind). According to Penn State University, on average animal agriculture in the United States alone uses “36 to 74 trillion gallons of water annually.'' This is approximately 500 times the amount used for hydrofracking, the common villain of water waste. To put this into further perspective, the LA Times states that producing a “1/3-pound burger requires 660 gallons of water.” This means every time someone eats a burger, they are essentially showering for two months. And it is not just beef. According to NaturalNews, “it can take up to 2,000 gallons of water to produce one gallon of [cow]milk,” almost twice the amount needed for one gallon of almond milk.
Water waste is a major problem, but it is not the only one. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, an astounding “14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG [(greenhouse gas)] emissions” comes from livestock globally, of which “65 percent” is beef and dairy cattle. Emissions include carbon dioxide and methane, released via belching, flatulence, and excretion. Beef and dairy production makes up for a massive percentage of GHG emissions, and yet its consumption continues to remain a staple part of the American diet.
Staples of the vegan diet include: legumes, nuts, seeds (hemp, flax, chia), meat substitutes, non-dairy milks and yogurts, and whole grains Source: Healthline
Vegan diets can be healthier. Essential fibers, antioxidants, potassium, magnesium, folate and Vitamins A, C, and E are rich in plant-based diets. Fresh fruits and vegetables provide phytochemicals, boosting the immune system. However, it is important to address what a vegan diet may lack. According to Healthline, vegan diets may be deficient of “essential fatty acids, vitamin B12, iron, calcium, iodine or zinc.” It is important, thusly, to distinguish between whole-food and fast-food diets, the latter lacking most of the listed nutrients. In dieting, giving up one food may result in the absence of an essential nutrient. In veganism’s case: Vitamin B12. Supplements are key here. While they may seem costly, it can be quite the contrary. A sixty-tablet bottle of B12 (two months worth) for less than four dollars—this means as little as two dollars a month—at Walmart seems a small price to pay to save the environment.
So, raising cattle in particular, remember. A vegan diet is not available to everyone, even those in better living conditions. What is important here is not the label ‘vegan’, or even ‘vegetarian’. The most important aspect of these diets is the environmentalist mindset. Even eating a little less beef, or switching out some dairy products, can save millions of gallons of water, and prevent pollution. Every small step towards a sustainable diet is a small step that generations before never took; every small step towards veganism is a small step that could save the planet Earth.
The Consequence of Human Activity on the Environment
By Emily Lusung
Most are aware that Earth’s environment is declining and suffers threatening conditions. Climate change contributes immensely to the world’s deathly situation. As the world’s environment undergoes deforestation, temperature change in oceans, air and water pollution, and, mass extinctions have occurred of biodiversity. However, the leading cause of these tragedies is human activity. The considerations to alternate and compromise human activity can be minor. Some might think in order to contribute to an improving environment would have to be done through strenuous changes. However, small changes in everyday life will cause change; like the straw law which essentially prohibits waiters from giving customers a straw. The simple change here would be to no request single use plastic straws which have polluted oceans and have caused extinctions in marine wildlife.
The ten warmest years have occurred since 2005. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) claimed that ninety-seven percent of active climate scientists agree that human activity has contributed to Earth’s climate warming. A certain explanation would be the greenhouse effect which is caused by excessive amounts of gases in the air which then gases trap heat from the sun to cause a gradual rise of temperature in Earth’s atmosphere. Human activity that involves greenhouse gases are the burning of fossil fuels which releases carbon dioxide, deforestation which when trees decompose they release carbon dioxide into the air, and generations of cars that are released into the air during everyday use which causes air pollution. The actions of people that occur within their everyday lives have consequences including the lost of lives due to climate change disasters. The devastation that humans experience with the environment are a matter of fact caused by their own species.
Nearly eighty-five percent of wildfires in America are caused by humans. Credit: Stuart Palley
Harmful human activity with the addition of natural disasters like storms speed up the process of the environment’s decline. Some natural disasters are even cause by humans like droughts. Catastrophic events caused by humans can be ended by them. Irrational ways like panicking and causing chaos or controversy of the existence of climate change are only counterproductive. To accept the fact that the leading contribution of the world’s plunge of environment is human activity is the first step to begin the process of ending excessive use of harmful chemicals or everyday use of products that slowly kill the environment.
Earth reaches its possible sixth mass extinction as numbers of species rapidly decrease. Mass extinctions that have occured many years ago were due to asteroid collisions. The cause today are among human activity. Fulfilling that statement proves that humans have the improbable power to cause catastrophic events that severely threaten the world's environment. Many distress the ‘end of the world’ finding ways to improve the environment when the most rational way to approach the situation is to completely understand what the borderline root of the cause is, which is human activity.
Arming Teachers with the Safety of Students
By Megan Irwin
On February 14, 2018, students arrived at Stoneman Douglas High School with the only fear in their minds being passing their pre-calculus exam or if their crush will ask them out, not the screams of terror from fellow classmates, not the blood, not the ear deafening shots from an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. It has been over a year since the traumatic Parkland shooting that took seventeen students victim; and as of early May 2019, Florida legislation has declared to let “teacher volunteers” carry a gun under their guardian program. Teachers would have to go through police-like training with a sheriff’s office and undergo a psychiatric evaluation along with a background check in order to qualify for carrying a weapon on campus; the arming of any teachers or staff of a school regardless of the calamity that may have occurred is no logical response to the tragedy brought on by gun violence. Arming teachers in one state would lead to others following suit and soon, the United States would become a country of ill-handled weapons, the very thing this Floridian law aimed to prevent.
Guns act as an impediment in relationships with students. Teachers are guides, mentors, discussion leaders and lecturers; so giving teachers guns would act as a direct barrier in the connection to students. It says “stand back” instead of “stand up,” creating such a division in the learning place all due to the possibility of teachers turning the guns against those they promised to protect.
The lives of students is at risk when a teacher becomes armed with a weapon instead of words. Credit: Vice
Guns simply have no place in the classroom. Teachers are in constant close proximity to students; with hundreds of students in a single classroom daily, the chance for an accidental discharge is guaranteed. Second, teachers are not trained to make instantaneous life-or-death decisions in a school environment with thousands of innocent children as possible collateral damage to the ill mannered use of a firearm. Even trained police officers have trouble reacting to school shootings and properly executing the use of deadly force with thousands of students at risk.
No amount of “good teachers” or those who want to take stand against a school shooter can account for the reckless delegation of Florida legislation. Who in passing this bill endangered more students than a school shooter would. A good teacher with a gun can still make a careless mistake, resulting in the death of a student who forgot to say ‘I love you’ to their parent that morning, who wanted to pass that final and graduate, to move on in life to better things; all cut down by a single bullet fired by their teacher.
The Trip to Cure Mental Health
By Gisel Flores
In present society, there still remains a large misunderstanding of psychedelic substances and the effects of them on the human body, especially the brain. Psychedelics are a type of drug that alter the state of one’s mind, causing them to hallucinate. Due to the common misunderstandings of these drugs, they can often lead people to stray further from the truth, due to the fear of misinformation spread about these substances. Only with proper unbiased information, one can find that psychedelics have been found to have medicinal benefits that allow people to heal from trauma, help cope with mental illnesses and could even cure one’s substance abuse.
There is no correlation between psychedelics causing mental illness.
Psilocybin mushrooms, most commonly referred to as the street name “magic mushrooms” or “shrooms,” have been used for hundreds, even thousands, of years, all throughout the world. From evidence of cave paintings in Spain that showed these psychedelic mushrooms from six-thousand years ago to ancient statues of these same mushrooms found and used by the Aztecs, Mayans, and other cultures, these mushrooms were often used during religious ceremonies to “communicate” with the spirits that these ancient civilizations believed in. Psilocybin mushrooms are known to be one of the oldest recreational drug that has been seen and even referenced through history. Research today shows that the psilocybin could help patients that suffer from cancer related psychological stress and anxiety according to the American Psychological Association (APA). A study done by the APA in 2016 has found that eighty patients who took a single dose of psilocybin mushrooms drastically reduced their depression and anxiety levels, with their levels even being reduced for up to six months, which is much longer than some conventional medicine. Some participants of this study were given talk therapy combined with the psilocybin, and these results showed that “participants made spiritual or religious interpretations of their experience and the psilocybin treatment helped facilitate a reconnection to life [and] greater mindfulness and presence…” according to Gabby Agin-Liebes, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Palo Alto University. This type of therapy would allow one to take a new approach to mental health medicine than previously before.
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD), more commonly referred as “acid,” is another well known psychedelic drug around the world. The most common misconception about LSD is that it “fries the brain.” However, a 2008 study at John Hopkins University found that there is no connected link between mental illness and the drug itself, with patients reporting more benefits than negatives about LSD. A 2012 study that had been published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology showed that a single dose of the psychedelic had significant and long lasting beneficial effect with those suffering from alcoholism. This trial of five-hundreds patients showed that fifty-nine percent of those patients reduced levels of alcohol misuse after taking the drug. Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), used LSD to help go through his recovery, even claiming that it was a large factor in his recovery. LSD is still classified as a “Schedule-1 Drug” by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), alongside with opiates, heroin, and methamphetamine. LSD is under this classification because of the potential for it to become addicting, but from studies found that LSD is not physically or psychologically addicting. This classification makes it difficult to perform studies on the drug but the studies that are being conducted do show promising results.
As more people begin to have an open mind about psychedelic drugs and the medical uses they offer, more studies can be conducted to further the improvement of mental health medicine for those who suffer.
False Illusion Of A Democratic Society
By Gabriella Gatchalian
Democracy is defined as a system that ensures that citizens within a society are able to participate in their government, and take control of it through the majority rule. Several governments around the world have claimed to be democratic, however, after looking at certain situations within their country, it is noticeable that their definition of democracy has been altered. To be a democracy is to prioritize the votes of the majority, but the difficulty in purely establishing this belief is that the majority doesn't always know what best for a country. There is a business saying that every employee knows by heart, “The customer is always right.” This is a flawed philosophy, as the government has issues happening behind closed doors that citizens are often unaware of. To decide what happens in the country based on the external events is reasonable to a certain extent, however, there are times in which the majority is unaware of the situations lingering beyond the perception of the people. These are the times in which the definition of democracy has to be altered.
The way in which democracy was demonstrated used to be physical, but the modern day has redefined the way in which democracy is enacted. Credit: Just Go Greece
Believing that modern day governments demonstrate a genuine democracy is just an illusion, for the amount of power that a citizen has over the government has been limited due to either the betterment of the people or the corruption of the government. It is important to remember that no matter how elite government officials may seem, they are still ordinary citizens distinguished in their role due to unexpected turns in a country’s economy. No matter how many constitutional rights protect the idea of democracy, citizens must always remember that the government complied of a board of individuals that have the ability to think the way citizens think; meaning if the people are able to create their own opinions on how a government should be ran, then the people within the government will be able to think the same way. It is difficult to maintain the same values that a country stood for in its beginning stages, therefore the alterations that are made in regards to how a government should work, and how much power the citizens have over such government, is bound to change as time progresses.
The illusion of a democracy is important in maintaining a stable society. If the people are able to think that they have power over the government, it will give them the feeling that they can change the government however they want to. If citizens are unaware of the alterations and the deprivations they have in regards to the decisions that are made in their country, they are less likely to rebel and force a change in their government.
Birth Tourism: Abuse of Fourteenth Amendment
The birth tourism industry is on the rise. Birth tourism is when women from foreign countries purposely travel to the United States to have their babies born into legal citizenship. Babies born of birth tourism, also known as anchor babies, are granted the privileges of being an American citizen by their mother. As of 2017, there were at least 4.5 million anchor babies in the United States under the age of eighteen, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Most of the time, the noncitizen mothers allow themselves to have the advantage of securing citizenship and seeking residency through birth tourism. These mothers are wealthy, meaning their children are guaranteed to thrive off of their benefits. The benefits include mainly containing legal citizenship and having the advantage of being born in America which is being able to obtain an easy access to education in their future.
By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population. Credit: Dave Granlund
Birth tourism provides better futures for anchor babies, even though their privileges are being regarded as abuse of the Fourteenth amendment. Three people were arrested in late January on charges of running birth tourism companies in Southern California. Birth tourism itself is not illegal, but the suspects were arrested for, "Conspiracy to commit immigration fraud, international money laundering and identity theft," according to the United States Department of Justice statement. Evidently, the Fourteenth amendment, which states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” has been unfortunately abused within this situation. In 2015, a raid of dozens of “maternity hotels” occured, where mothers-to-be were paid between $15,000 to $50,000 to give birth in the United States, according to a statement given at the time by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Fortunately, the mothers involved were only treated as material witnesses and were not arrested. Through the practice of birth tourism, individuals are taking the advantage in distorting the true purpose of it. The one objective of birth tourism has no longer been prioritized. As seen through the arrests, people are creating their own businesses to achieve wealth and perform visa frauds.
As for the anchor babies who have no control over these decisions have been given criticism in the past. Several protests have taken place in favor of being against birth tourism. These children had no say or choice in being born in America. With respects to the Fourteenth amendment, they are Americans since they were born in America. The true purpose of birth tourism are mothers’ genuine concern for giving their unborn child a decent and significant future. Apart from containing legal citizenship, these mothers are also drawn to the U.S. flawed yet superior healthcare, more jobs with a decent pay, and easy access to an education. The completely legal practice of birth tourism is solely harmless, unfortunately, the illegal activities run behind it have created a bad name for it. Visa frauds have occurred especially within the maternity hotels.
Favoring One But Not The Other
As humans, some tend to favor one animal more than other animals. Some may like dogs more than cats, or cats more than dogs. Having a favorite animal does no harm, but when it comes to saving one animal over another from slaughter or abuse, the majority of people tend to look the other way. This is common when dogs are being sold for meat in China and people are quick to jump into action to save those dogs or show more emotion towards that situation. However, when cows, pigs, chickens, or any other animal not considered a house pet is put in that situation, people tend to not give a second thought.
Pigs show the same intelligence level as dogs. Credit: Chewy.com
The life of an animal becomes more important for an individual if it has any significance to one’s life, such as a pet cat or dog would. With that being said, the life of any other animal should not be valued less than the life of any everyday pet. All animals are capable of showing the same emotions as humans, some more stronger than others. The fact that a majority of people can turn a blind eye to a pig or cow being murdered in a slaughterhouse, but at the same time become completely emotional and involved when a dog or cat is put through the same situation is simply hypocritical. All animals should be treated with the same love and compassion as any house pet. No species should be looked at as being superior to another species of animal.
Cows are able to show the same amount of affection as any other dog. Credit: Bucket List 127
The average lifespan of a cow ranges from eighteen to twenty-two years and, just like people, cows feel pain and are conscious beings with emotion. In a slaughterhouse, a cow’s lifespan typically does not pass thirty-six months. Just as puppies play when they are young, calves also have that same playful spirit as well; Even when they are older, some are still capable of having those same playful tendencies. Despite many assumptions, chickens are very intelligent. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), chickens are capable of counting, manipulation, and showing some level of self-awareness. If humans start spending more time with an animal other than a regular cat or dog, one will start to see the compassion that all animal show to humans.
Once people stop looking at animals differently, the reality of how alike humans are to animals is realized. Just as humans, animals feel pain regardless of their species. Animals are capable of feeling emotions, just as humans do, as they feel the same range of sadness and happiness that people can relate to as well. All animals should be looked at as equal with the same love and compassion.
The Selfishness of the American Dream
By Madison Brown
In the aftermath of the United States developing some of the most powerful border legislation in the late 19th century, immigration surges came from all sides of the country and carried people of all kinds. Most notably, however, migrants from Mexico seeking to live out the American Dream, while contributing to their communities, became America’s biggest point of exploitation.
Efforts to increase the amount of work being done by covering workers in pesticides. Source: efekto10.com
On the cusp of World War One, there was an overwhelming need for labor in the United States, as many men were being sent out to fight while the women were given the responsibility of holding down the homes. This created a cause for these individuals to provide service in tedious and otherwise unwanted work in largely agricultural places. However, around the 1930’s, after the war efforts had begun to die down and society began to return to its natural state, deportations began to be issued for those that were once granted the ability to come over and work. Nevertheless, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, an economic demand for workers opened up once again, and more labor agreements were made with Mexico under the Bracero Program in 1941. The program, according to the University of California Los Angeles Labor Center, had been designed to import millions of Mexican workers, which were mostly men, on agricultural work contracts for short periods of time. While this program was effective in providing the U.S. with labor that it needed, it simultaneously was separating families in Mexico. The United States was undoubtedly quick to end these programs after economic standings had become more coherent, and movements were stopped by any means possible. The most effective tool in further suppressing those that had just provided their work came in the form of derogatory language, and then deporting the millions individuals who had come to help, through “Operation Wetback” in 1954. What was supposed to come as a form of legislation turned into a witch hunt that left millions terrorized and only 225,000 deported according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Efforts to reduce and revert the oppression towards immigrants has been successful in some aspects, as well with progressive ideas being introduced by members of the newly elected congress such as “permanent protection to Dreamers, young immigrants brought to the country as children, and TPS holders.” According to the vice president of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress. Along with outspoken individuals, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the 116th Congress of the United States, the slow wheels of national reform have already began to turn as she plans to succeed in the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while allotting freedom to Mexican individuals seeking asylum and better opportunity on the basis of them being native to the lands. On a more cohesive level, the use of popular culture in aiding the end of decades of impartiality towards mexican immigrants has recently come from Alfonso Cuarón’s film entitled, “Roma,” which highlights the truths of Mexican life in the 1970’s under the heat of low paying work and odds stacked against those seeking better futures. Only shortly after its release, the film has received over twenty awards, while providing recognition to those within the film, such as the main character of the film played by Yalitza Aparicio, a mexican actress, as she has now been featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair. While “Roma” is only one film and has not yet even reached the peak of its lasting importance on the film and real world, the voice and representation that it has given Mexican workers is impressive to say the least.
On the other hand, overpopulation became a true problem for the United States, as the economic state of the nation was not well equipped enough to support the amount of people within it. Actions to defeat this problem came through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which was designed to limit the amount of those staying within the United States, while also giving opportunities for families to stay together once brought over. With this type of legislation in place, the fault of the overpopulation could not truthfully fall onto the immigrants, and politicians today are left with little to no real basis for the claim of having no fault. Due to overwhelming amount of pride in the using of a nation of people to reap benefits, the need for reparations of any kinds towards Mexico and those of Mexican descent has been erased and instead leaves resentment from the American people on issues that they are not formally educated on. And frankly, for being the “superior nation of the world,” as well as the most successful in terms of economic function, continual juxtaposition of the ideas of those that came before us depicts a very different image. The overwhelming truth that most neglect to acknowledge is that the United States needed Mexico well before Mexico ever needed the U.S., and the narrative of the United States being the saving grace is far from the truth, as they are what aided in the creation of most of the economic and political instability that Mexico faces today.
Rather than placing blame on an entire race of individuals for seeking shelter in a place they were once welcomed, it it the responsibility of the United States to live up to their demands and provide adequate aid in the way that Mexico had done before. The horrifying truths behind the workers that are still here with more than thirty percent making less than five dollars a day, as well as the rampant sexual and verbal abuse of immigrants at the hands of deportation officers, are all problems that require a fair hand of justice to end.
The Most Dangerous Threat to Mankind: Man
Nuclear weapons have been on the forefront of proving international dominance for the past half-century, beginning after the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as both cities fell victim to the atomic bomb. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only two nuclear weapons to be used in global warfare, however, the creation and expansion of nuclear weapons have spread to a multitude of countries, all in order to compete in the ongoing nuclear arms race for superiority. Following the thought of a full-scale nuclear war, comes the onslaught of possible consequences that would ensue.
The last two brain cells of world powers will continue to lead to conflict seeing that the only function of these puppets is to oppose one another. Credit: Gary Markstein
The extreme amount of nuclear weapons held by large political powers, such as Russia, North Korea, and the United States, allows them to continue to use the hazardous buildup and exploitation of nuclear weapons as a political threat. This threat to inflict environmental devastation on other countries has lead to an increase in intensity among world powers. The United States and North Korea especially have had immense nuclear tension in the past decade that has yet to be resolved, leaving citizens scared of a looming nuclear war. Recently, at the Hanoi Summit, a conference between the U.S and North Korea regarding the denuclearization of North Korea, both world leaders refused to come to a peaceful resolution to denuclearize North Korea. The tension between these world powers promotes further advancements of nuclear technology as retribution.
Even a small nuclear war would cause near-irreparable levels of environmental devastation. The hypothetical scenario of a nuclear war would drop ozone layers, kill natural vegetations and animals, plus the numbers of human casualties would be insurmountable – not mentioning the nuclear waste that would take decades to clean and recover from. A singular nuclear bomb containing twenty kilograms of uranium would create 2000 metric tons of uranium mining waste and four metric tons of depleted uranium among other deadly toxins. Multiply the waste of a singular nuclear bomb by the 70,000 nuclear warheads manufactured on an international scale, the environmental impacts would be catastrophic, if there was an environment left to save after a nuclear war.
Billions of lives are left in the hands of several world powers too stubborn to realize that the production and threat of nuclear war itself is problematic. The childlike nature of world leaders may find a shiny red button too irresistible that they kill billions of innocent civilians who never thought that their death would be in the headlines of the first nuclear war.
Hell Houses: Sin Destroys, Jesus Saves
Christianity among other religions has been a gateway to spiritual salvation in the lives of many people since the beginning of time. By promising an endless amount of love and support from its followers and Jesus himself, Christianity hopes to extend their beliefs to as many people as possible. One of these conversion methods is by scaring children in horrific ways with their seasonal attractions, Hell houses. Hell Houses are Christian versions of haunted houses, combining theater and scare tactics that often reenact real-life scenarios, pushing certain viewpoints in order to literally scare people into converting to Christianity.
Hell houses portray dark events in history, such as the Columbine Shooting, in order to convert people into Christianity. Credit: Buzzfeed
Hell houses act out graphic scenes of murders, suicides, rape, abortions, homosexuality, gun violence, and more. One of the most well-known Hell house being the Trinity Church Hell House, which recreated the 1999 Columbine Shooting only six months after the massacre happened. This church’s Hell house portrayed the two shooters as “agents of Satan” as they had never devoted their souls to God with the goal of slaughtering Christians. The victims of the shooters were sent to heaven because of their Christian faith and the two shooters were dragged down to Hell. Reverend Tim Ferguson, pastor of Trinity Church, claimed that the message of this scene was that “if you don’t accept Christ, there are consequences to that in a real place called Hell.” However, with some simple research into the two Columbine shooters, you’d find that in no way is there any evidence that has it ever been mentioned that it was a hate crime towards Christian believers.
Hell houses are Christian versions of Halloween haunt. Credit: Vice
These Hell houses also show the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community as being “lustful sinners,” and oftentimes show them horrifically dying of AIDS. In one instance, a Hell house in Chicago named “The Room: A Journey to Hell,” got shut down for planning to recreate the Pulse nightclub shooting that happened back in 2016. As something that was so traumatic for those who were present in the Pulse shooting, or any shooting, young children going through a recreated version of those events. On numerous occasions, people have broken down in tears from walking through these Hell houses, especially with common traumas like drunk driving accidents, suicide, and depression. The method that these Hell houses teach about sin by relating it to the real world leads to such a narrow-minded view on social issues. Participants that go through Hell houses are shown horrific scenes that claim are directly caused by Satan taking hold of that person because without the help of Christ, everyone is doomed to a tragic ending.
Scaring people into converting to a religion is unnecessary, especially when recreating graphic and shocking scenes that display false information about events that have previously happened. Hell houses allow all ages to participate, but mostly encouraging parents to bring their young children. These young children that are brought through these Hell houses are brainwashed at such a young age into believing that the devil and demons exist by using horrific scare tactics with the intentions of possessing those who do not attend church and allow Jesus into their hearts, and then dragging them to an eternity in hell once they die.
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What really happened in Washington this week? Leadership, Interests, Security
David A. Welch
Amidst tension throughout the Asia-Pacific, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shenzo Abe visit Washington to re-affirm key strategic interests and areas of mutual cooperation. To learn more about what could have transpired during this visit, we speak to CIGI Senior Fellow and Chair of Global Security at the Balsillie School of International Affairs David Welch.
CIGI: Given the mounting of tension between North and South Korea, and the recent closure of the joint factory park Kaesong, do you think that these meetings in Washington focused on security issues or more generically looked to cover extended cooperation within the Asia-Pacific region?
David Welch: At the moment it’s all security, all the time. In most other respects, Asia-Pacific cooperation is going quite well. Almost all of the conflicts at the moment are security-related. North Korea is the security challenge that most directly concerns the United States, South Korea, and Japan respectively, and it would be astonishing if this did not dominate the trilateral discussions in Washington between Barack Obama, Park Geun-hye, and Shinzo Abe. There is an important background issue, of course, and that is how to manage China. On this subject South Korea used to be an outlier, preferring engagement and giving Xi Jinping the benefit of the doubt while the United States and Japan were more skeptical and more worried. Recent events have brought the three countries closer together. Among the most important of these recent events is Xi Jinping’s resistance to strong joint action to deal with the North Korean nuclear threat.
CIGI: Amidst the hot peace between North and South Korea, what possible role could the United States play in helping de-escalate tension between these two countries?
Welch: The United States has no particular interest in deescalating tensions between North and South Korea at the moment. It has a strong interest in ramping up the pressure on North Korea to denuclearize. Everything else is secondary. The received wisdom in Washington is that North Korea simply takes advantage of periods of détente to move its nuclear and missile programs forward.
CIGI: If you are either of these two world leaders coming to Washington, DC, what are your goals within this visit?
Welch: My main goal would be to present a united front against North Korea and to keep the heat on Xi Jinping to use his leverage—or what is left of it—to rein in Kim Jong-un. But I would have an important ulterior motive as well: namely, to capitalize upon the recent breakthrough agreement on the comfort women issue to promote broader and deeper Japan-Korea cooperation on a range of issues. Security and intelligence cooperation are the most important of these, but both sides need to invest significant resources in improving the tone and bilateral relations and reducing the alarming levels of suspicion and hostility that have poisoned people-to-people relations in recent years.
CIGI: As President Obama’s term comes to an end, will there be any last ditch efforts to change American engagement with the Asia-Pacific, and how do you think it will change with the election of any of the new candidates?
Welch: President Obama has a clear-eyed and practical vision of American interests and American engagement in the Asia-Pacific region. The “rebalance,” or “pivot” to Asia is the centrepiece, and for this it is important to improve defense cooperation with America’s allies in the region. At the same time, the United States is determined not to let China create “facts on the ground” that would alter the maritime status quo in the South China Sea; as a result of this, we can look forward to future freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) at a fairly regular pace. But Obama does not want to threaten China; he wants to convince China that its own interests are best served by adhering to existing international law and prevailing norms of peaceful conflict resolution. The messaging challenge is significant: it requires a combination of carrots and sticks, but thus far China appears only to have noticed the sticks.
If Hillary Clinton wins the election in November, she will follow the Obama line, but somewhat more muscularly, as she is rather more skeptical of China’s intentions and is inclined to be somewhat more hawkish. If the eventual Republican nominee wins, we can look forward to a dramatic deepening of tensions and a significantly increased risk of conflict. None of the remaining Republican candidates has a nuanced understanding of the complexities of Asia-Pacific security, nor the judgment to navigate them safely.
"The United States has a strong interest in ramping up the pressure on North Korea to denuclearize. Everything else is secondary. The received wisdom in Washington is that North Korea simply takes advantage of periods of détente to move its nuclear and mi
The opinions expressed in this article/multimedia are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of CIGI or its Board of Directors.
David A. Welch is a CIGI senior fellow and professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. An award-winning author and scholar, David is an expert in foreign policy decision making and international security, with an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region.
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How Kevin Smith Found Out About His Awesome Captain Marvel Shout-Out
Warning: SPOILERS are ahead!
Although Stan Lee, one of Marvel Comics’ most important figures, passed away last November, he filmed several Marvel Cinematic Universe cameos months before his death, ensuring that we’re not done seeing him on the big screen just yet. His most recent movie appearance was in Captain Marvel, where he was shown reading the script for Mallrats, the Kevin Smith movie he cameoed in over two decades ago, on the train where Carol Danvers was hunting for a disguised Skrull. In other words, Lee was basically cameoing as himself, making this one of his more unique cameos within the MCU.
Kevin Smith posted an emotional reaction over the weekend to Stan Lee’s Captain Marvel cameo and the special tribute the movie included to the longtime Marvel Comics’ writer, publisher, editor and Chairman Emeritus, but as it turns out, Smith was told about Lee’s special cameo months ahead of time by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. As Smith revealed:
I knew before I got to the theater. I got a phone call a couple months back after Stan passed away from the great Kevin Feige over at Marvel Studios and naturally when fucking Kevin Feige calls... you pick up the phone right away.
Along with being a director and podcaster, Kevin Smith is also a huge comic book fan, to the point that he’s written several comic books over the years, including notable runs on Daredevil and Green Arrow. But as far as movies go, he hasn’t been shy about expressing enthusiasm for all things MCU. So to hear from Kevin Feige himself that Stan Lee’s Captain Marvel cameo is quite the honor. If you’re in any way a fan of these Marvel movies and Feige calls you, then that’s definitely an instance where you don’t want the call to go to voicemail.
Like many comic book fans, Kevin Smith also grew up reading Stan Lee’s Marvel stories, but it was with Mallrats that he finally got to meet him and work with him, as Lee showed up in the movie as himself to speak with Jason Lee’s Brodie Bruce. Mallrats came out in 1995, the same year Captain Marvel is set, so it was quite fitting to have Lee be practicing his lines in the penultimate Phase 3 release. Following Mallrats, not only did Smith and Lee continue to collaborate professionally, but they also became good friends.
After Stan Lee’s death, Smith posted a tribute to his colleague and friend on social media and also talked about him on his Fatman Beyond podcast, and it was reading and hearing Smith’s words that led Kevin Feige to contact him about what was in store for Captain Marvel. Smith continued:
Kevin was like 'I read your Stan thing,' because I had put up an Instagram post after Stan passed and he was like 'I heard the podcast' So we were talking about how bummed we were that Stan had passed and then Kevin goes 'well, I’m calling you with a very specific reason' and he goes 'I gotta tell you this but you can't tell anybody, in order for me to go forward I've gotta tell you Stan's cameo in Captain Marvel.'
Kevin Feige also informed Kevin Smith that when Stan Lee shot his Captain Marvel cameo, he was “on his weaker side,” as it occurred only a few months before he died (and after he’d shot his brief appearance in Avengers: Endgame). As a result, his voice wasn’t “quite there,” so Feige asked Smith if he had any alternate takes of Lee delivering his Mallrats lines, and Smith pointed him to Universal for that audio.
As you’ll see when you watch all of Kevin Smith’s video, the filmmaker was incredibly flattered to be referenced in a Marvel movie, so Captain Marvel will surely hold a special place in his heart. But beyond that, Captain Marvel has been going higher, further, faster on other fronts. Along with earning numerous positive reviews, the movie opened to $153 million domestically in its first few days, making it one of the higher-grossing of the MCU’s opening weekends.
After being teased in Avengers: Infinity War’s post-credits scene when Nick Fury contacted her with his spruced-up pager before turning to dust during the Decimation, Captain Marvel officially brought Carol Danvers into the MCU fold, and we learned how she obtained her special powers and watched as she learned the secrets of her past. The movie ended with a fully-powered Carol escorting the Skrull refugees to a new home, and while we still don’t have the full scope of what she’s been doing over the last 23 years, at least it makes sense why she hasn’t been around Earth lately.
But we’re not done with Carol Danvers in 2019 just yet. At the end of next month, she’ll be back for Avengers: Endgame, and Captain Marvel’s mid-credits scene set the stage for her alliance with the surviving MCU heroes by having her show up at the Avengers’ base asking where Nick Fury was. Plot details are still being kept under wraps, but given how powerful Carol became at the end of Captain Marvel and how Brie Larson once said her character was powerful enough to move planets, she will definitely be a key ally in the rematch against Thanos.
As for Kevin Smith, along with his various podcasting endeavors, directing episodes of TV shows like The Flash and The Goldbergs and working on the upcoming Howard the Duck animated series for Hulu, he’s also just returned to his View Askewniverse (which preceded the MCU as a shared film universe) with Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, which will see its eponymous protagonists traveling back to Hollywood to prevent a reboot of Bluntman and Chronic from being made. Filming on this sequel began last month, but a release date hasn’t been set yet.
Be sure to read CinemaBlend’s review of Captain Marvel, and stay tuned for more updates concerning the MCU, which will continue when Avengers: Endgame is released on April 26. You can also look through our 2019 release schedule to learn what other movies are coming out this year.
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Pew: 275,000 Babies Born in U.S. From Illegal Alien Mothers in 2014
By Penny Starr | October 31, 2016 | 4:55pm EDT
(Screenshot)
(CNSNews.com) – A report by the Pew Research Center based on data from the federal government estimated that the number of babies born in the United States to illegal alien mothers in 2014 was 275,000 – a decrease from the estimated 330,000 born in 2009.
The report also showed that in 2014 those 275,000 births represented seven percent of the 4 million births in the U.S.
Births to illegal alien mothers accounted for about one-in-three births (32%) to foreign-born mothers in the U.S. in 2014, according to the Pew estimates.
“These estimates are based mainly on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and its American Community Survey, using the widely accepted residual methodology employed by Pew Research Center for many years,” the Pew Research Center’s stated on its website.
“These new estimates update and revise previous estimates for 2012 (310,000 previously; now 305,000) and 2013 (295,000 previously; now 290,000) based on more detailed data sources,” it stated.
The report also revealed that these children -- sometimes called “anchor babies” because under Constitution’s 14th Amendment they are automatically U.S. citizens -- number in the millions.
“In 2014, there were 4.7 million U.S.-born children younger than 18 living with unauthorized-immigrant parents,” the website stated. “There also were 725,000 children younger than 18 who were unauthorized immigrants themselves and lived with unauthorized-immigrant parents.
“These totals do not count U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants who do not live with their parents,” it stated.
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MMO Co-Opportunities Volume XXXII: Neverwinter
Editorial 5/12/2013 at 4:28 PM by Tally Callahan
It's got dungeons, dragons, and dragons in dungeons!
Neverwinter is a game I’ve been quietly interested in since its announcement. A D&D-themed game set in the city of Neverwinter? Yes, please. Things went quiet for quite awhile after its announcement, and I forgot about it until it drew my attention at PAX East 2012. After going hands-on with a pre-alpha build at that time, I began to feel like it was going to be a damn good game. I wrote up my impressions at the time, then filed it to the back of my mind.
To make a long story short, I had the opportunity to participate in a press-only beta weekend as well as all closed beta weekends for the game. I was encouraged by what I saw. I even got to play during the five-day headstart to open beta (thanks, Christine at PWE!), and the deed was done. I was hooked. Now let’s talk about why (focusing on the co-op reasons, of course!).
The most impressive co-opportunity that I’ve experienced in the game is its flexibility towards players. Let me explain. While there are scenarios and dungeons (more on this later) that are focused on a full 5-person party, much of the game is balanced for solo or two-person play. My cleric is nearing in on level 50, and I’ve pretty much blitzed through the game so far with one other person. I could’ve easily done this with three of four other people, however, as most quest objectives will update for all players in a party (though there are some individual collection quests here and there) and sometimes all players that are close to an objective even if they aren’t in a party. Also, in this non-group-specific content, the composition of the party is largely unimportant. As expected, clerics and guardians may be useful, but players can often blitz their way through on pure damage and strategic potions. There’s no waiting around in town for a specific group to just go and do some quests. And since players can quick-travel to the start of any adventuring zone, they could potentially complete a couple quests even if they only have 15 minutes to play.
As for group-specific content, I should touch on the queueing system. By no means is Neverwinter the first to allow players to queue for dungeons, but it’s one of the most well-done ones I’ve personally experienced. From anywhere in the world, players can queue for party-based content. They can queue alone or in a group, and the system will round out the details. Once queued, they can go out and do whatever they want in the game and the matchmaking will let them know when it’s found a group. The system always appears to put at least one guardian (tank) and one cleric (healer) into every group, so you don’t have to worry about getting stuck with an all-dps party for really tough content. There are two types of PVE queueing in Neverwinter: Skirmishes and Dungeons. Dungeons are the standard affair where players fight through multiple rooms, clear multiple groups of enemies, and kill a couple bosses and an end-boss. They’re laid out to take roughly 45 minutes to complete. Skirmishes, on the other hand, are tuned to take only 15 minutes. They usually consist of only several waves of smaller enemies, followed by one boss. I really like that Cryptic thought to include both these options for the convenience of their players. This goes back to my point about flexibility as a co-opportunity.
mmo co-opportunities
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The Scourge Project
Online Co-Op: 4 Players
LAN Co-Op: 4 Players
The Scourge Project Hands-On Preview
Preview 3/24/2010 at 1:20 PM by Jason Love
For this preview play session, I was given a guided tour through the world of The Scourge Project by the game's director, Omar Salleh. At the start of our session, Omar provided me with a little background about the game and showed me the game’s opening cinematic. To keep it brief, an evil company (the Nogari Corporation) has been conducting some highly questionable research using a mysterious energy source (called Ambrosia) and an anti-corporation group (the Tarn Initiative) is out to put a stop to it. The game’s four main characters, Stonewall (the leader), Amp (the lady), Mass (the Scotsman), and Shade (the loner), are part of the Tarn Initiative’s Echo Squad and have been sent, along with another mercenary group called Alpha Squad, to infiltrate Nogari and rescue a Tarn Initiative corporate spy, Dr. Reisbeck. As you approach the Nogari island research facility, “sh** gets real,” as they say, and your squad suddenly finds itself betrayed by Alpha Squad and stranded with no way to get home.
Learning why Alpha Squad betrayed you and what’s been going on at the Nogari research facility is only half the story, however. Who the four characters are and why they’re doing what they’re doing is the other, and seemingly more interesting, half. One of the more publicized features of The Scourge Project has been the uniqueness of the four playable characters, each of whom experiences his or her own distinctive set of flashbacks over the course of the game. During the play session, Omar told me that films like “Memento” and TV shows like “Lost” inspired the development team as they were working on this particular aspect of the game’s story. Not only did they want to tell a more-or-less complete story over the course of Episodes 1 and 2, but they also wanted to leave room for future episodes to resolve unanswered questions and bring to light all of the game’s mysteries. Introducing a kind of social co-op element to the game, players will have to talk with their squad mates in order to learn what others are seeing and what it all means. Tragnarion is hoping that players will enjoy and really get into these story elements, even going so far as wanting to discuss their theories about what’s going on with other players outside of their play session.
Story elements aside, The Scourge Project plays like many third-person shooters out there, complete with cover system and “iron sights.” Added to this, are the aforementioned powers of the four characters. There are, in fact, only two power types, a shield that provides protection from incoming enemy fire and a kind of explosive force, but each power has two variants. In the case of the shield, a character can either create a stationary shield that can be used as temporary, in-place cover, or a shield that moves with the character but prevents them from shooting. For the explosive force, the force either radiates outwards from the character, or it travels forward a short distance and then explodes. Thus, each character does not have his or her own unique set of powers, but rather he or she has a unique mix of the variants of the two power types. For example, Shade creates an in-place shield and sends out the explosion, whereas Stonewall’s shield moves with him and his explosion radiates outwards from him.
The Scourge Project's main character (from L - R): Stonewall, Mass, Amp, and Shade
While it’s a little disappointing that there aren’t absolutely unique powers across the characters, the way the powers are mixed does make for some pretty interesting co-op combinations. At one point in the preview, Omar and I had to push our way forward to an enemy position in order to rescue a downed A.I. squad mate. In order to get there, Omar used Stonewall’s shield to provide cover for us while I (playing as Shade) followed behind, shooting enemies and sending out little explosion waves to clear a path. Reviving a squad mate takes a little bit of time, so when we made it to our ally I put up my stationary shield to continue providing cover while Omar revived him. The whole time he and I were undertaking this rescue effort, we were also earning experience.
4 player co-op
The Scourge Project Hits PC Next Month, Xbox Live Next Year
The Scourge Project Releases this March on Steam
The Scourge Project is a Little Better Now
The Scourge Project Hits Steam Today, 10% Off For First Week
The Scourge Project Co-Op Review
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Handbook for Marine Radio Communication
G.D. Lees, W.G. Williamson
Informa Law from Routledge
Reference - 374 Pages - 22 B/W Illustrations
Select Format: Paperback Hardback Quantity:
This bestselling book provides an incomparable reference source for all vessels using maritime radio communication systems, which are now a legislative requirement. It includes exhaustive coverage of all UK and international regulations relating to modern maritime communications, such as the crucial GMDSS, all contained within one singular volume.
This sixth edition has been fully updated to take into account major developments over the last five years, in particular the revised regulations introduced by the International Telecommunication Union in 2012. The authors deliver an authoritative guide to the complicated and changing world of radio communications, including:
The very latest technological advances in terrestrial and satellite communications
Changes to the international VHF channel allocation and channel spacing
The major overhaul of the organisational structure of the UK Coastguard service
Substantial enhancements to the eLoran services
The changing complexities of voyage planning
Large diagrams, an extensive index and fully-updated appendices
This is a definitive guide for today’s maritime communications industry, including ship owners, ship managers, coast guards, seafarers, students of maritime communications, as well as the recreational sector.
1. Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) 2. Distress and safety communications in the GMDSS 3. Digital Selective Calling (DSC) 4. Safety Related Equipment and Services 5. Satellite Communications 6. Radio Telex 7. Radiotelephony (RT) 8. General Regulations 9. Radio Traffic 10. Meteorological Services 11. Electronic Position Fixing Systems 12. Certification
GRAHAM D. LEES
B.Ed. (Hons); CGLI Cert. (Marine Electronics); MRGC Cert.; BOT Radar Maintenance Cert.; GMDSS GOC; TC (Manchester University).
Born in Liverpool and raised in Bebington Wirral, he was educated at Calday Grange Grammar School, West Kirby and trained as a radio officer at Riversdale College of Technology, Liverpool. He spent five years serving as a radio officer followed by a further six years as a radio and electronics officer on a wide range of UK registered vessels including passenger ships, general cargo, oil and chemical tankers, gas carriers and car/bulk cargo carriers.
He started teaching marine radio and electronics at Riversdale College in 1976 and became senior lecturer in charge of HND and GMDSS courses. After completing 21 years of teaching, he is now retired but continues his involvement in technical writing and advisory work specialising in the training needs of those involved in the marine radio communications and electronic navigational aids industries. In addition, he continues to teach GMDSS at Liverpool John Moores University on a sessional basis. He retains his appointment as GMDSS examiner on behalf of MCA/AMERC and recently returned to his role on the AMERC GMDSS examiner’s panel.
WILLIAM G. WILLIAMSON
B.Sc. (Open); Eng. Tech.; TMIEIE; 1st Class PMG Cert.; BOT Radar Maintenance Cert.; GMDSS GOC; Certificate of Education (Manchester University).
Born in Glasgow in 1943, he joined the Merchant Navy as a radio officer following initial training at the Glasgow Wireless College. He spent seven years at sea, during which time he served on a variety of vessels including general cargo ships, tramps and tankers. He continued his involvement with the marine industry as a marine electronics engineer based at Liverpool, gaining wide servicing experience on UK and foreign flag vessels. During this period he served for some years as an executive member of the Radio Officers’ Union.
After 20 years with the Marconi Marine Company, he joined the staff at Riversdale College of Technology in 1980 as a lecturer primarily concerned with radio officer training. Following a reorganisation, he became a senior lecturer at Liverpool Community College with particular responsibilities for all GMDSS courses, GOC, ROC and LRC until he retired in 2001. He currently teaches part-time on GMDSS courses at the Lairdside Maritime Centre. He remains an approved GMDSS examiner. He was a member of the AMERC’s Executive Committee for nine years and chaired the AMERC GMDSS Regulations Examination Panel for fifteen years. He is currently chairman of the Liverpool Marine Radio and Electronics Society.
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The story behind Tokyo's winning 2020 Olympics logo
Japan's capital city has been selected as the home of the next-but-one Olympics. Here's the story behind the logo for its winning bid, plus those of its rivals.
The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio is fast approaching, and once they've drawn to a close, the eyes of the sporting world will turn to Tokyo, which has just been selected as the home of the 22nd Games in 2020.
It's a huge boost for Japan, still recovering from the effects of the 2011 Tsunami. And while it's difficult to ascertain just how much contribution the bid's branding made to its victory, it's certainly not going to harm the career of Ai Shimamine, who designed the winning bid's logo (above).
Student entry
Shimamine submitted the design to a national competition held to pick a logo while she was in her final year as a student at Joshibi University of Art and Design. It's based around a wreath of cherry blossoms, Japan’s most celebrated flower and an integral part of the nation's cultural life.
The traditional Olympic colours of red, yellow, green and blue are combined with purple, which represents the celebrated Edo period of Japanese history. The circular shape of the logo is designed to symbolise a sense of eternity, and each individual petal represents the interconnectivity and interdependence of the world.
Wreath emblem
Surprisingly, Shimamine says the shape was also designed to symbolise a wreath. "I once saw a scene in a foreign film where a wreath was laid on a grave and wondered about the meaning behind the gesture," she said in an interview with the Ginza Street Association. "When I looked it up, I discovered that wreaths carry a message of 'coming back again'. I took this concept and infused the hope that Japan will recover its vigor and courage through sports."
Spanish controversy
One of Tokyo's rivals in the bid process, Madrid, also commissioned its logo design on the basis of a national competition. This was won by 22-year-old Luis Peiret's design (below), in which the five arches of the Puerta de Alcala - a monument in Madrid's Independence Square - represent the five continents.
However, Peiret was not a fan of the final version of his design, which was developed by Spanish agency Tapsa (shown below):
Peiret was not the only detractor; the design was widely criticised within Spain for its alleged lack of legibility (the mocking hashtag was '#Madrid20020') and the "incorrect" accent on the 'i' of Madrid. The controversy took an even more bizarre when a company that makes gay dolls accused the agency of plagiarism.
Turkish entry
In the case of Turkey's entry, five potential logos submitted by professional designers were published on Istanbul's website and the public were asked to choose their favourite. They selected this design; a painterly version of a tulip, a traditional symbol of the Turkish city.
Nestled between the petals are elements of Istanbul’s skyline centred around the Maiden’s Tower, with the orange and blue symbolising the European and Asian side, divided by the Bosporus. The idea was to draw attention to the fact that if Istanbul was chosen it would be the first time the Olympics had been held across two continents simultaneously.
Celebrating the majesty of the London 2012 Olympics logo
Thinking behind 2016 Olympics font revealed
The good, the bad and the ugly: typography in Olympics logo design
What do you make of the Olympic bid logo designs? Let us know in the comments box below!
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ICC ODI Player Rankings
ICC T20I Player Rankings
ICC Test Player Rankings
Home Cricket The Blooper That Cost New Zealand The World Cup
The Blooper That Cost New Zealand The World Cup
Satvik Pandey
Having awarded England six runs off an overthrow that went to the boundary after being deflected off Ben Stokes’ bat and cost New Zealand a potential World Cup victory, Kumar Dharmasena admitted that his call was wrong and five runs should have been given instead of the six that he had given to the English side. After the final, one of the best umpires of all time, Simon Taufel had opened up about his take on this decision and had said that it was an error on the side of the on-field umpire to award the extra run. This brought all the rage of the fans upon Dharmasena, who was the umpire who had made the call in the first place in the final.
image credit : hindustantimes.com
Though Taufel later went on to say that it is practically impossible for an umpire to have his eyes both on the crease and the boundary, so it was nothing but a normal human error that is bound to take place. But, till that time, the media had gone bonkers in criticizing Dharmasena for his call, but was he really wrong? The exact law states that no run completed after the ball has crossed the boundary because of an overthrow can be added to the team’s total. And, looking at the TV replays now, its certain that Stokes was well behind the crease when the ball crossed the boundary after getting deflected off his bat, but did Dharmasena really have the luxury of TV replays that he should have taken? The answer is a bid NO. According to him, the ground lacked the facility of providing TV replays to the on-field umpires. So, he had to take a call and he did that in consultation with his partner on the field, Marais Erasmus, who confirmed the call.
image credit : outlookindia.com
This gives another twist to the controversy, that whether the ground assigned to host the final of the quadrennial event was well equipped or not. The ICC, before assigning the grounds makes sure that the venue is equipped with the required facilities and the lack of such a vital one definitely is a cause of concern for the council, as it puts into question its process and credibility, as fans and enthusiasts wait for full four years to witness this phenomenon and the council being the patron of this event should make sure that all things are in place.
Thus, like all the controversies in sport, this too will remain debatable till the end of the day and will go down as a decision that wasn’t what it should have been, just because of the supposed lack of facilities that should have been made available to the match officials.
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Best Zagreb Tours to Explore the City and Its Surroundings
Best Lists by C. Luciano on April 23, 2018 add comment
Taking one of Zagreb tours is the good opportunity to get to know the region in the vicinity of Zagreb city area that extends from the Slovenian border to Varazdin town on the north.
This green and hilly region known as Hrvatsko Zagorje o Zagreb’s Zagorje covered with pastoral villages, medieval castles and thermal springs, makes a good day break from summer heat and overloaded beaten places along the Adriatic coast.
It could be a good escape from the summer heat and occasion to taste the Austrian influenced food and to admire the baroque architecture that contracts the Roman and Venetian influence along the coast.
This northern Croatia’s region is not visited by tourist like other districts but when visiting Zagreb capital I highly recommend some of the highlights, definitely worth visiting. On Zagorje map and Varazdin you can find all most attractive highlights.
Zagreb Tours Offers
Krapina Town Zagreb Tours
Krapina town is located in the hilly Hrvatsko Zagorje region of Croatia, approximately in the middle between Zagreb and Varazdin, only 55 km away from Zagreb.
It was mentioned for the first time in 1193 and in the middle of the 14th century it was a free royal trading place, and by the end of the 15th century it was the seat of the Croatian ban (lord, master or ruler).
But, this town is known by something more important. It has become famous for the remains of prehistorical Neanderthal Man, found by Dragutin Gorjanovic Kramberger in 1899, in the cave on the Husnjakovo hill.
Today, in front of the cave there are reconstruction of prehistoric men and animals in natural size. The Museum of Early Man in Krapina is worth visiting to discover the interesting story about the life and culture of the Neanderthal man in this region, accompanied with numerous multimedia and other content.
Zagreb Tours to Kumrovec
Kumrovec is about 60 km northwest of Zagreb, and about 6 km from the town of Klanjec. This small town, best known for being the birth place of President Josp Broz Tito.
The main attraction in the village is a recreation of a 19th century Croatian village. This open air museum in the Zagorje region consists of a number of restored 19th and early 20th Century buildings made from earth and wood and furnished according to theme.
There is a blacksmith hut, potter’s studio, toy-maker’s hut, vintner’s hut, candle maker’s shop, and others complete with all the accessories that each worker would need for his job.
The museum offers demonstrations of the various occupations, which are held on weekends during the summer months. The setting here is beautiful with a small river running through the village.
The entire settlement is an open-air ethnographic museum. Its centerpiece is an authentic re-creation of the interior and exterior of Tito’s childhood home done by the Zagreb Museum of Arts and Crafts.
You can walk from building to building, including village’s memorabilia room, where documents and photographs from Tito’s time are on display.
Day trip to Marshall Tito’s birth place is one of the best Zagreb tours you can take visiting the green and hilly region of Hrvatsko Zagorje.
Zagreb tours to discover the land of castles
This region is well-known by more than fifty castles, some of them with their own park. Considering the number of castles this area is the richest regions in Croatia. For your day Zagreb tours here are some information of most visited:
Veliki Tabor castle
The 15th century fortified castle Veliki Tabor is the best-preserved monuments of medieval fortification architecture in Croatia.
It is located on a beautiful hill near the little northern Croatian village Desinic, only 70 km from Zagreb, on the road to famous Tuheljske Toplice (Spa). There are few stories about the castle’s history.
One legend says that the castle was situated on the top of an island of what was once the Pannonian Sea, and the other legend narrates that castle was built on remains of a Roman fortress from 2nd century.
Actually, this pentagonal tower which was proclaimed as a historical monument of utmost importance by UNESCO, was built during 12th century. The castle has twelve different roofing, a big well in the central court that is 31 meters deep and a wine cellar equipped with a big wine-press.
But the most interesting feature of this castle is definitely the scull of Veronika Desinic, a young and beautiful village girl who was killed and built in the walls of the castle during 15th century because she had a love affair with one noble man whose father didn’t approve their relationship. There is a legend that one can hear Veronika’s screams around the castle during the night.
Today the castle has been reconstructed after two years of work starting from outside walls ,portico, gallery and the five-cornered tower.
Trakoscan castle
Located on the north of Krapina town, Trakoscan castle dating from the Middle Ages (late 13th century), is the one of the most beautiful and the most romantic Croatia castles in Zagorje region.
It was a small fortress serving as an observation post overlooking the road from Ptuj towards the Bednja valley. The first known owners of the castle were the Celjski family, who also ruled over the entire Zagorje principality, as well as Medjumurje, Varazdin and large estates in the present-day Slovenia.
A visit of this castle is one of the most popular Zagreb tours that include also a visit to Varazdin, a city of baroque, young people, music, flowers and bicycles.
Marusevac castle near Varazdin
This castle is located in the village of the same name, in the county of Varazdin. The name’s origin goes back into remote times when, according to legend, Marusa, a Chech lady, settled here and established residence. Several centuries later the locality became known as Marusevec. The castle is situated 15 km from the city of Varazdin.
Marusevac castle was mentioned for the first time in 1547, as the property of the Vragovic family. Throughout centuries, the castle had numerous owners. The Count Schlippenbach added new wing to the castle and gave it today’s shape.
The park around the castle is the only remnant of the huge English garden as it was before the World War II. It is the worldwide cultural heritage monument. Today, it is owned by the Pongratz family.
Hlebine ‘The Cradle of Naive Art’ in Croatia
There aren’t organized Zagreb tours to this small village near Koprivnica, the central town of the Croatian region Podravina, spread along the Drava river, but this map can help you visit on your own this village where Croatian Naive Art was born.
The first mentioned in the year 1330, the village of Hlebine didn’t become famous for another 600 years, until Croatian peasant art was born there.
In Croatia the concept of the Naive assumes the work of artists who arrived from amateurism, people who are more or less self-taught, painters and sculptors who did not obtain their education by systematic training at art schools and academies, which did not, however, prevent them from creating their own style, achieving their own level of art.
This concept will be much clearer, if you visit Croatian Museum of Naive Art in Zagreb, St. Cirila and Metoda 3 street, in Upper Town (Gornji grad).
The most famous naive artists are, Ivan Generalic (1914-1992) the first master of the Hlebine School, and the first among the naive painters of Croatia to create a personal style and art of a high level.
Others are Vranjo Mraz, Mirko Virius, Ivan Vecenaj, Mijo Kovacic, Ivan Rabuzin, Josip Generalic, Emerik Fejes and many others.
Zagorje bathing and wellness centers
After you take part of one of Zagreb tours to visit Zagorje castles, baroque Varazdin, birthplace of Tito, prehistoric men museum in Krapina, it’s a time to experience nature and enjoy wellness relaxation or an active vacation.
Krapinske toplice (Spa) – Aquae Vivae Hotel, 246 beds, indoor swimming-pool with thermal water, 2 outdoor pools and sports grounds; hospital for rheumatic diseases with 650 beds for adults and 110 for children, four indoor swimming-pools with thermal water and equipment for various forms of therapy.
Hrvatsko Zagorje is known for a centuries-old tradition of thermal, healing and bathing tourism. See the map below of some of the most popular thermal spas: Stubicke spa,
Tuheljske spa, Varazdin spa and Krapinske spa.
Maybe you would like to visit!
Tags : Best Zagreb ToursExplore ZagrebExploring ZagrebZagrebZagreb Croatia
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Best Things to See and Do in Zagreb, Croatia
Zagreb, Croatia: Exploring the Lower Town (What to See, What to Do)
Zagreb Airport Guide: Bus, Transfer & General Information
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Home|News|CSB Proceeding with Barton Solvents Explosions and Fire Assessment, Investigative Team Returning to Site Today
CSB Proceeding with Barton Solvents Explosions and Fire Assessment, Investigative Team Returning to Site Today
Washington, DC, August 7, 2007 - The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is proceeding with its assessment of the explosions and fire at Barton Solvents in Valley Center, Kansas, north of Wichita, with investigators returning to the accident site this week to gather further information.
Shortly after 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, July 17, 2007, explosions and fire erupted in the outdoor tank storage area of the facility. The outdoor "tank farm" contained approximately 40 tanks with capacities ranging from 3,000 to 20,000 gallons.
At the time of the accident a tanker truck containing varnish-makers and painters (VM&P) naphtha was being offloaded and pumped into a 15,000-gallon storage tank at the facility. VM&P naphtha is classified as a flammable liquid by the National Fire Protection Association and is used widely in the paintings and coatings industry.
CSB investigators first arrived at the facility on July 19, 2007, to begin assessing the accident and examining the site. According to a number of eyewitness interviews, the VM&P naphtha was being pumped to an aboveground storage tank that subsequently exploded and launched into the air, creating a large fireball. The accident led to the evacuation of thousands of residents, and at least one home and a nearby business suffered structural damage from flying debris from the various explosions. The tank farm was completely destroyed.
The investigative team returned to Kansas today and will continue collecting and analyzing evidence. CSB Lead Investigator Randy McClure said, "The investigative team will be examining the tanks that failed and released their contents during the explosions and fire. We plan to examine the pressure relief systems, tank design, and facility configuration placing the tanks in the single spill containment." He added, "It is unfortunate that an explosion in one partially filled tank could result in a serious threat to the plant workers and nearby community."
Barton Solvents packages, stores, and delivers solvents and other chemical products. The company also has distribution locations in Iowa and Wisconsin.
The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents. The agency's board members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. CSB investigations look into all aspects of chemical accidents, including physical causes such as equipment failure as well as inadequacies in regulations, industry standards, and safety management systems.
The Board does not issue citations or fines but does make safety recommendations to plants, industry organizations, labor groups, and regulatory agencies such as OSHA and EPA. You are invited to visit the CSB website, www.csb.gov for more background on the agency.
For more information, contact: Public Affairs Specialist Jennifer Jones at (202) 261-3603.
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Court Finds UCC Debtor Name Incorrectly Extracted from Driver’s License
You are here: Home » Court Finds UCC Debtor Name Incorrectly Extracted from Driver’s License
By Paul Hodnefield, Esq.
It is sometimes not enough for a secured party to determine the correct name of a debtor for purposes of filing a UCC financing statement. The correct name must also be correctly provided or it could render the financing statement seriously misleading. Unfortunately, when it comes to individual debtor names, it isn’t always easy to determine which parts of the name go in each financing statement name field. The secured party must map the components of the name to the correct field on the financing statement or it may find that its security interest is unperfected. That situation can and does occur, as was demonstrated in the recent case of In re Preston, 2019 Bankr. LEXIS 3864 (Bankr. D. Kan. Dec. 20, 2019).
This case involved an individual farmer named Dewey Dennis Preston (the “Debtor”), whose principal residence was in Kansas. In 2015, the Debtor purchased a combine and combine heads on credit financed by CNH Industrial Capital America (the Lender). To secure the loan, the Debtor granted the Lender a purchase-money security interest in the equipment.
The Lender filed two financing statements to perfect it security interests. The first described the collateral as the combine and head and was filed on June 29, 2015. The second financing statement was filed on January 8, 2016 and described just a combine head as the collateral.
The Debtor was generally known as “D. Dennis Preston” and that was reflected on his driver’s license, which listed the name as “PRESTON D DENNIS” (last name first, which is not an unusual format for driver’s licenses). When the Lender filed its financing statements, however, both provided “PRESTON” in the Surname field and “D.DENNIS” in the First Personal Name field. The “ADDITIONAL NAME(S)/INITIAL(S)” (fka ”MIDDLE NAME”) field was left blank.
In 2018, the Debtor filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy protection. The Debtor’s proposed plan treated the Lender’s claim against the combine and header as unsecured. The Lender objected to the plan, claiming to have a perfected security interest in that equipment. The court, therefore, had to determine the status of the Lender’s security interest.
Under UCC § 9-503(a)(4), if the debtor is an individual to whom this state has issued a driver’s license or identification card that has not expired, the financing statement is sufficient only if it provides the name of the individual which is indicated on the driver’s license or identification card. A financing statement that fails to sufficiently provide the name of the individual debtor required by § 9-503(a)(4) is seriously misleading and not effective under § 9-506(b).
There is one exception to the strict debtor name rules. Under § 9-506(c), if a search of the records of the filing office under the debtor’s correct name, using the filing office’s standard search logic, if any, would disclose a financing statement that fails sufficiently to provide the name of the debtor in accordance with § 9-503(a)(4), the name provided does not make the financing statement seriously misleading.
The Debtor argued that the Lender’s financing statements failed to sufficiently provide the name of the debtor as required by UCC § 9-503(a)(4). Moreover, a search conducted in accordance with UCC § 9-506(c) failed to disclose the record. As a result, the financing statements were seriously misleading and the Lender’s security interests unperfected. Therefore, the Debtor’s plan should treat the Lender’s claim as unsecured.
In response to the Debtor’s argument, the Lender asserted that the name on the financing statement did correctly reflect the name indicated on the driver’s license. The license did not identify which components of the name represented the “first,” “personal,” or “middle” portions of the name and there was nothing to indicate that periods and spaces change what constitutes the name.
The court, however, was not persuaded by the Lender’s argument. The Debtor’s driver’s license stated the name as “Preston D Dennis” without a period and with a space between D and Dennis. The Lender’s financing statement included the extra period and no space between the initial and Dennis. The court went further and stated that “To reflect the name on Debtor’s driver’s license, as required by [§ 9-503(a)(4)], the financing statements should have stated Preston as Debtor’s surname, D as his first name, and Dennis as his middle name.”
According to the court, by providing “D.DENNIS” as the First Personal Name the Lender’s financing statement failed to sufficiently provide the name of the Debtor. The parties stipulated that a search conducted in accordance with § 9-506(c) failed to disclose the record. Therefore, the court held that the financing statement was seriously misleading and the Lender’s security interest unperfected.
The important takeaway from this case is that the secured party is not only responsible for determining what constitutes the correct name of an individual debtor, but also for correctly extracting the name from the source document. Each component of the name must be provided in the corresponding name field on the financing statement. If the secured party has any doubt how to map the data to the correct field, it should not hesitate to provide one or more variations of the driver’s license name as additional debtors. By doing so, the financing statement will have a much better chance of providing whatever form of the name that a court might later determine was correct.
Paul Hodnefield is associate general counsel for CSC® and is a frequent speaker and writer on UCC due diligence issues. Please feel free to contact him with questions or comments at paul.hodnefield@cscglobal.com or 800-927-9801, ext. 61730.
CSC January 6, 2020 UCC Search & Filing, UCC Updates and Perspectives
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Editorial: Investigating gender pay discrepancy at Princeton
By Editorial Board | Apr 24, 2014
Recently, the American Association of University Professors released its 2013-2014 Faculty Salary Survey. The survey investigated “trends, gender breakdowns, and comparisons of faculty salaries” at over 1000 colleges and universities. The survey found that while on the whole, Princeton pays its full professors more than most institutions, the average pay of female professors is just 89.9 percent of their male counterparts. This statistic parallels a similar discrepancy that pervades nearly all careers at the national level. This national gender pay gap was recently addressed by the Obama Administration with two executive orders meant to improve transparency of pay at federal contractors and businesses. While the discrepancy at Princeton may not be the result of intentional discrimination, the Board believes that the University should investigate the source of this difference and ensure that equal pay is given in return for equal work.
The difference between male and female professor salaries could be a due to a variety of factors. Historically, academia has been dominated by men. For this reason, it may be the case that a greater proportion of male faculty members have greater seniority, and so, receive more pay on the whole than female faculty members. It is also plausible that fewer women pursue professorships than men, and the 89.9 percent figure may reflect this confounding variable as well. Furthermore, the average faculty pay was not broken down into discipline-based averages – if male professors dominate highly paid fields, then the 89.9 percent figure might represent skewed representation in these departments. With only the knowledge of the average pay discrepancy across the board, it is impossible to know exactly whether or not — or to what degree — these confounding variables account for the 89.9 percent statistic. The Board urges the University to investigate the pay difference with attention to the above factors.
While the administration has started to take steps to improve faculty diversity, the Board believes that an investigation of faculty pay might reveal policy changes that could improve the discrepancy. In September 2013, the University released the Report of the Trustee Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity, a report that discussed the state of diversity at Princeton. The Board commends many of the recommendations the Committee made, including new methods to identify rising stars from underrepresented groups as well as greater support systems to retain early-career, tenure-track faculty. It is possible that improved hiring and retention of female professors could, in time, limit the impact of the higher salaries of older male professors on pay averages. However, the Board believes that more specific recommendations could be made to address the issue of pay discrepancy following a University-led investigation. Many of the Committee’s recommendations were issued with the broad goal of increasing diversity in the ranks of the faculty. Targeted policy is required if the University aims to ensure pay equality for its professors.
The Board believes that the pay discrepancy between male and female faculty members must be investigated and subsequently addressed with specific reforms if necessary. The pay difference may be the result of variety of factors, and only closer examination of pay data can reveal the underlying causes behind the broad 89.9 percent statistic. The AAUP report found pay discrepancies at several of our peer institutions, and the Board believes that Princeton should take the lead in addressing the report’s findings. While factors outside the University’s control will inevitably continue to affect the composition of our faculty, the University should continue to consider various avenues by which it can ensure that faculty pay is fair.
Letter from the Editor: Reflecting on a year of service
The decline and fall of grade deflation
A challenge to political labels in an era of polarization
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David Weekley Homes Partners with BuildAid to Celebrate Renovation of Home Damaged by Hurricane Harvey
Houston, TX (December 27, 2018): David Weekley Homes celebrated the return of the Ok family to their Houston-area home during a special welcome home event held just in time for the holidays. The home, which sustained substantial damage during Hurricane Harvey, was renovated through the collaborative efforts of the nonprofit organization BuildAid Houston with David Weekley Homes as the builder partner.
Representatives from BuildAid and David Weekley Homes were in attendance for the event that included a tour, surprise furniture delivery from Exclusive Furniture, gifts from Walmart and breakfast provided by Chick-fil-A.
“All of these families have been on such a journey to get back into their homes,” said Bob Sutton, client services manager with BuildAid. “After construction is complete, we still want to help families get their lives back together and this is a truly impactful way we've been able to do that. It is a blessing to those of us at BuildAid and David Weekley Homes to be involved.”
Seungwoong Ok, who is a pastor at Hilltop Lutheran Church of Houston in the Spring Branch area, and his wife evacuated their home more than 16 months ago when it was flooded with five feet of water during Hurricane Harvey. Since that time, the couple has been living with members of their church family.
“The great thing about finding BuildAid and having David Weekley Homes complete the repairs is that I didn’t have to worry about anything,” Ok said. “I knew they were taking care of things and everything went very smoothly. I am used to serving other people and didn’t expect it to come back to me.”
The family received assistance from BuildAid Houston, a nonprofit initiative of HomeAid Houston and the Greater Houston Builders Association. The organization was created in December 2017 with a $1 million commitment from The David Weekley Family Foundation. Through this partnership, local home builders work with the nonprofit organization to significantly reduce the price of rebuilding by offering materials and contractors at cost to homeowners.
For additional information about David Weekley Homes, visit www.DavidWeekleyHomes.com or go to www.buildaidhouston.org to learn more about BuildAid and how to apply for assistance.
About BuildAid
BuildAid, an initiative that was started during the early aftermath of Hurricane Harvey by The David Weekley Foundation, provides full home repair services to homeowners across the Houston area who experienced flooding due to Hurricane Harvey. Homeowners who have met the pre-qualification requirements will be matched with experienced builder members of the GHBA who will walk them through a finish selection process. For more information on BuildAid visit www.buildaidhouston.org.
David Weekley Homes, founded in 1976, is headquartered in Houston and operates in 21 cities across the United States. David Weekley Homes was the first builder in the United States to be awarded the Triple Crown of American Home Building, an honor which includes “America’s Best Builder,” “National Housing Quality Award” and “National Builder of the Year.” Weekley has also appeared 12 times on FORTUNE magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For®” list. Since inception, David Weekley Homes has closed more than 90,000 homes. For more information about David Weekley Homes, visit the company’s website at www.davidweekleyhomes.com.
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Carroll High School in Riverside drew about 190 students from Dayton Public Schools in 2016-17 via the state’s primary voucher system, according to the Ohio Department of Education. Overall, more than 2,500 students who lived within DPS boundaries used vouchers to attend more than 30 private, mostly religious schools. JEREMY P. KELLEY / STAFF
Photo: JEREMY P. KELLEY / STAFF
Ohio school vouchers expand; Kettering lawmaker opposes program
Jeremy P. Kelley, Staff Writer
Ohio’s school voucher “expansion” program for low-income families will grow by millions of dollars each of the next two years, but a key Republican education leader says the program may be a bad idea.
The point of Ohio’s primary EdChoice voucher program has been to give “students from under-performing public schools the opportunity to attend participating private schools,” according to the Ohio Department of Education.
RELATED: How the primary voucher program works
But the EdChoice “expansion” program is a separate budget allocation allowing students from any public school — good or bad — to get state money for private school, as long as the family is below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines.
“One of the problems I have with this program is that it doesn’t look at the quality of either the sending school or the receiving school,” said State Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering. “It just basically says, if you’re low-income, we will pay to send you to a school of your choice.”
K-12 education funding in Ohio saw very small increases in the new state budget — a 1 percent bump overall, while programs like the $15 million Straight-A innovation fund were eliminated.
RELATED: Voucher students did worse on state tests
But the EdChoice expansion program will grow by more than 20 percent each of the next two years, from $31.5 million last year to $47.7 million in 2018-19. That’s because the program adds a new grade level every year, to let students stay in the pipeline. It began with only kindergarteners four years ago. This year, fourth-graders become eligible, followed by fifth-graders next year.
“It was originally touted as being, like $5 million, but I pointed out that it has to go up every single year,” said Lehner, chair of the Senate Education Committee. “It is going to end up being a very expensive program, without any real evidence that it has benefit, or certainly not more benefit than some other things we could be doing with those same dollars.”
In the Dayton area, only students slated to attend 22 schools in Dayton, one in Trotwood and one in Jefferson Twp. are eligible for the primary EdChoice program, because of students’ low scores on state tests in those schools.
RELATED: Dayton schools try to slow voucher exodus
But the expansion program opens doors for other students, according to Mary Ann Bernier, who oversees government programs for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s schools office. The Archdiocese represents schools throughout southwest Ohio, including in Butler, Montgomery and Clark counties.
“I think the legislators are supporting the parents’ cry for more choices,” Bernier said. “To be able to make the decision of faith-based education that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible for them.”
Rhonda Corr, superintendent of Dayton Public Schools, said the expansion voucher program is a drain on her district. DPS lost more than 2,500 students to private schools via the primary EdChoice program last year, because 22 of DPS’ 28 schools scored low enough for students to be eligible.
RELATED: Tuition fund bolsters Catholic schools
The expansion program means students at DPS’ higher-scoring schools, such as Horace Mann, Valerie and Stivers, can get state money to leave, too.
“I think competition can be good, but the state cannot continue to finance this,” Corr said. “Public education is under siege, and people need to step up and call their senators and legislators and let them know how they feel.”
The EdChoice scholarship amount is currently $4,650 per student per year for grades K-8, fully covering tuition at most private schools. The high school amount is $6,000, where Catholic high schools often cost $8,000 to $10,000 per year.
But EdChoice expansion students do not have to pay any tuition that is not covered by the scholarship, according to ODE.
RELATED: Parents try to navigate increasing school options
Final 2016-17 numbers are not yet available, but the Ohio Department of Education said participation in both the primary and expansion voucher programs has been growing. The regular EdChoice program grew from 17,867 students in 2013-14 to 21,250 in 2015-16. The expansion program grew from 1,064 to 5,746 in that span.
State data shows that most Dayton-area students using the primary voucher program attend Catholic schools. St. Helen, St. Anthony and Immaculate Conception were among the schools getting more than 200 voucher students last year. Bernier said EdChoice students make up a majority of the enrollment in some Dayton Catholic schools.
But ODE officials did not provide a breakdown of what schools the EdChoice expansion students attended, nor what home districts they came from.
Bernier said the legislature’s commitment to the annual growth of the expansion program gives the Archdiocese the ability to plan for the future.
RELATED: Dayton schools begin year with uneasy peace
“Every school markets differently, every school has different capacity,” Bernier said. “It’s helpful when we’re trying to help parents decide, we can say, we have this many spots. We all want to be able to do that.”
While private schools have the ability to accept or reject students’ applications based on their needs, Corr said districts like Dayton Public Schools must accept all students, and the churn of students leaving on vouchers makes it harder to plan.
Lehner said she’s not convinced the expansion program is a good idea.
“I have not been supportive of the EdChoice expansion program from the beginning,” she said. “While I’m not opposed to school choice, I think we have to be more thoughtful about what programs we include. This particular one doesn’t make an enormous amount of sense to me.”
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Comparing Light Combat Aircraft with Gripen, JF-17 and F-CK-1 Ching-kuo
Posted by: Cavin Dsouza January 13, 2011 170 Comments
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India’s much awaited supersonic fighter jet, Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas is country’s second indigenous built light combat aircraft and its induction has highlighted India’s defence aviation and self sufficiency capabilities to the world. We have to wait and watch if LCA TEJAS matches other multirole fighters like Gripen, JF-17 and F-CK-1. So lets go ahead and compare the features of LCA TEJAS with the rest.
Lets start with the LCA TEJAS which is a single-seat, single-engine, lightweight, high-agility supersonic fighter aircraft. The LCA TEJAS can speed upto Mach 1.4 and is capable of carrying assorted weapon load along with dropping tanks up to four tons. It has some of the latest avionics and digital flight control systems. The Tejas, presently is powered by American General Electric Engine. The HAL TEJAS is designed with a single vertical fin with no tailplanes or foreplanes and has a delta wing configuration.
The HAL TEJAS integrates modern design concepts and state-of-art technologies such as fly-by-wire Flight Control System, Advanced Digital Cockpit, Multi-Mode Radar, Integrated Digital Avionics System and a Flat Rated Engine.Other salient features of TEJAS include short takeoff and landing, excellent flight performance, safety, reliability and maintainability.
The aircraft is also fitted with a night vision compatible glass cockpit with Martin Baker (UK) zero-zero ejection seats. The aircraft’s electronic warfare suite, developed by the Advanced Systems Integration and Evaluation Organisation (ASIEO) of Bangalore, includes a radar warning receiver and jammer, laser warner, missile approach warner, and chaff and flare dispenser. The LCA’s design has been configured to match the demands of modern combat scenario such as speed, acceleration, maneuverability and agility.
The next aicraft we will be talking about is Gripen which is a lightweight single engine multirole fighter aircraft manufactured by the Swedish aerospace company Saab.The new Gripen NG (Next Generation) will have many new parts and will be powered by the General Electric F414G, a development of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet’s engine. As compared to LCA TEJAS , the Gripen will have a supercruise speed of Mach 1.1. The combination of delta wing and canards gives the Gripen significantly better takeoff , landing performance and flying characteristics. It also has a built-in electronic warfare unit, making it possible to load more ordnance onto the aircraft without losing self defence capabilities.
The Gripen uses the modern PS-05/A pulse-doppler X-band radar, developed by Ericsson and GEC-Marconi. The radar is capable of detecting, locating, identifying and automatically tracking multiple targets in the upper and lower spheres, on the ground and sea or in the air, in all weather conditions.One interesting feature is the Gripen’s ability to take off and land on public roads, which was part of Sweden’s war defence strategy.
Next , we will talk about is JF-17 Thunder, also known as Chengdu FC-1. It is a single-engine, light-weight multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by the Chengdu Aircraft Industries Corporation (CAC) of China, the Pakistan Air Force and the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC).
The JF-17 airframe is of semi-monocoque structure and its airframe is designed for a service life of 4,000 flight hours, or 25 years.The aircraft has a composite flight control system (FCS), comprising conventional controls with stability augmentation in the yaw and roll axis and a digital fly-by-wire (FBW) system in the pitch axis. The JF-17 is powered by a single Russian Klimov RD-93 turbofan engine, which is a variant of the RD-33 engine used on the Mig-29 fighter.JF-17 can be armed with up to 3,629 kg (8,000 lb) of air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance.
Finally let us talk about F-CK-1 Ching-kuo, commonly known as the Indigenous Defence Fighter (IDF). The IDF jet fighter project was designed and built by the Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC) based in Taichung, Taiwan, with assistance from American defense corporations.
The IDF is equipped with a GD-53 Golden Dragon multi-mode monopulse Pulse-Doppler radar, which is based on the General Electric AN/APG-67 X band. The radar can simultaneously track 10 targets and engage two of the 10 targets tracked with TC-2 active radar seeker BVRAAMs. After the F-CK-1 Ching-kuo basic variant was finalized, the next step involved an upgrade with systems improvement, new technologies, and adjustments of material and weight.
It would be interesting to see how the LCA Tejas will compete with these three aircrafts over a period of time. The induction of LCA Tejas into the IAF has launched India into an exclusive club of nations that include the US, Russia, France and Britain that can produce combat aircrafts. Do you think LCA Tejas is a better match than GRIPEN , JF-17 or F-CK-1 Ching-kuo? Let us know in the comments.
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aircraft aircrafts in iaf can tejas compete with mig 29 comparision of latest fighter plane of indian in 2011 composite materials hal tejas F-CK-1 Ching-kuo Gripen hal hal aircraft HAL Tejas how capable is lca tejas IAF Indian Air Force Indian Airforce JF-17 LCA lca ioc LCA Tejas Light Combat Aircraft medium combat aircraft MIG-21 MiG-27 MiG-29 SAAB Gripen NG TEJAS 2011-01-13
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Home Land Land African militaries need to re-evaluate themselves
African militaries need to re-evaluate themselves
Written by Jonathan Katzenellenbogen -
The role and organization of African militaries requires a thorough re-think as on the whole most armies in Africa are not fit for their purpose, according to retired Nigerian Major General Olasehinde Ishola Williams.
Williams served for 30 years in the Nigerian army and is now Executive Secretary of the Panafstrag International Secretariat. The Lagos based think tank conducts studies for bodies such as The Economic Community of West African States.
He is well known for being highly outspoken on a range of issues and has served as the President of the Nigerian chapter of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International.
Williams proposes a new security model for African states based on community policing, a type of gendarmerie to deal with public order and terrorism, and a far leaner but better equipped and more unified military.
“Whenever there is a crisis, the mentality is to run to Europe or the US and say help us,” instead of dealing with the situation Williams said. “If you look at African armies you see that most of the time they are forced to ask for foreign help before they can engage the enemy.”
Williams made the comments to DefenceWeb at the Second Annual Africa Security and Counter-Terrorism Summit in London yesterday.
Williams said that “far too much money is being spent on old fashioned conventional forces,” with conventional western military doctrine being followed.
Part of the reason for the current problems faced by many African militaries is due to the advice governments took to curb defence to boost social spending. When Nigeria was pushed to send forces to help ECOWAS peacekeeping efforts during the Liberian civil war, the army, “were begging for boots and socks,” Williams said.
He added that the Nigerian Army was neglected after it suppressed the Maitatsine Uprisings (1980-85) in Kano and Borno states. “The political masters thought these uprisings could not recur and the army was unprepared” to deal with Boko Haram.
The retired general believes that public pressure on Nigerian politicians will mean that the army will, after a period of ineffectiveness in dealing with the threat from Boko Haram, soon step up to the challenge.
“People do not realize that you need a defence policy review every few years when a new government comes in to determine what threats and structure we need. Then you determine what to buy and the structure,” he said.
The new security model he proposes for most African states would rely heavily on community policing for local law enforcement. Each state or province in a country would have its own police force and a body, modelled along the lines of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), would be in charge of serious and cross border crime. A force modelled along the lines of the French Gendarmerie would have authority over public order and counter-terrorism issues.
The country’s military force would largely have a rapid special operations force role. The smaller and more focused forces would permit a reduced defence budget, “but it would be smart, well equipped, and affordable,” said Williams. Such a force would be able to deal with emergencies internally and externally, and the army signallers and engineers could also be seconded to work in a development role.
Williams also believes that to ensure greater efficiency armies, navies, and air forces, should be unified along the lines of the Canadian Armed Forces or the Australian Defence Force, which has a single headquarters.
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Plenary Action
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Contract Enforcement Available Despite Successful Downward Modification of Child Support
Posted in Agreements and Stipulations, Child Support (C.S.S.A.), Modification-agreements-and-stipulations
A court’s reduction of a divorce judgment’s child support obligations, incorporated from a settlement agreement that survived the entry of that judgment, does not result in a modification of the agreement. The shortfall may still be collected through a separate action to enforce the contract.
As Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Leonard D. Steinman noted in his July 1, 2013 decision in N.S. v. A.S., N.Y.L.J. July 22, 2013, such has been the law of this State for over 70 years:
A modification of a divorce judgment or decree providing that a party is to pay a sum less than he agreed to pay does not relieve such party of any contractual obligation.
In this case, the parties entered a Stipulation of Settlement in January, 2003,resolving all issues stemming from their divorce proceedings. The parties agreed that the agreement would be incorporated but not merged into their judgment of divorce.
Among the issues resolved were custody and child support for their son, then 2½ years old. It was agreed that the wife would receive child support from the husband in the amount of $34,000 per year ($2,833.33 per month) for 48 months and thereafter the sum of $39,146 per year ($3,262.16 per month) The increased amount coinciding with the cessation of four years of maintenance payments to the wife at $3,833.33 per month.
The agreement reflected the ex-husband’s 2001 income was $312,121. The agreement, itself, provided that if the ex-husband’s income were to dip below $250,000, the parties would attempt to renegotiate the maintenance amount. If unsuccessful, the ex-husband could seek a downward modification of his maintenance obligation from the court. The agreement did not provide to the ex-husband with a concomitant right to seek a downward modification of his child support obligations in the event of a reduction in his income.
In April 2004, ex-husband became unemployed and subsequently took a position at the reduced salary of $150,000. In March 2006, the ex-husband moved for a downward modification of his child support and maintenance obligations (by that time, the ex-husband’s maintenance obligations had expired, but he claimed that there were arrears owed to his ex-wife based which he looked to cancel).
Sanctions and Fees Totaling $60,000 Imposed Against Ex-Wife; Divorce Litigation Often Keeps Going, and Going, and Going . . .
By Neil Cahn on February 21, 2012
Posted in Agreements and Stipulations, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), Counsel Fees, Sanctions, Settlement
There are may circumstances which courts recognize warrant revisiting a divorce resolution. On the other hand, ongoing litigation is often unfounded and a result of the anger, bitterness, sadness, desire for revenge, etc.
In her February 3, 2012 decision in D.W. v. R.W., Westchester County Supreme Court Justice Francesca E. Connolly imposed $17,500.00 in sanctions and another $42,707.29 in counsel fees against a pro se (self-represented) ex-wife who refused to abide by repeated rulings requiring the ex-wife to discontinue her attacks on a divorce settlement reached over seven years earlier.
Following that settlement, the ex-wife had engaged in extensive post-judgment litigation to vacate the underlying agreement on the grounds that she lacked the mental capacity to understand and agree, and that the agreement was unfair, unconscionable, the product of overreaching, fraud, or some variation thereof. Her numerous attempts to challenge the stipulation were considered and rejected by several lower and appellate courts.
Nevertheless, in October, 2010, the ex-wife commenced another action against 23 defendants, including her ex-husband, her children, her former in-laws, her ex-husband’s former attorneys, and other entities. In an 81-page complaint, she claimed breach of contract and fraud for the failure to disclose various assets during the divorce proceedings. She claimed to have discovered documents showing the fraud by going through her ex-husband’s garbage cans outside his residence.
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Alcohol consumption occurs frequently in social situations. For many, it can ease stress and increase pleasure. Recognizing why people drink alongside their peers and the consequences of getting carried away could help you understand more about social drinking.
AddictionAlcoholSocial Drinking
Social Drinking Defined
History of Social Drinking
Social Drinking Situations
Why People Drink Socially
Problems with Social Drinking
Social Drinking and Recovery
Medical Reviewer: Ashraf Ali, MD | Author: Matt Gonzales | Last Updated: 5/24/18 | 17 sources
Drinking is a common social activity. People meet with friends or co-workers over drinks at the end of a workday to decompress. Most of us attend events that offer alcohol. It is an activity shared by everyone from college students to business executives.
Peer Pressure and Alcohol
Social Media and Alcohol
Around the world, millions of people engage in this activity for various reasons. However, unregulated or irresponsible social drinking could spur problems that could last a lifetime.
Social drinking is casual alcohol consumption in a social setting, such as a bar or restaurant. It commonly occurs on special occasions, such as birthdays, Cinco de Mayo or New Year’s Eve.
Many people tend to feel relaxed when drinking socially. This is because alcohol affects brain function, changing moods and behaviors. It binds to receptors in the brain that boost dopamine levels, which activate pleasure.
Social drinking is part of American culture. However, engaging in the activity multiple times a week could give way to heavy drinking, defined as four or more alcoholic beverages a day for men and three for women on five or more days in a month.
Heavy drinking could cause people to engage in activities that jeopardize their safety.
For thousands of years, alcohol and socializing have gone hand in hand. The activity is featured in religious texts, Roman literature and historic artworks.
In ancient Greece, Socrates would offer wine to philosophers during gatherings. In the 16th century, Mexicans would drink pulque, a fermented drink, in vinaterías. In Colonial America, early settlers would fill taverns and share news with one another.
Alcohol was an infamous part of Woodstock in 1969 and has been such at countless outdoor concerts since.
Since then, social drinking has remained popular. During Oktoberfest, crowds engage in beer drinking and celebrations. Alcohol was an infamous part of Woodstock in 1969 and has been such at countless outdoor concerts since. It also is common at sporting events.
Christine Sismondo, author of “America Walks into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops,” says alcohol changes the way people relate to one another. “You end up with accelerated relationships — and occasionally cantankerous ones,” she told Smithsonian magazine in 2011.
In today’s digital age, social media and alcohol have become closely intertwined. Alcohol-related ads and marketing encourage social drinking, as do people who post photos and videos about their drinking activities on sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
The purpose of many drinking events, such as happy hours, is to foster social bonding. A number of venues beyond bars or pubs foster social drinking.
Alcohol often plays an important role at weddings. Loved ones may raise a glass of wine or champagne to toast the bride and groom. During the reception, guests flock to the bar and socialize for hours.
Today, couples are enhancing the social experience. Since 2009, the cost of entertaining guests has more than tripled, as more is being spent on wine, liquor and cocktails.
Festivals provide an opportunity to hear live music, eat food and socialize over alcohol. Some of the most popular alcohol-filled festivals in the country include the Firefly Music Festival, Lollapalooza, South by Southwest and Coachella.
Social motives influence most festivalgoers to drink. A study by MSN UK revealed that 47 percent of festivalgoers engage in activities they would “never consider doing outside of the music festival environment,” which include excessive alcohol consumption.
Alcohol is prevalent before and during professional sporting events. Tailgating allows fans to grill food, drink alcohol and socialize in the parking lot in preparation for a game. Concession stands often offer alcohol throughout an event.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota found 40 percent of spectators at 16 sporting events drank alcohol. Those who reported tailgating were 14 times more likely to be legally drunk. In all, thousands left their event legally intoxicated.
Company Functions
Many employers host functions that include alcohol, such as business luncheons, holiday parties or happy hours held at a restaurant. The purpose of these gatherings is to establish relationships and strengthen camaraderie among employees.
A 2015 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management indicated 65 percent of HR managers held an end-of-year holiday party. Three-fifths of those gatherings offered alcohol. More than half did not regulate alcohol consumption.
Fraternity and Sorority Parties
Alcohol is prevalent on college campuses. As a result, social drinking could give way to heavier consumption in a short period of time.
Fraternities and sororities host parties attended by many. These gatherings may include kegs and countless bottles of liquor, which make binge drinking easier. As a result, nearly 75 percent of students living in a fraternity house binge-drink, per a Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study.
Other Social Events Involving Alcohol
In 2014, nearly 88 percent of people 18 and older reported drinking alcohol at some point in their lives, per the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The wide availability of alcohol has contributed to its use during many special occasions.
Other junctures that feature social drinking include:
Certain holidays, such as St. Patrick’s Day, the Fourth of July and Halloween, also encourage social drinking.
Why People Drink in Social Situations
People drink socially for a variety of reasons. Alcohol helps some people take the edge off in social situations. Others just want to fit in.
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And many rely on alcohol to enhance their communication skills at social functions.
Alcohol’s Role as a Social Lubricant
Individuals often turn to alcohol before an evening out with friends. For many, it is perceived to be a social lubricant that improves mood, reduces self-consciousness and enhances social skills.
A study published in Psychological Science supports this theory. Researchers noted that alcohol increased social bonding among strangers randomly assigned to groups of three. The alcohol drinkers were more engaged than those drinking nonalcoholic beverages in discussions. The social drinkers were also more likely to involve everyone in these conversations.
Alcohol helps create a comfortable environment for some partygoers. Alcohol enhances dopamine levels, increasing drinkers’ generosity, empathy and friendliness.
Social Anxiety Disorder and the Tension Reduction Theory
Social anxiety disorder is a mental health condition in which individuals experience heightened stress in social situations. They may fear doing or saying something embarrassing in front of strangers, friends or a group of people. In response, they turn to alcohol.
The tension reduction theory, which states that individuals with social anxiety consume alcohol at social functions to reduce stress, may explain why. Many are motivated by the idea that alcohol reduces anxiety. If alcohol alleviates anxiety once, the likelihood of continued social drinking increases.
Some researchers say alcohol increases stress, but studies have provided inconsistent results. Investigations often use college students with varying levels of social anxiety to examine the theory, rather than patients with social anxiety disorder.
Anxiety-induced alcohol consumption can give way to alcohol dependence. About 20 percent of patients with a social anxiety disorder also have an alcohol use disorder. For these individuals, alcohol and social situations could be problematic.
Social Drinking: What Can Go Wrong?
Social drinking can be a low-risk activity done in secure environments. However, people tend to drink more in social situations, which can harm the drinker and his or her peers.
Alcohol Myopia Theory
According to the alcohol myopia theory, alcohol consumption narrows perception and causes individuals to pay closer attention to a few internal or external factors. Consequentially, people may focus on pleasures rather than consequences.
Alcohol impairs our ability to identify dangerous situations. For example, an inebriated person may concentrate on a friendly smile rather than the risk of driving home with a stranger. The theory suggests that people make illogical, simple decisions in complex situations.
Misperceived Intentions
Alcohol can manipulate the way we think. Therefore, consuming the substance in social settings can give way to miscommunication.
A 2010 study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology revealed that men who consumed moderate amounts of alcohol perceived friendly photos of women as sexual. They misinterpreted facial expressions and body language.
This is common in bars across America. Alcohol disrupts our ability to interpret the motives of others, leading to social mistakes or even violence.
Potential to Drink Past Capacity
Drinking more than you can handle is common in social situations. Someone may try to catch up to a peer who is on a third drink or may stay out later than usual. This can give way to embarrassing and dangerous situations.
Careless social drinking could cause individuals to drink and drive, commit violence, have unprotected sex or black out. Alcohol poisoning, another potential consequence, could lead to death.
To avoid problems, social drinkers must know their limits.
Columbia University laid out strategies to control your drinking in social situations:
Eat before or during an event.
Decide on a maximum number of drinks beforehand.
Drink plenty of water.
Add extra ice to your beverage.
Avoid drinking games and shots.
Pace yourself.
Spend time with friends who drink less.
These strategies could prevent drinkers from breaking the law or engaging in risky behaviors. It could also ensure they arrive home safely.
Forming a Drinking Habit
Drinking regularly, socially or not, can cause alcohol addiction. Regular consumption of alcohol at social functions could increase your tolerance and desire to drink more.
“We only use alcohol because, as humans, we develop the understanding that we like the way things feel. But if we do not take very good care of that responsibility, it can take over our lives.”
— Richard Molina, Head Therapist, The Recovery Village
Nearly 17 million Americans, including nearly 680,000 adolescents, struggle with an alcohol use disorder. Some of these individuals have co-occurring disorders. In some instances, alcohol serves as a gateway drug to other dangerous substances, including heroin and cocaine.
Seeking alcohol addiction help?
For Those in Recovery from Alcoholism
Though social drinking can be a low-risk activity, it can also be dangerous. Activities and environments that revolve around alcohol could lead individuals to drink in excess and engage in risky behaviors.
Individuals in recovery must be especially careful. If you attend an event where alcohol is served, do not be afraid to say no and don’t give in to peer pressure. Try to bring a friend who understands your commitment to sobriety.
Remember: One drink could cause alcohol relapse. Individuals are most vulnerable to relapse during the early months of sobriety. Attending events that do not include alcohol is encouraged.
Excessive alcohol use is the fourth-leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Do not become a statistic. If social drinking has led you or someone you know to abuse alcohol, contact a nearby treatment center.
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