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Liturgies & Mass Times
Teaching Mass
Sunday Sharing
SPRED
Become a Catholic
Join St. Edna
ToTeachWhoChristIs
St Edna Inquiry on Catholic Christianity RCIA. Are you interested in becoming Catholic? Are you an adult Catholic wishing to receive First Communion and/or Confirmation?
So What Exactly is the R.C.I.A and The Elect?
R.C.I.A. stands for the Rite Of Christian Initiation For Adults. The process, begun during Vatican Council II in the early 1970’s, calls upon the local communities to form the men and women who are called by God to join the Catholic Faith.
At St. Edna, the process begins in early September with the Investigation Into Catholicism series. Here, all are invited to learn more about the Catholic Faith, as different topics are discussed on a weekly basis. The attendees include those who are of a different religion, those who have little or no religious background and Catholics who have not received all of their Sacraments. In addition to these groups of people, the R.C.I.A. Team also attend the sessions. At the end of the Investigation phase in mid-November, the attendees are asked whether they hear the call to join the Catholic Community.
For those that do, and want to continue on the journey, they are welcomed into the R.C.I.A. process with the Rite of Acceptance in late November.
Here the Candidates (those who have been Baptized) and Catechumens (those who have not been Baptized) publicly declare their intention to continue their journey of faith toward full initiation in the Catholic Church. The entire community in turn, offers its support to these men and women.
At this point and thereafter, the Candidates and Catechumens and the RCIA Team attend Mass on a weekly basis, and are dismissed after the Homily. They leave to meet to discuss the Scripture readings and the Homily that they have just heard, and to delve into a specific topic for the day.
The next Rite in the journey is the Rite of Election and the Enrollment of Names. This takes place at Holy Name Cathedral, and here we celebrate God’s election of the Candidates and Catechumens to embrace the mission of Jesus, and to begin the Lenten preparation toward the receiving of the Sacraments on the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday.
From this point forward, they will now be referred to as the Elect. For the remainder of Lent, the Elect go through a period of purification and enlightenment. They are encouraged to look into their own lives, and listen to the call of God. Where must they reform their life? What new road is God leading them down? This continues through Holy Saturday, when the Celebration of the Sacraments of Initiation takes place. The R.C.I.A. process ends with the period of Mystagogy, or Postbaptismal Catechesis.
As part of the RCIA team, the role of the Sponsor is really the backbone of the process. They unselfishly give up countless hours of their time in walking through the journey with those who will be receiving their Sacraments. They are members of St. Edna who are as faith filled as one could imagine. We all owe them a tremendous amount of gratitude for their efforts!
The Elect are always as inspiring a group as you could imagine. They are tremendously engaged, hungry to find Christ in their lives. To a person, they feel a void in their lives and chose Jesus as the one to walk each day with. They always help to strengthen the faith of all that they have come into contact with.
The other very critical part of the Rite are the members of the St. Edna Community. The Elect look to you as members of this wonderful Parish for strength and courage. We ask that you keep all of the Elect in your prayers as they continue the journey to the Celebration of Holy Saturday.
Lorie Crepeau
lcrepeau@stedna.org
© 2019 St. Edna Catholic Church • 2525 N Arlington Heights Road, Arlington Heights, IL 60004 • 847-398-3362
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Pilot Error Being Probed In Russian Jet Crash That Killed 41
May 15, 2019 Kurucz JuditLeave a Comment on Pilot Error Being Probed In Russian Jet Crash That Killed 41
Russian news reports say that investigators are looking at whether pilot error is to blame for the crash of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 at a Moscow airport that killed 41 people.
The Kommersant newspaper on May 7 quoted unnamed sources as saying the pilots of Flight SU1492 made several mistakes before and after the craft’s emergency landing at Sheremetyevo airport, including flying into a thunderstorm and then landing with a full tank rather than circling to use up fuel.
The business daily RBK, meanwhile, quoted unnamed sources as saying that, after the plane had landed, the pilots opened a cockpit window, which could have fanned flames inside the craft, and that they failed to switch off engines immediately upon coming to a stop.
Officials said 41 people were killed after the jet burst into flames on the runway during the May 5 landing. Of the 33 survivors, about a dozen required medical treatment, many for smoke inhalation. Two people were hospitalized in critical condition.
Investigators said they were still examining data from the two flight recorders and that it could take a week or more to determine a cause.
Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said investigators were looking into several possible causes: insufficiently skilled pilots, air-traffic controllers, or technicians who examined the aircraft; a faulty plane; and bad weather.
Transport Minister Yevgeny Ditrikh on May 6 said there was no reason ground the nation’s fleet of Sukhoi Superjet 100 planes pending the outcome of the investigation.
Ditrikh was quoted by state media as saying the families of those who died would receive compensation of 9 million rubles each ($135,000).
Operated by national airline Aeroflot, the flight took off from Sheremetyevo and was heading for the northern city of Murmansk, carrying 73 passengers and five crew members when it was forced to turn around.
Video showed the plane making a hard landing at Sheremetyevo about 45 minutes after taking off. The video shows the plane bouncing, then speeding along a runway, with flames and black smoke pouring from its fuselage.
Aeroflot said the plane’s engines caught fire on the runway of the airport after making an emergency landing — not in midair as initially reported.
The plane’s manufacturer said the aircraft had received maintenance last month. The pilot had some 1,400 hours of experience flying the plane, according to Aeroflot.
In an audio recording posted by Russian media, a man identified as the pilot, Denis Yevdokimov, said the plane was struck by lightning, causing problems with systems on board and interrupting communications with the ground.
Passengers were also quoted as saying that the jet was struck by lightning during a thunderstorm. Storms were passing through the Moscow area at the time.
Aeroflot has long shed its troubled post-Soviet safety record, with its fleet relying mainly on Boeing and Airbus aircraft. However, the state-owned company also owns at least 50 Superjets that it operates on both domestic and international routes.
Manufactured by the state conglomerate United Aircraft Corporation, the Superjet is a midrange regional jet, conceived of as a way to help bolster the country’s civil aviation manufacturing industry in the face of competition from Boeing and Airbus, as well as Embraer and Bombardier.
Source: rferl.org
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HomeNation & WorldForeign cyber hackers target major U.S. companies
Foreign cyber hackers target major U.S. companies
February 26, 2019 Viktoria Ristanovic Nation & World 0
By Viktoria Ristanovic
Nation & World Editor
Chinese and Iranian hackers have been targeting U.S. businesses and government agencies with cyberattacks. Security experts suspect these attacks were triggered by President Donald Trump’s “withdrawal from the (2015) Iran nuclear deal last year and his trade conflicts with China,” The New York Times reported earlier this month.
Recent Iranian attacks on American banks, businesses and government agencies have been more substantial than formerly reported. Dozens of corporations and multiple U.S. agencies have been hit, as claimed by seven confidential people briefed on the episodes, The New York Times reported.
T-Mobile falls victim to recent attacks (Flickr).
Big companies such as Boeing, General Electric Aviation and T-Mobile were earmarked in the latest Chinese campaign, but it is still uncertain whether the attacks were successful, according to The Hill. The Chinese cyber attacks slowed down four years ago after former President Barack Obama and China’s president, Xi Jinping, came to an agreement to cease hacking that attempted to discover trade secrets, The New York Times reported.
However, the 2015 deal seems to have been unofficially halted in the thick of the ongoing trade tension between the U.S. and China, the intelligence officials and private security researchers reported. Hacking linked to China has resurged to previous levels, “although they are now stealthier and more sophisticated,” according to The New York Times.
The Iranian hackers supposedly became far less active following Obama’s signing of the nuclear deal with Tehran in 2015. The new Iran-credited cyber attacks are thought to be linked to Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal, The Hill reported.
As The New York Times reported, “Miriam Wugmeister, a cybersecurity specialist at the law firm Morrison Foerster,” reported that Fortune 500 companies were being attacked at “shockingly high” rates.
A main goal for the Chinese hackers, while supporting Beijing’s five-year economic plan, is to “make China a leader in artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies,” The New York Times reported.
The hackers have become better at hiding their tracks and improving their cyber skills, and federal agencies and private companies have been combating advanced Chinese and Iranian hackers while also battling incessant Russian hacking efforts, according to The New York Times.
The Hill stated that “intelligence officials have also cautioned that Iran could become more aggressive in other ways.” Iranian officials are threatening to start constructing and improving Iran’s nuclear powers if Tehran “does not gain the tangible trade and investment benefits it expected” from the 2015 deal that Trump terminated.
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This morning I rushed into class as the bell was ringing and smiled a greeting to the teacher whose classroom I occupy during first period. She was wearing a cute black dress and bright, bright green tights (or maybe even bright, bright, bright green -- bright enough that I still get a headache just thinking about them!) I was wearing a fuzzy wool scarf of various shades of green, and we joked that we should have combined outfits. She left to work in the computer lab, and I dove into the morning routine of prayer -- quiz -- discussion that consumed 90 minutes before I realized what was happening.
As my students filed out, thrusting papers in my direction, I sat down to restore order, and another teacher walked in. "Sonja's going to the hospital. She's in terrible pain and doesn't know what's wrong. Have you seen her keys?" We searched for them to no avail, and she left to tell the principal, who was going to drive her to the hospital.
Concerned, I called down to see what I could do. I didn't have any classes after second period; could I drive her to the hospital? No, but I could substitute for her two remaining classes. When I greeted the surprised faces of Sonja's next class, I decided that last-minute substitutes are the antithesis of dentists. Students LOVE to see them, especially when the subs are as clueless as I was. ("Quiz? What quiz? No, I don't have one here . . . ")
During my half-hour lunch period I dashed home to fix a sandwich and grab my binder of accreditation stuff for our after-school meeting. We've had a lot of meetings this year, some skin-crawlingly boring and some fairly illuminating, but I enjoy being part of my committee, whose job is to review the school's long- and short-range plans and goals. For today's meeting, I was supposed to review the students' survey results, especially their comments, and make some sweeping generalizations about what the students liked and didn't like about the way the school was being run.
Sonja's last class was AP European History, which was my favorite class in all of high school, so I was excited to see what they were studying. Apparently, however, even AP students would rather have a break than work, even when someone as knowledgeable as me offered to help. (I'm not sure they bought it. "I got a 5 on the test," I bragged, and I could see the thought bubbles floating above their heads: "When was that? 20 years ago?")
On a whim, I asked the students to help me clarify some of the survey responses. "I know you didn't write all of these," I explained, "But I figured since you guys are some of the best students in the school [flattery, flattery] you could give me some idea of the general trends of thought." They were excited. "We love giving our opinions!"
I read the first question. "Does the administration provide effective leadership?" And then I didn't get to say another word for forty-five minutes. They had a LOT to say. They felt left out; they didn't ever feel they knew what was going on, from programs to goals to school policies; they felt they were ruled with an iron fist, when they had done nothing to deserve that kind of authoritarianism. Granted, these are teenage girls, but I certainly saw their point; most of my colleagues feel the same way to some degree. The administration does tend to micromanage, insisting that all decisions pass under their watchful eye.
There was more. They had had privileges revoked without explanation. Little things, like Christmas parties and the annual lip-synch contest, but things that mattered to them. And most of it came down to respect. They wanted to be respected as human beings -- as near-adults who had valid points of view. As one girl put it: "They consistenly show no regard for our opinions." Who hasn't felt like that at some point?
I've written before about the importance of listening when you're making music, but I was reminded today that you should always be listening, no matter who is speaking or how much you think you already know what they're going to say. It was actually very freeing to let them air their griefs without feeling the need to defend the school's position; I didn't take either side, and didn't even speak except to clarify what they meant. I just listened and wrote and wrote and wrote. And as their hands flew into the air to emphasize a point, as the color rose in their cheeks and their eyes widened at the honor of being given a chance to say what they really thought, I gained a new level of respect for these incredibly sophisticated and articulate students. They had words of criticism for the powers that ruled the school, but they were just as quick to condemn their own classmates who constantly complained and weren't interested in learning. They couldn't imagine how difficult it must be to have the job of teaching a class full of kids who didn't care: "I mean, there's only so much you can pull out of them, right?" I stifled a laugh at the accuracy of that metaphor, and I could have hugged each one of them for her amazingly mature attempts to see the situation from the other side.
End-of-the-day announcements interrupted their animated discussion, and there were sighs of resignation as they turned toward the cross for prayer, returning to the way things usually were. As they left, I thanked them for helping me see their point of view. "No, thank you," they said. "Seriously. Thank you for caring what we think. Thank you for listening to us."
Posted in School Policies, Virtues.
February 9, 2009 by Emily.
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Daily Content Archive as of Monday, October 1, 2018
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Definition: (verb) Command against.
Synonyms: disallow, forbid, nix, prohibit, veto, interdict
Usage: They are proscribed by federal law from owning guns.
Oil Reserves
A measure of the wealth available to owners and operators of hydrocarbon-bearing reservoirs, oil reserves are the estimated amounts of oil or gas that can be economically recovered from reservoirs. In the 1970s, an energy crisis precipitated by a spike in oil prices prompted the development of new oil fields in Alaska and the North Sea, boosting the world's reserves from 645.8 billion barrels in 1978 to 1,052.9 billion in 1998. Today, many nations do not reveal data about their reservoirs. Why? More...
Siemens & Halske Telegraph Construction Company Is Founded (1847)
Siemens AG is Europe's largest engineering conglomerate. It was originally founded to build telegraph installations, but under Werner Siemens and his three brothers, it expanded to produce cables, telephones, electric power, and electric lighting. The company built the first long-distance telegraph line in Europe, followed by the monumental Indo-European telegraph line that stretched from Calcutta, India, to London, England. What scandal tainted the company's reputation in the 1940s? More...
Bonnie Parker (1910)
Bonnie Parker was the female half of the notorious Depression-era criminal duo "Bonnie and Clyde." She met Clyde Barrow in 1930 and soon became his lover as well as his partner in crime. In 1932, the pair began a 21-month crime spree—which ended when they were killed in a police ambush—that involved robberies, shootouts, and murders. Their activities were widely publicized, and they soon became America's most famous and romanticized outlaws. How did Bonnie and Clyde allegedly meet? More...
The music of life would be mute if the chords of memory were snapped asunder.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)
International Day of Older Persons (2018)
The United Nations General Assembly decided to set aside October 1 as International Day for the Elderly in 1990 (later designated as the International Day of Older Persons). By designating a day when governments are supposed to focus on what they can do to provide for the elderly, the U.N. hopes not only to forestall problems related to the aging of the population but to focus attention on the promise that a maturing population holds for social undertakings. The United Nations also set aside the year 1999 as the International Year of Older Persons. More...
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10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Vote For A Veteran…. Are You Kidding Me?
If you haven't read Jim Gourley's "10 Reasons Not To Vote For A Veteran", make sure to read it before reading this response.
I don’t know about you, but what the hell is going on in America these days? Seriously, it’s like the pendulum has swung back, and all those who would have been degrading the service of servicemembers and veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan are now jumping over the barricades, set up by Vietnam and other veterans, to attack the service of OIF and OEF veterans, because we are ending our longest running wars. Think about it? From Congress’ COLA cuts, to Operation Pink, to recent articles about overly generous benefits, to now an article telling people not to vote for somebody because he or she is a veteran, the landscape is rapidly changing for the military and veteran community.
Replace “veteran” with “black”, “hispanic”, “gay”, whatever minority term you want to use, and tell me that both liberals and conservatives wouldn’t be all over the author and media outlet for publishing an article titled “10 Reasons Not To Vote For A Hispanic”.
There are some who responded to my last response to a retired Lieutenant Colonel that told the world that his benefits are overly generous, with “Why should we care what one person says”, “He’s deranged”, “You’re making a mountain out of a mole-hill”. But here’s the thing, guess what, when major media outlets like the Washington Post, or even more importantly media outlets that specifically tailor themselves for the military like Stars and Stripes, are printing opinion pieces that egregiously mis-portray the circumstances of the military and veteran community or attack outright the characteristics of our community, everyone needs to stand up and pay attention.
The minute the military and veterans are no longer sacrosanct is the minute that we lose our benefits and status in society.
This is not the time to turn the other cheek. This is the time to do what the military trained us to do, become one unit and defend ourselves…. Or attack…
So let’s discount Jim Gourley’s 10 reasons for why people shouldn’t vote for a veteran:
10. According to Gourley, “We are really bad at managing tax dollars”:
So first off, let’s be honest with each other. If you aren’t a Colonel or a General, how much direct control do you have over the spending of tax dollars? Sure, a Range NCO controls how many rounds are used. Sure, a Company Commander can try to control fuel costs during training. Sure, an Admiral can state that the Navy doesn’t need any more Aircraft Carriers. But who really controls the military’s budget? Who makes sure that government contracts are let to specific companies in specific districts? Maybe the Admiral to some degree through persuasion. But since the vast majority of veterans running for political office were not General Officers, Gourley is attacking veterans for the sins of politicians in Congress.
The reality is, most of those in the military, make do with what they have. Most try to stretch their dollar to do as much as they can with what they have. Is there some waste? Sure. But you show me a private sector company that doesn’t have any waste of any of their profits.
9. Gourley states, “We’re just as political as the politicians.”:
Let’s all agree that most General Officers have a little bit of a politician inside of them. Let’s also agree that to make it in this world, there has to be a little give and take and most of us call this “office politics”. Let’s also agree that people do things for a reason. Going to a great school will help you get your foot in the door. People join fraternities to make friends and enlarge their network. And of course, there are people who join the military in the hopes that it will help them make a better life for themselves, however for those who joined the military during a time of war, and then went to war, Gourley’s attack is capricious.
8. Gourley contends that, “Being a vet doesn’t make us a morally superior candidate.”:
That’s true. Look, not every veteran is a saint. However, being a nun doesn’t necessarily make one a saint either. It’s about what you have done and continue to do that makes your who you are. Let’s face it, when one person risked their life for their brothers and sisters, and the other person went to college and then went on to the corporate world, it’s not hard for the comparison scale to tilt towards the veteran.
7. Gourley assumes that, “Combat isn’t an accomplishment.”:
Usually I try to be eloquent and persuasive, but sometimes you just can’t hold your tongue. Gourley can go fuck himself. Seriously I could just leave it at that and everyone in the veteran and military community would understand, but I’ll go on so that those outside of our community might understand why he can go fuck himself. Only people who have never been in combat assume that being in combat isn’t something notable to put down on your curriculum vitae. Obviously having been an intern, or going up the foreign policy ladder, is a form of accomplishment. Doing something that less than 99% of Americans have done, well that’s too easy. And of course, anybody who has ever been shot at, blown up, or have seen their buddies die, will tell you that they worry everyday about what people say about them.
I mean the courage that it takes to fight for a bill in Congress surely outweighs the courage that it takes to fight for your life. Plus if he is correct in his belief that those in the military are just as political as politicians, doesn’t that mean that they are well prepared to suffer the slings and arrows… sorry the paper cuts and jabs in the halls of Congress?
6. Gourley states “We really don’t understand the average American.”:
So let me get this straight, a guy who is a Foreign Policy expert thinks that he is more in touch with the average American than the guy turning a wrench in the military? Think about that for a second, one hard second. Usually we want leaders with a broad understanding of circumstances and life. Usually we want leaders who will do what they think is right.
Is every single veteran an icon to be a leader in the legislative halls? Of course not. But just like black people, I as a veteran, love being stereotyped and degraded as a group.
5. Gourley contends that, “Our life experience is limited.”:
Look, it’s my serious hope that every veteran who just leaves the military has the ability to decompress and civilianize. That’s necessary to be able to fit in and work in the larger American culture. However: 1) Not all of us who joined the military were officers, 2) Even non-commissioned officers go on to do great things, 3) he keeps on harping that units never need to worry about budgets or building consensus.
I’m sure glad that I could just buy all the medical equipment that I wanted for my medical platoon. Oh yeah, and just yelling out orders is exactly how the military teaches you to be a leader. There isn’t any counseling, team building, or any other normal “civilian” leadership techniques taught by the military.
4. Gourley states that, “We’re overrepresented as it is.”:
So I’m confused, because people keep on electing veterans to office, that’s a reason not to elect veterans?
3. Gourley believes that, “We make a mess of the dialogue.”:
I don’t know where to begin. I’m sure veterans figured into immigration reform and Cantor losing his Republican primary….
Obviously without the military and veterans there would be an open and clear dialogue in the political spectrum and a lack of single issue divisiveness.
2. Gourley rightly states, “The parties are just using us as poster children.”:
Gourley’s right. But here’s the rub. Parties use everybody as poster children when it suits their needs. The only difference is, if you are a veteran, you have a special bond with our community. Therefore, hopefully, you honestly want to do right by your brothers and sisters.
1. Gourley believes that, “We actually do feel entitled.”:
Sure, some of us feel entitled. But we’re also Americans. I haven’t yet met an American who hasn’t felt entitled to something.
In fact, I believe that the revolutionary idea that we have the right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”, is at its heart a statement of feeling entitled to something.
So the question is this, and it’s a question that I have asked before, what is the value provided to both the American people and the government/military to have an all-volunteer force? Unless you can answer this question, there’s really no way of knowing if veterans are receiving benefits for services rendered, or overly generous entitlements.
At the end of the day, Jim Gourley, a veteran himself, can raise the red flag and state that because veterans are not willing to validate their service to America at large, that we are in some way hiding behind it. In some respects, our community should be more open with our experiences and not allow those in our community to tarnish our community through outlandish slanders or through outrageous use of military experience to justify an entitled feeling. But at the end of the day, I am more concerned of the American population discrediting military service, than I am of veterans using it as a hammer to beat civilians in political contests, because let’s face it, if you have never experienced war, if you have never experienced combat, if you have only ever asked what your country can do for you, how can I as a veteran, convince you of the merits of my service and my experience?
I’m all for dialogues and discussions. But unfortunately, when your going in proposition is negatively stereotyping all veterans, can you actually expect to have a thoughtful conversation?
I don’t know if there is a stronger term for a Blue Falcon in the military and veteran community, maybe it’s a Sergeant Bergdahl.
Newer:USA, the World Cup, and IraqOlder:Your Benefits Might Be Too Generous, But That's Because You Didn't Do Anything
Tags10 reasons not to vote for a veteran, veterans, politicians, gourley, military service
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Professional and Pro Bono Activities
The Law Offices of Alexandre Turner, LLC
Alexandre Turner is a graduate of Haverford College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He dedicated the first seven years of his legal career to representing low-income clients accused of crimes, first at the Miami-Dade Public Defender, and subsequently at the Defender Association of Philadelphia. Mr. Turner has tried hundreds of criminal matters before judges and juries. He has obtained favorable results in numerous serious cases, including where his clients were charged with firearm possession, arson, and attempted murder.
Prior to opening his own practice, Mr. Turner was associated with the law firm Ballard Spahr LLP, where he litigated complex matters on behalf of local and national businesses. While at Ballard Spahr LLP, Mr. Turner participated in several internal investigations for high-profile clients facing potential government prosecution.
Mr. Turner is a persuasive courtroom advocate who believes that every victory begins with a client relationship built upon diligence, credibility, and trust. He is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania and is admitted to the Federal District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
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Turkey to launch gas pipeline to Europe in June that will bypass Russia
Sunday, May 13, 2018 5:00:42 PM
Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Berat Albayrak stated that the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP), which will deliver gas to EU countries on a route that bypasses Russia, will be officially commissioned on June 12. Anadolu reported on this.
Albayrak said that the Presidents of Turkey and Azerbaijan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ilham Aliyev, will participate in the ceremony to launch operations for TANAP. The heads and ministers of other countries will attend as well.
The Energy and Natural Resources Minister also noted that Turkey will start deep-sea drilling in the Mediterranean this summer.
The initial throughput capacity of the TANAP pipeline is expected to be 16 billion cubic meters of gas per annum. Approximately six billion cubic meters will be delivered to Turkey, while the rest will continue on to Europe.
The TANAP project is a key component of the Southern Gas Corridor, which involves the transportation of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region through Georgia and Turkey to European countries.
In the first stage, gas will be supplemented by second-stage development of Shah Deniz gas condensate field in Azerbaijan; this gas will be considered the principal source for the projects of the Southern Gas Corridor. At a later stage, other sources may be connected to the project.
The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the EU's priority projects for gas transport.
Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline, Southern Gas Corridor
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Starmount Forest Country Club
Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek of Boston, Mass., designed the original Starmount Forest golf course and it was completed with consultation from Perry Maxwell. The course formally opened for play on Aug. 1, 1930. The course was renovated in 1971 with consultation from George Cobb, and totally rebuilt in 1999 by architect Lester George. During its 75-plus years of existence, Starmount Forest has hosted many professional and amateur tournaments. It is the only championship golf course in the city limits of Greensboro.
Starmount Forest was the inaugural host for the Greater Greensboro Open held in 1938. Sam Snead won that event at the ripe age of 24. Starmount Forest continued its involvement with the GGO (now formally known as the Wyndham Championship) until 1960. Starmount Forest hosted the 1947 Women's U.S. Open. Betty Jameson won with a score of 295, marking the first female golfer to score below 300 in a 72-hole tournament. Recently, Starmount Forest hosted the 2001 N.C. Senior Amateur Championship, the 2004 N.C. Mid-Am Championship, the 2004 Southern Conference Women's Golf Championship, and the 2007 N.C. Amateur Championship.
The course covers 155 acres and offers a tremendous test for the most avid golfer. Four tees are available for play: Black, White, Blue and Green.
It is also home of the Starmount Fall Classic, a women's event hosted by UNCG each fall.
Bryan Park Golf Club
The Champions Course at Bryan Park opened in 1990 and has proven to be a Rees Jones masterpiece of design. It is the home of the Bryan National Collegiate, a women's event co-hosted by UNCG and Wake Forest each spring.
Seven holes border scenic Lake Townsend. Ranked in 1990 as the runner-up best new public course in the country by Golf Digest, the course has since been ranked nationally each year by major golf publications.
The par-72 course, which can play as long as 7,135 yards, hosted the USGA's Amateur Public Links Championship in the summer of 2010.
It is home of Bryan National, a women's event hosted by UNCG each spring.
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James Bond 007 -Nightfire- Original Videogame Score
Album Title:
Catalog No.:
Buy Used Copy
I honestly don’t remember much about James Bond 007: Nightfire. I seem to remember some car chases, a trippy theme song, and some girl falling out of a skyscraper, but that’s about it. Perhaps one of the reasons the instrumental music didn’t stick out, unlike previous entries in the series, was that it mostly featured film emulations rather than individual expressions. Jeff Tymoschuk’s soundtrack was released for promotional purposes at the same time as the game.
The soundtrack for James Bond 007: Nightfire opens with a rendition of the series’ main theme, “Paris By Helicopter”. Following a cinematic introduction, Jeff Tymoschuk offers a straightforward rendition of the Monty Norman classic. However, the production values are much more impressive than its past video game adaptations, with the bellowing brass and slapped bass standing out as they should do. Overall, this iconic track is a suitable introduction to the score and demonstrates the series’ games at last attaining filmic production values. The demo track at the end of the soundtrack also features an even more linear interpretation of the theme.
Tymoschuk does tend to labour this theme when portraying the title character. The theme is incorporated in most other tracks on the soundtrack in a range of forms, from the chromatic chord progressions of “Escape from Drake’s Castle”, to the interludes of “Jungle Assault”, to the climactic moments of “Rescuing Nightshade”. Most appearances are appropriate in the game and supplement already established cinematic cues and racing tracks. However, it’s disappointing that Tymoschuk wasn’t permitted to offer novel melodic material here, like David Arnold has in the film scores. Like James Bond 007: Tomorrow Never Dies before it, these numerous arrangements starve the soundtrack of originality and give quite a repetitive quality.
Despite its largely consistent sound, there are some more interesting tracks on the soundtrack. Interestingly, “Enemies Vanquished” goes quite a bit further by subtly incorporating motifs from other film scores, notably Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” and John Barry’s “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, within a range of original action-packed orchestrations. Another major highlight on the soundtrack is “Ignore That Sinking Feeling”, which provides the desired feeling of infiltration in the game with its eerie soundscaping before expanding into an intense action-packed anthem. “Jungle Assault” is also a refreshing deviation from the mostly orchestral sound with its funky guitar riffs and exotic infusions.
While not present on the promotional release, the game’s aforementioned theme song “Nearly Civilized” is particularly interesting. Appropriate for accompanying the silhouette images of the title sequence, the song features the typical alluring melodies and lyrics of the film series’ theme songs. However, the accompaniment is quite a bit different with its various exotic and electronic tinges. Despite its creative intentions, the verse doesn’t come together well and lines such as “Don’t love me quietly” sound particularly out-of-place. Fortunately, the chorus is quite enjoyable and brings out the most of Esthero’s ethereal voice.
Overall, the James Bond 007: Nightfire soundtrack successfully emulates the tones of the series’ film scores with its thematic references, action-packed orchestrations, and high production values. However, it is too lacking in original themes and stylings to be anything more than an inferior emulation of David Arnold’s scores. What’s more, at 30 minutes long, it is disappointingly brief as well. While the soundtrack features some impressive music, it didn’t deserve a wider release.
James Bond 007 -Nightfire- Original Videogame Score Chris Greening
Do you agree with the review and score? Let us know in the comments below!
Posted on August 1, 2012 by Chris Greening. Last modified on August 1, 2012.
ASUKA 120% ~BURNING Remixes~ →
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Final Fantasy XV Piano Collections: Moonlit Melodies →
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Children - Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Lupus is an autoimmune disease that causes the immune system to mistakenly work against the body's own tissues. It can be hard to diagnose because it can affect almost any organ in the body, and its symptoms — including joint pain, fatigue, muscle pain, rash, mouth ulcers, and hair loss — vary widely from patient to patient. That is one of the greatest challenges of treating the disease for both doctors and their patients.
About Lupus
A healthy immune system produces proteins called antibodies that normally protect the body against bacteria and viruses that cause infections. But when someone has lupus, the immune system can't tell the difference between the body's healthy cells and bacteria and viruses, so the antibodies attack the body's healthy cells.
Lupus affects 1.5 million people in the United States, including an estimated 10,000 children. Nearly 90% of adults diagnosed with lupus are female, although the male to female ratio is much less different for kids and teens.
What Causes Lupus?
Although the cause of lupus is unknown, researchers think that many factors may trigger the disease.
Genetics might play a role. Some people may have a genetic predisposition to lupus that is then activated by an infection, certain medications, or extreme physical or emotional stress. The hormone estrogen also may play a role and could help explain why it's more common in females than males.
Lupus also happens more often in African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans than in caucasians.
Types of Lupus
The three main types of lupus are:
Systemic lupus erythematosus, or SLE, which can affect multiple organs in the body and is the most common form of the disease. Although SLE typically develops in people in their twenties, thirties, or forties, some people first notice symptoms during childhood or adolescence (after age 10).
SLE can be difficult to diagnose because no two patients will have an identical set of complaints, and the symptoms can sometimes be mistaken for those of other conditions, like juvenile idiopathic arthritis, Crohn's disease, Lyme disease, and mononucleosis.
Cutaneous (or skin) lupus, which usually affects only the skin and is characterized by a rash on the scalp, legs, or arms. The rash has sharply defined patches and can be raised from the skin.
There are two types of cutaneous lupus: discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE), which can cause scarring; andsubacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus (SCLE), which doesn't cause scars. Discoid lupus affects approximately 15% of all lupus patients, but is rare in children. Occasionally, discoid lupus occurs with systemic lupus.
Drug-induced lupus, which accounts for about 10% of all lupus cases, occurs as a reaction to specific kinds of medications. In kids, anti-seizure medications, thyroid medications, and acne medications can cause lupus. The symptoms are similar to those of the systemic form, but are usually milder and go away after the medication is stopped.
Diagnosing Lupus
The two rashes commonly associated with lupus are:
malar rash — a rash across the cheeks and the bridge of the nose (also called a "butterfly" rash because it is shaped like a butterfly)
discoid rash — circular, red or hyperpigmented raised patches of skin that often occur on the face, neck, or chest
Other common symptoms:
sensitivity to ultraviolet light — either sunlight or, occasionally, certain types of fluorescent light (also called photosensitivity) — that results in a rash
ulcers in the nose or mouth
nonerosive arthritis (arthritis that does not destroy the bones around the joints)
inflammation of the lining around the heart, abdomen, or lungs (called serositis)
kidney problems, either mild (with no early symptoms) or severe (such as those that lead to swelling in the legs)
neurological disorders, such as seizures or psychosis
blood problems, such as a low red blood cell count (anemia), a low white blood cell count (leukopenia), or a low platelet count (thrombocytopenia)
problems with the immune system
positive blood test for antinuclear antibodies (ANA), specific proteins that are a hallmark of rheumatic or autoimmune disease. More than 95% of lupus patients have a positive ANA.
Someone with four or more of these signs or symptoms is likely to have SLE. Most patients don't develop all of them. Before making a diagnosis, doctors perform a physical exam and take blood tests to rule out any other diseases.
In addition to those symptoms, patients with lupus often have fever, weakness, fatigue, or weight loss. They may experience muscle aches, loss of appetite, swollen glands, hair loss, or abdominal pain, which can be accompanied by nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting.
Sometimes the fingers, toes, nose, or ears will be particularly sensitive to cold and will turn blue and white in cold temperatures, a condition known as Raynaud's phenomenon.
Managing Lupus
There is no known cure for lupus, but the symptoms of the disease can be controlled. Often a patient with lupus has a health care team that includes specialists who can help treat the symptoms. That team may include:
a rheumatologist (a doctor who specializes in conditions of the joints and connective tissues)
a nephrologist (a doctor who specializes in kidney diseases)
an advanced practice nurse
a social worker
other consulting doctors, like a dermatologist, psychologist, or infectious disease specialist
Part of managing lupus is preventing flares — times when the disease gets worse. During a flare-up, a person with lupus may feel much more tired, sick, feverish, and achy than usual. Almost all lupus patients take medication to control inflammation and reduce the risk of flares.
Doctors often prescribe corticosteroids to control inflammation. These aren't the same steroids some athletes take. If a doctor prescribes one of these medicines, the dosage and any side effects will be carefully monitored.
For day-to-day muscle and joint pain, patients can take acetaminophen or any of a variety of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen.
Almost all patients with lupus take antimalarial drugs (medicines first developed to prevent and treat malaria that also have proved helpful with lupus). Antimalarial drugs often help treat skin rashes and joint pain, and help prevent coronary artery disease and the involvement of other organ systems in lupus.
Some children who also have kidney disease, very low blood cell counts, or other organ involvement, may require more aggressive treatment with immunosuppressive drugs, which lower the body's immune system responses.
In 2011, belimumab was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of lupus, especially for arthritis, rashes, and fatigue.
Making Lifestyle Changes
Though the course that lupus takes cannot be predicted, certain lifestyle changes may help minimize flare-ups. Patients should avoid too much sun exposure by wearing sunscreen and protective clothing when outside.
Regular exercise can help prevent fatigue and joint stiffness. A balanced diet and sufficient rest also are important for maintaining general health and well-being.
When to Call the Doctor
Kids and teens with lupus are prone to the usual childhood illnesses, such as a viral infection or diarrhea. However, a fever, rash, or mouth sore might indicate the beginning of a flare. As you and your child become more familiar with the disease, you may learn to recognize signs that a flare-up is around the corner.
Call the doctor immediately if any of these symptoms appear:
bloody stools
easy bruising (with or without nosebleeds)
chest or abdominal pain
new or high fever
The Outlook for Lupus
The outlook for lupus patients is constantly improving. Over the past few decades, better tools to diagnose and treat lupus have remarkably improved the lives of those who live with the disease.
Treatments for Children - Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Symptoms and Screenings for Children - Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Causes and Preventions for Children - Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Education and Resources for Children - Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Support groups for Children - Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Learn More about Children - Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
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LowCVP welcomes support for electric vehicle purchases02 August 2010
LowCVP (the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership) has welcomed the UK government's announcement that it intends to continue funding to support initial purchases of electric vehicles.
The announcement, which provides £43 million of support for next year, will help to give an initial kick-start to the industry – supporting the purchase of at least 8,500 electric vehicles, according to LowCVP managing director Greg Archer.
"The UK can become an early market for electric vehicles and provide support for UK automotive companies in developing opportunities and expertise in this key emerging area," says Archer.
"There is considerable uncertainty about how prices for EVs will change in the future. Given the [government's] imminent comprehensive spending review it is not surprising that [it] has chosen to take a staged approach to the support it is able to offer for EV purchasing and recharging infrastructure," he adds.
Brian Tinham
Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership
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Travel Guide 2 > Europe > Austria > History
Austrian History
Austria can trace its history back to the dawn of civilization. In pre-Roman times, the country was occupied by various Celtic tribes including the Celtic kingdom of Noricum.
In Roman times, Noricum was annexed by the Romans and became a province of the Empire. In fact, most of what is now Austria (all parts to the South of the Danube River) were part of the Roman Empire.
When the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century, Austria was invaded by tribes of Bavarians, Avars and Slavs. Most of Austria was eventually conquered by the Charlemagne in 788, and eventually became part of Eastern Francia ("Francia Orientalis"), and was given to Leopold of Babenberg in 976.
The first reference to to the name "Österreich" comes from 996, where the term "Ostarrîchi" is used to refer to the Babenberg lands (also known as "marchia Orientalis").
Beginning in the 14th century, the Habsburgs began to gain more and more land around Austria. They also acquired more and more power in the Germany (which at that time fell within the Holy Roman Empire - after 1438, every single emperor but one, of the Holy Roman Empire, was a Habsburg). Eventually, through marriage, they also acquired Spain, Spanish lands in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the New World. Additionally, their victories over the Ottoman Turks in 1526 at the Battle of Mohacs, and again in 1683 at the siege of Vienna, eventually brought Hungary and Bohemia (the area that is today the Czech Republic) under Habsburg control.
By the 18th century however, things had begun to change. The last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II, died childless in 1700, and rule of Spain passed to the Bourbon, Philippe of Anjou (King Philip V of Spain). Moreover, following the War of Austrian Succession (1740 to 1748), Prussia began to first match, and eventually displace, the Habsburg Empire as the dominant power in German affairs.
In 1804 the Austrian Empire (German: Kaisertum Österreich) was formed by Holy Roman emperor Francis II (who became Austrian emperor Franz I), although the Holy Roman Empire itself came to an end in 1806 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. Despite many defeats at the hands of the French during the Napoleonic Wars, the Austrian Empire eventually emerged on the winning side, and played an important part in that victory, and ended up, together with Prussia, being a leading member of the German Confederation.
In 1864, Prussia and Austria cooperated in a war against Denmark in order to free the Dutchies of Schleswig and Holstein from the Danish Crown. However, following the war, the two countries could not agree on how these provinces hould be administered, and the Prussian-Austrian War of 1866 was a result. As a result of its defeat in this war, Austria had to leave the German Confederation, and end its participation in German politics.
In 1867, the Ausgleich ("Compromise") was signed by emperor Franz Joseph and a Hungarian delegation led by Ferenc Deák. The Ausgleich provided for a Hungarian government of near equal status to the Austrian government in Vienna, presided over by a single monarch (Franz Joseph) who had responsibility the military and foreign policy. This arrangement was known as the "dual monarch", and by this arrangement the Austrian Empire became the Austria-Hungary.
CISLEITHANIA
1. Bohemia
2. Bukovina
3. Carinthia
4. Carniola
5. Dalmatia
6. Galicia
7. Kustenland
8. Lower Austria
9. Moravia
10. Salzburg
11. Silesia
12. Styria
13. Tirol
14. Upper Austria
15. Vorarlberg
TRANSLEITHANIA
16. Hungary
17. Croatia & Slavonia
18. BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
The 1914 assassination of the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo, was the trigger that led to World War I. Austria-Hungary was among the defeated Central Powers, and the Empire broke up along ethnic lines. The German speaking parts of the Empire became the Republic of German Austria (German: Republik Deutschösterreich), but the name was changed at the insistence of the Entente powers to the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich). The new state was also forbidden to ever unite with Germany.
The First Austrian Republic came to an end in 1933, when the Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuß, shut down parliament and established an authoritarian regime in an attempt to stabilize the country - paramilitary armies belonging to the Social Democrats and Conservatives were fighting each other on the streets, and a growing Nazi movement was advocating union with Germany.
Engelbert Dollfuß was assassinated in 1934, during an attempted Nazi coup, and succeeded by Kurt Schuschnigg. In 1938 however, German troops marched into Austria, and Adolf Hitler (who himself was Austrian) proclaimed the "Anschluss", the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany.
At the close of World War II, with the defeat of the Nazi regime, Austria, like Germany, was divided into American, British, French and Soviet Occupation Zones. However, just before the surrender, Austrian politican, Karl Renner, declared the separation of Austria from Germany, and set up a Provisional Government in Vienna. This government was in fact recognized by the Allies, and as a result, Austria was treated as the first victim of the Third Reich.
In 1955, as a result of the Austrian State Treaty (German: Österreichischer Staatsvertrag) , the country regained its independence. As part of the agreements surrounding this treaty, Austria became permanently neutral, a status which it maintains to this day.
Austria joined the European Union in 1995, and became part of the Eurozone which it was established in 1999.
Here are some books about the history of Austria:
Comments about Austrian History
Please share your comments about the history of Austria:
Books about Austrian History
A Concise History of Austria (Cambridge Concise Histories)
By Steven Beller
Brand: Cambridge University Press
Used Book in Good Condition
For a small, prosperous country in the middle of Europe, modern Austria has a very large and complex history, extending far beyond its current borders. Today's Austrians have a problematic relationship with that history, whether with the multi-national history of the Habsburg Monarchy, or with the time between 1938 and 1945 when Austrians were Germans in Hitler's Third Reich. Steven Beller's gripping and comprehensive account traces the remarkable career of Austria through its many transformations, from German borderland, to dynastic enterprise, imperial house, Central European great power, failed Alpine republic, German province, and then successful Alpine republic, building up a picture of the layers of Austrian identity and heritage and their diverse sources. It is a story full of anomalies and ironies, a case study of the other side of European history, without the easy answers of more clearly national narratives, and hence far more relevant to today's world.
The Austrians: A Thousand-Year Odyssey
By Gordon Brook-Shepherd
Brand: Basic Books
This is a masterful survey of Austria's controversial place at the heart of European history. From the Reformation through the Napoleonic and Cold Wars to European Union, a superb history of Austria's central role in uniting Western civilization is covered. 24 pages of photographs and maps are included. "Connoisseurs of Austria and its delightful and infuriating inhabitants will agree that Mr. Brook-Shepherd has got it just about right.'—The Wall Street Journal "Engrossing, elegantly written history.'—Publishers Weekly
Introducing Austria: A Short History. (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought)
By Lonnie Johnson
Brand: Ariadne Pr
INTRODUCING AUSTRIA provides in compact form a comprehensive overview of the country's rich past and present. The first half of the book deals with Austria before 1918. Each chapter and subchapter approaches Austria's diverse, thousand-year-old heritage from a different perspective to illuminate its essential features. The second half of the book deals with Austria's turbulent history from 1918 to the present. Controversial issues are presented objectively and without oversimplification. Overall the book conveys a differentiated picture of the country and its people and should give readers a feeling for the continuity and change of the Austrian idea.
A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918
By Robert A. Kann
University of California Press
"An impressive achievement in a task of extraordinary difficulty...The outstanding asset of this work does not consist in in its comprehensiveness and objectivity, however, nor even in the wide knowledge and special expertise Kann can bring to bear from his early legal training, his formidable scholarship on the nationalities question, and his keen critical appreciation of the diverse cultures of the monarchy. Its greatest merit derives from the author's determination always to ask fundamental questions, his care to discriminate between surface phenomena and deeper causes, his skill in finding significant patterns in an apparently chaotic welter of events, his facility for perceptive and penetrating distinctions and generalizations. In short, he tried with considerable success to tell what really happened in history rather than simply what obviously happened."―Canadian Historical Review
The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918 : A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary
By A. J. P. Taylor
First published in 1941, The Habsburg Monarchy has become indispensable to students of nineteenth-century European history. Not only a chronological report of actions and changes, Taylor's work is a provocative exploration into the historical process of the most eventful hundred years of the Habsburg monarchy.
Austria History: The Celtic and Roman Eras, The Early Medieval Era, Rise of the Habsburg Empire, The Thirty Years' War, 1618-48, Economy, Government, Politics, Tourism
By Henry Albinson
Kindle Edition (241 pages)
Entire information on Austria, Austria history, early history and recent, Austria economy, Austria tourism, Austria government and politics, Austria information book, for education, tourism, business engagements
Knowing about Austria and the people inside it. Germanic tribes were not the first peoples to occupy the eastern Alpine-Danubian region, but the history and culture of these tribes, especially the Bavarians and Swabians, are the foundation of Austria's modern identity. Austria thus shares in the broader history and culture of the Germanic peoples of Europe. The territories that constitute modern Austria were, for most of their history, constituent parts of the German nation and were linked to one another only insofar as they were all feudal possessions of one of the leading dynasties in Europe, the Habsburgs
The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848-1938
By William M. Johnston
Part One of this book shows how bureaucracy sustained the Habsburg Empire while inciting economists, legal theorists, and socialists to urge reform. Part Two examines how Vienna's coffeehouses, theaters, and concert halls stimulated creativity together with complacency. Part Three explores the fin-de-siecle world view known as Viennese Impressionism. Interacting with positivistic science, this reverence for the ephemeral inspired such pioneers ad Mach, Wittgenstein, Buber, and Freud. Part Four describes the vision of an ordered cosmos which flourished among Germans in Bohemia. Their philosophers cultivated a Leibnizian faith whose eventual collapse haunted Kafka and Mahler. Part Five explains how in Hungary wishful thinking reinforced a political activism rare elsewhere in Habsburg domains. Engage intellectuals like Lukacs and Mannheim systematized the sociology of knowledge, while two other Hungarians, Herzel and Nordau, initiated political Zionism. Part Six investigates certain attributes that have permeated Austrian thought, such as hostility to technology and delight in polar opposites.
The War of the Austrian Succession
By Reed S. Browning
Reed S. Browning explores the often-changing war aims of the major belligerents-Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Piedmont-Sardinia, and Spain-and links diplomatic and military events to the political and social context from which they arose.
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Travel Guide 2 > Europe > UK > Towns and Cities > Cambridge
Cambridge is a historic city in England in, that is famous for being home to University of Cambridge, one of the leading academic institutions not only in the the UK, but in the entire world. As of the 2001 census, Cambridge had a population of 108,863 people, including 22,153 students.
Visitors to Cambridge can see the many historic colleges, walk along the river Cam, or take a punt (flat-bottomed bottom pushed along with a pole) on the "backs" (the area behind the colleges). There are also several fairs held annually in Cambridge, including the Cambridge Beer Festival (in May), the Midsummer Fair, the Strawberry Fair (first Saturday in June), the Cambridge Film Festival (in July), and the Cambridge Folk Festival.
Key Facts about Cambridge
Kings College Chapel:
Here are some facts about Cambridge:
Cambridge is a city in the East Anglia region of England.
Cambridge is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the North of London.
Cambridge is located on, and its gets name from, the River Cam.
Cambridge is best-known internationally, and in the UK, for being the home of the University of Cambridge, which is one of the top universities in the world.
Cambridge is also known for its high technology, computer, and software industries (many of which were founded by people associated with the university). As a result, the area is sometimes nicknamed "silicon fen".
Parker's Piece, a 25 acre (100,000 m2) green space near the center of Cambridge, is widely regarded as the birthplace of assocation football (soccer), as it was here that the Cambridge Rules of 1848 were first used. The Cambridge Rules subsequently became the basis of the modern rules of soccer, when these were drawn up by the football association in 1863.
Cambridge can be accessed by road using the M11 motorway, and the A14.
Nonstop trains run regularly from Cambridge to London Kings Cross, and have a journey time of less than one hour.
London Stansted Airport is within easy reach of Cambridge. It can be reached by train (from Cambridge or London), or by road, as it is located just off the M11 motorway between London and Cambridge.
Attractions and Places of Interest in Cambridge
Attractions and places of interest in Cambridge and the Cambridge-area include:
Cambridge University Botanic Garden
Fitzwilliam Museum
Imperial War Museum Duxford in Duxford, Cambridgeshire
Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences
Weather in Cambridge
BBC Weather forecast for Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
Comments about Cambridge
Please share your comments about Cambridge, the UK:
Books about Cambridge
Here are some books about Cambridge:
Greater Than a Tourist- Cambridge United Kingdom: 50 Travel Tips from a Local
By Jennifer Baines
Are you excited about planning your next trip? Do you want to try something new? Would you like some guidance from a local? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this Greater Than a Tourist book is for you. Greater Than a Tourist – Cambridge, UK by Jennifer Baines offers the inside scope on the city of Cambridge in England. Most travel books tell you how to travel like a tourist. Although there is nothing wrong with that, as part of the Greater Than a Tourist series, this book will give you travel tips from someone who has lived at your next travel destination. In these pages, you will discover advice that will help you throughout your stay. This book will not tell you exact addresses or store hours but instead will give you excitement and knowledge from a local that you may not find in other smaller print travel books. Travel like a local. Slow down, stay in one place, and get to know the people and the culture. By the time you finish this book, you will be eager and prepared to travel to your next destination.
Rick Steves Great Britain
By Rick Steves
Paperback (1080 pages)
Explore the misty isle of Great Britain, from lively London to the lush fields of Wales and the craggy beauty of the Scottish Highlands. With Rick Steves on your side, Great Britain can be yours!
Inside Rick Steves Great Britain you'll find:
Comprehensive coverage for spending two weeks or more exploring England, Wales, and Scotland
Rick's strategic advice on how to get the most out of your time and money, with rankings of his must-see favorites
Top sights and hidden gems, from Stonehenge and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to whisky distilleries and corner pubs
How to connect with culture: Try haggis or a Scotch pie, catch a show in SoHo, or chat with locals in a cozy Welsh tavern
Beat the crowds, skip the lines, and avoid tourist traps with the help of Rick's candid, humorous insight
The best places to eat, sleep, and relax with a pint
Self-guided walking tours of charming villages and historic sites and museums
Detailed maps for exploring on the go
Useful resources including a packing list, a historical overview, and recommended reading
Over 1,000 bible-thin pages include everything worth seeing without weighing you down
Complete, up-to-date information on London, Windsor, Cambridge, Bath, Glastonbury, Wells, Avebury, Stonehenge, Salisbury, South Wales, the Cotswolds, Stratford-upon-Avon, Ironbridge Gorge, Liverpool, the Lake District, York, Durham and Northeast England, Conwy, Caernarfon, Snowdonia National Park, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, St. Andrews, Oban and the Inner Hebrides, Glencoe and Fort William, Inverness, Loch Ness, and more
Make the most of every day and every dollar with Rick Steves Great Britain.
Visiting the UK? Try Rick Steves Best of England!
Fodor's Essential Great Britain: with the Best of England, Scotland & Wales (Full-color Travel Guide)
By Fodor's Travel Guides
Fodor's Travel
Written by locals, Fodor’s Essential Great Britain is the perfect guidebook for those looking for insider tips to make the most out their visit to England, Scotland, Wales and beyond. Complete with detailed maps and concise descriptions, this Great Britain travel guide will help you plan your trip with ease. Join Fodor’s in exploring some of the most exciting parts of Europe.
Great Britain remains a perennial favorite with travelers who come for the busy streets of London, the cozy thatched-roof villages of the Cotswolds, and the wild moors and lochs of Scotland. From Edinburgh to Cardiff, discover worthwhile destinations and savvy travel tips with the full-color Fodor's Essential Great Britain. Our selective collection of the best of England, Scotland, and Wales will guarantee you make the most of your trip.
Fodor’s Essential Great Britain includes:
•UP-TO-DATE COVERAGE: Fully updated top attractions and experiences in every region of Great Britain from Scotland to England to Wales―from cities to great castles to stately homes to quaint country villages―with plenty of new options for dining, lodging, shopping, and nightlife.
•ULTIMATE EXPERIENCES GUIDE: A spectacular color photo guide highlights the ultimate unmissable experiences and attractions throughout Great Britain to inspire you.
•PULLOUT MAP AND DETAILED MAPS: A handy PULLOUT map will help you navigate on the go. Full-color and full-size street maps throughout will help you plan efficiently and get around confidently.
•GORGEOUS PHOTOS AND ILLUSTRATED FEATURES: Rich, full-color features invite you to experience the best of Great Britain. Colorful spotlight features on British food, Welsh castles, Roman relics, and more provide insight into contemporary life as well as the past.
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•SPECIAL EVENTS COVERAGE: Every summer, the Edinburgh Festival draws lovers of music, theater, and comedy while Hogmanay is the most Scottish way to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
•COVERS: London, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, the Cotswolds, Stratford-upon-Avon, Manchester, Liverpool, Yorkshire, Wales, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glencoe, Loch Lomond, Inverness, Loch Ness, Isle of Skye, and more.
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The Tsimbalist
Matchbreaker, matchbreaker
In previous episodes of The Tsimbalist Blog, I've mentioned how scholars were prized as bridegrooms, and how matters of business were often left to the brides. Yaffa Eliach relates one amusing example of how that could work out, involving a bride named Malke:
"A widow with seven children, Malke married a fine young scholar from the yeshivah whom the saintly Rabbi Yossef Zundl Hutner and his flamboyant wife had found for her. Malke had been supporting her family on the income from her store, which ... had its biggest earnings on market day. On the first market day after their wedding, Malke’s husband left the beth midrash to assist his wife for a few hours at the store. It was the first time in his life he had ever faced a real scale, and though he knew all the halakhic and ethical regulations pertaining to scales, he did not in fact know how to use one, as his wife discovered when she gave him a kilogram of salt and he carefully placed both the salt and the weights on one side of the scale.
"Malke was outraged. In an unprecedented move, she closed the store at the height of market day, grabbed her husband by the sleeve, and marched him through the market square to the home of Reb Zundl. When she arrived at the rabbi’s house, she said, 'Rebbe, you gave him to me, you take him back. I am a hardworking widow who is trying to provide for her orphans so that they will grow up to be proper human beings. I do not have the time to raise yet another child.'"
Other brides were expected to be more patient than poor Malke. In fact, according to Hayyim Schauss, pre-nuptial examinations were administered to gauge just this virtue:
"… the girl was tested for patience and skill by the women of the groom’s family. She was given a tangled skein of thread which she was expected to unravel, or told to prepare a large sheet of dough and to cut it patiently into fine, thin noodles."
That patience would have been required to deal with more than just a groom's impracticality. There were all kinds of reasons to be unhappy with a match. For example, after my great-grandmother Kayla, who I've already mentioned in connection with a priest, married my great-grandfather Schlomo Zalman, she ran right back home. Why? Because he was more than twenty years older than she was, and even had children about her age. (But don't worry. She went back to him after a while.)
There were plenty of reasons to be unhappy with a match. But divorce, while far from uncommon, was obviously something to be avoided if possible. The best thing, it would seem, would be to break off the engagement before the wedding-day arrived.
In fact, though, breaking an engagement wasn't considered any great shakes either (unlike breaking a bunch of crockery, which is how an engagement was sealed at the time.) Possible consequences and deterrents included:
Corporal punishment, if the engagement-breaker were a groom. Or at least, that's what medieval sage Rashi suggested. (Cited by Nathaniel Deutsch in The Jewish Dark Continent.)
Threats to be force-recruited into the army, in the case of grooms protesting matches their parents had arranged. One groom faced with this threat tried to get around it by sending an anonymous letter to the bride's parents: "No good will come of this marriage!" he wrote. But to no avail. (Cited in ChaeRan Freeze's Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia.)
There was the prospect of getting taken to court by your parents, if you defied their wishes in marriage. Which, believe it or not, really happened sometimes. One case cited by Freeze resulted in a sentence of 3-6 months in jail for the errant bridegroom, followed by exile. (This particular threat pretty much fizzled out in 1861, when some Russian judicial reforms were made.)
And last but not least, a dybbuk might enter "the body of a person because of a sin they committed, especially breaking a vow or canceling an engagement." (Ethnographer Shmuel Shrayer, quoted by Deutsch.)
However … never underestimate the determination and ingenuity of the young. Here are some of the ways they still found to wiggle out of engagements:
Running away to a yeshiva or state rabbinical school (for wouldn't-be grooms)
Dybbuk, by Ephraim Moses Lilien
Running away to a "special school" (for young women.) These might include "schools for midwives in Mogilev" and "schools of dentistry in Kharkov," according to Freeze.
Joining one of the latest political movements, "like nihilism, populism, or socialism: these close-knit conspiratorial circles functioned as ersatz families and helped single women contract the fictitious marriages that conferred internal passports and the right to reside outside the parental home." (Freeze)
The ever-popular Converting to Christianity. Rachel Elior notes, in Dybbuks and Jewish Women, that "between the years 1737 and 1820 more than two thousand Jewish women converted to Christianity in Lithuania ... From folktales and dybbuk stories we know that this phenomenon was connected at least partially to the fact that apostasy was perceived as a refuge from coerced sexual relations and arranged marriages."
Conversion had a bonus feature, too: it made the authorities more inclined to help you get your parents off your back.
And finally, if all else failed, that same dybbuk that threatened to enter you if you broke an engagement could be employed to help get you out of one. According to Elior, "it was not uncommon for women who did not know how to speak about themselves and their psychological anguish, and who were not heard in public, to express themselves through physical ailments, mental afflictions, and associated madness. The body possessed by a dybbuk is represented as being under the control of the chaotic world of the dead, which imposes higher claims on it than does the patriarchal world of real life, and the person possessed is thereby liberated from the latter. By superseding the usual circle of social expectations and proper conduct, the dybbuk could offer, to those unwilling or unable to accept the social dictates associated with matchmaking, marriage, enforced sexual relations, and family, a justification for conduct that deviated from religious, sexual, or social norms."
Magicians, Mohels, and Mosques … or, Moslems in the Shtetl
Tatar mosque in Nemėžis, Lithuania
If you didn't think there were Christians living in the shtetl, then you probably really didn't think there were Moslems.
But guess what? There were: members of a people known as the Lipka Tatars, whose lives intersected with those of their Jewish neighbors in some totally fascinating ways, involving magic spells, magic amulets ... and maybe even marriage.
But before we get into that, let's just go over a little history, so we're clear on who we're talking about. The Tatars in general are a Turkic people originating in Mongolia, of whom there are a number of branches, the most prominent of which is named for the Volga, as in Volga Tatars. (Altogether, there are about 5.5 million Tatars living in the territory of the Russian Federation these days.)
Zeroing in on the Pale of Settlement: if you look into the histories of various shtetlekh, you're likely to find sentences like 'this or that building was constructed as a defense against the Tatars.' Generally, this is not a reference to the Lipka, but to the Crimean Tatars, who for hundreds of years terrified everybody in the Ukraine: from their Black Sea base, they would make raids to capture as many slaves as possible, then hand over their captives in trade to the Ottoman Turks. The Crimeans also didn't mind teaming up with Cossacks now and then.
(Among the fortifications built to repel Crimeans and Cossacks were stone "fortress synagogues," according to Jeffrey Veidlinger's In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Small-Town Jewish Life in Soviet Ukraine.)
The Lipka, though related to the Crimeans, had a very different history. Their arrival in what is now Poland, Lithuania and Belarus dates back to 1397, just after they lost a power struggle with the notorious Mongol leader Timur, or Tamerlane, of pyramid-of-skulls fame.
The soon-to-be-Lipka (the name means "Lithuanian") were given refuge by Vytautas the Great, Grand Duke of Lithuania (who was also very welcoming to Jews, and generally had a glowing reputation among Lithuanians of all faiths.)
Lithuanian Tatars in the Napoleonic Army, by Jan Chełmiński
For most of the next several hundred years, Lipka fought as cavalrymen alongside the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (or as part of that army), enjoyed privileges as Polish noblemen, and built more than a hundred mosques in Commonwealth lands. (These mosques were usually wooden and painted green, like the one pictured above, and included women's galleries.)
The Lipkas' complex history--Mongol descent, Moslem faith, centuries of residence in Eastern Europe--is reflected in their language, literature and religious practice. In Lithuania-Poland, they quickly adopted local languages, but wrote them in Arabic script. Their literary output was variously in Polish, for religious commentary (written between lines of Arabic in the Qur'an); and Belarusian, for kitabs, that is, "religious literary anthologies … containing Muslim legends, ritual prescriptions, stories and moral precepts, apocrypha and other narratives, but also texts in Arabic (and rarely in Turkish) such as fragments from the Qur’an, prayers."
In their religious practice, the Lipka Tatars differ from some other Moslems in significant ways: they do not engage in polygamy, their women are not veiled, they drink alcohol. In addition, at least formerly, they shared many of their neighbors' folk beliefs--for example, "they did not feed the cows on the Midsummer Day, fearing that they might lose their milk"--and they sometimes mingled the Islamic with the shamanistic. And this, my friends, is where things really get interesting.
According to Marek Dziekan, in History and culture of Polish Tatars, "Polish people often considered Tatars to be sorcerers." More specifically, Tatars had a reputation as extraordinary healers--a reputation in which their Jewish neighbors firmly believed.
We learn from various authors that, in a milieu rife with folk healers of various stripes, Jews particularly favored the Tatars*; and that the "acknowledged experts in the use of spells as well as herbs were the Tatars, and when an illness was so serious that it could not be cured by the exorcism of a dybbuk or the use of conventional medicine, the Tatars were called upon for help."**
* Deutsch, The Jewish Dark Continent
** Eliach, There Once Was A World
What kind of magic did these Tatar healers practice? This very question was asked by the great ethnographer S. Ansky, author of the play The Dybbuk, in the questionnaire that he and his associates took around to Jews of the Pale between 1912-1914: "Are there Tatars in your community, old male and female gentiles, who heal? What provisions and remedies do they offer?"
Here are some answers:
One technique involved "reading Muslim prayers and blowing on the patient. Such technique was supposed to cleanse the body by 'blowing away' the sickness that came from the air. The second most popular method was fumigation. A page from a prayer book or a specially written amulet was supposed to be burned on coals and the sick one was expected to inhale the smoke while listening to specially chosen prayers. This was a way of dispelling 'charms'. Another use for cards with writing was to wash away the text and drink the used water." This last was said to be "a good cure for epilepsy and giddiness."***
The Dybbuk
*** According to Shirin Akiner, in Religious Language of a Belarusian Tatar Kitab
Also, says Dziekan, "Many amulets and charms were supposed to guard a man from evil powers. These were … usually worn under clothes." And in addition, says Akiner, "Muslim cemeteries were regarded as holy places, with magical properties. Tatars (as well as local Christians and Jews) would make communal visits to them to pray for good health, help with conceiving, and other blessings."
How else did Jews and Tatars interact?
Yaffa Eliach tells us that, in the shtetl of Eishyshok, Jews and Tatars were friends, and that during World War II, Tatars (and Christians) aided their Jewish friends there. In some shtetlekh, for example Lyakhovichi, Jews and Tatars were close neighbors: "The street Tatarskaya was named for the primary street of their residence and that of their mosque, but it was not exclusive to them, Jews lived on Tatarskaya also."
One descendant of Lipka Tatars: Charles Bronson
The same source tells us that "These Sunni Moslems were a small group that reportedly found it difficult to find suitable marriage partners for their children without some intermarriage. It was illegal for a Christian to convert to Judaism, but there are a number of documented cases ... of Lipka Tatars converting from Islam to Judaism to marry."
I haven't been able to find documentation of these documented cases (though it's true that Tatars were a very small minority in some towns.) But I did learn of one way in which Jews were definitely able to help their Tatar neighbors out:
"Circumcision is called siunniet (from Arab. sunna, Tur. sünnet – ‘tradition’), by Tatars ... It was formerly done by specialised ritualists called siunnietdży, who were often Jews."
Peasants, Priests, and Other Neighbors
A Shy Peasant, by Ilya Repin
So far in these posts, I've talked about schmaltz and slenderness, paleness in the Pale, whistling ... and I've used the word shtetl a lot. But I haven't asked: Aside from being a place where schmaltz-eating gals gazed admiringly at slender and pale guys, and vice-versa ... what was a shtetl, exactly?
It's not the easiest question to answer quickly … unless you're Professor Jeffrey Shandler of Rutgers University, who just published a book called Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History. Earlier this week, Tablet Magazine put up a fantastic podcast interview with Shandler, and it takes the professor only a few short minutes to iron out most of this issue's many wrinkles. I don't want to misrepresent what Shandler says, because he actually allows for various definitions (and you should listen to the whole podcast), but here's the heart of the matter:
"… what might be thought of as an archetypal shtetl is a community that’s centered around a marketplace ... peasants from surrounding farm communities would bring whatever they had raised … and sell it to both people who lived in the town, and then to brokers who would buy all this produce and ship it off to various locations actually all over Europe … and at least originally, the core activity of Jews in these towns was that they were there to facilitate this economy … either overseeing production ... or they were the brokers who were buying and selling and moving things, or they ran stores that lined the marketplace that sold to the peasant farmers the things that they needed that they couldn't make for themselves."
Two Ukrainian Peasants, by Repin
Asked by host Sara Ivry to name some misperceptions about shtetlekh, Shandler answers: "One I think might be that these are Jewish towns. These are towns that always have a non-Jewish population."
There's no doubt that Shandler is right: this is a big misperception. Take our attitudes about Fiddler On The Roof. We might all generally know, yeah, it's Broadway, it's not history … but maybe we've also thought: but shtetls were sort of like that, right? Close-knit Jewish communities rooted in piety and … um, tradition … where, when Gentiles did appear, they were associated strictly with calamities (or perceived calamities) like intermarriage, eviction, pogroms?
Well ... if we thought that, then we thought wrong. Because if the marketplace involves a lot of interacting between Jews and Gentiles, then Gentiles must be something other than just outsiders and bringers of calamities in the lives of Jews. True?
Ukrainian Peasant, by Repin
For example, in There Once Was A World, historian Yaffa Eliach describes the development of special, one-on-one marketplace relationships--and how they could sometimes grow into something more. Farmers "would often go to the homes of their preferred Jewish customers prior to taking their goods to market, offering them first pick, perhaps bartering for things they needed. Occasionally such transactions would conclude with a glass of vodka or tea or some special Jewish dish favored by the gentile peasants. Some of these cordial business relationships ripened into real friendships, with the gentile being asked to spend the night before market day in his Jewish friends' home, and parking his wagon in the backyard of his host."
An interesting wrinkle:
"… until World War I the market was largely in the hands of the grandmothers, mothers, and daughters of the shtetl. Perhaps that was why so many of the usual social barriers, between classes and between Jew and gentile, broke down on market day. The women of Eishyshok were more proficient than their men in the languages spoken by the gentile peasants. Many could manage conversations in Polish, Russian, and Byelorussian, and some knew the essential trade words in Lithuanian and Tataric as well. They were familiar with the religion and customs of their clients, took an interest in their families, assisted them with their practical needs, and even knew their tastes well enough to take them into account when ordering stock. Malke Roche’s Schneider, for example, was considered not just a merchant but an adviser and friend to many gentiles. She knew all their woes and sorrows, and would sympathize with them when a pregnant swine was accidentally slaughtered or the crops failed."
Surprising, right? It was to me, anyway. If I'm not alone, then I think it's worth asking, why do so many of us not know about this stuff?
One brilliant explanation has been offered by literary critic Dan Miron. In The Literary Image of the Shtetl, Miron shows how the idea of a Gentile-free shtetl was created by the first generations of Yiddish authors. Focusing on Sholem Aleikhem (whose Tevye stories, of course, are the basis for Fiddler On The Roof), Miron compares the real-life shtetl the author grew up in with his principal fictional one.
Portrait of a Peasant, by Repin
In real-life Voronke, "Every Sunday he would see Ukrainian men and women flocking to the church, crossing themselves, genuflecting and praying before the statue of the Holy Virgin and then dropping their coins into her charity box. He witnessed processions with colorful banners and icons, funerals on their way from church to the nearby tsvinter (Christian cemetery). He heard the deep intonations of the priests' singing. All this must have been a very real part of life in the historical Voronke of the writer's childhood, and yet one would not find even a trace of Christian culture or religion in the manifold projections of Kasrilevke throughout his oeuvre."
What's Miron's explanation? It has something to do with the ambivalent cultural position of these early Yiddish writers, who had one foot in the shtetl world and one foot very much out:
"… there actually existed in Jewish literature ... a potent norm, which demanded the radical Judaization of the image of the eastern European shtetl; it had to be presented as purely Jewish. Only then could it be satirized, exposed as benighted and reactionary, soporific, resistant to initiative and innovation, or, alternatively, portrayed nostalgically and romantically as the quintessence of spirituality and communal intimacy, the nucleus of a besieged civilization that nevertheless enjoyed internal harmony and perfect internal communication. Either rendering demanded an unhistorical Judaization of the shtetl …"
Russian Priest, 1919
If it's true that our image of the shtetl was shaped by nineteenth-century writers, it's probably also true that the process has not stopped. Shandler, in that Tablet podcast, has a lot to say about contemporary authors with no feet in the shtetl who continue to re-imagine things--and their place in a larger movement of re-investigation and reclamation:
"… if you think about world Jewry, so many people, if they go back in their family a few generations, they lived in one of these towns … so there is a sense of origin tied to these places that's very powerful … you can go and do genealogical research, and you can read the yizkor book, the memorial book from your family’s particular town and you can find photographs, you can do all kinds of stuff that’s very specific but … they’re fragments, and you need to fill them in. And that exercise of filling in which leaves a lot of open spaces provides great opportunities for people to think into their Jewish past."
Which brings me at last to … priests. My first aim with The Tsimbalist was simply to write a really good mystery novel that took place in a shtetl … but along the way I also wanted to explore some aspects of my own family history. One of our family stories involves a priest, maybe in the very year of 1919 when that character to the left was photographed.
My great-grandmother, Kayla Rubinchik, living in what is now Belarus, had a cow named Masha, who was (as my grandmother said) a very important member of the family. As any cow would, Masha had to be grazed. But Masha was picky about her food. The grass close at hand (or hoof) wasn't good enough for her. And so for a long time, Kayla had to take the cow quite a long away to feed, which required a lot of time and energy from a very busy woman with twelve kids and no husband. This situation persisted until, one day, the local priest took pity on her. He let her graze Masha on his much closer piece of land.
In The Tsimbalist, I wanted to explore the character of an Orthodox priest who would do this kindness for a Jewish family, at a time not long after Tsar Alexander III, pondering the easing of some anti-Jewish regulations, had written: "We must never forget that it was the Jews who crucified our Lord and spilled his precious blood." Was there any tension for this priest, between the personal and the official? Between a specific act and a deeply held belief? Or had the Revolution already happened, and had that changed everything? Or was this priest just a nice guy, and that was all there was to it?
Of course, I have no idea. But it's the kind of thing that makes you remember an obvious but easily-forgotten truth: people are complicated. And also, the kind of thing that makes writing and thinking about this period so rewarding.
Sasha Margolis is author of The Tsimbalist (the novel and the blog) and violinist, singer, and storyteller for the band Big Galut(e)
He can be found on twitter as @SashaMargolis
Ansky
Bennett Muraskin
Big Galut(e)
ChaeRan Freeze
Chaim Grade
Dan Miron
Dara Horn
Hayyim Schauss
Jeffrey Shandler
Joe-black
Julian-kytasty
Molly Picon
Mordecai Gebirtig
Moshe Beregovski
Moshe Leiser
Nathaniel Deutsch
Rachel Elior
Sacher-Masoch
Schmaltz
Sholem Aleikhem
Toscha Seidel
Yaffa Eliach
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Kath & Kim
Kath & Kim movie on the way
Kath & Kim is set to be developed into a film which will take the entire cast to Europe. The film, entitled The Kath & Kim Filum, will go into production later in the year in Italy.
Sheen replacement rumours begin
Charlie Sheen has been dumped from Two and a Half Men for all of one day and the rumours for a replacement are already beginning. TMZ is reporting that series producer Chuck Lorre has reached out to actor Rob Lowe as a possible replacement for Sheen.
Criss Angel honoured
TV magician Criss Angel has become the youngest inductee into the International Magic Society Hall of Fame. The 43-year-old star of Criss Angel: Mindfreak was also presented with the group’s lifetime achievement award.
Scrubs actor join pilot
Former Scrubs actor John C. McGinley has joined the new ABC pilot Smothered where he will feature alongside Marcia Gay Harden and Sons of Anarchy actor Adam Arkin.
Sheen celebrates firing in style
In Charlie Sheen news, the actor has reportedly celebrated his axing from Two and a Half Men by brandishing a large machete on the roof of the Live Nation building in Beverly Hills. TMZ have footage of the actor waving the sword before declaring “this is the greatest day of my life.”
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Home ► PAINTINGS ► JOHN LLOYD JONES
JOHN LLOYD JONES ORIGINALS
John Lloyd Jones is a Realistic Impressionist who captures the essence of an experience. His work has appeared in outdoor publications such as Gray's Sporting Journal, Sporting Classics, and Angler's Journal. His works capture just enough detail to let the viewer become involved in what's happening before them.
JOHN LLOYD JONES ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING " JIGGIN' "
John Lloyd Jones is a Realistic Impressionist who captures the essence of an experience. His work has appeared in outdoor publications such as Sporting Classics, Angler's Journal, and Gray's Sporting Journal. Framed with 3" Antique Wood Frame with Beaded Gold Leaf Liner. Picture light optional and sold separately.
The painting measures 12" x 16". This piece measures 22 1/2" x 18 1/2" framed outside dimensions.
SKU JLJ-006
JOHN LLOYD JONES ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING WITH A FLYFISHERMAN
John Lloyd Jones is a Realistic Impressionist who captures the essence of an experience. His work has appeared in outdoor publications such as Sporting Classics, Angler's Journal, and Gray's Sporting Journal. Framed in 4" Gold Leaf Frame with black inside liner. Picture light optional and sold separately.
The painting size is 24" x 36". This piece measures 42 3/4" x 30 7/8" framed outside dimensions.
JOHN LLOYD JONES ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING "RESTING PLACE"
John Lloyd Jones is a Realistic Impressionist who captures the essence of an experience. His work has appeared in outdoor publications such as Sporting Classics, Angler's Journal, and Gray's Sporting Journal. Framed in a 3 1/2" Rich Veneer with Gold Leaf Beaded Lip. Picture light optional and sold separately.
The painting size is 12" x 16". This piece measures 23" x 19" framed outside dimensions.
JOHN LLOYD JONES ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING WITH FLYFISHERMEN
John Lloyd Jones is a Realistic Impressionist who captures the essence of an experience. His work has appeared in outdoor publications such as Sporting Classics, Angler's Journal, and Gray's Sporting Journal. Framed with a 3 1/2" Gold Leaf Frame with a 1/4" lined enhancer. Picture light optional and sold separately.
The painting size is 12" x 16". This piece measures 23" x 19" framed outer dimensions.
JOHN LLOYD JONES ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING "DEEP POCKETS"
JOHN LLOYD JONES ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING WITH DUCK HUNTERS
John Lloyd Jones is a Realistic Impressionist who captures the essence of an experience. His work has appeared in outdoor publications such as Sporting Classics, Angler's Journal, and Gray's Sporting Journal. Framed with a 3 1/2" Reverse Gold and Textured Panelled Frame. Picture light optional and sold separately.
The painting measures 24" x 36". The piece measures 41 1/2" x 30" framed outside dimensions.
JOHN LLOYD JONES ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING WITH DUCK HUNTERS II
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US, Qatar ink sweeping business deals
Nations agree to large purchases of aircraft, defense equipment
By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) - The U.S. and Qatar signed off Tuesday on sweeping business deals spanning the energy, aeronautics and defense sectors.
President Donald Trump and Qatari Emir Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani formalized the deal in a signing ceremony at the White House. It includes Qatar Airways' purchase of five Boeing 777 freighters, and an additional commitment to purchase an unspecified number of additional Gulfstream large-cabin aircraft.
Qatar's state-owned airliner further committed to using General Electric jet engines and services to power its fleet of Boeing 787 and 777 aircraft.
Chevron-Phillips agreed with Qatar Petroleum to jointly develop and operate a petrochemical complex in Qatar, according to a joint statement provided by the White House that outlined the deals.
The Qatari Defense Ministry additionally committed to purchasing Raytheon's medium-to-long range NASAM and long-range Patriot Systems surface-to-air missile systems.
The exact dollar figure for the deals is not clear, but al-Thani earlier said the U.S. and Qatar are seeking to double their $185 billion trade volume, which he hinted would include increased infrastructure investments from Doha.
Those were not mentioned in the Qatari-U.S. joint statement.
Acting Pentagon Secretary Mark Esper and al-Thani earlier discussed a number of issues at the Pentagon "including the importance of burden sharing, Qatari support to the NATO mission in Afghanistan and the Gulf rift," according to the Pentagon.
"Secretary Esper thanked the Emir for the Qatari offer to improve Al-Udeid Air Base and for hosting U.S. forces," spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement, referring to the sprawling air base the U.S. uses for its regional operations.
Tags: Boeing, General Electric, Qatar, Qatar Airways, U.S
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BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Virgin and the Viscount’ by Charis Michaels—4 Stars
August 24, 2016 By Katie Leave a Comment
Charis Michaels writes characters that are so easy to love in, ‘The Virgin and the Viscount’! You’ll adore this story’s strong leading lady! Read our review below!
[For Mature Audiences; Some Spoilers]
The Virgin and the Viscount was such a fun read! It’s the second novel in The Bachelor Lords of London series by Charis Michaels. There was romance and a little drama. It made for a book that I didn’t want to put down.
Elisabeth and Bryson’s path’s have crossed before. Elisabeth, a teenager who had been kidnapped and sold to brothel, and Bryson, a nineteen-year-old virgin brought unwillingly to the brothel by his father, uncle and cousin. That night, Bryson saved Elisabeth’s life by breaking her out of the brothel and seeing her safely to London.
Fifteen years have passed and the next time he meets Elisabeth, the incident has been locked away in some corner of his mind.
Elisabeth has never forgotten, though. She now runs a charity for women and girls in need. She even goes so far as to help them escape from the brothel’s they’ve been sold to or are trapped working in. She’s knows what she wants out of life, and what she’s willing to give up because of her past.
Bryson waited (not so patiently) for his father to finally die so he could be named Viscount Rainsleigh and begin to put honor back into the family’s legacy. Over the last several years, he’s built his shipping empire and put his name back to rights.
The time is upon him where he needs to do the next respectable thing, marry and have children. He initially goes about this the same way he does with everything, it’s an item to tick off a list and he has a few requirements he gives to his secretary so they can begin the process.
What he doesn’t count on is meeting Elisabeth. He’s enchanted with her beauty and her smarts, but the downside is that she makes him feel something, and he didn’t want an emotional attachment to his wife.
He puts that aside, though, because he has to have her. Rainsleigh learns early on that Elisabeth is planning on applying for a charity contribution from him. She insists their relationship remain professional until the matter is settled, and Rainsleigh decides to settle it himself by just sending her a thousand pound donation.
Elisabeth isn’t one to be bought, though, and she sends the money back.
I adore that Elisabeth doesn’t fall over herself for Rainsleigh. Throughout the novel, she’s aware that her secret could destroy everything, but she wants these moments because she knows that when he finds out, he’ll want nothing to do with her. It’s selfish, but it’s so relatable. I never once faulted Elisabeth for thinking this way or putting it off.
The secret is actually quite damning considering the time period, but Rainsleigh knew the whole time, he had only forgot who she was.
I will say that I think he overreacted when he found out, but he understands he did that, too. Overall, the love story between these two was very solid. I loved the supporting characters, especially Lillian and Quincy. I’m so happy they got their happily ever after, and I’d enjoy a novella about their love story so much!
There were two main issues that I had with The Virgin and the Viscount. Both of them happened after they’re married and their issues are settled. A man shows up at Rainsleigh’s work and Elisabeth is the only one there. He tells her that he’s Bryson’s real father and the product of an affair his mother had.
Rainsleigh loses his mind at this and eventually hands over the viscountcy to his younger brother who doesn’t want it. I know he’s an honorable person, but I think he should have kept it. He was redeeming the family name that he was born with and the only one he knew for thirty-five years.
I feel like it would have said more about his character if he had been born a Courtland and made the decision to be different than explaining it away as he never had that blood in him anyway.
Then there was the whole thing with Elisabeth not knowing if she was a virgin because of her time spent in the brothel and the touching that happened to her. That was such a huge point of contention throughout the novel that she wasn’t “pure” but at the end, it’s brushed other very dismissively by Rainsleigh. I would have liked to seen more resolution there.
If you’re looking for a really nice historical romance, The Virgin and the Viscount is it. Even though it’s part of a series called The Bachelor Lords of London, it can be read as a stand-alone. I had no trouble with it having only read this one and not the first.
Amazon | Barnes & NobleAdd to your Goodreads TBR HERE!
Image Source: HarperCollins
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Books, Historical Romance, News Tagged With: 4 stars, Avon Impulse, Book 2, Book Review, Charis Michaels, Elisabeth, Historical Romance, The Bachelor Lords of London, The Virgin and the Viscount, Viscount Rainsleigh
Katie has read this year…
Katie’s favorite books »
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NMG – Manalapan Archives
Our digital archives from 2000-2015
Posted on July 12, 2002 by Greater Media
Curchin, Wiss again filing separately Partners in both firms cite differences in style for change
By GLORIA STRAVELLI
Curchin, Wiss again filing separately
Partners in both
firms cite differences
in style for change
VERONICA YANKOWSKI Bob Fouratt stands at the front door of the office that will house the now separated companies, the Curchin Group and Wiss & Co.
Like marriages, some mergers are made in heaven, but two local accounting firms found their union wasn’t and have decided to call it off.
After just two and a half years, partners Curchin & Co., Red Bank, and Wiss & Co., Livingston, decided their practices weren’t compatible and dissolved their merger effective July 1. The two firms merged in January 2000 under the Wiss & Co. name.
Clients of Curchin recently received a letter informing them that the four original partners were reviving the Curchin name and starting a new firm, The Curchin Group LLC. The partners of Curchin are Robert C. Fouratt, Douglas P. Stives, David L. Ferullo and Peter Pfister.
"We returned to the name because it is so well-known in the community," said Fouratt, who is managing partner.
The firm will remain in its present offices at 125 Half Mile Road in Red Bank and will retain files, including computer records, of its 2,800 clients throughout the state.
"There were no legal issues (between the companies)," he said. "It was a difference of style, not substance. There were no accounting practices we were uncomfortable with.
"They’re a much larger firm from a different part of the state, and our cultures were dramatically different," he added.
"The atmosphere of the firm was certainly different from what our culture was here in our Red Bank office," Fouratt said. "Things were a little more impersonal. I think it had to do with their size. That gap between our cultures was just too large for us to bridge.
"Our departure has been quite amiable," he said. "We all kind of looked at one another and said, ‘It’s not working.’"
"It was more a philosophical desire to pursue certain practice areas," said Jeffrey Campo, managing partner of Wiss & Co. LLP.
"Each of us had to learn new core competencies, and we found after the merger that we were not compatible and that it was easier for us and for them to continue to focus on what we do best."
Clients got letters from Wiss, telling them that after evaluating key areas such as compatibility of practice areas, both firms agreed it would be best for each "to focus and concentrate on markets and areas of expertise they serve best."
The firm, which has offices in Livingston and Woodbridge, will keep a presence in the county. Michael Lee will be partner in charge of Wiss’ Red Bank office on Half Mile Road.
Curchin & Co. was founded in Long Branch in 1974 by George Curchin, Stives and H. Alan Schneider. The partners moved the firm to Maple Avenue in Red Bank in the mid-1970s and to 125 Half Mile Road in 1992.
Fouratt, who had been with Curchin since graduating from college in 1978, said the merger with Wiss reflected an industry-wide trend.
"The trend in our industry has been that firms are growing very large or very small," he explained. "The need for capital and specialized services is driving mergers and acquisitions throughout the industry."
Wiss has 13 partners, Fouratt noted, and the merger gave Curchin, a mid-sized firm, a wider capital base and access to more services and more technical expertise.
"Wiss is a solid firm known for technical expertise. Their average client is larger than ours, and they service several publicly traded companies," said Fouratt.
Curchin services nonprofits, community associations, credit unions, construction companies and closely held businesses that range from start-ups to companies with $600 million in assets.
"We have people that are experts in particular areas," said Fouratt, who focuses on audits of credit unions. Pfister handles individual tax clients and closely held businesses. Ferullo specializes in homeowners associations, while Stives handles finance and estate planning. The staff of 22 also includes certified business valuation specialists and a certified fraud examiner.
The longstanding Monmouth County firm has built a practice based on close relationships with clients, Fouratt said.
"We become more than the accountant; we become their adviser," explained the Shrewsbury resident. "That’s what builds long-term relationships. It’s been a culture here that we’ve all grown up with, that the founding partners instilled. We try to have that permeate the firm."
The unwinding of the merger has been amiable, and Curchin will retain the practice the firm had when the merger occurred, he said.
"I kept the clients I had," Fouratt added, "and there were a couple I left behind because they would be better served staying with Wiss. You always do what’s best for the client, and everything else will take care of itself."
Wiss has 13 partners in addition to a staff of 80 professionals who provide accounting, tax and consulting services to middle market companies.
The firm’s practice is focused on litigation support, corporate recovery, bankruptcy, turnaround management and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"Technical expertise is one of our strengths," said Campo, who joined the firm straight out of college in 1983.
The Livingston-based firm was formed in 1983 through the consolidation of two firms, Wiss Pachman and Nechemie Goldberg.
Wiss is ranked among the top 100 accounting firms in the country, according to Public Accounting Report, Campo said. The publicly traded companies Wiss handles nationwide puts it in the top 20 accounting firms in the nation.
"Not many firms handle the depth we do," he noted. "It’s one of our fortes."
According to Campo, the merger with Curchin gave Wiss entry into the Monmouth County market.
"Part of it was to get coverage throughout the state," he explained, "as a springboard for expansion into other areas of the state and into New York City."
Curchin represented about 16 percent of Wiss’ total revenue base when the firms combined, he said.
The firms have different marketplaces and will continue to cross-refer customers, he said.
"I think very highly of (Curchin)," Campo said. "It was an amicable decision on both parts."
Campo said unwinding the merger had some legal aspects but hasn’t been a difficult process because of the partners’ mutual respect for each other.
The decision on splitting staff and clients was uncomplicated, he said.
"Curchin took the clients they brought with them and any clients they brought to the table since the merger," he said.
Since the firms’ practice areas were different, he said, undoing the merger allows Wiss "to concentrate on what we do well."
The firm will continue to pursue merger opportunities in Middlesex County, New York, Princeton and Philadelphia, he said, "with firms that complement our existing practice in medium-sized businesses."
Fouratt said it is business as usual at Curchin, where the four partners have a combined experience of over 100 years.
"We get along and like one another. We share the same philosophies and values," he noted. "We’re very heavily connected to the community, and we’re all excited about continuing to grow, serving our clients, and being involved in Monmouth County."
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tags: art, Everton Park, Foraging Spiral, Fritz Haeg, gardens, guardian, installation, Liverpool Biennial, Lives of Grass, Mathilde Roussel, sculpture
This feature was written for the Guardian
“My projects are never done, they send out ripples that continue, which can’t be anticipated or controlled. That’s how I like it,” says Fritz Haeg, who has made community gardening an art form that galleries find hard to resist. His Edible Estates series has taken him around America and Europe, including a commission to make an Edible Estate for Tate Modern back in 2007.
This year he created a ‘Foraging Spiral and Base Camp’ in a bowl shaped hollow of Everton Park for the Liverpool Biennial. The spiral is a wild and winding bed of tall native plants, many of which are edible or medicinal. The lawn of the hollow has been allowed to grow long. Throughout the art festival, a temporary encampment hosted conversations about the park’s future and its complicated past – it grows over an area where terraced homes and then tower blocks were levelled in the 1960s and 80s respectively.
Despite his love of working with plants, Haeg insists he is an artist not a landscape designer. “I have gradually become bored with things that are not alive – like paintings, buildings and sculptures. I like working with things that are always changing, that I am not always in complete control of,” he says.
“A landscape designer might be focused on solving problems. As an artist I might actually be looking for the problems, focusing on them, presenting them and not avoiding them… The work can be performance, political and activist, and many other things too, all at the same time.”
A hint of performance can also be found in the work of French artist Mathilde Roussel. Her ‘Lives of Grass’ sculptures are dynamic human forms – stuffed with soil and wheat seeds – that constantly change. When they are installed, the host gallery must become a plant nursery of sorts, complete with botanical lights. The living sculptures need watering daily. Their presence invites drama and ritual.
Choosing living plants over more reliable materials means opting for results that are not just unpredictable but that will ultimately die. The artwork – or its longevity – becomes less important than the process of creating it. Both Haeg and Roussel’s work has a special quality made possible by the use of plants, an ephemeral one that has something in common with performance art.
“Wheat grows very fast so you can really see the forms metamorphose through the exhibition,” explains Roussel. “After a few weeks, the wheat grass starts getting yellow and then slowly dries and dies. In this way the sculptures encapsulate the entire human and plant life cycle.” She describes time as “sculpting the forms.”
Roussel grew up on a farm in Normandy, where her family grow cereals, mainly wheat. Using wheat plants as a medium is a way of reflecting her heritage and also showing that “food has an impact on us beyond its taste.” But working with living things has huge implications for the final results.
“Because I work with organic materials, I can’t have a complete control… And this is precisely what I am interested in. Plants are a fascinating material to work with. There is something magical about the way they transform through time just like we do,” says Roussel.
Both continue to work with plants. Haeg will be planting the 13th and final of his Edible Estates for the Walker Art Center in 2013, in the suburbs of Minneapolis; while Roussel is currently working on an installation using mud and plants.
from → gardens
← Urban Agriculture | part twelve | Glasgow and Edinburgh
Guardian | high rise gardening →
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50+ World > Entertainment > Biography > Celebrating Seniors – Sandy Duncan Turns 70
Biography,
Celebrating Seniors - Sandy Duncan Turns 70
New septuagenarian senior citizen, Tony and Emmy Award-nominated dance, actress, singer, comedian and baby boomer Sandy (Sandra Kay) Duncan was born on February 20, 1946 in Henderson, Texas.
Sandy Duncan has said that after taking ballet lessons in Dallas, she made her professional stage debut there as a child actor at age 12 in 1958, in a production of The King and I. Although she has been on television and in feature films, it is primarily on the stage that Duncan has made her name. More stage roles in off-Broadway musicals followed during the early 1960's, including productions of baby boomer favourites South Pacific (1962), My Fair Lady (1964), and others.
According to an interview with People Magazine in 1979, Duncan said she spent a year at the private Lon Morris Junior College in Jacksonville, Texas.
While there, she was voted Most Beautiful and Freshman Favorite, before she moved to New York in 1965 at age 19 to continue pursuing a professional acting & singing career. (Left Photo: Etsy.com)
Sandy Duncan's first big break came as the female lead in a production of The Music Man (1965) at Manhattan's City Center, which was quickly followed by more roles.
By early 1968, 22-year-old Sandy Duncan had moved to California and made her television debut in a commercial for United California Bank, as well as on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow (as Helen).
Duncan was rehearsing for a replacement role that year as Viola in the North American tour of the rock musical Your Own Thing (1968) when she fell for her co-star Bruce Scott (he dropped his last name Zaharaides).
Sandy Duncan has said the couple married in September 1968, in part, because at the time she couldn't live with a man. "It was legalized 'doing it,' but an impossible marriage," she told People.
In 1971, Sandy Duncan's career was ascending rapidly. She had been named by Time magazine as one of the most promising faces of tomorrow, garnered two Tony Award nominations - for Canterbury Tales (1969), and as Maisie in The Boyfriend (1970) on Broadway - and had starred in films The Million Dollar Duck (1971) and Star Spangled Girl (1971). Below, a movie clip from The Million Dollar Duck featuring Sandy Duncan and Dean Jones.
However, Duncan's personal life was in a shambles - her troubled marriage to Bruce Scott was disintegrating and at age 25, while starring on the television series Funny Face (1971), she began having severe headaches. Sandy Duncan was diagnosed with a brain tumour on an optic nerve and underwent successful surgery to remove the tumour, leaving her blind in her left eye. Sandy Duncan and Bruce Scott divorced the next year, in October 1972, and she began dating her former consulting oncologist, Dr. Thomas Calcaterra. Meanwhile, Duncan received a nomination for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Continued Performance By An Actress In A Leading Role In A Comedy Series, for her work on Funny Face. Below, the Funny Face intro in a short video clip.
(The Sandy Duncan Show Cast Photo: CBS Television | Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)
Clockwise from top left, M. Emmet Walsh, Marian Mercer, Tom Bosley, Sandy Duncan, and Pam Zarit.
Sandy Duncan has never let vision problems due to being blind in one eye deflect her career.
She continued to act on stage and television, appearing again as Sandy Stockton in The Sandy Duncan Show (1971-1972), which picked up from where Funny Face had left off.
Below, The Sandy Duncan Show opening segment video clip.
She met younger actor/dancer/choreographer Don Correia for the first time in a variety show in 1971 and they became friends. She voiced her animated self in The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972).
Sandy Duncan and Dr. Thomas Calcaterra married on January 10, 1973. Duncan told People Magazine that Calcaterra wanted her to be a stay-at-home wife, while she wanted a career. During their marriage Duncan appeared only occasionally on stage, film and television. She was in the special Sandy in Disneyland (1974), which again included dancer Don Correia, and had small parts on popular baby boomer television series The Bionic Woman (1976), and The Six Million Dollar Man (1976).
Sandy Duncan, Flip Wilson as the Fox, and Liz Torres as the Cat in Pinocchio (1977 Photo: CBS Television | Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)
Duncan was nominated for another Emmy Award for her role as Missy Anne Reynolds in Roots (1977), and co-starred in another Disney movie The Cat from Outer Space (1978) with Ken Berry, Harry Morgan, and McLean Stevenson.
Her Wheat Thins crackers television commercials endured from the mid-1970's to the 1980's.
Sandy Duncan resumed her career with a vengeance in 1978 with a successful touring nightclub act, and hired Don Correia as her dance partner. The Duncan-Calcaterra marriage ended in divorce in 1979.
By then, Duncan had moved on and was starring on Broadway as Peter Pan in Peter Pan (1979-1981), arguably the role for which she is best known, and for which she was nominated for another Tony Award as Best Actress (Musical).
Sandy Duncan was also now dating Don Correia, and they married in 1980. Sandy and Don had sons Jeffrey (b. 1982) and Michael (b. 1984), and will celebrate their 36th anniversary in 2016.
The couple have worked together several times over the years, including starring in the Radio City Music Hall production Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Dance! (1984) and My One and Only (1985-1986), with Sandy replacing Twiggy and Don replacing Sandy's fellow Texan native and friend, Tommy Tune.
After living in Los Angeles, Sandy Duncan and Don Correia moved back to New York City in 1996. Sandy Duncan has continued to tread the boards on stage on Broadway and elsewhere, including voice roles on two My Little Pony television series (1984 and 1986-1987).
Next came a 4-year turn as Sandy Hogan on The Hogan Family (1987-1991). Sandy Duncan played the sister to airline pilot brother Michael Hogan (Josh Taylor) and aunt to teenager David Hogan (Jason Bateman).
Since entering her 50+ years in 1996, Sandy Duncan has appeared in two films, most recently Never Again (2001), However, most of her work in the years since then have been on stage, on and off Broadway, including starring as Roxie Hart on Broadway in Chicago (1999), touring with Anything Goes (2002), a traveling production of The King and I (2004), No, No Nanette (2008), and many others. Below, Sandy Duncan and Don Correia performing 10 Cents a Dance in a 1976 TV special.
Sandy Duncan became a senior citizen in 2011 and since becoming a new senior, has been most recently seen on television in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2014). She played senior citizen "Miss Daisy" on stage in a North Carolina production of Driving Miss Daisy that same year.
Duncan has not yet retired; she briefly took on the role of Madame Du Maurier in Finding Neverland on Broadway in February 2016, leaving the role after 5 days. Although she's now a septuagenarian senior citizen, Sandy Duncan looks years younger and her smile is undiminished.
Happy 70th Birthday, Sandy Duncan!
Farewell, John Glenn
Celebrating Seniors - Frankie Valli Turns 82
January 28th Birthdays
Boomer TV Trivia: Mash
Canada's Aging Population Faces Epidemic of Vision Loss
Celebrating Seniors - Diana Muldaur Is 78
Rustic Russell November 29th, 2017 at 11:50am
Hi Sandy... so glad to you are still doing what you have always loved . Im now living in the Waco area ,after movingvhere when i retired from apt management....
Dan Smith November 10th, 2017 at 5:45am
Is she the owner of Duncan Donuts? : l
Queen Graves September 1st, 2017 at 5:20pm
Im so happy to know that you are well. ive enjoyed you over the years and you are still beautiful.
Yaphett Pruitt July 13th, 2017 at 9:43pm
Sandy Duncan was our "Peter Pan ". My wife and I reminisced on those days and remembered the magic! We will love Ms. Duncan forever, best wishes and birthday blessings!
Tricia A. Vaught January 8th, 2017 at 10:01pm
dear sandy, i was born Tricia A. Beall, I have been doing reasearch on Harold L Beall and Raymond Howes.
I was told that Ray Duncan could help me with my research however: when I was looking him up I found out that he had passed away. I am trying to find out if the duncans"s are realated to the Tummins, Bealls or the Howes. I would appreciate if you have any info on this at all.
Thanking you in advance for your time. happy upcoming birthday
Tricia A. Beall, Sloan, Vaught
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AC/DC’s Phil Rudd Has Sold His Waterfront Mansion for $2.7 Million
Oliver Road Estate Agents
Phil Rudd of AC/DC is off-loading his home in Otumoetai, New Zealand. He's asking 4.1 million New Zealand Dollars (NZD), which translates to $2.75 million in the U.S.
3/6/19 UPDATE: New Zealand's Stuff is reporting that Rudd has sold the property for just under the asking price, 4 million NZD (2.7 million USD).
In a listing that calls the property "one of the most exciting opportunities to hit the Bay of Plenty market in recent years," we learn that his property consists of two apartments that he uses as one residence. Combined, they have six bedrooms, five bathrooms, two kitchens and a five-car garage. The asking price is for both units, although they can be purchased separately, with the first floor going for $1.95 million NZD ($1.31 million US) and the second going for $2.35 million ($1.58 million US).
The building is walled-off and gated for privacy, and also features a swimming pool as well as views of Mount Maunganui, Tauranga Harbour, Matakana Island. While the agent, Cameron Macneil of Oliver Road, doesn't directly state that Rudd lives there, he gives a few hints, referencing the songs "Highway to Hell," "Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be" and "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" in the listings.
Rudd's house made news in 2015 when the drummer was sentenced to eight months of home detention after pleading guilty to counts of drug possession and threatening to kill a former employee the previous November. Less than two weeks into his sentence, he was charged with breaching the conditions of his sentence by possessing or consuming alcohol on the premises.
Those legal problems came as his band was planning to release their most recent album, 2014's Rock or Bust. While AC/DC never issued a statement that said that Rudd was out of the band, they toured with Chris Slade, who was their drummer from 1989-94. In August, Rudd and Brian Johnson were photographed outside a Vancouver recording studio, which helped spawn rumors that AC/DC were working on a new album.
Watch a Walkthrough Video of Phil Rudd's House
Next: See More Rock Star Homes
Source: AC/DC’s Phil Rudd Has Sold His Waterfront Mansion for $2.7 Million
Filed Under: AC/DC, phil rudd
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Avril Lavigne Keeps Her "Head Above Water" In Strong New Song
The singer returns with a spiritual single
Michael Cerio
© PictureGroup
Strong and spiritual, it's the return of Avril Lavigne.
After weeks of teasing, we finally get to hear new music for the "Complicated" singer. The song is called "Head Above Water".
On the piano ballad, Lavigne asks for help from a higher power, hoping to make it through the struggles. "God keep my head above water" she sings. "Don't let me drown, it gets harder."
Related: Avril Lavigne Is Teasing A New Music Video
In dynamic fashion, the singer sounds equal parts powerful and vulnerable, summoning the strength to overcome her challenges. For Lavigne that challenge has been her battle with Lyme disease.
In a statement Avril opens up about the writing of "Head Above Water", saying "“I thought I was dying, and I had accepted that I was going to die. My mom laid with me in bed and held me. I felt like I was drowning. Under my breath, I prayed ‘God, please help to keep my head above the water.’ In that moment, the song writing of this album began. It was like I tapped into something. It was a very spiritual experience. Lyrics flooded through me from that point on.”
Along with the release of the single, the Avril Lavigne Foundation has launched an initiative to raise money to benefit those dealing with Lyme disease. You can join her fight here.
From what we understand, Avril is also putting the finishing touches on a new album. Last month she also released some behind-the-scenes photos from an upcoming music video.
Welcome back Avril, we're so happy you're here.
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Early look at Windows 10 on the new Retina MacBook says it runs better than OS X
- May. 15th 2015 6:22 am PT
One of the first people to try Windows 10 on the new Retina MacBook says that it actually runs more smoothly than OS X. The comment was made by Computer Science major Alex King, who tried upgrading his Boot Camp installation of Windows 8.1 to the preview of Windows 10.
Here’s the real kicker: it’s fast. It’s smooth. It renders at 60FPS unless you have a lot going on. It’s unequivocally better than performance on OS X, further leading me to believe that Apple really needs to overhaul how animations are done. Even when I turn Transparency off in OS X, Mission Control isn’t completely smooth. Here, even after some Aero Glass transparency has been added in, everything is smooth. It’s remarkable, and it makes me believe in the 12-inch MacBook more than ever before.
If you’re fortunate enough to have taken delivery of your own Retina MacBook and want to try the experiment for yourself, be prepared for a few glitches along the way. King said that not all of the Boot Camp drivers automatically installed, there’s no Bluetooth support and some Windows apps (like Steam) look blurry because they don’t support the full resolution of the Retina display. But overall, the experience sounds like a good one.
If you’re still not sure whether you’re the target market for the new lower-powered, ultra-portable machine, you can check out our own in-depth review and one-month-in video of just what it can and can’t do.
Apple’s Mac lineup consists of MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac Pro, and Mac Mini. The Mac runs macOS for its operating system.
Officially unveiled in September 2014, Windows 10 is the latest of Microsoft's desktop operating systems based off the Windows NT lineage.
Boot Camp Tech Industry Microsoft Windows 12-inch MacBook Retina MacBook
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First Amendment Protections for Adjuncts and the Seventh Court of Appeals
Recently a federal court of appeals found that an adjunct professor in Illinois did have the right to sue for wrongful termination; it was her contention that the First Amendment protected her right to criticize her employer publicly. What are the implications of this decision for Colorado’s adjuncts? Following is a letter written from Don Eron, member of the Colorado Conference executive committee, as well as national AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, to all participants on the COCAL (Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor) adjunct listserv (adj-l).
Vanessa has asked that I weigh in on the recent Seventh Federal Court of Appeals decision regarding Robin Meade’s lawsuit against Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois. Vanessa, Jack and others have suggested that the long-term implications of the decision are unclear and, at least at this point, a note of cautious optimism might be the best response. I agree. Specifically, I think that some of the press coverage has overstated the breadth of the court’s finding regarding First Amendment protections for adjunct speech. There are also questions about the decision’s impact on adjunct eligibility for unemployment compensation. Still, the news from this decision is very good, and there’s already much that adjunct activists can put to use.
In advance, please pardon the length of this missive. But I would like to note that this weekend I attended the AAUP’s Committee A meeting, where we discussed the court of appeals’ decision. Although these impressions are my own, I think that they are generally consistent with those of the AAUP legal staff.
To summarize the case: Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois fired Robin Meade, an adjunct and union activist, explicitly for criticisms made in a letter she wrote in her capacity as head of the adjunct union. Meade sued Moraine Valley in district court. The district court threw out Meade’s lawsuit because they found that she had no legal ground on which to contest her dismissal. Meade appealed to the Seventh Federal Court of Appeals, which was obliged to interpret the evidence in ways most favorable to Meade.
On that basis, the appeals court found that Meade had two legitimate legal claims. First, that the letter she wrote in her capacity as a union official–a letter critical of college policies regarding adjuncts–was protected by the first amendment because it addressed an issue of public concern. Second, that a letter of agreement that Moraine Valley Community College had sent to Meade, tentatively indicating her course assignments for the fall semester of 2013, implied a property interest that entitled Meade to due process protections. Having found that Meade has grounds for a lawsuit, the appeals court has now tossed the case back to the district court to hear the suit.
The First Amendment implications of this decision are welcome, but narrower than some of the press coverage has suggested. First Amendment protections for public employees are generally guided by the Supreme Court’s 2006 Garcetti ruling, which determined, essentially, that public employees have no first amendment protections for speech made “pursuant to their official duties.” However, Moraine Valley conceded that they fired Meade for speech made in her capacity as head of her adjunct union, which–all sides agreed–was not among her official duties as an adjunct instructor. Thus, the court applied the Supreme Court’s far more liberal 1968 Pickering decision to determine Meade’s First Amendment rights. The court did not comment on what they might have ruled had Garcetti been applicable—if, for example, Moraine Valley had fired Meade because they didn’t like comments she’d made at a faculty meeting. In other words, this decision says nothing about First Amendment protections for speech made by adjuncts in the course of performing their job responsibilities. What it does suggest, however, is that activists who are involved in the leadership of their unions or AAUP advocacy chapters or other adjunct organizations have considerable protection for speech made when representing those organizations. If you are not already actively engaged in an organization that represents adjunct interests, please join in the fun.
Other news from the decision is mostly good. The appeals court decision rousingly characterizes the adjunct crisis as a national problem, and the working conditions of adjuncts as a matter of public concern. While this finding may be self-evident to anyone reading this post, it certainly wasn’t apparent to the district court. This lower court didn’t fathom a connection between adjunct working conditions and student learning conditions, and found that Robin Meade’s criticisms were a matter of “private griping” rather than public concern because, as an adjunct, she was personally affected by the policies of the college. In their decision, the upper court found the district court reasoning (or myopia) to be almost incomprehensible. As activists, we can now use the powerful Seventh Court of Appeals decision to validate one of our central arguments. From my own vantage point, I can say that when I meet with administrators, legislators, or lobbyists to advance our Colorado initiatives, my argument—that the desire of higher education administrations for maximum flexibility over their workforce has a corrosive impact on the educational product—is often met with skepticism. This decision will help.
The decision is also significant for the finding that the “spare” piece of paper Moraine Valley CC sent Robin Meade before the fall semester of 2013 indicating (with many qualifications) her class schedule, and also furnishing a beginning and end date, constituted a binding employment contract for the fall semester. In effect, the letter gave her property rights that superseded any presumptions of at-will employment (despite that Illinois is an at will state and that Moraine Valley’s CBC agreement stipulates that all adjuncts are to be employed at-will). As a practical matter this means that, for the duration of that semester, Meade should not have been fired without access to due process dismissal procedures. More generally, it may suggest that adjuncts are no longer to be considered at will employees as long as they receive something in writing that confirms class assignments and states a beginning and end date.
While this implies some degree of job security that many adjuncts have not enjoyed, as Maria and others have observed colleges can find ways around it, if they wish to. For example, if classes don’t “make,” the contract would no longer be valid. Furthermore, as the appeals court explicitly states, had Moraine Valley wished to legally dismiss Meade, they could simply have waited until the end of the fall semester and then advised Meade that there were no courses available for the spring term. All that notwithstanding, the court’s recognition that a written notification of class assignments that almost all adjuncts receive but that almost no one has considered to have legal validity, might now be considered to be a binding contract replete with property rights for adjunct teachers, is an exciting step in the right direction.
As for the possible negative consequence, it may be (as some have suggested) that the viability of the contract constitutes a reasonable assurance of employment, and therefore it might interfere with one’s case for unemployment compensation between sessions. That will need to be sorted out, obviously, but there are positive laws in some jurisdictions. In California, for example, it’s doubtful that Meade’s “spare” piece of paper would provide a reasonable expectation when classes that do not fill can be cancelled or when full-timers who want or need classes can take them away from adjuncts. If the Seventh Court of Appeals decision becomes the precedent that I hope it will, for all the good reasons, it will be necessary for us to prioritize the issue of unemployment compensation even more than we have.
On a final note, in Colorado we have found that attorneys seldom are willing take on cases involving adjunct termination–and not only because the laws tend not to favor part-time employees. Generally, an adjunct cannot afford to pay for a lawsuit. Nor do adjuncts usually earn enough money to make it worthwhile for attorneys to take on their cases on a contingency basis. Thanks to Robin Meade (who should be on this list if she is not) and her lawyers for pressing her case, and best wishes for a successful outcome as her suit has now been tossed back to district court.
Don Eron
← Campus Equity Week Observed at Front Range and Red Rocks Community Colleges
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Pete Buttigieg shares his plan to win Democratic nomination for president
"Nightline" spoke to Buttigieg about responding to a police shooting of a black father in South Bend, Indiana, and what he thinks has made him a top contender in a field of over two dozen candidates.
Transcript for Pete Buttigieg shares his plan to win Democratic nomination for president
Reporter: Pete buttigieg is not your typical presidential candidate. He plays impromptu guitar and piano gigs and speaks seven languages, including arabic. Of course his is better than mine. You're good. Reporter: He's a Rhoads scholar who served as a naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan and the mayor of South Bend, Indiana for the past seven years. So the whole downtown is undergoing this renaissance that we're trying to keep balanced with the need to invest in the neighborhoods. Reporter: At 37 years old, a ma lynnial, he has a strength, like his name. Now winking, an inside joke among his supporters and his sexual orientation, the openly-gay politician puts it on center stage. Realistically, do you think this country is ready for a gay president? There's only one way to find out. It's simple enough to put on a bumper sticker. Freedom, security and democracy. Reporter: Relatively unknown when he announced, he quickly became a buzzy candidate for the nomination. We've been able to go from total on security to leading the entire democratic field in fund raising and vaulting to the top five among the candidates. Reporter: Our visit comes at a pivotal time for buttigieg who's been running or his record as mayor. In recent weeks, that record called into question over allegations he hasn't done enough for his city's African-American community. I have black supporters and black critics in this community. But in the end of the day, I wouldn't have gotten reelected in this community without black support. Reporter: But his support among African members dipped. A South Bend police officer shot and killed a suspect Sunday morning. Reporter: Could now be at a new low following the June 6th shooting of Eric Logan by a white police officer who alleges Logan approached him with a knife and ignored several orders to drop it. If you're saying it's not good enough. You're right. Reporter: The city has provided no corroboration of those claims to the public. The story that was reported by the police department, it just didn't add up to a lot of residents here. He wasn't known to be somebody who would carry a knife. He wasn't known to be someone who would challenge the police. Reporter: This in a city whose population is 25% African-American, roughly 35% living in poverty. He held a town hall in south Bend, residents confronted him. I aim raising a 7-year-old grandson that when he sees the police he is afraid. That is not what's supposed to happen in America, in Indiana in 2019. Reporter: The issue becoming a flash point in the first democratic debate on NBC. The police force in south Bend is now 6% black in a city that is 26% black. Why has that not improved over your two terms as mayor? Because I couldn't get it done. Reporter: Why did you respond Because it was the truth. It may or may not be good politics, but I think if I'm going to talk proudly of all the achievements we've made we have to talk about where we've fallen short. That's the policy and someone died. Reporter: What was going through your mind when you began to answer that and got stumped. I wasn't stumped. Reporter: You were quiet. I was. Sometimes the better part of valor is restraint. Reporter: What actually gets through the veneer and into your gizzards? One of the reasons I've learned to be very disciplined in how I speak and how I act is because I'm really passionate about the work that I do and about the country we live in. So I try, I try to make sure that I don't get carried off into saying or doing something I'd regret of. Reporter: What hurts you? Well, it hurts me to see people suffer. It hurts me to confront the possibility that that's being made worse by something that I'm the things that bother me most are the moments when I realize I might have done something differently. Reporter: Today butte general announcing his Douglass plan in part through criminal justice reform and investing in black America. When black Americans experience true freedom and justice every American is better off. Reporter: Butte general's teacher and supporter says she's always known him to face a challenge head on. One thing about Peter is he continues to learn. He will take someone's suggestion and explore it to see if there's a better way of doing something. He will always reevaluate, and he is not going to abandon any project, because if it is good for the people and going to improve their lives, that's what it's about. Reporter: Buttigieg was running for his second term as mayor when he maid the risky decision to come out. People were more interested in the fact that the city was coming back in the way that I had served this community. I believe the same will happen at the national level. Today we're going to introduce the mayor. It is important to him that his city thrive and reach its potential. More importantly, I think the city did not believe in itself before Peter became mayor of South Bend. That was his first task. How do you get the city to believe in itself again? And the city does believe in itself. Reporter: As mayor, he's distinguished himself by using technology and data to governor. The self-avowed technology junky has caught silicon valley's attention. A chunk of buttigieg's last round of fund raising came from big tech. Is breaking up some of the big tech companies something you would support? Potentially. I think we see evidence of anti-competitive behavior, and the federal trade commission needs to deal with that. I don't think candidates or presidents need to think about companies to break up. Reporter: He is outraising bank-busting $25 million just in the past three months. ABC news' poll has him tied for fifth place. There's something about our message that matters. And I think what it is is people are ready for something different. Reporter: Do you think you're ready to be president right now? And if so why? I didn't think I would run for president if I didn't think I was ready. What we need now is leadership that can recognize the accelerating pace of change. If we're not dealing with the causes we're never going to be able to deal with the symptoms. What we need is a president who looks into the future and recognizes what implications those changes will play out across my lifetime have for the present, the decisions we're making right now. Reporter: If you don't get the nomination, what do you do? My plan is to win. Reporter: For "Nightline," I'm Matt Gutman in South Bend, Next, the football player
Pete Buttigieg on becoming a viable contender in the 2020 Democratic field
The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who rocketed to the national stage as the youngest candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary field, sat down with ABC News' Matt Gutman for "Nightline."
Buttigieg addresses racial injustice, Gillibrand begins 'Trump Broken Promises Tour'
2020 presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced new plans to address systemic racial injustice, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand hits the road for a two-day "Trump Broken Promises Tour."
Now Playing: Pete Buttigieg on becoming a viable contender in the 2020 Democratic field
Now Playing: Buttigieg addresses racial injustice, Gillibrand begins 'Trump Broken Promises Tour'
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Sarah Stewart
Writer and Editor in Edinburgh, United Kingdom
I'm a writer and editor based in Edinburgh.
My services include copywriting, website content, print and web editing, and journalism/features commissions.
Clients I have worked for/with include The Scottish Poetry Library, Eskimo Design, BBC Scotland, Faber & Faber, IPC Media, The Scottish Government, Veolia UK and the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.
As a writer, my bylines include The Guardian, The Herald, Time Out and The List.
As a book editor, I've worked for Scholastic Children's Books, Floris Books, Canongate, Black & White and Faber & Faber.
I'm the director of The Lighthouse Children's Literary Consultancy which gives editorial feedback and advice to new authors.
I'm the author of three children's books, Elspeth Hart and the School for Show-offs Elspeth Hart and the Perilous Voyage, and Elspeth Hart and the Magnificent Rescue. I'm happy to visit schools or do creative writing workshops.
I write poetry too, and some of my work can be found here: http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poets/sarah-stewart
St. Andrews University
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Why definitions? Words are extremely powerful, and dictionaries are always very precise about what vocabulary they use in their definitions. Mendacity is a word rarely used today in common practice. Before going through the definitions, ask the group what they think mendacity means. Once they are on the right track, then go through the definitions of “mendacity,” “lie,” and “to lie” and discuss the differences.
The group may end up with the conclusion that the concept of a lie is very complex, and just as difficult to grasp as the concept of the truth. For example, in order for something to be a lie, must there be intent to mislead or deceive behind the statement, or must someone else simply believe the statement to be untrue, regardless of intent?
Mendacity is a habit that many people fall into at some point in their life, whether the lies are small or large. Ultimately a government will always be dependent upon its people. Therefore, it is impossible that a government will not wrestle with its own honesty, just as people do. As citizens it is our duty to decide how far mendacity in government can go.
Is it ever acceptable for a government to be dishonest? Are there times when a government must be secretive or blur the truth? How truthful, in general, do the group members believe the government is or has been throughout history? All of these are very large issues, which will be discussed throughout this guide. After the group discussion on the given definitions, have the group create their own definition for mendacity as it applies to the government. (Definitions taken from Merriam-Webster Online.)
n. The quality or state of being mendacious. (Mendacious is an adjective defined as “given to or characterized by deception or falsehood or divergence from absolute truth.”)
n. an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive
n. an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker
n. something that misleads or deceives
n. a charge of lying
To lie
v. to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive 2. to create a false or misleading impression
Quotations help to point out values that are important to American society, or in this case, to point out the habits which fall short of our aspirations. The following collection of quotes indicates that the issue of mendacity has long been a part of our country’s dialogue on government. Many other quotes can be found by encouraging group members to explore the Internet. Ask the group to discuss the relationship of mendacity and democracy in light of these quotes.
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.” – Abraham Lincoln
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Winston Churchill
“One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.” –Nietzsche
“The naked truth is always better than the best dressed lie.” – Ann Landers
“A lie cannot live.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
How does one decide what an American value might be? The soundest approach is by using core historical documents. Materials ingrained into American culture include the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution, as well as famous speeches, Supreme Court cases, and other sources documenting events or ideas from American history.
Before moving on to the historical sources and study questions listed here, consider starting a group discussion by asking how the group might identify an American “value.” Have the group make a list of what it considers to be “American habits” that are not values and why. See if these habits or sources they come up with are similar to those listed in these study guides.
George Washington and the Cherry Tree
Link to story at Apples4theteacher.com
Many people look to religion or other belief systems for anecdotes or rules concerning lying. However, American folklore also addresses dishonesty – nowhere more famously than in the story found in “The Life of George Washington” by M.L. Weems. In this work, Weems provides the classic story about George Washington and the cherry tree. This was only an anecdote to help flesh out Washington’s childhood and demonstrate his honesty, but because of the importance surrounding our first president, it has thrived as a fable for American morality. It is unlikely that the group members will even need the link above to recall the story. Have the group describe the fable, and where they have heard it. Then move on to the following questions.
Why is it important that George Washington states that he “cannot tell a lie” in the story? Is it simply a way to tell children that they should not be dishonest, or is it also intentionally portraying Washington as an extremely honest person? If the latter, does that mean that American society requires that a president be an honest man? George Washington, after all, has become the symbol for the presidency. Do any group members feel that there are times when a president must be less than completely honest? Or do they see the idea as entirely unacceptable? If not, have them describe situations where they feel a president might have to be less than straight-forward with citizens.
The story finishes with the father praising Washington’s honesty: “My son, that you should be afraid to tell; the truth is more to me than a thousand trees! Yes— though they were blossomed with silver and had leaves of the purest gold!” This is the final message in this American fable — that honesty is a trait that is valued by Americans. Have the group members try to brainstorm other American fables and stories where the message holds honesty as a virtue, or have them browse the Internet to search for more. With honesty as the key message to so many tales, it becomes clearer that honesty is a central value in America and throughout most of the world for ethics and morality. Ask the group whether the government should be held to the same standards as normal citizens, or should special rules apply? Why or why not?
The story by Weems is just that — a story. The incident with the cherry tree reportedly never occurred in the life of George Washington. Ironically, the group is exploring a story about honesty that is untrue. Ask the group about their thoughts on this. Is this fable an example of mendacity? Is it a situation where mendacity is used for a good reason? Does its fictional nature hurt the original purpose of the story? Why or why not?
Link to text at the National Archives Online
Before addressing some of the core historical documents and how they relate to mendacity, it is important to note that in many ways the American value “accountability” can be paired with the American habit “mendacity.” Is it possible for a government to be accountable if it is dishonest? If the group has already gone over the accountability guide, it can look back on that discussion for insight into this mendacity guide.
In the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson states: “-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This brings up an interesting point. According to the Declaration signers, the government must acknowledge that it rules only with the “consent of the governed.” If our society values honesty and frowns upon mendacity, is it possible that a government can be dishonest and still have the consent of those they govern? Or is it necessary instead for citizens to hold a mendacious or dishonest government accountable? How do the group members feel? They are citizens themselves; do they believe that their “consent” is present without disclosure? Why or why not? Do they believe they have the power to hold the government accountable? Why or why not?
The Declaration of Independence delivers a lengthy list of grievances to the English sovereign. However, Jefferson does not point out a single act of dishonesty or deceit in this list of grievances. Have the group members discuss this absence. It is possible that the king was exceedingly honest, but more than likely there is a different reason. Perhaps Jefferson did not believe that dishonesty was something that citizens must prohibit in their leaders, or saw it as simply a habit that any government must occasionally embrace. On the other hand, could all of these grievances have dishonesty behind them in some way? By abusing the power that Jefferson feels only the citizens can grant, was the king being inherently dishonest?
The United States Constitution
Link to text at the National Archives Online (for the Constitution click on ‘read transcript’)
When discussing the Constitution in relation to mendacity, group members should have the opportunity to cross-reference to the accountability guide. That guide allows group members to review articles of the Constitution that explicitly describe many of the powers and limitations of the government. When discussing mendacity, have the group members look over and think about these limitations of power. Consider starting a discussion about why the Constitution does not directly address the honesty of the branches of the government. Explore the potential reasons why this is so.
Honesty is central to the moral fabric of America and the world, so perhaps the framers of the Constitution felt it was unnecessary to list any rules regarding what they believe it to be. On the other hand, perhaps the framers were just being pragmatic. Lies vary greatly in degree, and it would also be nearly impossible for a law on honesty to be enforced, except in very specific situations (such as perjury). Or perhaps the issue was indirectly addressed through the checks and balances put in place between different branches of government. Could any government live up to the Constitution if it was regularly mendacious? Encourage the group to brainstorm and discuss many perspectives.
At some point in the discussion, the group may have noted that, at points, the Constitution is vague or imprecise. If not, you might consider pointing this out. How has this imprecision provided flexibility to adapt over time? Ask the group members to discuss whether that has been beneficial to the country, or not? Why? For example, the Constitution states what powers the Supreme Court may have, but does not specify every detail of how a trial before the court will go. It gives the president the power to appoint people in his agencies and bureaus, but does not specify what those should be, or how they should behave (other than they are there to enforce and protect the laws and the Constitution). How does the group feel about this, especially as it relates to accountability and dishonesty?
Do the group members differentiate secrecy from dishonesty? Can there be secrecy without dishonesty? If the government is secretive for reasons of national security or privacy, does that necessarily mean it is being dishonest? The interaction of these concepts can result in a very practical and thought-provoking dialogue concerning the government.
Mendacity continues to be a focal point of our national dialogue. Nearly every day issues related to mendacity are reported, debated, and discussed in the media and government.
As a group, go through a stack of newspapers or magazines, or browse the Internet and have group members point out articles that reflect concerns they have about mendacity. Discuss these in the context of the ideas and concepts already pointed out from the definitions and historical sources. Ask group members how their views were shaped by their own experiences with mendacity. Ask them to consider if the article or report is promoting a particular point of view. What is being reported and what is not? Why? What additional information would the group like to have?
The following are some examples of mendacity issues that are often in the news to help begin discussion.
Sunshine Laws
Links to articles at Jacksonville Business Journal and CBS News, and to info at the Missouri Attorney General’s Office .
Sunshine Laws, or Freedom of Information Acts, are laws designed to ensure that governments make their meetings and records open to citizens. These laws affect everyday issues, as well as large ones. In the first article, published prior to the 2000 election, it states: “Open records let you find out such things as whether the lake is clean enough for swimming, if there’s been a leak at a nuclear power plant, how many times guns are found at school, how much money a football coach earns at a public university, who owns the empty lot that could become a neighborhood playground.” The second article indicates how the application of these laws may become hotly contested in situations such as the 2000 presidential election.
In Missouri, the law is very clear: “It is the public policy of this state that meetings, records, votes, actions, and deliberations of public governmental bodies be open to the public discourse unless otherwise provided by law.” How much transparency does the group believe there should be in the government? Why?
Have group members discuss the benefits of state laws such as these and how they relate to the concepts of “mendacity” and “accountability.” For example, with Sunshine Laws it becomes not only more difficult for a government to mislead its citizens (since all of the records are there) but it also allows citizens to hold government officials accountable for any decisions they have made (since all of the information is in theory readily available).
In Sunshine Laws openness is the value, and without the option of privately engaging in public business, officials are not given the option of secrecy. After discussing how Sunshine Laws relate to mendacity and accountability, have the group members browse the Internet or a public library to find out different kinds of information available to them due to Sunshine Laws. Consider having them share some specific examples.
Do Sunshine Laws ever operate to the detriment of the public? How and why?
Political Spin
In the 2004 Presidential Election, “political spin” was a hotly-debated issue. For example, after debates, commentators would muse on how the candidates’ election managers would “spin” the results. In order to understand political spin, let’s look at two definitions from Merriam-Webster Online. Spin, the verb, is defined as (3b): “to evolve, express, or fabricate by processes of mind or imagination.” Spin, the noun, is defined as (4): “a special point of view, emphasis, or interpretation.” Therefore, political spin can be defined as media or government figures taking a subject and shaping it to reflect a special point of view or emphasis.”
Have the group members think back on the definitions for lying. Is the intent of spin to mislead? If so, is it any different than lying? How? Or is it only an emphasis on a particular view over another? When does “spin” go too far?
There is such a prevalence of spin in the media and government today that there are fact-checking organizations dedicated to it. For example, have the group members visit the website: http://www.factcheck.org. Take a look at the first few articles, and contrast the group’s opinion on the issues discussed with the actual facts given on this website. Ask the group members how they feel about the gap between opinion and facts. Do they consider “spin” to be mendacity? Have them discuss the implications of spin.
A good discussion starter might be to ask the group if spin misleads the public. If so, what are the consequences of a body of citizens that are misinformed about their own government or country? Can they make decisions as responsible citizens? Does “spin” cause citizens to grow apathetic toward the political process? Why or why not? What suggestion does the group have for improving public discourse and limiting the prevalence of “spin?”
Clinton and Bush
Perhaps one of the easiest ways to offend someone is to call him a liar, to accuse him of mendacity. Two presidents since Nixon, both in office for two terms, have earned their fair share of accusations of mendacity. Bill Clinton was accused of perjury before a grand jury in the Monica Lewinksy scandal. George W. Bush and his administration have been accused of misleading the public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and their motives for going to war there. There is a wealth of information on both issues available on the Internet. Have the group members explore news websites – such as network websites, or The New York Times and The Washington Post .
Any of these will have articles on these issues in their archives, and there are two important questions to focus on when discussing them with the group: 1) What values do these accusations in each context reveal? Mendacity is at the heart of both of these issues; focus the discussion on how mendacity was related to each issue. 2) What concerns were raised with respect to how this dishonesty affected the country as a whole?
Both of these issues can be highly partisan, and thus if discussed it is important to discuss them both. As citizens, we do not always have the opportunity to have a mediated environment for exploring partisan issues. By focusing the group on the underlying values identified and concerns raised, you can, as a group leader, help maintain a dialogue and avoid partisan debate.
Below are links to websites of organizations that deal with mendacity.
Open the Government.org
The Mendacity Index (Washington Monthly Opinion)
Harry Frankfurt’s Book (On Bullsh*t)
Choose the Field
You might want to use this guide with the guide “Accountability … is an American Value.” The following are some resources that address accountability.
The Government Accountability Office
GAP – Government Accountability Project
Government Accountability – George Mason University
OMB Watch
In order to fully understand issues surrounding government accountability and mendacity, it is also important that the group members understand the system of checks and balances in the United States government. Below are some links to various guides that can help explain how the system works. Also, now would be a good time to review our Internet research guide in our Other Resources page on the website.
Boston Globe Editorial
USconstitution.net
Factmonster.com
Cyber Learning
Comments Off on Mendacity . . . is NOT an American Value®
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The Last Muster
At the time of the invention of photography in 1839, America’s aged Revolutionary generation was quickly passing away. Historians and photographers sought to capture the images and stories of veterans and those who lived through that momentous period. Author Maureen Taylor’s book, The Last Muster: Images of the Revolutionary War Generation, complied over fifty extant nineteenth-century photographs and shares known biographical information for each person.
“In the mid nineteenth-century, Benson Lossing and the Reverend Elias Hillard retold the history of the American Revolution, Lossing in a travelogue and Hillard in a series of interviews with the survivors of the conflict. Both were driven to document the rapidly disappearing physical and personal histories of the beginnings of this country. Lossing wrote in his preface, “The story of the American Revolution has been well and often told, and yet the most careless observer of the popular mind may perceive that a large proportion of our people are but little instructed in many of the essential details of that event, so important for every intelligent citizen to learn…”
“A Pension Office report published in the December 10, 1852, New York Times outlined the number of men and women who received support under various acts and how many were still on the rolls. The Pension Office mentioned that the total number of soldiers who received pensions under the Acts of 1818, 1828, and 1832 originally numbered more than 5,500. By 1852, there were reportedly 1,876 still on the rolls…”
“After reviewing Lossing’s and Hillard’s work, I wondered if it was possible to use photographic and documentary evidence to re-create the first generation of Americans – those men, women, and children bound together by having lived during the Revolutionary War. I realized it was conceivable that there were pictures – daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, ferrotypes, and even paper photographs of members of that generation who lived into the age of photography. With most born in the 1760’s these hardy men and women would have been at least eighty to one hundred years of age by the time Louis Daguerre took his first daguerreotype in 1839. The focus of this project on photographs (or on paintings based on daguerreotypes) was deliberate. There are many paintings of that generation, but a photograph elicits a different response from that of viewing a painting. There is a sense of connection in a photographic portrait that extends across the centuries."
Read the Revolution is published biweekly by the Museum of the American Revolution to inspire learning about the history of the American Revolution and its ongoing relevance.
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Documentation and Additional Reading
Erdogan’s Plan to Raise a ‘Pious Generation’ Divides Parents in Turkey, by Carlotta Gall
Canada to Legalize Recreational Marijuana Use in Mid-October, by Paul Vieira
Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal, by Dan Bilefsky and Catherine Porter
‘Inappropriate’ Behavior Could Mean a Faux Pas — Or a Crime, by Carina Chocano
Tags: Audio, Canada, Erdogan, Language, Marijuana, Turkey
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It's Monday, June 25, 2018. I'm Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
A modern-day sultan? Examining the the re-election of President Erdogan and the trajectory of Turkey
Most Americans give scant attention to the nation of Turkey considering it geographically far and also far removed culturally. But giving Turkey no attention is a mistake, because Turkey is extremely important and recent events in Turkey point to leading indicators about change elsewhere in the world. But as we're thinking about Turkey and we should think about Turkey, we should think about the meaning of this nation, and its history, and it's context. And understand that there is no way that the United States can be unaffected over the long term about the happenings in Turkey.
The most immediate headline news out of the nation is that president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is been reelected. The importance of this is that he was elected in a snap election that he called, and that his election came on the first ballot, even as he was one among six candidates. Many people around the world, including political observers, had thought that perhaps Erdogan would be defeated, or at the very least that he would be forced into a run off. It turns out that wasn't true. As of early this morning the results appear by almost any measure to give Erdogan a victory, a big victory, a victory that will avoid a run-off.
But in order to understand the meaning of this story, we have to understand that Erdogan himself represents the transformation of one of America's historically most crucial allies. Erdogan came to power in 2002 and 2003, and served between 2003 and 2014 as Turkey's prime minister and head of government. But his ambitions have never been limited to being head of government. He became head of state and since 2015 has been Turkey's president. But in the election yesterday there was also a constitutional revision so that now Erdogan as president is both head of state and head of government. The position of prime minster was effectively removed. This will give Erdogan vast powers over modern Turkey. It will make him very influential in the judicial system, even though at this point he basically already controls the courts. It will also give him unprecedented authority over the legislature. It is coming close to establishing Erdogan as something of an elected autocrat.
In this sense, it's probably the case to say that the closest analog to understanding Erdogan would be Vladimir Putin in Russia. Yes, there is an election and Putin wins, but at the same time the election in Turkey is far more like the election in Russia than similar elections in most of Western Europe or in North America.
But it's also important to understand that modern Turkey emerged out of the ashes of World War I. World War I saw the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It was already crippled given corruption from within and weakness without. But the fall of the Islamic Ottoman Empire gave the opportunity for the emergence of a new, modern, secular Turkey in the early decades of the 20th century. This came primarily under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who was the leader of Turkey in the years between 1923 and 1938. But he became the architect for an entirely new national identity, a national identity that was no longer premised upon the Islamic identity of the Ottoman Empire, but was instead a modern secular identity as Ataturk branded it, bringing Turkey out of the ruins of World War I, into status as a modern nation. But at the same time Ataturk also planted the seeds of what would be a continual battle between Turkey's politicians and the very powerful armed forces.
Over the course of the last several decades, there had been stirrings of a greater influence of Islam within Turkey, but the army has been the primary check upon any kind of religious movement on the part of the nation and its government. At times Turkey has been under the effective rule of military authorities, but it is now clear that in one individual, President Erdogan, most of the national power is now concentrated. Over the course of most recorded human history, this particular land mass has had an unusual strategic importance. It's been important militarily. It's been important economically, and politically as well. To this you have to add the rise and fall of civilizations and the intersection between Christianity and Islam.
The Asian portion of the modern nation of Turkey is often referred to Asia Minor and this should remind Christians that so many of the churches that are identified in the New Testament, including the churches to whom John wrote in the book of Revelation are in Asia Minor. Much of the Apostle Paul's ministry was also in what's now called Asia Minor. Even then it was referred to as Asia. The Roman Emperor Constantine who declared Christianity the state religion of The Roman Empire established a new capital in the east in a city he would name for himself, Constantinople. And it was Constantinople that would fall to the Ottomans, to the Muslim invaders, in the 15th century, leading to a complete revolution in that land mass and in its theological identity.
The fall of Constantinople in the year 1453 spelled the absolute end to The Roman Empire, even as it retreated to the east. And it pointed to The Ottoman Empire as the new player on the scene, and a masterfully important player it turned out to be on the chessboard of human history. But Christians also need to remember that as we think of the Ottoman Empire, we should think of the 16th century, the very century we identify with the Protestant Reformation and in particular with Martin Luther the Reformer. We need to remind ourselves that in to that very important and historically crucial 16th century, we were looking at four very strategic princes or crown heads within Europe and Asia Minor. They included Henry VIII of England, Francis II of France, and of course Charles V, the emperor of The Holy Roman Empire. But to them had to be added Suleiman the Magnificent, the sultan of The Ottoman Empire. If you add Henry VIII, Francis II, Charles V, and Suleiman the Magnificent, you cover most of the land mass of the known world at the time.
In that context, one of the developments to watch is the fact that President Erdogan is now increasingly acting like a sultan, and in Turkey that isn't an accident. It is deliberately hearkening back to a high watermark in the influence of the Ottoman Empire. But the Ottoman Empire was Islamic and modern Turkey is secular, or is it? One of the other most interesting developments related to President Erdogan is the fact that he has been first, rather on the margins, and now more centrally moving Turkey and its government into a more explicitly religious motive engagement. And that religion by no coincidence is Islam.
In the run up to the election in the June 19 edition of The New York Times, Carlotta Gall had a front-page article on the fact that Erdogan has been pointing many schools in Turkey towards the national goal, as he describes it, of raising by the means of public schools, a pious generation. As Gall writes, "The battle over how to shape Turkey's next generation has become a tumultuous issue for President Erdogan, even as the election was looming." And it points out that he has already "Chipped away at Turkey's democratic institutions, purging the courts and civil service of suspected opponents, bringing the media to heel and leaving in place a state of emergency after a failed coup in 2016 that has added a new level of precariousness to the campaign." His opponents according to this article, "fear that his reelection to a newly empowered presidency after constitutional changes, will give Mr. Erdogan almost unchecked authority to push his agenda even further and fundamentally alter Turkish Society."
Now, even at this point there are many Americans who would say, "What does this have to do with us?" And this is where Americans need to be reminded that ever since the year 1952, Turkey has been a member of NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization didn't come out of the ashes of World War I, but rather out of the ruins of World War II. And, as most Americans recognize, with that acronym, N-A-T-O, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a binding agreement between member states that each will come to the aid of another if militarily attacked. Given the Cold War and the face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union and their so called client states, it was understood that this could be a very real possibility and the mutual defense pact of NATO was one of the crucial issues on the western side that cemented a united front. It was extremely important during those decades that Turkey would be a member of NATO.
But when you think about 1952 when Turkey entered NATO in 1951, when the political decisions were made that allowed it to happen, we should remember that both 1951 and 1952, go back to the presidency of Harry S. Truman. That is to say, that out of the immediate trauma and the political context of World War II and the Cold War, it was understood by the west that Turkey was an extremely important bulwark against any southern and westward expansion of the Soviet Union. And furthermore, it cemented the fact that this country that straddles both Europe and Asia would have a western identity. And, as we think about this, we should remind ourselves that one of the unremembered dimensions in most cases, of the Cuban missile crisis is that even though it was not acknowledged at the time, The United States agreed to remove nuclear missiles from the nation of Turkey, even as the Soviet Union removed those missiles from the island nation of Cuba. That wasn't acknowledged at the time, but the important thing is for us to recognize that The United States and our allies had nuclear weapons. In this case, Jupiter missiles installed there in Turkey. By the way, the loss of those missiles was not all that important to the nuclear shield of The United States and the NATO allies, because submarines quickly replaced those land based missiles.
Finally, as we're thinking about these issues in Turkey, it's not just about the schools and it's not just about Turkish culture. It's not just even about Turkey's relationship to NATO. It is about Turkey's increasing involvement in Syria and elsewhere, especially in The Middle East. It's also about the fact that Turkey has now received the first delivery of one of America's most advanced fighter jets, the F-35. Concerns have been raised about the wisdom of Turkey possessing those advanced American jets precisely because Turkey is believed to be in conversation with Russia about buying missile systems. The concern is that even as Russian missile experts could be in Turkey, they could have access to one of America's most strategic weapons.
But this is where Christians also understand that we never escape history. History is always closer than we want to imagine. Both history and theology are bubbling under the surface if we will only see them. The secular media sees the election held yesterday in Turkey as a secular event that just might have religious overtones. Christians looking at the very same headlines understand that history's undertones come with an undertone of very powerful argument and memory. It's not an accident that President Erdogan is acting increasingly like a sultan. It is not an accident that he is looking to a stronger Islamic identity for what has been a secular state. It's not an accident that Turkey is now increasingly involved in the entire region. And it's no accident that the nation we're talking about is occupying what throughout human history has been understood as one of the most strategic land masses on earth.
So, it turns out that even in a digital age, land and location still matter. They always matter. But, one final note before leaving Turkey, even as we think of Erdogan acting increasingly like a sultan, he is also demonstrating what some of the sultans did and that comes down to taking what can only be defined as political hostages. One of them right now is an evangelical Christian pastor by the name of Andrew Brunson. He is being held in what are generally understood to be trumped up charges without an adequate court process, largely because Erdogan is looking for leverage to use in order to incentivize The United States to extradite to Turkey one of those he blames for being behind the attempted coup against him in 2016. It turns out that one of the dangerous old games played by the sultans is now being played by the man who was just yesterday reelected to a five-year term as The President of Turkey.
Canada becomes second nation to legalize marijuana. Will Canadians be satisfied with government-regulated pot?
But next we shift from Turkey to Canada, because last week the Canadian government moved to legalize marijuana, effective in the month of October. This will make Canada the second nation on earth to legalize so called recreational marijuana. It's big news by any account and of course it's very big news for The United States since we're talking about the nation just across our northern border. We're talking about a nation that shares a good deal of the common culture with The United States, but it is also a nation that serves as something of a microcosm of moral change in North America. With Canada, often tracking closer to Western Europe than to The United States on some of these moral trajectories. In this case, it's not so much that Canada's following Europe however, as it is following Uruguay.
In 2014 Uruguay became the first nation, and until the Canadian action, the only nation to nationally legalize so called recreational marijuana. And now Canada becomes number two. It's not often you hear about Canada following Uruguay, but under the leadership of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, fulfilling one of his campaign promises, Canada has now moved quite boldly forward in legalizing marijuana. But one of the most interesting moral dimensions that is revealed in the Canadian action, is that many in Canada are beginning to wonder if the legalization will have the anticipated impact. It's not so much because there's a question as to whether usage levels of marijuana will increase, the question is to whether or not the Canadian people are going to be satisfied with government regulated marijuana.
One of the arguments made by the government is that in regulating and legalizing marijuana, the national government could gain control. Control of usage keeping it out of the hands, it was promised, of teenagers and also it gained control when it comes to quality. In particular making certain there are no pesticides or unwanted ingredients in the cannabis that will be smoked by Canadians or otherwise consumed. But just about every major news source looking at the Canadian action has picked up on the fact that there is a significant kick back, even in Canada, to the idea of consuming government sponsored pot.
As Paul Viera of the Wall Street Journal reported, "The legislation means across Canada adults will be able to purchase non-medicinal marijuana from authorized dealers and possess as much as 1.1 ounces of the drug when in public. Households will also be able to grow as many as four cannabis plants for personal use from seeds or seedlings from a licensed supplier." But here's where we need to watch what happens when a substance like marijuana is often legalized. One of the things that happens is that the black market, against all the promises of the government, simply doesn't disappear. Why? Well for one thing, when you're looking at marijuana you are looking at a symbol of the counter culture and you are also looking at a very generalized unregulated business. It's a huge business to be sure. But there is no assurance whatsoever that the unregulated business will simply disappear and that regulated marijuana will become the norm in Canada. Dan Bilefsky and Catherine Porter reporting for The New York Times put it this way, that proponents of marijuana legalization, "may face an unlikely challenge. Customers who worry that government approved products will take some of the thrill out of pot smoking."
By the way, further evidence of the fact that the black market is unlikely to disappear also appears in this New York Times article. Listen to this paragraph, "Although Canada legalized medical marijuana in 2001 and today patients must order marijuana by mail from producers licensed by the government, hundreds of black market dispensaries have proliferated."
Another interesting moral twist on the story in Canada has to do with the fact that even as the tech sector has appealed to many millennials and their younger siblings, it turns out that the pot industry is following the same pattern. One 21 year old said, "For young entrepreneurs like me, the pot industry feels easier to get into than the tech sector. Besides, we millennials have the know-how when it comes to the pot market. We've all smoked pot." Well that's one of those irrefutable statements, because it's certainly true that given this action by the Canadian government, it's going to be easier to get in the pot business in Canada than to break into the tech sector, because in the tech sector you actually have to know how to do something. Whereas when it comes to the pot sector, all you have to know is how to smoke and then help to sell or otherwise consume marijuana.
In the larger worldview context it is very important to note, as we have previously on the briefing, that the legalization and normalization of marijuana in western nations has tended to follow almost the same trajectory and pattern as the normalization of many LGBT issues as well. It's not that the two issues are necessarily linked, it has to do with the fact that there's a larger moral change taking place in the society that appears to be facilitating both.
Why moral change is almost always accompanied by changes in language
But finally, as we think about language, moral language and we tracked the changes that take place in our moral discourse in this country, we note that moral change is almost always accompanied by linguistic change. One of the most important of these changes is the use of euphemisms. Something was named one thing, and then when you rename it it takes on a new moral understanding, a moral valence. For one thing, if you talked about adultery it appeared that you were talking about something else in moral terms when you called it an affair, or even when you call it extra-marital sex. If you can repackage the relationship as merely hooking up or even using the kind of language popular in the previous generation of having an affair, by use of the euphemism, you attempted to redefine the moral importance of the act simply by changing the word. The words really do matter.
That's what makes an article that appeared yesterday in The New York Times Magazine so interesting, because in the article, Carina Chocano points to a word. A word that's increasingly being used in moral debate. A word that didn't previously have any inherent moral meaning, but is now being used, and I will also add, often used as a euphemism. The word is inappropriate. She begins the article, "Not so long ago, inappropriate described things that were not done, like wearing white after Labor Day or congratulating the bride. It applied," she says, "to minor transgressions against codes of social behavior. These days though, it's an alarm. To hear it used in connection with your name is no doubt to imagine, the heart stopping worst, revelations of shameful behavior, firings and resignations, public loathing and perp walks."
But the most important aspect of this article by Chocano is pointing to the fact that inappropriate isn't really the appropriate category to use here. Inappropriate has previously meant a violation of a social norm, not the violation of a moral principle or rule. She doesn't put it this way, but we will. The use of the word inappropriate is a way of avoiding saying that an act or behavior is wrong. Now it's merely inappropriate. We have noted the kind of apologies that are offered by many public figures who acknowledge that their behavior or relationship was inappropriate. But, inappropriate doesn't carry much moral weight. It is now a substitute word, a word that is used instead of acknowledging the moral importance, or even the moral specificity of the behavior that was, well there's that word again, merely inappropriate.
Chocano puts it this way, saying that describing these acts as "inappropriate does not feel entirely appropriate." It feels she says, "More like a culture wide dodge." Well, it feels like, because it is. Chocano gets to the essence of the issue when she writes, "inappropriate is a broad category. It arranges peccadilloes, technicalities, indiscretions, corruption, toxic harassment and violent crimes on one shelf. Takes a step back and plays dumb." That's really good writing. It's also extremely insightful in moral terms.
She went on to say right now it generally serves to diminish things that are actually much worse than merely inappropriate. But it can also work the other way around. She says there are times when you're more likely to find it in the mouths of authority figures and social superiors clucking at the grave errors of the people around them. A woman's inappropriate clothing, an employee’s inappropriate tone, a comedian's inappropriate jabs at politicians. "The word's vagueness" she says, "has always been a handy way to remind people of their relatively low status. If they can't already tell what's wrong about their behavior, perhaps they are beyond help." That may be true in some work cases, but in the larger culture it's the other direction that's far more significant.
It's using the word inappropriate when we are unwilling to use the word evil, wrong, sinful. At least in its historic context, being found guilty of something inappropriate would lead to mere embarrassment. But of course, being found guilty of doing something immoral should make one feel shameful and guilty. Giving the ultimate example, Chocano points to the fact that calling a crime inappropriate, "makes it seem like a misunderstanding."
As Christians think about how language changes and how those changes reveal deeper moral meaning, we certainly agree with Chocana that the use of the world inappropriate appears to be now more like a culture wide dodge. But at the very least, Christians ought to know it when we see it and call it what it is.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me using the contact form. Follow regular updates on Twitter at @albertmohler.
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The Mother Church
10:00am-11:00am
Private Tour of The Mother Church
Gather at the back of the Extension Auditorium for a private tour of the The Mother Church.
Pre-register by June 7, 2019 (please use the form on this page).
Walking Tour of “Mrs. Eddy’s Boston”
Discover what Boston was like during Mrs. Eddy’s time and see places of interest that were significant in the establishment of Christian Science and the life of Mrs. Eddy. We will meet a tour guide from The Mother Church at 2:30pm in the lobby on the second level of the Westin Copley Place Hotel. We will then proceed to the T to the starting location of the tour. The tour itself is approximately two miles long (not including the walk to and from the T). Individuals are responsible for the cost of the T. Those not wishing to take the T may Lyft/Uber to Park and Tremont on the Common. The tour will start at 3:00pm.
Visit to Mrs. Eddy’s Swampscott and Lynn Homes
10:00am- 2:15pm
Come tour two of Mrs. Eddy’s homes owned by Longyear Museum. Mary Baker Eddy would refer to 23 Paradise Road in Swampscott, Massachusetts, as the “birthplace of Christian Science.” Participants will visit the rented rooms where she was living in 1866 when she experienced the healing through spiritual means alone that would lead to her discovery of Christian Science. They will also tour 8 Broad Street in Lynn, Massachusetts, Mrs. Eddy’s first home of her own. While living at the house in Lynn, she completed the first edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and laid the foundations for the Christian Science movement. This Italianate-style home was practically new when she purchased it in 1875, and it has been restored inside and out to its original look and feel. The buses will also stop by Red Rock where Mrs. Eddy wrote her poem Christ My Refuge.
Fee of $15.00 — lunch. Pre-Payment Required.
Space for this event is limited to 28. Meet in the lobby on the second level of the Westin Copley Place Hotel at 9:45 to board BA vans.
pay $15
Longyear Museum Book Talk & Dessert
Immediately following dinner and tours of the BA, buses will depart from the BA for Longyear Museum at 6:45pm. Hear Author Heather Vogel Frederick, talk about her latest book, Life at 400 Beacon Street. Heather will be sharing some of the inspiring stories of the men and woman who served in Mrs. Eddy’s home from 1908-1910 as well as insights that she gained while doing research for her book. Heather will be adapting her talk to the AOCSN group. After the talk there will be refreshments and the opportunity to view the museum, see some artifacts just for our group, and visit the Museum Shop. Buses depart from Longyear Museum for the Westin at 8:45pm.
Activities Reservation Form
Private Tour of The Mother Church - Sunday, July 7 from 11:15a-12p
Yes, reserve my place
Walking Tour of “Mrs. Eddy’s Boston” - Sunday, July 7 from 2:30p-4:30p
Visit to Mrs. Eddy’s Swampscott and Lynn Homes - Monday, July 8 from 10a-2:15p
Yes, reserve my place. (Payment Required at time of reservation. Please pay after submitting this form via link on the Thank-You page)
Longyear Museum Book Talk & Dessert - Tuesday, July 9 from 5p-8:30p
Activities that can be scheduled with a group or on your own before and after the conference:
Additional Activities at The Mother Church
Tour the first floor of the Christian Science Publishing Society
Take a Plaza Tour
Visit the Mary Baker Eddy Library
Visit the Mapparium
Hear an organ demonstration (not always available)
For more information visit here
Additional Activities at Longyear Museum
• Visit the Longyear Museum and eight historic homes through the New England Area.
• Visit The Mary Baker Memorial in Mount Auburn Cemetery, the first rural, or garden cemetery in the United States, located on the line between Cambridge and Watertown in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, 4 miles west of Boston.
For more information email here
Mary Baker Eddy Library
Click here to download a printable version of the activities.
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History of the Web Timeline Infographic: Celebrating 30 Years of the World Wide Web
Posted March 7, 2019 | March 7, 2019 Author: Nabeena Mali | Categories: Infographic, Mobile Trends | Comments: 22
March 12th 2019 celebrates 30 years of the history of the web. From the first web page to the way humans connect, communicate, spend and live their everyday lives, we take a look at the major events that have shaped our lives over the past 30 years…
1 A Timeline Infographic: Looking Back at the First 30 Years of the World Wide Web
1.1 Share this Image On Your Site
2 The Proposal
3 Just Browsing
4 What Are You Looking For?
5 Getting Social
6 Making the Web Mobile
7 Entertain Me
8 You’re the Product
9 The Future
A Timeline Infographic: Looking Back at the First 30 Years of the World Wide Web
Please include attribution to appinstitute.com with this graphic.
<a href=’https://appinstitute.com/history-of-the-web-infographic’><img src=’https://storage.googleapis.com/sales.appinst.io/2019/03/AppInstitute-30yearsofwww-infographic.jpg’ alt=’History of the Web Timeline Infographic: Celebrating 30 Years of the World Wide Web’ width=’800′ border=’0′></a>
An Infographic Celebrating 30 Years of the World Wide Web
Nowadays it is common for people to use the terms web and internet interchangeably even though they refer to two distinct technologies. The internet is the network that the World Wide Web – or web for short – operates on and has been around in one form or another since the late sixties. The web, on the other hand, has only been online for 28 years, with the idea for the web being 30 years old. It was in March 1989 that Tim Berners-Lee, while working at CERN, that he wrote Information Management: A Proposal, which included “[…] a solution based on a distributed hypertext system”. As Berners-Lee describes it:
Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the internet, multifont text objects, had all been designed already. I just had to put them together. It was a step of generalising, going to a higher level of abstraction, thinking about all the documentation systems out there as being possibly part of a larger imaginary documentation system.
His manager at the time calls it “vague, but exciting”, and encourages him to explore the ideas further, and over the next 18 months he creates many of the tools we still use on the web, including HTTP, HTML, a browser and WYSIWYG editor for web pages, and later the URL structure we’re all familiar with. The first web server went online at CERN in December 1990, but it wasn’t until the following August that Berners-Lee shared details of the web server and the WWW Browser-Editor to newsgroups and published the first publicly accessible web page.
A Timeline Infographic Celebrating 30 Years of the World Wide Web
It is quite acceptable to suggest that since Berners-Lee used tools that had already been created by other people, if he didn’t put it all together to create the web, someone else would have. But we aren’t here to speculate about what the World Wide Web might have been under the guidance of someone else, but to rather celebrate Tim Berners-Lee’s version of it: how it has changed the world, the way in which we look for and share information, and how we communicate with friends, family, and perfect strangers. And one of the first monumental decisions taken in getting us to where we are today was that of releasing the web technology and program code into the public domain early in 1993, making it easier for people to copy, distribute, and make changes. This also made it possible for people to get a better understanding of how the underlying technology worked, so they could go about creating other tools that worked with it.
Whether you’re surfing the web, or just browsing the web, having software that makes the whole process a little easier is important, and the first browser to make the web more accessible to average users was announced and released in 1993.
NCSA Mosaic home page displayed in the NCSA Mosaic browser
It was called Mosaic, and although it was originally designed for Unix operating systems, it also had ports for Microsoft Windows and Classic Mac OS. It used a graphical user interface (GUI) that made it easier to operate and was the first browser to display images inline with text. Unfortunately, one of the original developers, Marc Andreessen, soon left the project for Mosaic Communications Corporation – which would eventually be rebranded as Netscape Communications Corporation. Although it was originally based on the Mosaic browser, Netscape – or Netscape Navigator – rapidly overtook Mosaic, and for a few years was the most popular browser for internet users, and introduced many features still found in browsers today. The team behind Netscape is also credited with giving us JavaScript and SSL, but thanks to a brief browser war with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the Netscape browser no longer exists and is unknown to a younger generation. The browser war that began with Netscape and Internet Explorer (IE) continued well into the new millennium, first with Firefox – an offshoot of Netscape – pitted against IE, and then Google’s own Chrome browser, which was first released in 2008, and has been the dominant browser since mid-2012.
The browser wars affected developers far more than it affected internet users since, although Tim Berners-Lee had started the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1994, the way in which Netscape and Internet Explorer implemented or supported the standards put forth by the W3C differed tremendously. Although you will still occasionally find differences today in how different browsers render a webpage, the issue was much more prolific and pronounced in the early years of the web, and it was very common to have web sites include statements about the site being best viewed in Internet Explorer. Earlier versions of IE had a terrible track record in terms of standards adherence, but since it was the dominant browser at the time, developers had little choice but to ensure their website looked good in IE, either settling for it not looking so good in Netscape (and later Firefox), or employing various hacks to have it work reasonably well in all popular browsers. The W3C still exists and is now responsible for maintaining many more protocol standards with the technology used on the web having evolved over the years.
Search engines were another important development that allowed the web to become a popular tool, rather than a niche one. Part of what drove Berners-Lee’s initial proposal was making information more accessible, and this isn’t possible if you have no easy way of finding the information you are looking for. The first example of a search engine – Archie – predated the first public web server and web page by almost a year, but it had been designed for rudimentary indexing of FTP archives. What would eventually become Yahoo! was started in early 1994, but it was little more than a manually curated directory of interesting websites, making WebCrawler the first full-text website that would eventually influence other search engines. It started out with around 4,000 websites in its database but had already served its millionth query within seven months of its launch.
WebCrawler home page in 1995
WebCrawler was also one of the first search engines that allowed users to search for any word or term on a web page, something that has become the foundation for all popular search engines since. More than 80 web search engines have been launched since 1993, and though Google now enjoys the lion’s share of the search market, Yahoo! was the dominant search brand in the early years of the web, with a few other brands also being quite popular for brief periods of time. But the way in which websites are crawled, indexed, and searched has matured considerably, largely thanks to Google’s approach to indexing and ranking sites that favoured an emphasis on relevance, rather than just the presence of certain keywords.
“Looking to the future, I expect Google to continue to monetize more real estate in search results. For organic search engine optimization, I suggest offering real value to your visitors.” – Bradley Shaw
Search has also become more intelligent, with the ability to search using queries that are more closely aligned with speech than just a combination of a few keywords. Google was also very successful at monetising search, launching AdWords in 2000, the same year the dot-com bubble burst. AdWords wasn’t the first service to offer brands the ability to appear at the top of specific search results, but again for Google, the priority was the relevance of the advertiser to the search term. Though Google has diversified into a number of different fields, including browsers and operating systems, advertising is still the biggest contributor of revenue.
The late nineties saw a number of different platforms launching that would contribute to the popularity of blogging or online diaries as they were styled at first. The first popular platform was Open Diary in 1998, followed by LiveJournal and Blogger in 1999. WordPress, now the most popular content management system with blogging features, would only launch in 2003.
The Open Diary’s home page in 1999 – Source
These diary platforms revealed how eager people were to share details of their lives, thoughts, activities, and more with perfect strangers who would, sometimes, end up becoming friends. Open Diary added the ability for visitors to leave comments on any posts, making diaries and blogs more social, and the launch of Friendster in 2002 marked the beginning of a much more social web. Though it no longer exists, Friendster was the first of a new generation of social networking services, followed by MySpace, Hi5, and Facebook, and the first such service to reach more than a million users. With more than two billion active users, Facebook is still the leading social network platform, even though during the first two years of its existence membership was limited to certain US universities, colleges, and schools only.
“I think privacy, obviously, is going to become one of the key issues. The big social networks will either fracture from government regulation or users getting tired of being mobbed upon by strangers.” – Dan Martino
There are now more than twenty social networking services with more than a hundred million active users, but most of them are quite different in the way they operate, and the audience they appeal to, with YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp all considered to be social networking services.
August 2007 would change the way we used the pound/hash sign when product designer and technologist Chris Messina transformed the way conversations could be grouped, curated and searched for when he invented the hashtag.
“Prior to the hashtag, people used online groups and forums to have topical conversations, or would use freeform tags to label their content to make it easier for others to find media like photos. We also hung out in real-time chat rooms using a technology called IRC. Each of these behaviors inspired the thinking and design of the hashtag.” – Chris Messina
Most social networks have faced some form of criticism, ranging from privacy concerns, through to how they manage online bullying, and the spread of hateful content. But most have also only grown in popularity, proving to be quite resilient to criticism.
Making the Web Mobile
Although mobile phones predate the web, full internet service via a mobile phone only became possible in the late nineties. Even then the experience was far removed from what we are used to today and using a mobile phone to browse the web was more of a last resort rather than a deliberate choice. This all changed following the release of the first iPhone in 2007, followed a year later by the first Android device, with both bringing about a change in how we were able to access the internet on a mobile device. Screens were bigger, and as more websites began using responsive or adaptive techniques, browsing a website on a mobile device was not too different to doing so on a computer. But both iOS and Android also allowed for the use of third-party apps, and the app stores for both operating systems launched in 2008, each with fewer than 3,000 apps in the first year, but now offering access to more than 2-million apps each. As with websites when the web first became public, the first apps for iOS and Android were quite rudimentary compared with what we now have, both in design and functionality.
Evolution of the Ebay app for iOS – Source
This is understandable as websites have benefitted from new technology and the natural progression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other web related technologies, and so too have mobile apps.
The impact of all this is most notable when comparing how people access the internet, with less than two percent of people using a mobile phone to access the web in 2009, and more than forty percent by early 2016.
Arguably the biggest change to business models and user behaviour brought about by the World Wide Web has occurred within the entertainment sector; from how we access news, read books, and listen to music, to how we watch TV and movies. But while users embraced – becoming a major driving force to the change – this, the pace of the change, and the ability to monetise it, has not been easy for content producers. Regular print media has had a particularly tough time in keeping up, watching circulation numbers steadily decline as their audience switched to sourcing news and articles on the web.
The Guardian’s home page in 1996 – Source
Attempts to monetise the electronic distribution of news through advertising and various subscription-based models have proven to be less successful, with the ability to block ads in browsers being quite easy, along with ways to circumvent paywalls. Then, in 2007, many publishing houses were almost blindsided by the release of the first Amazon Kindle, and there was considerable fretting about a decline in sales of print books. But the death of print books never materialised, and while eBooks now account for twenty-five percent of all books sold, year-on-year sales growth has declined in some markets, with younger readers favouring print books over digital.
Something else that caught many people off guard was the release of Napster in 1999, which made peer-to-peer sharing of MP3 files incredibly easy, even if it was illegal. Being able to buy and download songs and albums online was already possible, but not widely available, and further hindered by a very limited catalogue of digital music. Despite popularising music piracy, Napster also showed record labels that there was a large market for downloadable music, especially one where users could purchase individual songs instead of a full album. The first popular digital music marketplace – the iTunes Store – launched in 2003, with five major record labels offering music through the service, and by 2016 the iTunes Store was the largest music vendor in the world. It was only natural that other forms of digital media piracy – or file sharing – would follow what Napster started, with second generation P2P services such as Kazaa and Gnutella allowing users to share movies, TV shows, games, and even software. And as with music, the rise in other forms of piracy forced media and entertainment companies to also reconsider their business model, and begin offering digital downloads through the iTunes Store, and other digital marketplaces.
Netflix home page in 2009 – Source
But the push for different ways of accessing and consuming entertainment didn’t end there, with music streaming coming first, followed by Netflix’s transition from delivering DVDs to streaming TV shows and movies. In 2008, about 0.9 million American households only watched television online, but that had grown to 22.2 million households relying entirely on the Internet for television viewing by 2017.
You’re the Product
Way back in 2010 a user on MetaFilter commented, “If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold”. It is an idea that is paraphrased frequently, and forgotten almost immediately as Google, Facebook, and hundreds of other brands on the web deal with one privacy-related concern, only for another privacy matter to be exposed weeks or months later. No business can operate by giving away their services or products for free, and while there has long been a reluctance to pay for services offered on the web, there are a number of SaaS and PaaS products that work quite well using a subscription model. But the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a number of other brands in the social networking field have always offered some of their products and services free of charge to end users, without giving up on the idea of monetising their product.
Which is when users become the product, with anonymous bits of their private information, demographics, and behaviour on the platform sold off to advertisers, so that the advertisers are better able to target who sees their adverts. On the surface, it isn’t such a bad deal, but unfortunately, when you’re the product you also have little control over what personal data advertisers have access to, and have to trust that Facebook, Google, and others behave ethically. And every now and then they don’t, as evidenced by the Cambridge Analytica scandal that beset Facebook in early 2018, forcing them to change certain internal policies, and take out full-page advertisements apologising for the misstep. But that wasn’t the only scandal Facebook faced pre-2018, or since. While it is obvious that some brands are trying to find better ways of managing your privacy without affecting their revenue streams, governments around the world are starting to question whether it is enough, with the GDPR coming into effect through most of Europe in 2018. Even though the UK was already in the middle of Brexit talks and preparations, their own Data Protection Act is largely modelled on the GDPR, which aims to put strict processes in place for the management, storage, and use of personal data.
“I’m fairly confident data protection issues will become increasingly more prevalent in business practices, politics, and the media. In fact, it’s already happening now. World leaders are already stepping up and making soft agreements in creating more ethical and secure data protection and cybersecurity policies.” – Jamie Cambell
An important caveat of the GDPR and DPA is that while it applies to most of Europe and the UK, it doesn’t consider where your company is based, only if you do business with an EU or UK based person or business, so even a small online business operating out of a small warehouse in Boise, Idaho, would need to be GDPR compliant if any of their products are bought by someone in Europe or the UK.
It’s difficult to imagine what the web will be in another 30 years when you consider how much has changed since it was first made accessible to the public. In the early years, technology and connection speeds often meant that even simple images could take many seconds – if not minutes – to be rendered and downloading a small video could take hours. Now we easily give up on a website if it hasn’t fully loaded within four seconds, and have no difficulty watching movies in high-definition, streamed in real time. But it is possible to surmise that over the next few years we may find more regulatory requirements being imposed on certain web services, particularly those operating within the social networking sector, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. All of these have faced considerable criticism almost since they were first launched, sometimes relating to privacy concerns, and other times relating to how easy they make it for hoaxes and false information to be distributed. In the first three months of 2019 YouTube has already announced that they would in future recommend fewer videos that could misinform users in harmful ways, followed by a decision to remove ads from videos with anti-vaccination content. Any future regulation, whether self-imposed or mandated, will certainly affect how the web continues to evolve, and just like the first thirty years, the next thirty will surely be exciting.
This entry was posted in Infographic, Mobile Trends
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Woman shocked after friend charges her $1,100 to stay at her house
Francesca Specter
Yahoo Style UK deputy editor
Yahoo Lifestyle 25 June 2019
A woman's friend, posed by model, charged her $1,100 to stay at her home. Photo: Getty Images
A woman has taken to the internet for advice after a friend charged her to spend five nights in her home.
Posting on Mumsnet, the user explained that she had arranged back in January to visit an old friend and her husband, who live in Southern Italy, along with her own husband and two children.
However, just five days before they were due to leave, the friend then informed her she would like to be paid $1,100 – plus the cost of food – to host them.
“I’m shocked and deeply upset,” said the woman of her friend, who is also godmother to her daughter.
“Besides which we can’t afford it,” she added.
“I would have been happy to pay $180 (£100) p/head plus food but this seems a lot. I feel like not going but what would I tell DD [dear daughter] she is so excited.”
Many users agreed that the friend was being unfair in charging her to stay.
One wrote: “YANBU! [You are not being unreasonable] I wouldn’t go. It’s a visit to a friend, not a stay in a hotel, she is being very cheeky.”
Another added: “That’s beyond cheeky. I’d be very upset. I would never dream of charging friends to visit, especially as they are the ones paying for travel, etc.”
However, some tried to understand the friend’s mentality, suggesting she might feel “exploited”.
I wouldn't charge friends either,” wrote one user. “But if I thought they were taking the piss...for example only contacting me when they wanted a cheap holiday abroad, then I would probably do something similar.”
Got a story tip? Send it to lifestyle.tips@verizonmedia.com
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Supporting access to alcohol and other drug treatment: the Los Angeles County screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment project for short-term jail detainees
Anne Lee1,
Richard Rawson2 &
Rebecca Beattie3
The University of California at Los Angeles Integrated Substance Abuse Program (UCLA ISAP) was contracted to evaluate the Los Angeles County screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment project (LA SBIRT). This project was funded by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to provided SBIRT for short-term-stay detainees. Elements of the program include increasing access to care and reducing alcohol and other drug (AOD) use by screening with the Alcohol, Smoking, and Substance Use Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST), which assesses risk of developing problems related to AOD use; performing a motivational brief intervention based on the results of the ASSIST; and, when indicated, referring detainees to a course of brief treatment sessions. The university’s ISAP used the Government Performance and Results Act tool (GPRA) and ASSIST data to describe the population and assess outcomes. They also conducted a process evaluation. According to results, risky alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco use were high in this group. Among all participants who completed the ASSIST, 95% scored either high or moderate risk for at least one substance. Fewer participants reported using all AODs at follow-up than at baseline, and those who used substances reported using all AODs on fewer days at follow-up. Participants also had less involvement with the criminal justice system at follow-up and received more outpatient services. This SBIRT project was a successful collaboration between the greater Los Angeles criminal justice system and substance abuse treatment networks and offered access to treatment for thousands of detainees. A key lesson learned was that conducting the ASSIST in the jail setting decrease dropout from treatment in this transient population. Locating clients for follow-up was extremely difficult, thus, incentives plus tracking and locating are crucial. Staff felt the ASSIST and motivational interviewing was extremely well-suited to this population. The success of this project depends upon ongoing training, supervision, and collaboration among the stakeholders.
Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Anne Lee
Department of Psychiatry, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Richard Rawson
University of California at Los Angeles Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Rebecca Beattie
Search for Anne Lee in:
Search for Richard Rawson in:
Search for Rebecca Beattie in:
Correspondence to Anne Lee.
Treatment Network
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'Fantastic Beasts' and more: Richard Crouse movie reviews
Movie reviews: 'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald' feels thin despite its grand face
Richard Crouse
Contributor, CTV News Channel and CTV News Digital
Published Nov. 16, 2018 7:17 a.m. ET
Updated Nov. 22, 2018 10:41 a.m. ET
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares his take on five movies: "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald," "Widows," "The Front Runner," "Instant Family," and "A Private War."
Eddie Redmayne in 'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.'
FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD: 2 STARS
If you already know what a 'magizoologist' is you're likely a fan of J.K. Rowling's wizarding world. If not, you've got some catching up to do before buying ticket to the second instalment of the Harry Potter spin-off "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald."
When we last saw magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) he temporarily put aside his study of magical creatures to travel to New York City and help MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America) bring the powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) to justice.
Johnny Depp in 'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.'
Callum Turner, Zoe Kravitz and Eddie Redmayne in 'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.'
The story picks up as Grindelwald escapes. Like all good villains he craves world dominance, but only on his own terms. He believes in wizarding superiority and sets in motion a plan to lead a new Wizarding Order of pure-blood wizards who will rule over all non-magical beings.
Enter Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and an influential member of the British Ministry of Magic. To stop Grindelwald's diabolical plot Dumbledore contacts Scamander, a confidante and former student.
The film based on the second original screenplay from J.K. Rowling is more fantastical than magical. There are all manner of creatures and wizard's tricks that could only have sprung from her fertile imagination but there is very little actual cinema magic. Sure Potter fans will love seeing Hogwarts and a glimpse of Quidditch again but that is nostalgia, and Alison Sudol's Judy Holliday impression is as winning as it was the first time out but overall "The Crimes Of Grindelwald" feels like a placeholder for the films yet to come.
Non-Potter-heads will likely be confused by the barrage of names, the myriad of subplots and a deadly scene about the family tree of Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) that gives the word convoluted a whole new meaning. Part of the joy of the Rowling's story weaving in the Potter series was its depth and complexity. Here it feels as though she's being paid not by the word but by the character.
When director David Yates isn't bathing the screen with blue digital flames and the like there are things to admire. The set and costume design are spectacular, appropriate for both the 1920s setting and the otherworldly characters. Also interesting are the messages, both timeless — the search for identity — and timely — unity, fear mongering and freedom through force — provide subtext that is more interesting than the actual story.
Ultimately "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald," despite its grand face, feels thin, over written and under dramatic.
Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki in 'Widows.'
WIDOWS: 4 STARS
Widows may be one of the most subversive heist films ever made. Based on a British mini-series from the 1980's it stars Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Erivo as four women bonded by debts left to some very bad men by their late husbands. It is part caper flick and part survival story that makes strong statements on hot button topics like sexism, poverty, prejudice, power and police brutality.
Set in modern day Chicago, the action in the story begins when Harry (Liam Neeson) and his crew of robbers gunned down and blown up after a heist gone wrong. His widow, teachers' union executive Veronica Rawlins (Viola Davis), is left with a $2 million debt to local crime boss Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry). Manning is a tough guy attempting a stab at legitimacy by entering politics, running against corrupt local alderman, Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell).
Manning wants his money and, after mistreating Veronica's dog, gives her just one month to come up with the cash. "That money was meant to buy me a new life," snarls Jamal. "That money was about my life. Now it is about yours." If she can't come up with the cash she'll have to deal with psychopathic strong arm Jatemme Manning (Daniel Kaluuya).
Daniel Kaluuya and Brian Tyree Henry in 'Widows.'
Robert Duvall in a scene from 'Widows.'
It is a dire situation but Veronica has a plan, or rather, a notebook and a plan. Harry left behind a handwritten book detailing every bribe he ever paid and blueprints for a future heist. Putting the widows of her late husband's hoodlum crew to work (Debicki, Rodriguez, and non-widow Cynthia Erivo), she creates a gang of her own to steal $5 million cash and save their lives. "I'm the only thing standing between you and a bullet in your head," says Veronica.
Co-written by McQueen and Gillian Flynn, the author and screenwriter of "Gone Girl," "Widows" is a tightly constructed thriller that builds with each passing moment. McQueen takes his time with the material, allowing the audience to get to know the characters, to learn what's at stake if this caper goes south.
First and foremost is Davis, fierce and formidable. Her evolution from executive and unsuspecting wife to criminal mastermind is emotional, logical and very motivated.
Carrie Coon and Ann Mitchell in 'Widows.'
Opposite her is Debicki as a damaged woman whose own mother suggests prostitution as a career choice to make things meet. Her shift from abused woman to a person completely in control of her life and the way she is perceived—"It's mine to be ashamed of or be proud of," she says. "It's my life."—is one of the film's true pleasures.
The cast is universally strong. Farrell could use a different accent coach but Kaluuya is evil personified, a psychopath with dead eyes and an attitude.
"Widows" is a stylish art house heist flick that pays tribute to the genre but layers in not only intrigue but also social commentary about racism, the cost of political power and the imbalance of power between some of the female characters and their male counterparts. The thrills will appeal both to your heart and head.
Hugh Jackman in 'The Front Runner.'
THE FRONT RUNNER: 2 ½ STARS
"The Front Runner" is a story of scandal that destroyed a man's public life in 1988 that seems almost genteel given the tone of today's politics. Four years after Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman) lost the Democratic leadership convention to Walter Mondale he entered the presidential race with a giant lead. He was the front-runner. Three weeks later it was over.
By 1988 Gary Hart had served in the United States Senate for thirteen years. A intellectual, he sought to reignite the Democratic party, a group experiencing a slump in popularity and in ideology. His was a campaign of ideas with one of his managers marvelling at the candidate's gift of untangling the bull**** of politics." Unlike his opponents, however, he didn't like to smile for photos like "some sort of game show host." "If I pose for photos what's next," he wonders, "a swimsuit competition?" Discussing his personal life, says one of his aides, is not in his comfort zone and yet it was his personal life that torpedoed his chance at the White House.
His undoing came in the form of Donna Rice (Sara Paxton), a woman who wanted to work on the campaign and ended up in an extra marital affair with Hart, who was then married to Lee (Vera Farmiga). "I wanted to work for Senator Hart," she says. "I liked his positions." The press picked up on the story, partially in response to Hart's dare, "Follow me around. Put a tail on me. You'll be very bored," and partially because it dented his family values image.
Despite the media circus that followed Hart refuses to be contrite. "The public won't care," he says and "the press will not earn the dignity of my response." By the time Johnny Carson cracked jokes about it on the Tonight Show the campaign was over.
"The Front Runner" is a straightforward retelling of the twenty-one days leading up to Hart's withdrawal from the presidential race. What it does best is create the environment surrounding Hart. From the fast-and-furious pace of a campaign in full gallop and the dark humour of a newsroom to the inner-workings of a smear campaign and the anxiety-inducing clickety-click of the still cameras at Hart's final press conference, the film's most interesting element is it's atmosphere. There are some fun performances, particularly from J. K. Simmons as Hart's blunt talking campaign manager Bill Dixon, but the problem lies with Hart himself. He's a bit of a cypher, highbrow yet bland; the film never gives us a reason to care about him or the mess he gets himself into.
Sen. Gary Hart, left, with W.Va. Gov. Jay Rockefeller in 1984.
In its final moments, however, "The Front Runner" finally indulges in some subtext, courtesy of direct quotes from Hart's withdrawal speech.
"Politics in this country," he says, "take it from me - is on the verge of becoming another form of athletic competition or sporting match. We all better do something to make this system work or we're all going to be soon rephrasing Jefferson to say: I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve."
The words are thirty years old and yet sound as though they were written yesterday. Perhaps if director Jason Reitman had followed Hart's lead and focussed more on the ideas and less on the scandal "The Front Runner" might have had more impact.
Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, Gustavo Quiroz, Isabela Moner, and Julianna Gamiz in 'Instant Family.'
INSTANT FAMILY: 3 ½ STARS
GREEN BOOK: 4 STARSIn future edition of your Funk & Wagnalls the entry for 'heartfelt' may well be illustrated with the poster for "Instant Family." For better and for worse the new Mark Wahlberg film is an earnest and deeply felt look at adoption out of the foster care system.
Wahlberg and Rose Byrne are house flippers Pete and Ellie. Childless, they are forty-somethings with a well-appointed, orderly life. When the subject of kids comes up, raised by Ellie's sister, Pete worries about being an "old dad." He jokes about adopting a five year old so "it will be like I got cracking when I was thirty-six years old." That one off hand comment triggers something in Ellie who researches the stats on foster kids and is immediately inspired to help by welcoming children into their home. Pete isn't as sure.
"People who take foster kids are special," he says. "The kind of people who volunteer when it isn't even a holiday. We're not that special." Later, after looking at a website of photos of kids available for adoption he relents. "This is what we do," he says, "fix things up. We'll scrape off their emotional popcorn ceiling."
Octavia Spencer, Rose Byrne, Tig Notaro and Mark Wahlberg in 'Instant Family.'
Margo Martindale in a scene from 'Instant Family.'
Gustavo Quiroz and Mark Wahlberg in 'Instant Family.'
The couple attend Foster Parent Classes run by social workers Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro) and, when at a Child Fair they meet the forceful fifteen-year-old Lizzy (Isabela Moner) and her siblings, accident prone Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and the sweet but screechy Lita (Julianna Gamiz). Drawn to them, Pete and Ellie knew their "cosmic connection" was much more than a hunch; that this group must somehow form a family. That's the way we they became, well, not exactly the Brady bunch, but a family with all the good and bad that entails.
There are parts of "Instant Family" that will make you laugh and parts that will make you cry. Then there are the other parts. Director Sean Anders—who, in real life adopted three children from foster care—clearly cares about making a difference with this film. As the writer of "Hot Tub Time Machine" and "We're the Millers" he's comfortable with finding humour in situations, and he's explored family dynamics in as the writer and director of "Daddy's Home." Here he adds in a third element, the Public Service Announcement.
Spencer and Notaro are tasked with delivering the cold hard facts and figures that shine a light on the difficulty of children in foster care, and they do the best they can with it, but early on it often feels as though you are reading an informational pamphlet from one of their Foster Parent Classes and not enjoying a family dramedy. Once past that you're left with a pleasing story of a hard-earned connection between adoptive parents and their new kids.
"Instant Family's" heart is in the right place and that goodwill goes a long way. The relationship between Wahlberg, Byrne and the kids isn't all sunshine and roses. They have real problems and work through them by trail and error, sometimes with hilarious results, sometimes not. Either way they feel universal—every parent has had to calm a tantrum in public, etc—even though the story is very specific.
Rosamund Pike and Jamie Dornan at the premiere of 'A Private War' in London.
A PRIVATE WAR: 3 STARS
These days journalists aren't just reporting the stories, often they are the story. Just ask Jim Acosta. A new film, "A Private War," places the journalist front-and-centre while detailing a story from our recent past.
Rosamund Pike plays Marie Colvin, long serving war correspondent for The Sunday Times. For three decades she put herself in harm's way, covering conflicts the world over. "I care enough to go to these places," she says, "and write about it in a way that makes people want to care about it as much as I do." While on assignment in Sri Lanka she loses an eye in a bomb blast. Later, when accused of being "stupid" for going into that war zone she says "I think stupid is writing about the dinner party you went to last night."
Years of witnessing bloodshed have taken a toll. "You've seen more war than most soldiers," says her photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan). Plagued by nightmares, she would drink a quart of vodka to calm herself. Her PTSD didn't keep her from the job, in fact it may have been the engine that kept her going.
In 2012 she, along with Conroy, embarked on her most dangerous assignment, covering the siege of Homs in Syria. Her reporting revealed the Syrian government was targeting civilians in an effort to quell the Arab Spring uprising. "I see it," she says of the horrors of war, "so you don't have to."
As the title suggests "A Private War" is about the push and pull inside Colvin. The battle between her life in England with boyfriend Tony Shaw (Stanley Tucci) and the adrenaline rush provided by her work in the field. "Maybe I would have liked a normal life," she says, "or maybe I don't know how. Or maybe this is where I feel most comfortable."
Rosamund Pike on the red carpet for 'A Private War' at TIFF
Pike brings passion and fire to the role, although while on duty in Sri Lanka she looks like she's part of a "Vogue" fashion spread, not a reporter in the field. Emotionally raw, it's a portrait of a single-minded person who always put her work first.
Unfortunately we don't learn much more than that. It's a jittery performance that effectively portrays Covin's state of mind but by the film's second half it feels one note.
"A Private War" comes at an interesting time for journalism. With the profession under fire from Fake-Newsers it's important to discover the stories of the people who report on "the rough draft of history."
Click for more entertainment news on CTVNews.ca
'Pop Life' host Richard Crouse
Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and pundits on the talk show Pop Life on CTV NewsChannel and CTV. Catch up on all the entertainment news, reviews and interviews at the Pop Life website.
Read more of Richard Crouse's recent movie reviews:
'The Girl in the Spider's Web' is a thriller set to slow simmer
By-the-book 'Bohemian Rhapsody' time-twister will leave you humming
'Can You Ever Forgive Me?' the best-ever feel-good movie about loneliness
'Halloween' reboot a bloodly love letter to John Carpenter
'First Man' a small story about a giant leap
'A Star is Born' hits all the right notes
Knightley in top form for sparkling biopic 'Colette'
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IEEE Big Data
Search IEEE Big Data
Join the Big Data Technical Community
IEEE Talks Big Data
IEEE Talks Big Data: Lyria Bennett Moses & Greg Adamson
IEEE Talks Big Data: Ritu Chadha
IEEE DataPort
IEEE Talks Big Data is a series of Q&A articles with IEEE experts on big data.
IEEE Talks Big Data: Whurley
William Hurley (Whurley) is Chair of the IEEE Quantum Computing Working Group. In this interview, Whurley explores some of the ways quantum computing will change the world, including by analyzing large, often disparate datasets that traditional computers struggle to process. He’s also involved in a new IEEE project that aims to eliminate arguably the biggest barrier to quantum computing going mainstream: the lack of industry-standard definitions about its most fundamental concepts. Whurley has been announced as a keynote speaker at the annual SXSW Conference, March 9-18, 2018, in Austin. This session will be included as a part of the IEEE Tech for Humanity Series at SXSW.
Question: Quantum computing has been in development for decades but some vendors are starting to offer commercial products. How long before quantum computers become something that's common in at least large enterprises and government agencies? And what are the barriers to adoption? Cost? The learning curve of quantum computing?
IEEE Talks Big Data: Sorel Reisman & Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed
Professor Sorel Reisman chairs the Standing Committee for the IEEE Computer Society Signature Conference on Computers, Software, and Applications (COMPSAC), serves as a tenured professor of information systems in the Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences in the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University (Cal State), Fullerton, and as managing director of MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching), a project of the Cal State University Chancellor’s Office. Professor Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed chairs the COMPSAC Steering Committee and serves as a professor of computer science and director of the Ubicomp Research Laboratory at Marquette University. The two professors recently participated in a joint interview during COMPSAC 2017 in Turin, Italy, on the impacts of Big Data, disruptive technologies and how COMPSAC 2017 contributes to IEEE’s mission to advance technology for the benefit of humanity.
Question: What are the quintessential disruptive technologies today with the greatest impact?
IEEE Talks Big Data: Mahmoud Daneshmand & Ken Lutz
Dr. Mahmoud Daneshmand is a member of the IEEE Big Data Initiative (BDI) Steering Committee, Co-Founder and Chair of Steering Committee of the IEEE Internet of Things (IoT) Journal, and Professor of Business Intelligence & Analytics at Stevens Institute of Technology. Dr. Kenneth J. Lutz is an IEEE Life Senior Member and an adjunct professor at the University of Delaware, where he teaches Smart Grid courses. The two men recently participated in a joint interview to frame some of the issues raised by Big Data and data analytics in the context of the Smart Grid.
Question: Would each of you take a turn describing how we should frame a discussion on Big Data and analytics in the Smart Grid era?
Dr. Ritu Chadha is an IEEE Senior member and serves as Executive Director at Vencore Labs (dba Applied Communication Sciences), where she oversees the application of data analytics to diverse domains, including healthcare, cyber security, and wireless networks. In this Q&A she discusses cyber security of wireless networks and the creation of testbed environments for testing cyber security algorithms.
Question: You work on something described as “detecting and mitigating attacks on the control plane of wireless ad hoc networks.” Would you explain what that means?
Lyria Bennett Moses chairs IEEE’s Society on Social Implications of Technology (IEEE-SSIT) Australia Chapter and is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Kensington, Australia. She is also a member of the IEEE Big Data Initiative Steering Committee. Greg Adamson serves as president of IEEE-SSIT and is a Principal Fellow at the Melbourne School of Engineering, University of Melbourne, Australia. Both Bennett Moses and Adamson take deep personal and professional interest in the social implications of technology. They share their personal views of the topic in this interview.
Question: What draws each of you to this topic?
IEEE Talks Big Data: Chris Miyachi
Christine “Chris” Miyachi chairs IEEE Cloud Computing. She works as a systems engineer and software architect at Xerox Corporation, and is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In this Q&A, Miyachi discusses big data’s and the Internet of Things’ (IoT) implications for the cloud and for her professional work.
Question: Chris, would you share some thoughts on the various drivers for cloud computing and its relationship with big data?
IEEE Talks Big Data: Cicek Cavdar & Burak Kantarci
Dr. Cicek Cavdar and Dr. Burak Kantarci are both active in the IEEE Green ICT Initiative, which is driven, in part, by the advent of big data. Cavdar was coordinator of the project 5GrEEn: Towards Green 5G Mobile Network, now Swedish cluster coordinator of the project SooGREEN – Service Oriented Optimization of Green Mobile Networks, and a senior researcher in the Communications Systems Department at the School of ICT at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Kantarci is a senior member of IEEE and an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Wallace H. Coulter School of Engineering, Clarkson University, New York. In the following Q&A they discuss drivers, implications and the future of Green ICT.
Question: What forces or developments are driving the need to develop Green ICT?
IEEE Talks Big Data: David Belanger & José Moura
Dr. David Belanger and Dr. José M. F. Moura are the co-leaders of the IEEE Big Data Initiative. Belanger is senior research fellow in the Business Intelligence and Analysis Program at Stevens Institute of Technology; Moura is the Philip L. and Marsha Dowd University Professor at CMU, with interests in signal processing and data science and 2016 IEEE VP for Technical Activities. Both are big data subject matter experts and discuss the technologies that are developing to help realize opportunities in big data, where they might occur and what frameworks are needed.
Question: What comprises big data from a technological perspective?
Contact IEEE Big Data
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Observations from Mary Barra's recent time in Washington, DC
Rory Carrol
Mary Barra on Capitol Hill.
Editor's note: This story originally appeared in the May 12, 2014 issue of Autoweek magazine
On April fools' day 2014, in the shadow of clustered, leafless trees near the southeast corner of the U.S. Capitol building, a few dozen TV cameras and their operators stood in a ring around a small podium. Hill staffers stared at their phones and some chatted quietly with journalists. A group from Close Up walked up, looking at their own cellphones. A few discussed their theories on what might be transpiring under the trees. A few were taking Instagrams. Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado held up a huge keychain and said, “These are the keys of every mother in America!”
A few months after sitting with the First Lady during the State of the Union, GM's newly minted CEO Mary Barra was in town to answer questions related to a faulty ignition switch that played a role in the deaths of at least 13 people. The evidence suggests that something, or more likely several things, went very wrong at GM. Whether it was a failure of GM's bureaucratic system or a willful effort on GM employees' part to deceive customers and regulators remains unknown.
The cameras focused on a group of legislators and a handful of grieving family members. Senator Edarkey's office reserved space for the press conference.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Detroit ruin pornographer and security-guard biter Charlie LeDuff stood close enough to the podium that it appeared he would be speaking next. He wore Levis, a blue dress shirt, a tie with an oversized knot and some kind of vest. He looked like Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow would if forced to give up the pirate life for a straight job. He glowered and shook his lowered head. Before long he looked up at the cameraman standing directly across from him and mouthed, “Are you ready to go?”
Later he ambushed Henry Waxman, D-Calif., stuck a camera in his face and did a bizarre “investigative journalist shouts unexpected, 'hard-hitting' questions at befuddled legislator” routine using an accent that was hard to place. Video here
Waxman is a small, beady-eyed man with Droopy Dog jowls, glasses and a scruffy mustache. When cornered, he snarled and pointed at LeDuff, who is about a foot taller than Waxman. LeDuff qualified some questions by saying, “This is a serious question.” Then he half-yelled “I'm an American citizen, from Detroit, Mich. I don't like what you did with the company!” LeDuff is not technically from Detroit, but to his credit he was one of the only people there who seemed genuinely interested in what was going on.
The day's events centered around Barra, General Motors' first female CEO. She's a glass-ceiling shatterer, a barrier-breaker. Her story is anecdotal evidence that what we as Americans say and claim to believe about equality of opportunity isn't totally imaginary. She is important. If, as a legislator, you give her a hard time in public and invite the press to watch, you'll get on TV. And if you get on TV, there's a chance that your existence might momentarily register with your constituents.
Barra is 52 years old. As a student in Waterford, Mich., she developed an interest in math and science, leading her to enroll at General Motors Institute, now Kettering University. By the time Barra enrolled in 1980, GMI was a GM farm system developing managers and engineers for leadership roles. As part of their training, students worked for GM in GMI's Co-Op system, gaining real experience at the automaker while attending school. Barra worked at Pontiac Motor Division, where her father was a diemaker for 39 years. She earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and met her husband, Tony Barra at GMI. They have two children.
After college, she went to work at GM and was selected for a GM fellowship at Stanford University where she earned an MBA in 1990. Later that decade, she worked as an executive assistant to GM chairman and CEO Jack Smith and vice-chairman Harry Pearce. Then, she held a broad range of jobs before arriving as product chief in 2011, a job she held until being named CEO last year. Autoweek was granted an interview with Barra when she was product chief, before the rumors of her ascendancy to the company's top job had really started to spread.
The corporate lore that surrounds Barra often comes in the form of anecdotes that while true, appear packaged as an effort to sell a change-agent/reformer narrative.
An example: As the head of HR, she replaced a 10-page corporate dress code with the words “dress appropriately.” John Calabrese, who announced his retirement April 22, was vice-president of global vehicle engineering when he described the change this way, “Mary kind of drove the judgment discussion versus the hard, fast rule discussion...Her predecessor was extremely formal, extremely orchestrated, where Mary drives a very collaborative organizational structure. Collaborate, hold people accountable and use your judgment; hence the dress code. I'm asking you to make multibillion-dollar decisions on engineering content, program content. I think I should give you enough confidence that you know how to dress appropriately as an adult.”
But beyond the illustrative, media-friendly anecdotes, there is some evidence of substantial change. Two years ago, she reduced vehicle-program management staff 20 percent and put 12 executive chief engineers in charge of every vehicle General Motors makes. Previously, two people were ultimately accountable for each vehicle program, and as Barra put it, “Neither was accountable. We've driven that accountability. You know you could talk to every single one of those chiefs, and they know they own that vehicle. I want them to be passionate about that vehicle. They should know that vehicle segment better than anybody else.” The system has been remade again in the wake of the ignition-switch crisis, with Global Vehicle engineering being divided into Global Product Integrity and Global Vehicle Components and Subsystems.
Today, business pundits talk a lot about what has actually changed, but to car guys who pay attention to product, it's obvious that something has changed from Cavalier, to Cobalt, to Cruze. Whether it's cultural or systemic or the result of changes in personnel, something at GM is working better than it has in years past, if product and profits are any indicator.
But, Barra is not a Bob Lutz, just-ripped-an-incredible-donut-on-your-lawn “car guy.” She's not what most Autoweek readers would call a hardcore enthusiast, and she doesn't pretend she is. The car industry is packed with people who pretend to be car enthusiasts because, presumably, they feel like it will help them get ahead. As Autoweek readers know, enthusiasts can spot a faker a mile away, so it's refreshing that Barra doesn't fake it.
She does talk a lot about making great, segment-leading cars, and it's clear that she is passionate about those things. She makes frequent use of the phrase “best cars, trucks and crossovers.” She also talks a lot about winning, calling the Cadillac ATS a “win.” Perhaps most famously, she's fond of the phrase, “No more crappy cars”—which is, of course, a tacit admission of GM's past failures.
It's hard to say how much of the “on-message” repetition is deliberate and how much is the result of doing a lot of interviews where a lot of similar questions are asked. GM being a major international corporation, all the executives are on message—at least now that Lutz is gone. If you spend time with individual execs, you'll notice that they all share common phrases. But, outside of those phrases, Barra is remarkably open and frank.
She has what could be described as a small voice. It is distinctly Midwestern and natural in a way that projects genuine, no-bullshit self-confidence—like she has absolutely nothing to prove to anyone. The strange affectations of the MBA'd “born leader” types are notably absent. When she tells you that being the highest-ranking female executive in General Motors history isn't something she thinks about, it comes across as believable—or it at least seems probable that she believes it.
In last year's interview, she brought up the issue of gender without prodding. “The other thing I always get asked about is, 'Oh, you're the first woman in this role,' and I think: OK, I've spent my whole life in the auto industry, and I never define my work, my roles or what I want to do by gender. The only benefit I see to it is if I can motivate young women to take a math and science path and not shy away from it, that's good. But beyond that, it's not something I even think about. I don't walk into a room and consider that. I started in manufacturing. In the '80s...In the '80s, it was interesting…” After 33 years of employment at GM, it's safe to assume she is used to working in a male-dominated environment.
Her story is anecdotal evidence that what we as Americans say and claim to believe about equality of opportunity isn't totally Imaginary. She is opportunity.
When Barbara Boxer questioned Barra at a Senate hearing on April 2, much of her testimony consisted of naming jobs that Barra had held at GM, listing some of the responsibilities associated with those jobs and then asking if Barra personally knew about the ignition switch issue when she held that job, while trying to sound incredulous. Example:
Boxer: “OK, and then you were plant manager of Detroit Ham...tram...k Assembly in '03-'04, where you were responsible for day-to-day plant activities related to safety, people and quality. *super-incredulous voice* And still you knew nothing about this?”
Barra: “We didn't build any of these models at the Detroit Hamtramck Plant…”
Boxer: “You knew…In that position, you knew nothing about this. Correct?”
It's worth watching Boxer's entire line of questioning, which is available online. She talked about the Ford Pinto and the Ivey Memo of 1973, and she touched on a number of topics, some of which were relevant to the ignition switch issue.
She maintained a scolding, condescending tone throughout her questioning, often asking a question, then interrupting Barra before she could answer.
In asking about Ivey and mentioning the Pinto, Boxer might have been attempting to draw a line from GM's situation to some historical instances of real and perceived automaker misconduct. She might have been trying to illustrate that Barra should be aware of the mistakes and misdeeds of auto execs who came before her. But as Barra continued to avoid engagement, Boxer appeared increasingly exasperated, and the whole exchange took on an air of futility.
Finally, in a moment that had some observers crying sexism, the annoyed-looking Boxer closed her questioning by lowering her tone and saying, “These issues run deep. And we have work to do. And I am very disappointed. Really, as a woman to woman, I am very disappointed. Because the culture that you are representing here today is a culture of the status quo.”
Barra's eyes flashed a glimmer of what could have been disbelief. Was a politician who'd been in public life since the early 1970s—a woman who'd probably faced some sexism in her time, a Democrat—was she reducing this to a discussion of gender? In any case, GM's Mark Reuss, seated behind Barra, looked as he had throughout the entirety of both hearings: extremely pissed.
The day before—the day of the Capitol lawn press conference, Barra testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in the Rayburn House Office Building.
The Rayburn building is large enough to be called imposing, but far too ugly to be called impressive. In an exceptionally brutal 1965 review of the building that appeared in the New York Times, Ada Louise Huxtable wrote: “Architecturally, The Rayburn Building is a national disaster,” and finished her piece by saying “The Rayburn Building's ultimate claim to fame may well be that it is the biggest star-spangled architectural blunder of our time.”
At 10:30 a.m., journalists had already begun setting up laptops and claiming seats in the hearing room, though they'd be shooed away so that the TV guys could set up before the hearing started at 2 p.m.
A handful of people sat on the floor or leaned against the wall around the corner from the hearing room, hoping to grab one of a few seats reserved for the public. Around 20 TV cameras and their attendants were setting up near the metal detectors at the Rayburn Building's main entrance. They didn't know that Barra and her colleagues would enter from the garage, avoiding them entirely.
Secret entrance or no, the cameras could not be avoided. By the time Barra entered the hearing room, it was packed with photographers and videographers, many of whom sat or squatted at the front edge of Barra's table.
At the end of Barra's testimony, almost all of the cameras ans reporters left the room, even though David Friedman, the acting administrator of the NHTSA, had yet to testify.
The families of victims found their seats, then turned to place photos of the victims on the molding between the wainscoting and the wall. A nearby reporter confirmed that bringing the photos had been the parents' idea.
Representative Tim Murphy opened testimony with a prepared statement outlining a number of questions that he presumably hoped would be answered during the hearing, and at one point misquoted “Cool Hand Luke.”
Toward the end, he said, “It is my hope and expectation that today we will not hear a blame game or finger pointing. All the brilliant engineers and workers in the world won't matter if the people don't think you care. As the old saying goes: 'People don't care that you know, until they know that you care.'”
In his statement, Murphy did a nice job appearing angry, and he touched on several serious points of concern. But, like much of what was said by the legislators over the course of the hearing, it created the impression that some of the people we pay to make the laws that govern the car industry don't understand it.
Barra's statement followed shortly thereafter, and it was a good deal more informative than her answers to most of the questions asked in either hearing. She apologized, then announced that GM had hired U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas, who previously led the investigation into the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, to conduct an investigation into the ignition-switch debacle. She told legislators that GM had appointed a vice president for Global Vehicle Safety.
She didn't mention it in her statement, but by that point it was known that GM had retained the services of Kenneth Feinberg, the attorney who had been special master of the Government's September 11 Victim Compensation Fund. Feinberg also set executive compensation during the bank bailouts and provided guidance on financial compensation for the victims of several of this country's major public tragedies.
In the House hearing, and in the Senate hearing that followed it, Barra made sure to draw a line between the way GM might have done business in the past and the way she said they were doing business today. She also leaned heavily on the fact that Valukas was conducting an investigation into what had happened. When Congressman Fred Upton asked Barra when GM knew that a replacement part had been produced, but that no new part number had been issued, the exchange went like this:
Upton: “But when...when did GM realize that no new part number had been assigned?”
Barra: “Again, that is part of our investigation. I am...I want to know that just as much as you because that is an unacceptable practice. It is not the way we do business.”
But, the House hearing wasn't just Barra dodging questions. Some of the representatives had done some research and familiarized themselves with the issue at hand. Some new information was revealed, including an email exchange that suggested a GM engineer, Raymond DeGiorgio, could have been responsible for the fact that the replacement ignition switch did not receive a new part number. He and another engineer have since been placed on leave.
During his questioning, Representative Billy Long of Missouri said that he hoped he would be able to look back on the day's hearing and think he made a difference. He seemed genuinely confused as to why GM would use different ignition cylinder assemblies in different models. He even went so far as to suggest standardizing ignition switches. Unfortunately, his unique oratorical style does not lend itself well to transcription.
Representative Bruce Braley of Iowa seemed very upset that GM has always claimed that safety was important. His questioning seemed aimed at making Barra explain why people sometimes get hurt in GM cars if GM thinks safety is such a priority. He presented a promotional screwdriver set that was given to him 20 years ago by an Iowa family “harmed by another defective GM vehicle.” The words “Safety Comes First at GM” were printed on the screwdriver.
Representative Michael Burgess of Texas started down a line of questioning that appeared to be aimed at determining whether the development of the Cobalt was “an entirely new business line” that GM had developed in response to CAFE standards. It seemed possible that the representative was unaware of the fact that GM had been in the business of producing small cars prior to the Cobalt.
Later, Congressman Joe Barton, an engineer from Texas, seemed flummoxed by the idea that GM would accept a part from a supplier that differed from GM's original specification.
Barra spent some time trying to explain that, in certain cases, the company might evaluate an out-of-spec part to determine whether it met GM's standards for “performance, safety, functionality and durability.”
If the part could work and meet the standards, it might still be approved for use. Barton called the response “gobbledygook.”
Barra tried to explain further, but DeGette interjected briefly. Barton either failed to understand how an out-of-spec part could make it into a GM car despite having been provided a clear explanation, or he had been engaged in a somewhat complex rhetorical game aimed at getting Barra to admit that delaying a car's production for the sake of ensuring that one of its parts met spec—even though GM believed the part would work—would, in certain cases, be unnecessarily expensive. If Barton was indeed trying to catch Barra out, his willingness to play the fool in the service of the people of Texas is commendable.
Representative Lee Terry of Nebraska, chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, was allowed five minutes of questioning, which he began with a joke: “Thank you, I appreciate this, and I'm sorry for being late, but my uh, plane was cancelled for uh, mechanical reasons, probably an ignition switch...US Air.” Someone in the room laughed out loud, but it probably wasn't one of the bereaved family members who were still seated at the back of the room.
Barra was widely criticized in the media, even lampooned on “Saturday Night Live,” for being evasive during the hearings. Past interviews with Barra and her colleagues suggest that she is, by nature, quite a bit more frank and open than she appeared during her testimony. In one moment during last year's interview, she took issue with the fact that a lot of journalists fixated on her having moved from HR to product development, saying, “When people say, 'Oh my God, they put an HR person in product development,' it's like, gosh, you kind of didn't do your homework. Before that, several years were spent all around the product.” In a handful of other instances she proved more than willing to challenge the premise of a question.
It is probably safe to assume that GM believed it had little to gain by answering avoidable questions at length and that Barra's doing so would expose her to the possibility of uttering a damning or at least soundbite-worthy quote.
Some of the representatives made a big deal about the failures of NHTSA during the early part of the hearing,
with one representative citing the two incidences where NHTSA declined to investigate the ignition switch problem. But at the end of Barra's testimony, almost all of the cameras and reporters left the room, even though David Friedman, the acting administrator of the NHTSA, had yet to testify.
When Friedman's testimony began, seven of the subcommittee's 26 members were present, which is a shame, because Friedman's testimony was packed with information that would be useful to legislators seeking to become more informed policymakers.
The members of the committee who stayed asked well-considered questions and, for the most part, adopted a far less combative, less outraged tone with Friedman. But the show that everyone had come to see—woman CEO testifies before House Subcommittee—was clearly over.
During the second part of the hearing, Barra stood outside the hearing room waiting for the elevator and was surrounded by reporters and cameras.
Some members of the victims' families milled around near the main entrance of the hearing room. A woman in a brown suit comforted another woman and handed her a business card. Throughout the hearing, the families sat quietly. Some cried. Did the hearing offer them a measure of comfort? What did they expect to see there?
GM claims to have continued making operational and “cultural” changes since the hearings. Without the hearings and the media attention they caused, would GM have done all that they have done so far? Would they have hired Valukas? Or Feinberg? From outside of the Renaissance Center, it's difficult to say, though it's hard to imagine that the scrutiny hasn't helped get the corporation's attention.
Barra has made it clear that her career should not be defined by the fact that she's a woman, even if the media seems fixated on it.
Now in her fourth month as GM's CEO and fully embroiled in a scandal with roots in the GM culture she claims to have spent the post-bailout-era trying to reshape, Barra has been given her chance to define her career and determine exactly how she will be remembered.
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Paul Provenza: ¡Satiristas!
Michaelangelo Matos
¡Satiristas!
Books of short interviews tend to be breezy, which often equals inconsequential. But the 60 Q&As Paul Provenza conducts with stand-ups, late-night hosts, writers, animators, musicians, and commentators for ¡Satiristas!: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians add up to more than the sum of their parts. (Dan Dion’s backstage portraits of the artists certainly help.) Individually, the conversations veer between casual, such as the reunited Kids In The Hall’s nonstop riffing on one another, and more obviously thematic, such as the long-retired Tom Lehrer discussing the pros of quitting early.
But Provenza’s canny sequencing is the real draw. ¡Satiristas! reads less like a series of monuments—the approach of some in-depth Q&As, such as Mike Sacks’ excellent 2009 book And Here’s The Kicker—and more like a constantly moving conversation. Frequently, the talks segue into one another thematically, as when Penn Jillette describes the impact Randy Newman’s “Rednecks” had on him growing up in Massachusetts (“It changed my thinking from ‘I know everything I need to… I’m totally okay on the racism thing all the way back’ to ‘Wow, I really don’t know jack shit about this.”) to Newman’s description of writing the song, which was based on seeing Georgia’s segregationist governor Lester Maddox being booed on The Dick Cavett Show. “[T]here’s racism everywhere,” Newman explains. “There is no basis for anyone anywhere in America assuming moral superiority over citizens of Georgia.” And befitting the topic, there’s lots of room for contrariness. In one sequence, Craig Ferguson defends Jay Leno, saying he “does not talk down to his audience.” Then Leno defends his own middle-of-the-road political stance. Then Janeane Garofalo chides Leno for his “fear of not being well-liked.”
Provenza himself is a stand-up veteran, as well as co-director of the 2005 comedy documentary The Aristocrats, and his basic understanding of how humor works, on the page or on the stage, clearly helps his subjects relax and open up. He’s also unafraid to voice his own disagreements, as when he thoughtfully counters Marc Maron’s assertion that atheists are control freaks. The title is shticky, but ¡Satiristas! has a lot to teach comedy fans about the history and structure of humor, and it offers illuminating glimpses into the inner lives of the people who make it.
Recent from Michaelangelo Matos
Buddy Guy with David Ritz: When I Left Home
Matty Simmons: Fat, Drunk, & Stupid: The Inside Story Behind The Making Of Animal House
RJ Smith: The One: The Life And Music Of James Brown
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Alton T. Lemon, Philadelphia Plaintiff in Pioneering Church and State Lawsuit, Passes Away
By Thad Eagles, Legal Intern
In 1971, a group of Pennsylvania taxpayers who objected to having their taxes used to fund parochial schools took their fight to preserve the separation of church and state all the way to the Supreme Court. The Pennsylvania legislature had passed a statute allowing school districts to reimburse parochial schools, which at the time were almost all Catholic-affiliated, for the salaries of teachers and textbooks used in “secular” classes. With representation from the ACLU of Pennsylvania provided pro bono by the law firm of Drinker Biddle, the taxpayers won. On June 28, 1971, a unanimous Supreme Court overturned the Pennsylvania statutes. Alton T. Lemon, a civil rights activist and the lead plaintiff in this case, passed away on May 4th in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. He was 84 years old.
Most immediately, Lemon v. Kurtzman established that it violates the First Amendment for governments to help fund parochial schools, even for nominally secular activities. The Court held that the inevitable court intrusion into the details of school affairs required to ensure that government funds were used for secular activities and not for religious ones would create an impermissibly “intimate and continuing relationship between church and state.”
The more lasting effect of the case, however, was the new test it created to determine whether government activities or programs violate the First Amendment Establishment Clause principle of the separation of church and state. To pass this test, legislation must have a secular legislative purpose, cannot have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion, and cannot result in “excessive government entanglement” with religion. This test, known in legal circles as the “Lemon Test,” has made Lemon v. Kurtzmanone of the most cited decisions ever, as it is now the basic framework for every First Amendment case involving the separation of church and state.
The Lemon Test has been employed by the Supreme Court to strike down legislation requiring the placement of the Ten Commandments in school classrooms, that creationism (including “intelligent design”) be taught alongside evolution, teacher-led prayer in schools, and a whole host of other government actions that are unconstitutionally entangled with religion. In 2010, this test was employed by the federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in response to a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Pennsylvania, to strike down a state statute prohibiting corporate names containing words that “profane the Lord’s name.” As Chief Justice Burger wrote in his opinion for the court in 1971, the Lemon Test helps enforce the constitutional mandate that “government is to be entirely excluded from the area of religious instruction and churches excluded from the affairs of government.”
For his participation in the case, Alton T. Lemon won the 2003 First Amendment Hero Award from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. He settled in Philadelphia after serving in the Army, getting a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a lifelong member and supporter of the ACLU. He was also the first African-American president of the Ethical Society of Philadelphia and director of the Police Community Relations Division of the North City Congress. Sadly, we have lost Alton T. Lemon, but thankfully, his bravery helped solidify important freedoms protected by the First Amendment, and the legal principle that bears his name remains as vital and important today as in 1971.
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Education Week's blogs > Charters & Choice See more Opinion
Arianna Prothero
Charter schools. School Vouchers. Private Schools. Home Schooling. Join the discussion as Staff Writer Arianna Prothero examines the implications of school choice for students, families, and education.
« Will a 'School Choice for All' Program Survive the Ballot Box in Arizona? | Main | KIPP Alumni Are Thriving at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Here's Why »
For-Profit Charter School Students Doing Better on Math in Michigan, Study Finds
By Arianna Prothero on April 2, 2018 3:44 PM | No comments
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' overnight rise from Michigan philanthropist on a mission to spread school choice to the country's top ed job has meant that her favored policies have come under a lot more scrutiny.
And that's particularly true of charter schools run by for-profit companies—something of a controversial idea at least in part because recent research has found that some types of for-profit charter operators, mainly those that educate students online, can have a pretty adverse effect on how students perform academically.
It has been urban, nonprofit charter networks that—in study after study—have shown the most success at raising student test scores, at least for African-American and Latino students.
But findings from a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy are intriguing precisely because they run counter to other research and the general narrative that's developed around for-profit charter operators.
Although this latest study is limited to only one for-profit operator, the National Heritage Academy, and it hasn't yet been peer-reviewed, the findings are nonetheless worth exploring.
National Heritage Academy educates 58,000 students across nine states, making it the fourth largest for-profit charter operator in the country, and the largest in Michigan. About two-thirds of Michigan's charter schools are managed by for-profit companies, more than any other state. Unlike the two largest for-profit operators in the country, National Heritage Academy schools are not online schools—all of its students attend school in brick-and-mortar buildings.
The researchers only looked at Michigan students, and they found that attending a National Heritage Academy school for one year gave students a moderate academic boost in math, and had no statistically significant effect on student reading scores one way or the other. A 2013 study by Stanford University's Center for Educational Outcomes, or CREDO, that examined the performance of charter networks across the country also found that National Heritage Academy was among those that improved student academic achievement.
Furthermore, the University of Michigan researchers found that the students who benefited the most from attending a National Heritage Academy school were blue-collar and middle-income white and Asian students living in towns and suburban areas.
That's not to say that black and Latino students don't get a boost from attending a National Heritage school—the researchers just aren't sure because such students were less likely to enroll at a National Heritage school and those that did enroll attended the schools for shorter periods of time than their wealthier white and Asian peers.
This could be because there are fewer NHA schools in urban areas and students live further from their campuses. Charter schools in Michigan are not required to provide transportation to students. Urban areas in Michigan are also flooded with school choices, so students may simply be less likely to pick a National Heritage Academy school because they already have more school options than their rural and suburban peers.
Big Question: Does Profit Status Matter?
Perhaps the most significant question this study raises is whether the for-profit or non-profit status of a charter operator matters as much when it comes to improving student achievement, or if it's other factors that help raise student achievement.
Despite the profit status of the National Heritage Academy schools, they actually share several similarities with well-regarded non-profit charter networks such as KIPP and the Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy.
The schools follow the "no excuses" model with high expectations for student achievement, behavior, and strict codes of discipline. They devote more time out of the school day to work on math and reading and closely monitor student growth with frequent tests. National Heritage Academy schools also group students by ability.
National Heritage Academy schools hire more novice teachers and have more teacher turnover compared to traditional public schools. But the schools also place a significant emphasis on mentoring and leadership cultivation. Every school has a special administrator, known as a dean, who focus primarily on coaching teachers.
Teachers have many opportunities to move up the ladder as the network expands from teacher, to dean, to principal and to higher positions within the organization. This is very similar to how the country's largest charter school network, KIPP, develops talent and moves teachers up through the ranks.
What This Means for Debates Over For-Profit Companies in Education
As I mentioned, there are a couple of important caveats to keep in mind. First, the results were published as a National Bureau for Economic Research working paper, so they have not been peer-reviewed.
The researchers only studied one charter school operator in Michigan, and within the National Heritage Academy schools, researchers only looked at schools where there was more student enrollment demand than they could accommodate. These schools used a random lottery to pick which students they admitted, allowing the researchers to compare the test scores of lottery winners to losers within the same demographic groups.
A random lottery is great for girding against selection bias—the idea that students who attend charter schools are more successful not because of the school but because their parents are more motivated or have more resources. But it also means that the researchers are only studying the most popular schools within the NHA network, and they may be the most popular because they are the best academically.
All of this is to say that the results of this study can't be broadly applied to for-profit schools across the country or even just Michigan. But they do provide some food-for-thought in the ongoing debates both within and beyond the charter sector over the place of for-profit charter operators.
Betsy DeVos Helped Create Michigan's Charter Sector. Here's How It's Doing
The Broader Philosophical Debate Behind DeVos' Warning to Charter Advocates
For-Profit Charter Schools Show Poor Academic Growth
Online Charters Cause Rift Among Supporters of School Choice
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Children's Literature in Newcastle
Be inspired and informed by CLUGG, the Children's Literature Unit Graduate Group at Newcastle University, UK
Carnegie Medal winner 2019: The hard work of radical change
Remembering Jallianwala Bagh: Bali Rai’s City of Ghosts
CLUGG: A snapshot of what happens in the group’s weekly meetings
The 56th Bologna Children’s Book Fair: Creative Crossroads
A Fresher at Fifty
18th century children's literature
Aidan and Nancy Chambers
archival research
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Brian Conaghan
childhood reading
Children's Literature Unit
CLUGG
David Almond Fellowship
Elinor M Brent-Dyer
Fresher at Fifty
Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group
IBBY
Jean Estoril
Leila Berg
MLitt in Children's Literature
Noel Streatfeild
PhD in Children's Literature
Refugee Tales
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Vital North
Tag: Aidan and Nancy Chambers
Two Postdoctoral Positions in the Children’s Literature Unit
We’re really excited to have two postdoctoral posts available here in the Children’s Literature Unit at Newcastle University, each lasting two years (if full-time). The successful candidates will work on projects funded by Newcastle University’s Research Excellence Academy and Research Investment Fund. These offer the opportunity to work closely on the Aidan and Nancy Chambers collection at Seven Stories, or to pursue a postdoctoral research project of the candidate’s own design. The former would suit someone with experience in working with literary archives and an interest in developing this experience further, as well as someone with an interest in one of the many areas covered by the collection, which spans the whole of Aidan and Nancy’s working lives. The latter will be more independent in scope since it involves a project of the candidates own, but we’re interested in work which aligns with research interests in collection and archives, heritage, or diversity and inclusion.
Research Associate in Children’s Literature (REA) – B131592R
This post will be attached to the project ‘New Stories of Modern British Children’s Literature: the Chambers Collection’, and will map research pathways into the Aidan and Nancy Chambers archival material newly acquired by Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books. Applicants for this post should supply an academic CV and a cover letter in addition to completing the electronic application form.
Research Associate in Children’s Literature (RIF) – B131593R
This post will support research aligned with one of these three broad themes:
Developing collections, archives and exhibitions of children’s books, with a particular focus on how we tell national stories of children’s literature.
Children/young people and heritage.
Diversity and inclusion in histories of children’s literature.
Details of how to apply for this post are given in full in the online ad.
Successful candidates will be based in the Children’s Literature Unit, within the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, and will be joining a large and successful team of academics, doctoral students, and other postdoctoral researchers.
Applicants should have been awarded a doctoral degree in children’s literature, children’s culture, 20th-century publishing or a related area (or be in expectation that the award will be made by 31 October 2018), and should be able to demonstrate ongoing research interests that align with one or more of the designated areas.
For informal enquiries relating to these posts, contact Professor Matthew Grenby(matthew.grenby@newcastle.ac.uk) or Dr Lucy Pearson (lucy.pearson@newcastle.ac.uk).
Posted on 13th June 2018 Author StoneTags Aidan and Nancy Chambers, archival research, Children's Literature Unit, diversity, heritage, inclusion, postdoctoral positions, Seven StoriesLeave a comment on Two Postdoctoral Positions in the Children’s Literature Unit
David Almond Fellowships for Research in Children’s Literature
Newcastle University’s School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books are pleased to announce that the application process for 2018 David Almond Fellowships is now open.
Further particulars
The awards recognise both David Almond’s contribution to children’s literature and his connections with these partner institutions: he is a patron of Seven Stories and an honorary graduate of Newcastle University.
The Fellowships aim to promote high-quality research in the Seven Stories collections that will call attention to their breadth and scholarly potential. The two awards of £300 each are to facilitate a research visit to the Seven Stories collections in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK of at least two days by a bona fide researcher working on a relevant project. Applications will be considered from candidates in any academic discipline. The successful applicants will have a clearly defined project that will benefit from having access to the Seven Stories collections (please see indicative information about the collections below). All applicants should consult the Seven Stories catalogue as part of preparing their applications. A well-developed dissemination strategy will be an advantage. Priority will be given to the importance of the project and best use of the Seven Stories collections as judged by a senior member of the Children’s Literature Unit in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University and a senior member of the Collections team at Seven Stories.
Some previous David Almond Fellows have gone on to take up fully-funded PhD studentships at Newcastle University, others have disseminated their research into the collection through book chapters, peer-reviewed journals and conference papers. One of our former Fellows said of her visit that it was ‘a wonderful opportunity to work in the archive of Seven Stories… it is undoubtedly an invaluable asset for researchers internationally, and something the city can be extremely proud of.’
Eligibility for the award
Applicants must hold a first degree or higher from a recognised institution of higher education.
Note: non-EEA applicants are reminded that to take up a Fellowship they must hold an appropriate visa. Neither Newcastle University nor Seven Stories can help with this process. Please see the UK visas website for more information.
Fellowships must be taken up before the end of December, 2018. Recipients are expected to spend at least two days in Newcastle and are encouraged to time their visits to enable them to participate in events organised jointly or separately by the Children’s Literature Unit and Seven Stories. (Please note: successful applicants must contact Seven Stories and agree a date for the visit prior to making travel arrangements; normally a minimum of two weeks’ notice is required before any research visit.) Acknowledgement of the Fellowships must accompany all dissemination activities arising from the research.
The Seven Stories Collection
Seven Stories is the only accredited museum specialising in children’s books in the UK. Its collections are a unique resource for original research, particularly insofar as they document aspects of the creation, publication and reception of books for children from the 1930s to the present day. The steadily growing archive contains material from over 250 authors, illustrators, editors, and others involved in the children’s publishing industry in Britain.
Researching the Seven Stories collection could enhance a number of research topics. Examples of research areas and relevant collections:
Makers of children’s literature: children’s book history 1750-2000
Children’s books have been under-represented in book history scholarship. Seven Stories’ holdings can be used to investigate the forces which have shaped the children’s book. Areas of interest include editing and publishing, education and bookselling, diversity and race and changing technologies. Key archival holdings include the David Fickling Collection, the Aidan and Nancy Chambers / Thimble Press Collection, and the Leila Berg Collection. The recently catalogued Noel Streatfeild Collection also provides fascinating insights into the life and times of a leading children’s author during the mid- twentieth century.
New adults: the growth of teenage literature
Seven Stories’ holdings represent the opportunity to investigate the development of teenage literature from a number of perspectives: holdings include detailed evidence of the process of composition from early draft to published text; evidence of socio-political contexts, and evidence of the publishing contexts. Key archival holdings include the Aidan and Nancy Chambers / Thimble Press Collection, the Diana Wynne Jones Collection, the Philip Pullman Collection, the Beverley Naidoo Collection, and the Geoffrey Trease Collection.
Seven Stories is particularly interested in supporting studies which explore themes of inclusion and diversity within our archives: race and heritage, disability, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, age, socio-economic status, religion and culture. Projects in this research field might be cross-cutting, looking at a number of different archives within the Seven Stories Collection.
Children on stage: twentieth century children’s theatre
Seven Stories holds the complete archive of David Wood, one of the most prolific and influential playwrights for children in Britain. Projects based in this archive may approach the topic of children’s theatre from a number of perspectives, including theatre history and adaptation. Other relevant holdings include the Michael Morpurgo Collection and the recently acquired David Almond Collection.
More information can be found on the Collection pages of the Seven Stories website. Most of the artwork and manuscript collections are fully catalogued*, and the catalogues can be searched online via the link provided on the website. A list of many of the authors and illustrators represented in the collection can also be found on the Collection pages.
(NB this is not a complete list of the collections).
Please see also the Seven Stories Collection Blog, containing a variety articles describing or inspired by the Collection.
Applicants are asked to submit the following items by 1 June 2018:
an application form
a curriculum vitae
a brief proposal (of 1,000 words maximum)
one confidential letter of recommendation (sealed and signed; confidential letters may be included in your application packet or recommenders may send them directly)
Applications may be submitted by email or post.
Email: Kim.Reynolds@ncl.ac.uk
Post: David Almond Fellowships, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK
* NB Thanks to a major accrual, recently received, cataloguing of the David Almond archive is ongoing – the records are expected to be online by 30 June. An interim listing is available on request. Please contact collections@sevenstories.org.uk
Images from Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books, photography by Damien Wootten.
Posted on 26th April 2018 17th May 2018 Author StoneTags 18th century children's literature, 19th century children's literature, 20th century children's literature, Aidan and Nancy Chambers, archival research, Beverley Naidoo, Children's Literature Unit, David Almond, David Almond Fellowship, David Fickling, David Wood, Diana Wynne Jones, Geoffrey Trease, Leila Berg, Michael Morpurgo, Noel Streatfeild, Philip Pullman, Seven Stories, Thimble Press CollectionLeave a comment on David Almond Fellowships for Research in Children’s Literature
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Making anti-malarials from yeast: Jay Keasling and synthetic biology
Posted March 8, 2010 by plosmedstudent in Neglected Diseases
Guest blog by Shah R. Ali, an MD candidate at Stanford Medical School.
Malaria is getting a cutting-edge, first world scientific treatment at the hands of synthetic biologist Jay Keasling.
The most effective antimalarial currently in use is artemisinin, which is effective against the Plasmodium falciparum species (the most lethal malaria-causing species), including multidrug-resistant forms. However, most of the available artemisinin is extracted from the Artemisia annua plant, and supplies depend on the yield and cultivation-related factors. Chemical synthetic options are being explored, but their potential costs are not lower than for extraction of the active ingredient from plants. Dr. Keasling’s synthetic biology approach to re-engineer yeast to synthesize a key artemisinin precursor is estimated to reduce the cost of artemisinin-based combination therapies by 30-60%.
Dr. Keasling recently spoke at Stanford Medical School as part of the “Access and Delivery of Essential Medicines” lecture series about the story of artemisinin. At the beginning of his talk, he surprised audience members by talking about computer parts. He used this example to make his point that “we often take for granted the standardization that is so important for engineering disciplines.” Standardization of various biological components is one of the major goals of synthetic biology. After providing the background of the field, he said, “we thought…we could engineer a chemical factory inside a microbe to produce [artemisinin].”
The premise is deceptively simple: since we know the metabolic pathway to synthesize the drug in A. annua, we should be able to put it into another easily-cultured organism to churn out the compound at high quantities. Dr. Keasling did just this: his team tested some steps in E. coli then moved onto S. cerevisiae, into which they engineered 1) a mevalonate pathway engineered to increase yield of farnesyl pyrophosphate, 2) the amorphadiene synthase gene, and 3) a novel cytochrome P450 monooxygenase. The modified yeast metabolizes simple sugars to artemisinic acid, a nontoxic precursor to artemisinin. This genetically engineered yeast strain could prove a boon for malaria patients worldwide. The work was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gave Dr. Keasling (UC-Berkeley), Amyris Biotechnologies, and the Institute for OneWorld Health $43 million for this project.
Amyris Biotechnologies optimized culturing conditions and the chemical process for scale-up, and Sanofi-Aventis has partnered with these groups and obtained a license to produce the drug on a large scale and sell it cheaper than the farmed artemisinin. Furthermore, Sanofi currently produces several antimalarial compounds and has distribution networks in the developing world, and their partnership with the Keasling team should enable access to the infected individuals who need the drug. The Institute for OneWorld Health will support global access to the drug through public policy. The synthetic version of the drug is projected to cost a fraction of its current retail value, and thereby make it more affordable in resource-poor settings.
I think the reason that yeast-derived artemisinin has captured the attention of the media is that its story is compelling: a world-class researcher used cutting-edge science to produce a drug for the developing world, while collaborating with a start-up (Amyris), a non-profit drug-development company (Institute for OneWorld Health), and a for-profit pharmaceutical company (Sanofi-Aventis), and using the equipment and manpower of one of the premier research universities in the world (UC-Berkeley) and funds from the BMGF. This unique collaboration is all the more exciting given that the project actually worked in the laboratory, and many organizations and groups of people optimistically look forward to the translation of this benchtop discovery to the bedsides of infected individuals in the developing world. It remains to be seen whether such a scenario is, like a good experiment, replicable, but I hope that similar attempts will be made in the future that follow this paradigm. After all, Dr. Keasling did stress the importance of standardization.
Access and Delivery of Essential Medicines is a Stanford elective that aims to increase attention to diseases particularly concerning to the developing world at the medical school. The majority of talks, including Dr. Keasling’s, are recorded and made available to the public at www.adem.stanford.edu/talks.
Pingback: Biosafety | Synthetische Biologie
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Ratings Info strong bloody violence, strong language
Genre(s) Horror
Director(s) Colm McCarthy
Cast includes Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, Fisayo Akinade, Sennia Nanua, Dominique Tipper, Anamaria Marinca, Lobna Futers
THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is a horror film, set in the future, where much of humanity has been wiped out and survivors are threatened by the infected.
There are scenes in which zombies are shot, stabbed and bludgeoned, resulting in several bloody impact wounds. There are also scenes in which humans are attacked and bitten, resulting in some gory wound detail. There is also a scene in which a girl attacks and eats a cat.
There are several uses of strong language ('f**k'), as well as milder bad language ('shit', 'bollocks', 'bloody', 'sod', 'frigging', 'Jesus', 'Christ', 'hell').
In one scene, there is brief sight of adult magazine covers.
Warner Home Video Ltd
AVF339130
Components List
This work is made up of a number of separate components. Note that since February 2001 the BBFC has measured each component separately, but older works may not have the exact details, only a list of titles
THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS [Trailer 1] FilmTrailer 2m 18s Warner Brothers Entertainment UK Ltd 09/06/2016 15
THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS Warner Home Video Ltd,Warner Brothers Entertainment UK Ltd 22/12/2016 27
THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS Film 110m 53s Warner Brothers Entertainment UK Ltd 23/06/2016 15
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Craven Muslims Murder 12 Over Cartoons In Defenseless Paris
Posted at 9:49 am on January 7, 2015 by Bob Owens
Muslim terrorists attack the French satire newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing at least 12 today. Their automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades were not registered.
How weak are the core of your religious beliefs if you have to respond to satire with murder?
The answer to that question was exposed in Paris today, where the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo became the scene of another terror attack. This time, at least a dozen people were murdered:
Twelve people have been shot dead at the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, say police.
Two masked gunmen are reported to have stormed the offices of the controversial publication, which has previously been attacked over its portrayal of the Prophet Mohammed.
They are believed to have been armed with Kalashnikov rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade.
According to the AFP news agency, the attackers shouted: “We have avenged the prophet.”
A manhunt is under way for the gunmen, who escaped after a shootout in the street with police.
There is no right to bear arms in the French constitution, and so the left-wing weekly was essentially undefended when the pair of attackers emerged from a small black car and opened fire with what appeared to be fully-automatic AKMs. There are also claims that the attackers may have used an rocket-propelled grenade. Blast damage to an exterior wall lends credibility to that claim.
Charlie Hebdo has been threatened by Muslims since 2011, when they ran a special issue satirizing the prophet Mohammed with cartoons.
The Charlie Hebdo’ s cartoonist Luz kisses a special edition of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during a press conference at Theatre du Rond-Point on November 3, 2011 in Paris, France.
They’ve regularly lampooned radical Islam ever since, including tweeting a cartoon today just hours before the attack which mocked the leader of the terrorist group ISIS.
Meilleurs vœux, au fait. pic.twitter.com/a2JOhqJZJM
— Charlie Hebdo (@Charlie_Hebdo_) January 7, 2015
Charlie Hebdo was under “police protection,” which turned out to be woefully unprepared for the attack. At least two police officers are known to be among the dead, including one wounded and then finished off with a coup de grace on video.
We’ll warn in you advance that this brief video of part of the attack is both graphic and real, and is likely not safe for work [NSFW] viewing.
Why do we post such a gruesome video? We do so to point out the fact that the terrorists were all but carefree in their attack.
They knew that once the uniformed police were killed, that the neutered citizens of Paris would be able to nothing other than cower, or at most film the attack from now ubiquitous cell phone cameras. They knew that they could complete their mission and escape before Paris police had any chance to converge upon them… and they were right.
The gunmen who attacked Charlie Hebdo got away.
Paris reels.
Sadly, if the French citizen who shot the video above had been armed, there is an excellent chance that he could have fired upon these terrorists from above, giving the injured police officer writhing on the ground at least a chance of surviving his previous wounds.
But France is, as a matter of practicality, a “gun free zone.”
There is no “right to bear arms” in the French constitution. Both semi-automatic rifles and handguns—the same firearms Americans could so easily bring to bear against terrorists in our streets outside of a handful of freedom restricted cities—are prohibited, with very narrow exceptions.
There is no practical way for French citizens to protect themselves against “enemies foreign and domestic,” a problem dramatically illustrated in German tours of Europe twice in the last century, and which is abundantly clear again today as craven followers of Allah once again terrorized civil society for failing to respect their Dark Age sensibilities.
Events occur on a daily basis around the world which show us that bad men—both in criminal gangs and criminal governments—will use the force of arms to take what they want from disarmed populations.
History has shown us time and again that if you want to be free, you must be armed to defend that freedom.
While our politics could not be further from that of the radically left-wing Charlie Hebdo, we respect their unflinching courage to face some of the most violent bullies in world history head-on with the mockery such thin-skinned cowards so richly deserved.
It’s simply too bad that—thanks to their government’s distrust of its own people—that they lacked steel in their hands to back up the steel in their spines.
Tags: Charlie HebdoFranceParisSelf Defenseterrorism
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24.10.18 | Case Studies, People and Community, See and Share
Beaumont Wildlife – caring for our neighbors
Lucite International’s (LI) Beaumont site is part of the Beaumont Industrial Complex, an 800-acre area located along the Neches River in the heart of a bio-diverse zone in southeast Texas, USA. Our Beaumont team share the area with a wide variety of wildlife drawn to the perfect habitat created by this marshy area.
The osprey, one of the largest and most distinctive birds of prey, is a frequently seen neighbor at Beaumont. Living along the Neches River, they make their living by fishing in and around the marshes.
An osprey, pictured carrying its prey in Texas, USA.
During routine inspections in September 2018, Sterlynn Cook, a member of Beaumont’s environmental team, discovered a female osprey in the fire water retention pond, sadly injured and unable to fly out of the water.
Sterlynn was able to retrieve the bird gently with the help of a wildlife loop pole and placed it into the back of a pickup truck. In the US, ospreys are protected under federal and state wildlife laws. Consequently, Environmental Manager, Derek Eades made calls to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for further consultation.
Concerned that the osprey may go into shock or cause itself further injury by struggling, the team were able to calm the bird by transferring it carefully into a darkened container. Derek said:
“The osprey remained calm and offered little resistance throughout the whole ordeal. It’s as though it realized we were there to help.”
The osprey, Lucy, after being rescued at Beaumont.
No local support services were available to attend the site, so Environmental Specialist, Kendra Derrick, drove the bird over 100 miles to Wildlife Response Services, a wildlife rehabilitation facility in Seabrook, Texas where its condition could be assessed further.
Upon examination here, it was determined that bird’s wing and tail feathers had been burned by either a flare or hot gases during flight. Other than the damaged feathers, the bird was judged to be alert and in very good shape. The facility also named the osprey – Lucy.
The facility will be able to affix donor feathers to Lucy’s wings and tail to help keep her warm and improve her mobility whilst in her cage. In around six months, she is expected to shed feathers and grow new ones. At this stage, she will be brought back to LI’s Beaumont site, where employees will be encouraged to participate in Lucy’s release back into her home.
Wildlife Response Services is a non-profit facility that is able to operate on a donation basis. LI has followed its Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation ‘KAITEKI’ principles for the sustainable wellbeing of people, society and our planet Earth by pledging to donate to help care for Lucy and other wildlife in need of treatment.
Thank you to Derek Eades, Environment Manager at Beaumont, for sharing this story with us.
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Coast Guard looks for lessons in Matagorda miracle
By Houston Chronicle on September 1, 2009 at 9:30 AM
A car dealer out for a yachting joyride turned up what rescue boats and Coast Guard planes, scouring the Gulf round the clock for six straight days, could not: three missing Matagorda boaters, clinging to their overturned catamaran, miraculously alive.
Joyous reunions with the missing men — James Phillips, Curt Hall and Tressell Hawkins — eclipsed their families’ despair of a day earlier, when the Coast Guard had called off a search that spanned 86,000 square miles, making it one of the most sprawling, labor-intensive searches ever conducted in the Gulf of Mexico.
The pilots and captains who had hunted feverishly for days were among the celebrants, erupting into fist pumps and shouts of relief when they got the call Saturday night: The men were safely aboard the Corpus Christi salesman’s yacht, Affordable Fantasy. As details of the capsized catamaran’s drifting weeklong course unfolded, Coast Guard officials began a Monday-morning quarterback session of epic proportions, trying to understand where the search effort went off course, and how they could have corrected it.
“I’m so glad they’re alive and we can hear the story,” said Capt. Marcus Woodring, commander of Coast Guard Sector Houston-Galveston, who helped lobby a Coast Guard admiral to prolong the search for two days longer than they might, statistically, have given up hope.
Sketchy details of the boat’s location — and of what happened to it and when — stymied searchers from the beginning.
No radio beacon
The Coast Guard began their search on Aug. 22, when the three men were reported late returning from an overnight fishing trip near Tequila Rig, about 75 miles off the Matagorda coast. Without a tracking device or a radio transmission — one of the boaters said he tried to make a call, but the boat immediately capsized before he could finish — searchers only had the word of rig workers who said they had seen the men there near nightfall on Aug. 21. The catamaran did not have an electronic positioning indicator radio beacon, or EPIRB, which could have given searchers a precise starting point. The Coast Guard centered its search on the rig and fanned out over time.
It was only after the men were found — 75 miles from the search effort’s epicenter — that they learned the catamaran actually capsized about 20 miles to the southwest, near a fishing spot called Hilltop, a good 24 hours before the search began.
“This is why search and rescue is so difficult,” Woodring said. “In the absence of solid information, you have to make planning assumptions. You have to start somewhere.”
Over the next week, boats circled and planes buzzed overhead, day and night, in scrolling search patterns. As time passed, the search area expanded, but the models were based on drift from Tequila Rig, not Hilltop.
Meanwhile, perched atop the overturned 23-foot catamaran, the men grew increasingly desperate, broiled by sun, parched by thirst and surrounded, at times, by schools of sharks. But they were resilient, and resourceful, scavenging a tarp from the boat to shield them from the sun and warm them at night, and diving to forage for food and water inside the vessel. They had flares, but used them within an hour after the boat filled with water, to no avail. Near-misses with other boats were now frustratingly futile, but they resisted the urge to swim for other ships. That, Woodring says, is what saved them.
Phillips told Woodring, in a phone call on Sunday, that he had seen a plane fly overhead, turn and circle back again.
“That indicates to me that he was close to the edge of a search pattern, where that turn would take place,” Woodring said.
The Coast Guard’s search and rescue system, built on probability statistical models, lists the average probability of being detected from a plane as 78 percent. But the pilot did not see the men waving T-shirts, far below: they were in the unlucky 22 percent.
In all, 45 different flights would log 250 hours of search time and six cutter missions would rotate three-day shifts before the crew made the difficult decision to suspend the search on Friday. A strict reading of the probability models might have called off the search as early as Wednesday. But searchers were hopeful, swayed by the pleas of relatives who said the men were skilled survivalists: outdoorsmen, fishers and hunters.
“We had families that were depending on us,” Woodring said. “People chomping at the bit to go out and try to locate these people. We continued for another couple days, and that’s part of our own humanitarian desire to keep helping.”
Fire extinguisher helps
Inundated by media requests, the families did not respond to phone calls Monday. But Phillips’ wife, Shane Phillips, said late last week she was devastated by the Coast Guard’s decision to discontinue the search.
The three men, plagued by heat exhaustion and hallucinations, still had one trick up their sleeves when they saw the 75-foot yacht pass by on Saturday evening. In addition to waving their T-shirts, they blew foam from a fire extinguisher to draw the captain’s attention.
The yacht’s owner, Eddie Yaklin, treated the men to a dinner of steak and Gatorade. When a Coast Guard crew caught up with them, the men declined medical attention, Woodring said.
Without speculating on the men’s probability of surviving as long as they did in the conditions they did, Woodring called it the most unique and difficult case he’s had in 25 years with the Coast Guard.
“This is one of the biggest search efforts I’ve seen.”
Now the case will be investigated by experts from the Coast Guard’s Yorktown, Va., search and rescue school, Woodring said. The lessons they’ve learned will likely be taught to a future generation of Coasties.
jennifer.latson@chron.com
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John Stuart Mill Worries about Money Corrupting Advocacy and Facilitation
John Stuart Mill is not always as libertarian as people think. After defending free speech vigorously in an earlier chapter, in paragraph 8 of On Liberty “Chapter V: Applications,” he defends the idea of driving vice underground if the people advocating and facilitating it are likely to be advocating and facilitating it primarily for the money. However, he makes an interesting distinction: if paid facilitation is necessary to enable people to pursue vice, it must be allowed. But if home-production is adequate to make the vice possible, then it is legitimate to make the market provision of facilitation illegal in order to drive it underground, where it will be less of a bad influence. Here is what he writes:
There is another question to which an answer must be found, consistent with the principles which have been laid down. In cases of personal conduct supposed to be blameable, but which respect for liberty precludes society from preventing or punishing, because the evil directly resulting falls wholly on the agent; what the agent is free to do, ought other persons to be equally free to counsel or instigate? This question is not free from difficulty. The case of a person who solicits another to do an act, is not strictly a case of self-regarding conduct. To give advice or offer inducements to any one, is a social act, and may, therefore, like actions in general which affect others, be supposed amenable to social control. But a little reflection corrects the first impression, by showing that if the case is not strictly within the definition of individual liberty, yet the reasons on which the principle of individual liberty is grounded, are applicable to it. If people must be allowed, in whatever concerns only themselves, to act as seems best to themselves at their own peril, they must equally be free to consult with one another about what is fit to be so done; to exchange opinions, and give and receive suggestions. Whatever it is permitted to do, it must be permitted to advise to do. The question is doubtful, only when the instigator derives a personal benefit from his advice; when he makes it his occupation, for subsistence or pecuniary gain, to promote what society and the State consider to be an evil. Then, indeed, a new element of complication is introduced; namely, the existence of classes of persons with an interest opposed to what is considered as the public weal, and whose mode of living is grounded on the counteraction of it. Ought this to be interfered with, or not? Fornication, for example, must be tolerated, and so must gambling; but should a person be free to be a pimp, or to keep a gambling-house? The case is one of those which lie on the exact boundary line between two principles, and it is not at once apparent to which of the two it properly belongs. There are arguments on both sides. On the side of toleration it may be said, that the fact of following anything as an occupation, and living or profiting by the practice of it, cannot make that criminal which would otherwise be admissible; that the act should either be consistently permitted or consistently prohibited; that if the principles which we have hitherto defended are true, society has no business, as society, to decide anything to be wrong which concerns only the individual; that it cannot go beyond dissuasion, and that one person should be as free to persuade, as another to dissuade. In opposition to this it may be contended, that although the public, or the State, are not warranted in authoritatively deciding, for purposes of repression or punishment, that such or such conduct affecting only the interests of the individual is good or bad, they are fully justified in assuming, if they regard it as bad, that its being so or not is at least a disputable question: That, this being supposed, they cannot be acting wrongly in endeavouring to exclude the influence of solicitations which are not disinterested, of instigators who cannot possibly be impartial—who have a direct personal interest on one side, and that side the one which the State believes to be wrong, and who confessedly promote it for personal objects only. There can surely, it may be urged, be nothing lost, no sacrifice of good, by so ordering matters that persons shall make their election, either wisely or foolishly, on their own prompting, as free as possible from the arts of persons who stimulate their inclinations for interested purposes of their own. Thus (it may be said) though the statutes respecting unlawful games are utterly indefensible—though all persons should be free to gamble in their own or each other’s houses, or in any place of meeting established by their own subscriptions, and open only to the members and their visitors—yet public gambling-houses should not be permitted. It is true that the prohibition is never effectual, and that, whatever amount of tyrannical power may be given to the police, gambling-houses can always be maintained under other pretences; but they may be compelled to conduct their operations with a certain degree of secrecy and mystery, so that nobody knows anything about them but those who seek them; and more than this, society ought not to aim at. There is considerable force in these arguments. I will not venture to decide whether they are sufficient to justify the moral anomaly of punishing the accessary, when the principal is (and must be) allowed to go free; of fining or imprisoning the procurer, but not the fornicator, the gambling-house keeper, but not the gambler. Still less ought the common operations of buying and selling to be interfered with on analogous grounds. Almost every article which is bought and sold may be used in excess, and the sellers have a pecuniary interest in encouraging that excess; but no argument can be founded on this, in favour, for instance, of the Maine Law; because the class of dealers in strong drinks, though interested in their abuse, are indispensably required for the sake of their legitimate use. The interest, however, of these dealers in promoting intemperance is a real evil, and justifies the State in imposing restrictions and requiring guarantees which, but for that justification, would be infringements of legitimate liberty.
John Stuart Mill’s emphasis in this passage on the corrupting influence of money makes me think about the debate over restrictions on campaign contributions. There, I do think that the distinction the Supreme Court has made between direct contributions to a candidate and “independent” expenditures makes some sense. But I might draw the line a little differently: as long as money will only help a candidate win an election, this seems important enough for free speech that it should probably be allowed. But if money is given into such direct control of the candidate that the candidate can turn it to personal use–including even moderate luxury on the campaign trail–the potential for corruption seems more severe and the argument for limiting things becomes greater. This is actually an argument for prohibiting campaign funds from being used for the candidate’s comfort rather than an argument for limiting contributions to a campaign fund. If such a restriction had the side-effect of discouraging people who like high levels of material comfort–that they can’t pay for out of their own pockets–from running for office, that might not be a bad thing.
religionhumanitiesscience, politics
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Panasonic CARES for Virgin Trains projector
How Panasonic monitors and maintains the Virgin Train’s projector at London’s Euston Station
As the UK’s sixth busiest railway station, over 100,000 people filter through the ticket barriers of London Euston every day.
The station is the southern terminus for both London Midland and the West Coast Mainline operated by Virgin Trains and is operational 21 hours each day, from the time the first train arrives at the station from Milton Keynes at 4.34am and the last train departs to the same destination at 1.34am.
For each of those 21 hours, customers at Euston are engaged by a large projection in the main concourse, highlighting Virgin Trains offers, tweets and other marketing messages.
Such extended hours in such an environmentally challenging location, require a comprehensive maintenance programme for the projector.
"We are delighted with how effectively Panasonic works to ensure we are always able to communicate with our customers."
Panasonic CARES (Customer Assurance through Remote monitoring and Enhanced Service) is a service which connects projectors and displays via our Mobile Virtual Network, helping customers maximise uptime, minimise costly interruptions and stay focused on their professional priorities.
For Virgin Trains, Panasonic monitors the PT-DZ17K 17,000 lumen projector at Euston Station remotely from its Monitoring and Repair Centre based in Cardiff.
Using 3G technology alarms and system diagnostics are monitored by Panasonic’s Customer Service team, who then arrange for a service visit by a dedicated Panasonic engineer.
“We can see issues before they occur, and react to them in the fastest manner possible,” said Donald Maidment, Head of Customer Service for Panasonic Business. “Other projection and display manufacturers offer a reactive ‘return to base’ service programme, they can’t offer a predictive service, which is exactly what CARES provides.”
CARES uses Panasonic’s internally developed Early Warning System software (ET-SWA100) which connects to the product via 3G technology and enables Panasonic to perform a diagnostic service on the product from anywhere in the world, and determine what, if any, maintenance is required.
“By monitoring the projectors at Euston Station proactively, we can predict when lamps and filters need to be changed and deploy an engineer to Euston before there is any loss of the projection. For the client, it means completely hassle free use of our products,” added Donald Maidment. “The projector is situated on a roof within the ticket office at Euston Station. This is a particularly challenging environment, due to comparatively high levels of dust and a limited amount of space in which to project. We supplied a special enclosure which provides protection from dust and means the projection is maintained at a precise angle, maximising the image size.
“In order to affect the perfect service for the customer, we send our engineers in the middle of the night, outside of the operating hours of Virgin Trains, so they do not disturb operations within the ticket office. Our engineers affect a resolution during their down time, enabling Virgin Trains to wake up the following morning to a perfectly working projector.”
Yasmin Sinfield, Senior Advertising Executive at Virgin Trains, said “The service we are provided by the team at Panasonic allows Virgin Trains to concentrate on the really important things, like more destinations and more frequent train services, new ticket buying systems and better ways to access the travel information our customers need.”
“Having said that, we are delighted with the level of attention the projection at Euston gets and how effectively Panasonic works to ensure we are always able to communicate with our customers at our London hub.”
Available in different tiers, the CARES monitoring system connects devices, locations, the cloud platform and remote mobile devices.
"The service provided by the team at Panasonic allows Virgin Trains to concentrate on the really important things"
Each Panasonic device has an external module to enable 3G connectivity, with every unit linked to an account. All accounts can have multiple units connected to it, regardless of location. Installation and set-up is simple and out-of-the-box. The cloud-based remote monitoring platform handles multiple accounts and the cloud architecture allows for easy expansion and high service level agreements.
The contents of the server can be accessed from anywhere, by any mobile device (via a web interface) and alarm notifications can also be received on mobile devices via email. Devices can also be controlled remotely from mobile terminals.
Panasonic has also developed Smart Climate Cloud, a similar solution designed to control, monitor and manage heating and cooling systems via 3G from any web browser.
AV solution at UNESCO
Adidas Brand Centre has the world's long...
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Cairngorms National Park Deposit Local Plan goes out for consultation
A DOCUMENT that sets out the future development and land use of the Cairngorms National Park goes out for public consultation from July 9th.
The Cairngorms National Park Deposit Local Plan sets out proposed policies, guidance and management for development and land use in the Park for a five year period. Once it has been formally adopted it will replace the local plans currently in existence for the four local authority areas covering the Park: Aberdeenshire; Angus; Highland and Moray.
It was drawn up by the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) following consultation with the public and private partners.
The public is being invited to respond to it over the next three months. Drop-in sessions will be held around the Park during this time to allow people to discuss any concerns they have about the document before submitting their formal comments or objections in writing.
Karen Major, the Cairngorms National Park Authority’s Local Plan Officer, said: “The Cairngorms National Park Local Plan will be very important for the Park and therefore it is vital that the public respond to the deposit document. Only through responding will we be able to take their comments into account and ensure we get a Local Plan that delivers what is needed in Park.
“I would also encourage people to attend the drop-in sessions as it will allow them to have any concerns they have about the document addressed.”
Details about the drop-in sessions will be announced in the press nearer the time. The public can also make appointments at either the Grantown-on-Spey or Ballater offices.
The closing date for comments and objections, which must be made in writing, is September 28th. Following this the Deposit Local Plan will undergo any necessary modifications.
It will have several stages to go through before it is adopted, which is not expected to be for at least another year.
Copies of the Deposit Local Plan and representation forms are available online or from the CNPA offices in Ballater or Grantown-on-Spey. The document is also available for inspection at local authority offices and libraries throughout the Park.
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Brewster Commends Leadership of Interim Town Administrator Mark Forest
At Spring Town Meeting on May 6, the Brewster Select Board, on behalf of the residents and employees of the Town of Brewster, applauded the leadership provided by Mark Forest during his term as Interim Town Administrator. Select Board Chair Cindy Bingham read a proclamation recognizing Mr. Forest’s service including his actions to help address the Town’s financial challenges, his collaboration with elected leaders, appointed officials and residents, and his commitment to teamwork and high quality public service.
Mr. Forest served as Interim Town Administrator from June 2018 to April 2019. Brewster’s new Town Administrator, Peter Lombardi, began his duties on April 22. Mr. Forest will continue to serve as a consultant to the Town to ensure a smooth transition with Mr. Lombardi.
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Home » Articles » Horsforth Vale gets its ’15 minutes of fame’ Over 46155 entries
Monday, 6th July 2015
Horsforth Vale gets its ’15 minutes of fame’
TV scenes shot at a Redrow housing development in Horsforth, near Leeds have now aired.
Finished homes, ongoing building work and the interior of one of the properties at Horsforth Vale featured in episode five of The Syndicate, the BBC TV programme about a group of lottery winners that has regularly been attracting audiences of in excess of 5 million on Tuesday evenings.
Location managers for The Syndicate selected the housing venture in Horsforth for its pretty scenery and luxury homes with traditional stone exteriors. Within the story line one of the characters had attempted to surprise his wife by buying a luxury showhome with some of their share of the winnings.
Written by Kay Mellor and starring Anthony Andrews, Alice Krige and Lenny Henry, among others, the series is focused on the ‘downstairs’ staff of a crumbling stately home and their lottery fortunes. Filming took place across Yorkshire including locations in Scarborough, Wetherby and Leeds.
In episode five viewers were able to see emotional scenes shot inside and outside a ‘Balmoral’ home at Horsforth Vale involving two of the main cast members – Elizabeth Berrington who plays Dawn Stevenson and Kieran O’Brien who plays her husband Andy.
Patsy Aicken, sales director for Redrow Homes (Yorkshire) said:
“We’ve all been following The Syndicate faithfully in anticipation of seeing Horsforth Vale. We weren’t disappointed as it featured prominently and viewers were able to get a good look at the beautiful streetscene we’ve created there. We’ve also been gripped by the storyline.”
Writer Kay Mellor has also co-directed the series and played a key role in selecting the four-bedroom detached Balmoral after seeing Redrow’s same style showhome. She also oversaw filming on the day and said:
“It is always very important to me to find the perfect location to fit with the story and I was ecstatic when I saw this house because it was ideal.”
Would-be home owners who’d like a Balmoral of their own won’t need to win the lottery because it’s priced at £534,950. This large four-bedroom detached home, boasts three en-suite bathrooms, a bright, airy kitchen/dining room, large lounge and study/family room as well as a detached double garage.
Other homes at Horsforth Vale are available from £314,950, with the development split into two outlets, The Green and The Limes. Each boasts two fully furnished showhomes which are open daily from 10am to 5.30pm.
For those who didn’t catch the fifth episode, it will be on BBC iPlayer until the end of July – the Horsforth section features at around 33 minutes in. The sixth and final episode will air on Tuesday, July 7.
The filming of The Syndicate taking place at the Balmoral home in Horsforth Vale
Actress Elizabeth Berrington in a scene from The Syndicate
Redrow Homes
Ahmarra supply and install fire doors for major Southampton Tower Block refurbishment Ahmarra has been selected to supply and install hundred...
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Mnangagwa's govt re-ignites currency debate
by Brett Chulu
PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa's remarks over the weekend that Zimbabwe would have a fully-fledged local currency before the end of the year, ending the multi-currency regime enacted in 2009, effectively re-ignited the emotive issue. This emphatically buttresses statements earlier in the year by Finance minister Mthuli Ncube's on the re-introduction of an out-and-out currency.
The major premise on which the president based his argument for the return of the local currency is coded in his statement that the multi-currency had overstayed its welcome. Ncube, barely a day later, decoded the key reason behind his boss' statement that: "We must regain control of our monetary and fiscal policy … It is quite clear that we need to move towards having our own domestic unit of account and the RTGS$ is the beginning of that." Ncube lamented that without a monetary policy based on a fully-fledged currency it is difficult to control inflation.
It is clear that Mnangagwa and Ncube have sat down and given much thought on the deteriorating economic environment, characterised by a meteoric loss of value of the RTGS$ against the greenback, an interbank forex overwhelmed by the parallel market, stratospheric rises in the prices of goods and services and the accompanying socio-economic heaving. Clearly, they have come to the conclusion that shunting the multi-currency regime will result in economic stability. We have to subject these assertions to critical assessment.
Basically, Ncube and Mnangagwa are presenting a theory - a statement of what causes and why. To add value to this debate, we have to test the validity of their theory.
Let us begin from where we are all familiar. During the hyperinflationary era, Zimbabwe had a fully-fledged currency, with flexible monetary policy in place. The presence of these two elements Ncube and Mnangagwa hanker for a return did not stem economic decline; at its lowest ebb our economy was characterised by empty shops and year-on-year inflation of 89 700 000 000 000 000 000 000%. At the very basic level, a local currency and a monetary policy within the control of a central bank is not a guarantee of economic stability. This forces us to dust up our notes on the basics of currency valuation.
The currency Ncube and Mnangagwa wants to re-introduce is a fiat currency, just like the erstwhile Zimdollar. The word "fiat" comes from the Latin, which means "let it be done" or "it shall be". One scholar defines fiat money as "intrinsically valueless money used as money because of government decree".
The question then becomes how will Ncube and Mnangagwa's promised fiat currency have stability if it is principally hey-presto money? Any currency, whether it is representative (standing in for a tangible commodity) or fiat, has to be backed by something for it to command value and acceptance. Representative money is backed by something tangible such as gold reserves. The mechanics of how fiat money finds the level of its value relative to other sovereigns' currencies are primarily the stability or trustworthiness of the issuing government, the stability of the economy and the demand and supply of the money.
Firstly, when Ncube and Mnangagwa tell us that the re-introduction of the local currency, essentially fiat money, will restore economic stability, they are putting forward a tautology - a currency does not bring about economic stability - it is a stable economy that brings about a stable currency.
Secondly, they are telling us that they have divined into the future; they seem to have total control in terms of guaranteeing political stability and forcing the discipline not to print money recklessly.
The nostalgic yearning for a re-appropriation of the flexibility of monetary policy is a subtle call to print money - whether it will be responsible, no one can divine into that.
The next logical destination is a set of three questions. Can Ncube and Mnangagwa engineer political stability before the end of the year? Can Ncube and Mnangagwa bring about meaningful economic reform before the end of the year? Can Ncube and Mnangagwa resist the temptation to print money excessively?
If the answer is "yes" to these three questions, then Ncube and Mnangagwa's new currency will have stability. The converse is true. The questions I have posed have precise answers, unfortunately, only in the future. The only way to predict how these three questions can be answered in the future is a predictive model based on current and past data.
There is a direct link between politics and economics.
The major political opposition is playing hard in terms of dialoguing with the ruling party to forge a political settlement. Ncube is banking on a successful re-engagement process with the multi-lateral institutions and the Paris Club in order to get debt relief, critical to lowering our country risk premium and open paths for refinancing.
He has a high wall in his path to contend with - the debt relief process laid down by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the gateway to successful negotiations on debt relief with the World Bank, European Investment Bank and the Paris Club creditors (accounting for about 54% of our total sovereign debt of close to US$8 billion). The IMF process has four stages and Zimbabwe must pass all the four stages as the multilateral institutions and the Paris Club require us to excel in this process. One of the four stages requires that Zimbabwe comes up with what is called a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) which, according to the IMF, criterion must be a product of broad-based participation. If there is no input from the main opposition and the broad civil society, for example, the PRSP will lack legitimacy and will not make the grade. Ncube will be denied the access card to both Bretton Woods and Paris because Zimbabwe will have failed to pass a crucial stage.
That being the case, Ncube's debt relief journey will come to an immature end, and debt restructuring and subsequent refinancing being a key piece of the economic revival strategy, will fall apart like a deck of cards. We have already learned that the stability of a fiat currency depends partly on economic stability; it cannot be refuted that Zimbabwe is likely not to have the right political ingredients to underwrite a stable local currency.
The current RTGS$ is the bellwether for the new promised currency - the new currency by any name will just be fundamentally another RTGS$.
The IMF has not hidden its disapproval of the Afreximbank structured loans, making it clear these non-concessional loans based on collaterising our minerals and tobacco will scuttle negotiations for debt relief. This is a political hot potato - Zimbabwe is heavily dependent on Afreximbank loans to stabilise the dire forex situation.
Without other lenders coming to the party, Zimbabwe cannot do away with Afreximbank's financial assistance as that will be politically suicidal.
Government is damned if it dumps Afreximbank. It is damned if it does not dump the Pan-African lender. We do not even have the prospect of having forex stock to cover four months of import requirements as per the IMF recommendations.
Mnangagwa must not listen to simplistic economic arguments about currency return - he needs to know that sound politics and economics are pre-requisites to a stable currency. In our circumstances, politics impacts directly on economics.
Said the venerable scholar Charles Lindblom: "Politics is economics. Economics is politics."
If Ncube and Mnangagwa rush to re-introduce the new currency, be assured that the new currency will fall faster than what the RTGS$ is currently doing.
Brett Chulu is a management consultant and a classic grounded theory researcher who has published research in an academic peer-reviewed international journal. - brettchuluconsultant@gmail.com.
Source - the independent
More on: #Brett_Chulu, #Debate, #Currency
Pumula old 4 roomed house fr sale
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iPad Pro(ductivity)
Holy crap I get a lot done with my iPad Pro! To the casual observer, it definitely comes off as simply a larger version of something that already existed in the product line. Looking at the device aesthetically, aside from from some small but very cool hardware updates, this is mostly true. When you power it up, though, things take an exciting (and fast) turn.
This updated generation of Apple’s System on a Chip (SoC) is so quick, it’s easy to forget you are on a mobile device. Booting the device is quick and getting around within iOS feels like silk. iOS has added a lot of new features as we have progressed through iOS 9.x (some of which are iPad Pro only right now).For example, split screen is a nice way to view and edit information from two independent applications concurrently since each application can now be full iPad Air 2 size. In terms of viewing video, you can now put video into a floating window and position it to best fit what you are working on. Think of it like picture-in-picture! External keyboard shortcuts are a welcome addition as well. The ability to move around within apps and the OS using keyboard shortcuts brings traditional laptop feel into the iPad world. Touch is still the primary interaction method, but having the ability to use keyboard muscle memory aids in productivity when typing.
It doesn’t stop there, either. Two new accessories were released alongside this new iPad: Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard. Both of these accessories are only compatible with the iPad Pro as of this writing, but I can see them branching out to other size iPads over time. The Smart Keyboard is a mix between an external keyboard and a Smart Cover. Unlike most iPad keyboards that rely on Bluetooth to connect to the iPad, this new keyboard utilizes a new Smart Connector on the side of the iPad Pro. This means the keyboard doesn’t require an internal battery or wireless connectivity, making it very thin and light. It also doubles as a cover for the iPad screen, much the same as the traditional Smart Cover. I did also order the new BRYDGE Pro Keyboard, but won’t be able to comment on that until it ships in April of 2016.
Now, the Apple Pencil. We have seen various iterations of stylus going back to pre-iPad days. For the most part, they have all pretty much been the same in terms of how they interact with the screen. Because they were completely passive and had little to no communication with the iPad, they were very limited. The Apple Pencil is the first device of its kind that truly feels like pen and paper. The integration between the screen hardware of the iPad Pro and the Pencil are matched to a level of precision never before seen. Not only that, but the palm rejection is so good, you can rest your hand with no fear of stray lines or marks on the virtual page. This takes some getting used to, as we have collectively become trained in the past that you must not touch the screen with anything but the stylus tip. The Apple Pencil has set a new high bar in the area of handwriting on digital devices, and I would argue it being the official starting point of a true digital writing instrument.
Although I have replaced my laptop with an iPad in the past, the iPad Pro is really feeling like it is up to the challenge of taking over for a laptop in the majority of tasks. I am really happy with the device overall, and absolutely love having it as my main machine. I do have other computers (27″ iMac / 13″ MacBook Pro) and they will serve their purpose for some time to come, but the iPad Pro is definitely my first choice and the device I most enjoy using on a daily basis. I can’t wait to see where the device goes and how it helps morph the future of iOS.
//Jason
Apple blog iOS iPad Pro Productivity
Soylent 2.0 I recently ordered a case of Soylent 2.0 because I was curious to see what it was like. The basic idea of Soylent sounded interesting as a meal
Gold Plating. #science Have you ever done something simply because you wanted to see what would happen? Me too! The latest instance of this involved 24k gold plating. I
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Moles Family Crest, Coat of Arms and Name History
Ar. a bend sa. betw. two lions' heads erased of the last.
Origin, Meaning, Family History and Moles Coat of Arms and Family Crest
Moles Origin:
England, Dutch, Scotland
Origins of Moles:
This interesting and unique surname of English origin is a pet name for a person having an imagined closeness to the mammal, acquiring from the Middle English "mol(le)" which means"mole" and the addition of "s" which means "son of." The surname dates sometime back to the end of 13th Century. More documentations contain one Nicholas de Mol (1272), "Testa de Neville, name Liber Feodorum." Parish recordings consist of Jane Molles who married William Freesey in December 1621, at St. Gabriel's, Fenchurch, London, Richard, son of Richard and Ann Moles named in January 1701 at St. Anne Soho, Westminster. John Henry Mole (1814-1886) was a water-colour artist. He was vice-administrator of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-colours, 1879. One William Mole at the age of 32, who was a famine traveler, moved from Liverpool aboard the Rochester obligated for New York in May 1846. A Royal symbol gave to a Moles family which contains a silver shield with a black curve or diagonal line mentioning the shoulder strap worn by a fighter in the mid of two black lions heads removed.
More common variations are: Moules, Moyles, Moales, Mowles, Moiles, Molles, Molesi, Molese, Molies, Moleas.
The surname Moles was first found in Roxburghshire, Where they held a family seat as a tribe and descended from Eustace the Sheriff of Huntingdon who held his estates of Molesworth in Huntingdon from Countess Judith a fellow of Duke William of Normandy at the taking of the Domesday Book survey in 1086 AD. A section of this remarkable family moved north in 1124 in the train of King David of Scotland ( King David of Huntingdon) and gave estates in the upper half of Morebattle in Roxburghshire.
The very first recording spelling of the family was shown to be that of Willelmus Praepositus de Mole, dated about 1272, Testa de Neville, sive Liber Feodorum, Gloucestershire. It was during the time of King Henry III who was known to be the “The Frenchman," dated 1216 - 1272. The origin of surnames during this period became a necessity with the introduction of personal taxation. It came to be known as Poll Tax in England. Surnames all over the country began to develop, with unique and shocking spelling varietions of the original one.
Many of the people with surname Moles had moved to Ireland during the 17th century.
Individuals with the surname Moles settled in the United States in three different centuries respectively in the 17th, 18th, and 19th. Some of the individuals with the name Moles who landed in the United States in the 17th century included George Moles, who came to Barbados in 1671.
People with the surname Moles who settled in the United States in the 18th century included David Moles, who came to Pennsylvania in 1790.
The following century saw more Moles surnames arrive. Some of the population with the surname Moles who arrived in the United States in the 19th century included Francis Moles, who came to Washington Co. Pennsylvania in 1832. Francis Moles, who landed in Washington District, Pennsylvania in 1832. William Moles, who arrived in Allegany (Allegheny) Division, Pennsylvania in 1855
Here is the population distribution of the last name Moles: United States 3,143; Spain 2,343; England 920; France 882; Italy 773; Argentina 642; Australia 364; Mexico 314; Brazil 286; Germany 235.
Brodie Moles was born in November 1985. He is an Australian rules footballer in the Australian Football League (AFL).
James R. Moles (1884-November 1915) was an English professional football player who made 33 appearances in the Football League playing for Birmingham.
Thomas Moles (November 1871-February 1937) was an Ulster Unionist leader. He was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1871, he got his early education at the Collegiate School, Ballymena.
Andrew James Moles was born in February 1961 in Solihull, Warwickshire. He is an old English first-class cricket player for Warwickshire and Griqualand West.
Abraham Moles (1920 – 22 May 1992) was an engineer of electrical engineering and sound quality, and a specialist in physics and philosophy.
Enrique Moles Ormella (August 1883–March 1953) was a Spanish pharmacologist, physicist, and chemist.
Moles Coat of Arms Meaning
The two main devices (symbols) in the Moles blazon are the bend and lion. The two main tinctures (colors) are sable and argent.
The bend is a distinctive part of the shield, frequently occuring and clearly visible from a distance – it is a broad band running from top left to bottom right 6. Indeed, so important is the bend that it was the subject of one of the earliest cases before the English Court of Chivalry; the famous case of 1390, Scrope vs Grosvenor had to decide which family were the rightful owners of Azure, a bend or (A blue shield, with yellow bend). 7. The bend is held in high honour and may signify “defence or protection” and often borne by those of high military rank 8.
The art of heraldry would be significantly poorer if we were without the lion in all its forms. Most general works on Heraldry devote at least one chapter solely to this magnificent creature and its multifarious depictions 9 10 11. Some of the earliest known examples of heraldry, dating right back to the knighting of Geoffrey of Anjou in 1127, where he is shown with six such beasts upon his shield 12 .The great authority on heraldic symbology, Wade, points out the high place that the lion holds in heraldry, “as the emblem of deathless courage” 13, a sentiment echoed equally today.
6 Boutell’s Heraldry, J.P. Brooke-Little, Warne, (revised Edition) London 1970, P 39-40
7 A Complete Guide to Heraldry, A.C. Fox-Davies, Bonanza (re-print of 1909 Edition), New York, 1978, P22
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Home » Data Science » Design » Engineering » Technology » Making Smart Machines Fair
Making Smart Machines Fair
June 17, 2018 sherry 7 Data Science, Design, Engineering, Technology,
By Bennett McIntosh ’16
Olga Russakovsky
Photo: Peter Murphy
Can artificial intelligence be less biased than we are?
“IS THIS AN UMBRELLA OR A STRAWBERRY?” Posed to the undergraduates filling the lecture hall in the computer science building, the question topping assistant professor Olga Russakovsky’s lecture slide is laughably simple — but the question isn’t for the humans in the room. The class is COS 429, “Computer Vision,” and the question is being asked of a computer.For computers — and the scientists and engineers working to make them see the world — the task of telling fruit from rain gear is beyond merely difficult. It has taken decades for researchers to bring tasks that previously were the domain only of living brains — things like speech recognition, visual perception, and complex decision-making — within reach of computers. These and other applications of artificial intelligence (AI) promise to remake our world, from medicine and transportation to security and criminal justice.
Such rapid advances come thanks to machine learning, a wide variety of methods that computers use to “learn” and apply knowledge that isn’t directly programmed into them. Rather than giving the computer a system of explicit rules — umbrellas are this shape when open and that shape when closed; strawberries are these shades of red — machine-learning systems learn from “experiences,” like observing a collection of example images, discovering new rules, and making associations on the fly.
By figuring out the rules for themselves, learning machines can make inferences and decisions more quickly and accurately than humans. When Sebastian Thrun, a researcher at Google X, wanted to teach computers to recognize melanoma — skin cancer — for example, he didn’t try to program in the rules about size, shape, and color that medical students learn. Instead, he gave the machine-learning system a “training set” of 130,000 images of skin lesions that had already been classified by dermatologists, and let the machine learn its own rules. When put to the test, Thrun’s program outperformed the doctors.
Machine learning even offers insights when nobody knows the rules: Princeton professor Olga Troyanskaya, at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, recently used a machine-learning system to create a list of genes likely to be associated with autism. The system was given no rules for how autism genes should look or act — just a map of genetic interactions in the brain, and a list of genes that were already implicated in autism and other disorders. The list Troyanskaya’s machine generated gives autism researchers a new set of genes to study.
Machine learning already plays a large role in human society, from social media to fraud detection, and researchers expect its role to continue expanding in the next few years. But just as people make decisions based on misperceptions, prejudice, and faulty information, the vast quantities of data that “teach” machine-learning systems can be messy, full of gaps and human biases. Machines are no better than the data they learn from.
THIS IS WHERE RUSSAKOVSKY COMES IN. Russakovsky, who joined Princeton’s faculty last summer, is among the country’s leading young scholars of computer vision — the computer science field that deals with enabling computers to “see” and process images as human vision does. She was named to MIT Technology Review’s 2017 list of “35 Innovators Under 35” and is relentlessly optimistic about the ways AI will improve the human condition.
Russakovsky seeks to advance what she calls “humanistic AI, or AI for social good,” by designing these systems explicitly to avoid human mistakes and solve human problems. It’s a goal shaped in part by her experience as a woman in a profession dominated by men, which focused her awareness on how human blind spots and biases affect machine-learning systems.
She made her first splash in the field as a Ph.D. student at Stanford in the lab of Fei-Fei Li ’99, who leads the AI and machine-learning development projects at Google Cloud. There, Russakovsky was researching the problems of object detection and image classification — sorting through photographs for images of cars, or cows, and, yes, strawberries. She pioneered an algorithm for computer-vision systems to separate the object of interest in an image from the background, much as a human might, making it easier to classify the relevant object in the front.
But machine learning isn’t just about the machines, says Russakovsky. The systems are inextricable from the humans who design, train, and use them. Rather than thinking just about the computerized eye, she sees her role as building “collaborative human-machine object-detection systems.”
Take the training sets that many AI systems depend on — full of example objects, faces, or human actions that the machine is trying to learn about. For computer vision, these sets are usually manually labeled, which means tedious work sorting through tens of thousands of images and checking each one for hundreds of different objects. For large-scale data sets, whose labeling is often done by overworked students, the process becomes time-consuming and expensive. Worse, since bored humans labeling images make mistakes, the labels are not always accurate.
Stanford professor and Google Cloud chief scientist Fei-Fei Li ’99 gives a TED talk in March 2015. Li was a mentor to Olga Russakovsky and shares Russakovsky’s interest in encouraging young women to study computer science.
Photo: Bret Hartman/TED
Working with Li and then-Stanford postdoc Jia Deng *12, Russakovsky pioneered a way to ease the burden on human annotators by asking fewer and more general questions about the images. Instead of asking individually whether there were any chairs, desks, tables, ottomans, or hat racks, the system would ask if there was any furniture — and move on to other categories of objects if the answer was “no.” This made the process of labeling images much faster and possible to outsource, meaning computer systems could learn from more data. Using this strategy and other enhanced techniques, Russakovsky and her colleagues built a collection of millions of images of thousands of objects, which they called ImageNet. The ImageNet pictures are now a widely used standard in computer vision.
Other researchers, meanwhile, were uncovering how AI was affected by another human flaw: prejudice. In 2015, Google found itself at the center of a cultural maelstrom after its new photo application labeled a selfie taken by a black couple as “gorillas.” (The problem was corrected within hours.) At the time, just 2 percent of Google employees were African American, and some experts said having a more inclusive team likely would have ensured that the application was trained to recognize the full diversity of human faces. “Our own human bias informs what questions we ask about AI,” says Russakovsky.
In the spring of 2017, a team of Princeton researchers showed one way that bias in human data can directly create bias in machine-learning systems. In a paper published in Science,assistant professor Arvind Narayanan, visiting professor Joanna Bryson, and postdoc Aylin Caliskan showed that common machine-learning programs trained with ordinary human language can pick up the cultural biases in that language — including blatantly discriminatory views on race and gender. Ask the programs to fill in the blank “Man is to doctor as woman is to … ?” and they respond, “nurse.”
Other scholars have shown that a widely used image collection supported by Microsoft and Facebook linked pictures of activities such as shopping and washing to women and images of coaching and shooting to men. Machine-learning programs that were trained on those images, researchers found, learned those associations.
Narayanan compares the way computer systems perpetuate stereotypes to the way the media do. Think about any piece of art or entertainment with a character who’s identifiably a woman, or black, or old. “The media tries to mirror the world to get a feeling of authenticity, but in mirroring the world it’s also perpetuating those stereotypes,” says Narayanan. It’s the same with computers — and, as researchers have found, stereotypes can lead to insidious errors.
As AI’s impact on people’s lives grows, such errors will become more relevant and concerning. In May, Facebook announced that it was developing software called “Fairness Flow” to look for bias in the AI systems that prioritize news stories and filter offensive content —– recognizing that these algorithms affect how nearly 2 billion people see the world around them. And AI is having increasing influence on our offline world, as well. “There’s a bunch of interesting questions around uses of AI and machine learning in the criminal-justice system,” says Professor Ed Felten, director of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, who cites controversial risk-assessment algorithms used by some states in making sentencing and probation decisions.
While workforce diversity helps address the problem, Russakovsky and Narayanan recognize that it’s not sufficient. In February, they received a grant from the School of Engineering and Applied Science to develop best practices for finding and correcting bias in machine-vision systems, combining Russakovsky’s technical specialty with Narayanan’s experience in studying digital privacy and prejudice. A first step for the professors is to measure the cultural bias in the standard data sets that many researchers rely on to train their systems. From there, they will move to the question of how to build data sets and algorithms without that bias. “We can ask how to mitigate bias; we can ask how to have human oversight over these systems,” says Narayanan. “Does a visual corpus even represent the world? Can you create a more representative corpus?”
The project is in its infancy, but Russakovsky is confident that such bias can be measured and migrated in machines, ultimately allowing the machines to be better, and fairer, than humans. “It’s very difficult to reveal bias in humans, [and] very difficult to convince humans that they are biased. Human bias is the result of years of cultural exposure and is extremely difficult to undo for all sorts of reasons,” she says.
RUSSAKOVSKY APPROACHES THE BIAS problem not only from a technical perspective, but also from a personal one. As a woman in a male-dominated field, Russakovsky has had firsthand experience with bias. She describes her first years as a Stanford graduate student — before joining Li’s lab — as alienating. The only female Ph.D. student in that first lab, she says she was doubted by colleagues and plagued by “imposter syndrome” — the false sense that others were qualified but she was not.
Four years into her Ph.D., on the brink of quitting computer science, she moved to Li’s AI lab and found a mentor and role model. Her confidence grew, and she began looking for ways to help herself and other women, helping to start a workshop for women working in computer vision. Near the end of her time at Stanford, looking for a way to pay forward the mentorship she had received, Russakovsky floated to Li the idea of creating a camp to teach girls — particularly lower-income and minority students — about designing AI systems for the social good.
Together, in 2015 the two women launched a two-week summer camp for rising high-school sophomores, coaching the girls to develop AI programs to solve human problems. They called the camp SAILORS: Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory OutReach Summer, and in a survey afterward, about 90 percent of campers said they felt like they had a mentor or role model in computer science.
In 2017, the camp — now known as AI4ALL — expanded to the University of California, Berkeley. This summer, programs will take place at four more schools, including Princeton. The Stanford program is all girls, the Berkeley program is aimed at low-income students, and the Princeton program has encouraged applications from underrepresented communities: black, Latino, and Native American students. Princeton’s program will focus on the intersection between AI and policy, touching on issues directly relevant to the marginalized communities its students come from.
Felten, the co-director of the Princeton camp, hopes that solving problems like these will inspire the students to design AI systems that don’t perpetuate bias and that address social problems. “You’re looking at things that connect to their lives, and what’s happening in their communities,” he says. He hopes the camp will get students to think about the effects of AI on realms like education and economic equality: “That kind of synergy between the technical stuff … and the policy stuff will be, I think, one of the signs that we’re succeeding,” he says.
Zoe Ashwood, a Princeton Ph.D. student who will be one of the program’s instructors, says she was inspired to sign on after visiting last year’s camp at Stanford and seeing the students’ work: One team had developed a tool using machine learning to turn tweets after a natural disaster into useful information for first responders; another designed a machine-vision system that could tell if doctors were sanitizing their hands before entering hospital rooms.
For Russakovsky, every success by AI4ALL’s alumni is proof that diverse teams can build more reliable and “more humane” AI based on less biased data, applied to a wider range of problems, and implemented in more useful ways. “Forget political correctness,” she says, “diversity brings better outcomes. When people believe this, we’ve won the battle.”
Bennett McIntosh ’16 is a science writer based in Somerville, Mass.
https://paw.princeton.edu/article/making-smart-machines-fair
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Bitcoin, crypto, Cryptocurrencies, Cryptocurrency, Exchanges, Hacked, Hackers, korea, N-Technology, north korea, pyongyang, Reports, Security, South Korea
North Korea Obtained 11,000 bitcoins in 2017, Expert Says
Ayush Saraswat March 3, 2018, 1:45 pm March 3, 2018 193
North Korea may have made over $200 million USD from cryptocurrency transactions last year, according to a former NSA official. DPRK is believed to have obtained at least 11,000 bitcoins through mining or hacking in 2017. Pyongyang continues to exploit the benefits of using cryptos and the cyber security weaknesses of its adversaries, recent reports suggest.
Also read: Intelligence: Pyongyang Trying to Steal Cryptos before Pyeongchang Olympics
$200 Million Stashed in Bitcoin
Struggling to overcome effects from international political isolation and economic sanctions, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has been turning to cryptocurrency in recent years. Multiple reports have indicated that Pyongyang is actively engaged in attempts to acquire cryptos through any means possible.
The North has obtained at least 11,000 bitcoins last year, according to a former NSA official, quoted by Radio Free Asia. Priscilla Moriuchi, who has been in charge of cyber security in the Asia-Pacific region at the U.S. National Security Agency, believes the cryptocurrency has been acquired through mining or hacking in 2017.
The value of the stashed coins is estimated at $210 million USD, as of December last year, when the price of bitcoin was at its peak, Moriuchi said. She is currently working at the U.S. based cyber threat intelligence provider Recorded Future. If the hermit state’s regime still had the bitcoins in January, their value would have been around $120 million, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported.
Taking Advantage of Cryptos and Weaknesses
North Korea has been trying to benefit from the opportunities cryptocurrencies offer, in terms of freedom and anonymity of transactions. The international financial system is largely unavailable to Pyongyang, as its access is severely limited. Multilateral sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs have been imposed. North Korean interest in cryptos has been confirmed by reports indicating that Pyongyang University is offering courses on cryptocurrencies. The Alma Mater is considered to be the breeding ground for North Korean hackers.
DPRK has reportedly made multiple attempts to exploit cyber security weaknesses in the crypto ecosphere of its enemies. Mining malware infections and ransomware attacks have been blamed on North Koreans. Last year hackers from the notorious Lazarus Group, believed to be linked to the communist state, were implicated in attacks on South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges.
According to the South Korean intelligence agency, the North is involved in the hack of Bithumb, the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Personal data of more than 30,000 of its users was stolen by hackers. Authorities in the Republic of Korea have fined Bithumb’s operator for leaking private information. Cryptos worth billions of won were stolen by DPRK hackers last year, the National Intelligence Service said.
A report by Recorded Future claimed that North Korean government actors, including the Lazarus Group, continued to target South Korean exchanges and their users in late 2017. South Korean intelligence has informed lawmakers during a parliamentary hearing in Seoul that the North has never stopped trying to hack crypto exchanges in the country. The assessment came in a period of relative warming of relations on the Korean peninsula, which recently hosted the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang.
Do you think North Korea will continue to exploit the benefits of using cryptocurrencies and the cyber security weaknesses of its adversaries? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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bitcoincryptoCryptocurrenciesCryptocurrencyExchangesHackedHackerskoreaN-Technologynorth koreapyongyangReportsSecuritySouth Koreatop-story
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Simone ‘Jamaican Hurricane’ Edwards is named Celebrity Spokesperson for National Caribbean American Heritage Month 2019
The First Caribbean WNBA Player Simone Edwards has signed on as National Spokesperson for Caribbean American Heritage Month 2019, reprising a role she first played in 2017.
Simone Ann-Marie Edwards (born 17 November 1973) is a female basketball player who played for the New York Liberty and the Seattle Storm and was the first Caribbean and first Jamaican player in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). The 6’4″ Edwards center is known to fans as the “Jamaican Hurricane.”
Like some other Caribbean-born players such as Tim Duncan, Edwards did not play basketball in high school. She was spotted by an American college basketball coach after competing in a track meet in Jamaica. She first garnered attention on the court during junior college, at Seminole State College in Seminole, Oklahoma, leading the team to an undefeated conference record, ranking in the National Junior College Athletic Association Top 10. During her tenure, she was the recipient of several top sports awards and became the First Kodak All-American in the school’s history. In 1996-97, she led the University of Iowa Hawkeyes in field-goal percentage (.557) during her senior season.
Edwards was one of three players picked out of over 300 athlete at a NY Liberty tryout camp. As a developmental player by the New York Liberty in 1997, but never saw a game until signing on with the newly inaugurated Storm in 2000. She was the only player to be a part of the team for every game of its first six seasons, and became a KeyArena fan favorite for her ebullient personality and cheerleading when not in the game. Edwards won a WNBA championship with the Seattle Storm in 2004.
1993: Recruited to University of Iowa NCAA Division
1997: WNBA First Jamaican Player
1997: Signed to New York Liberty WNBA Team
2000: Signed to Seattle Storm Inaugural WNBA Team
2004: WNBA Championship – Seattle Storm
2005: Inducted in Seminole State College Hall of Fame
2005: The Women’s Day Award from International Women’s Day Committee (Italy)
2006: Second in Seattle Storm History in Most Points Scored (676)2006: Retired from Seattle Storm as last original player on the inaugural Storm roster
2006: Caribbean Basketball Confederation Championship, Jamaica Basketball Women’s National Team – Gold Medal (Team Captain)
2007: Most Points Scored Award for Federation of International Basketball (FIBA)
2008: Assistant Women’s Basketball Coach – George Mason University NCAA Division I (2008-2011)
2010: Member of the Seattle Storm All-Decade Team
2010: Centrobasket Championship – Silver Medal (Head Coach)
2010: RJR Sports Foundation Special Award recognizing contribution to development of Women’s Basketball
2014: Caribbean Basketball Confederation Championship – Gold Medal (Head Coach)
2015: RJR Sports Foundation Merit Award
2015: Starred in Award-Winning Documentary Feature Film “Coming Back To The Hoop”
2015: Founded The Anti-Bully Project
2015: Featured on Real Housewives of Atlanta
2016: Selected NCAA Women’s Basketball Ambassador
2017: Co-founded Diverse Writers Room
2017: Published Unstoppable: A Memoir of Adversity, Perseverance & Triumph
Simone ‘Jamaican Hurricane’ Edwards is named Celebrity Spokesperson for National Caribbean American Heritage Month 2019 added by Caribbean American Weekly on June 4, 2019
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GREAT A & P TEA CO. v. FTC
GREAT A & P TEA CO. v. FTC(1979)
Argued: December 4, 1978Decided: February 22, 1979
Section 2 (a) of the Clayton Act, as amended by the Robinson-Patman Act, prohibits price discrimination by sellers, but under 2 (b) the seller may rebut a prima facie case of price discrimination by showing that his lower price was made in good faith to meet a competitor's equally low price. Section 2 (f) makes it unlawful "for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, knowingly to induce or receive a discrimination in price which is prohibited by this section." Petitioner, in an effort to achieve cost savings, entered into an agreement with its longtime supplier, Borden Co., under which Borden would supply "private label" (as opposed to "brand label") milk to petitioner's stores in the Chicago area. Petitioner refused Borden's initial offer in implementation of the agreement and solicited offers from other companies, resulting in a lower offer from one of Borden's competitors. At this point petitioner's buyer informed Borden that its offer was "not even in the ball park" and that a $50,000 improvement in the offer "would not be a drop in the bucket." Borden then submitted a new offer that was substantially better than its competitor's and petitioner accepted it. Based on these facts, the Federal Trade Commission charged petitioner with violating 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act for allegedly misleading Borden during contract negotiations by failing to inform it that its second offer was better than its competitor's, and with violating 2 (f) by knowingly inducing or receiving price discrimination from Borden. The FTC dismissed the 5 charge on the ground that the issue was what amount of disclosure is required of the buyer during contract negotiations and that to impose a duty of affirmative disclosure would be "contrary to normal business practice" and "contrary to the public interest," but held that petitioner had violated 2 (f), the FTC rejecting, inter alia, petitioner's defense that the Borden offer had been made to meet competition. The Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: A buyer who has done no more than accept the lower of two prices competitively offered does not violate 2 (f) provided the seller has a meeting-competition defense, and here where Borden had such a defense and thus could not be liable under [440 U.S. 69, 70] 2 (b) petitioner, who did no more than accept Borden's offer, cannot be liable under 2 (f). Pp. 75-85.
(a) Since liability under 2 (f) is limited to price discrimination "prohibited by this section," and since only 2 (a) and (b) deal with seller liability for price discrimination, a buyer, under 2 (f)'s plain meaning, cannot be liable if a prima facie case cannot be established against a seller or if the seller has an affirmative defense. Automatic Canteen Co. of America v. FTC, 346 U.S. 61 . In either situation, there is no price discrimination "prohibited by this section." And the legislative history of 2 (f) confirms the conclusion that buyer liability under 2 (f) is dependent on seller liability under 2 (a). Pp. 75-78.
(b) To rewrite 2 (f) to hold a buyer liable even though there is no price discrimination "prohibited by this section" would contravene the rule that this Court "cannot supply what Congress has studiously omitted," FTC v. Simplicity Pattern Co., 360 U.S. 55, 67 . Pp. 78-79.
(c) Imposition of 2 (f) liability on petitioner would lead to price uniformity and rigidity contrary to the purposes of other antitrust legislation. P. 80.
(d) A duty of affirmative disclosure requiring a buyer to inform a seller that his bid has beaten competition would frustrate competitive bidding and, by reducing uncertainty, would lead to price matching and anticompetitive cooperation among sellers. P. 80.
(e) The effect of the finding that petitioner's same conduct violated 2 (f) as violated 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act is to impose the same duty of affirmative disclosure that the FTC condemned as anticompetitive, "contrary to the public interest," and "contrary to normal business practice," in dismissing the 5 charge. Pp. 80-81.
(f) The test for determining when a seller has a valid meeting-competition defense is whether he can "show the existence of facts which would lead a reasonable and prudent person to believe that the granting of a lower price would in fact meet the equally low price of a competitor." FTC v. A. E. Staley Mfg. Co., 324 U.S. 746 . Under the circumstances of this case, Borden did act reasonably and in good faith when it made its second bid, since, in light of its established business relationship with petitioner, it could justifiably conclude that petitioner's statements about the first offer were reliable and that it was necessary to make another bid offering substantial concessions to avoid losing its account with petitioner. Pp. 82-84.
557 F.2d 971, reversed.
STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and BRENNAN, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined, and in [440 U.S. 69, 71] Parts I, II, and III of which WHITE, J., joined. WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, post, p. 85. MARSHALL, J., filed an opinion dissenting in part, post, p. 85. STEVENS, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Denis McInerney argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Raymond L. Falls, Jr., and William T. Lifland.
Deputy Solicitor General Easterbrook argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Solicitor General McCree, Michael N. Sohn, Gerald P. Norton, W. Dennis Cross, and Jerold D. Cummins. *
[ Footnote * ] Thomas A. Rothwell and Arthur H. Brendtson filed a brief for the Small Business Legislative Council as amicus curiae.
MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented in this case is whether the petitioner, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. (A&P), violated 2 (f) of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 730, as amended by the Robinson-Patman Act, 49 Stat. 1526, 15 U.S.C. 13 (f), 1 by knowingly inducing or receiving illegal price discriminations from the Borden Co. (Borden). [440 U.S. 69, 72]
The alleged violation was reflected in a 1965 agreement between A&P and Borden under which Borden undertook to supply "private label" milk to more than 200 A&P stores in a Chicago area that included portions of Illinois and Indiana. This agreement resulted from an effort by A&P to achieve cost savings by switching from the sale of "brand label" milk (milk sold under the brand name of the supplying dairy) to the sale of "private label" milk (milk sold under the A&P label).
To implement this plan, A&P asked Borden, its longtime supplier, to submit an offer to supply under private label certain of A&P's milk and other dairy product requirements. After prolonged negotiations, Borden offered to grant A&P a discount for switching to private-label milk provided A&P would accept limited delivery service. Borden claimed that this offer would save A&P $410,000 a year compared to what it had been paying for its dairy products. A&P, however, was not satisfied with this offer and solicited offers from other [440 U.S. 69, 73] dairies. A competitor of Borden, Bowman Dairy, then submitted an offer which was lower than Borden's. 2
At this point, A&P's Chicago buyer contacted Borden's chain store sales manager and stated: "I have a bid in my pocket. You [Borden] people are so far out of line it is not even funny. You are not even in the ball park." When the Borden representative asked for more details, he was told nothing except that a $50,000 improvement in Borden's bid "would not be a drop in the bucket."
Borden was thus faced with the problem of deciding whether to rebid. A&P at the time was one of Borden's largest customers in the Chicago area. Moreover, Borden had just invested more than $5 million in a new dairy facility in Illinois. The loss of the A&P account would result in underutilization of this new plant. Under these circumstances, Borden decided to submit a new bid which doubled the estimated annual savings to A&P, from $410,000 to $820,000. In presenting its offer, Borden emphasized to A&P that it needed to keep A&P's business and was making the new offer in order to meet Bowman's bid. A&P then accepted Borden's bid after concluding that it was substantially better than Bowman's.
Based on these facts, the Federal Trade Commission filed a three-count complaint against A&P. Count I charged that A&P had violated 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act by misleading Borden in the course of negotiations for the private-label contract, in that A&P had failed to inform Borden that its second offer was better than the Bowman bid. 3 [440 U.S. 69, 74] Count II, involving the same conduct, charged that A&P had violated 2 (f) of the Clayton Act, as amended by the Robinson-Patman Act, by knowingly inducing or receiving price discriminations from Borden. Count III charged that Borden and A&P had violated 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act by combining to stabilize and maintain the retail and wholesale prices of milk and other dairy products.
An Administrative Law Judge found, after extended discovery and a hearing that lasted over 110 days, that A&P had acted unfairly and deceptively in accepting the second offer from Borden and had therefore violated 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act as charged in Count I. The Administrative Law Judge similarly found that this same conduct had violated 2 (f). Finally, he dismissed Count III on the ground that the Commission had not satisfied its burden of proof.
On review, the Commission reversed the Administrative Law Judge's finding as to Count I. Pointing out that the question at issue was what amount of disclosure is required of the buyer during contract negotiations, the Commission held that the imposition of a duty of affirmative disclosure would be "contrary to normal business practice and, we think, contrary to the public interest." Despite this ruling, however, the Commission held as to Count II that the identical conduct on the part of A&P had violated 2 (f), finding that Borden had discriminated in price between A&P and its competitors, that the discrimination had been injurious to competition, and that A&P had known or should have known that it was the beneficiary of unlawful price discrimination. 4 The Commission rejected A&P's defenses that the Borden bid had been made to meet competition and was cost justified. 5 [440 U.S. 69, 75]
A&P filed a petition for review of the Commission's order in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The court held that substantial evidence supported the findings of the Commission and that as a matter of law A&P could not successfully assert a meeting-competition defense because it, unlike Borden, had known that Borden's offer was better than Bowman's. 6 Finally, the court held that the Commission had correctly determined that A&P had no cost-justification defense. 557 F.2d 971. Because the judgment of the Court of Appeals raises important issues of federal law, we granted certiorari. 435 U.S. 922 .
The Robinson-Patman Act was passed in response to the problem perceived in the increased market power and coercive practices of chainstores and other big buyers that threatened [440 U.S. 69, 76] the existence of small independent retailers. Notwithstanding this concern with buyers, however, the emphasis of the Act is in 2 (a), which prohibits price discriminations by sellers. Indeed, the original Patman bill as reported by Committees of both Houses prohibited only seller activity, with no mention of buyer liability. 7 Section 2 (f), making buyers liable for inducing or receiving price discriminations by sellers, was the product of a belated floor amendment near the conclusion of the Senate debates. 8
As finally enacted, 2 (f) provides:
"That it shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, knowingly to induce or receive a discrimination in price which is prohibited by this section." (Emphasis added.)
Liability under 2 (f) thus is limited to situations where the price discrimination is one "which is prohibited by this section." While the phrase "this section" refers to the entire 2 of the Act, only subsections (a) and (b) dealing with seller liability involve discriminations in price. Under the plain meaning of 2 (f), therefore, a buyer cannot be liable if a prima facie case could not be established against a seller or if the seller has an affirmative defense. In either situation, there is no price discrimination "prohibited by this section." 9 [440 U.S. 69, 77] The legislative history of 2 (f) fully confirms the conclusion that buyer liability under 2 (f) is dependent on seller liability under 2 (a). 10
The derivative nature of liability under 2 (f) was recognized by this Court in Automatic Canteen Co. of America v. FTC, 346 U.S. 61 . In that case, the Court stated that even if the Commission has established a prima facie case of price discrimination, a buyer does not violate 2 (f) if the lower prices received are either within one of the seller's defenses or not known by the buyer not to be within one of those defenses. The Court stated:
"Thus, at the least, we can be confident in reading the words in 2 (f), `a discrimination in price which is prohibited by this section,' as a reference to the substantive prohibitions against discrimination by sellers defined elsewhere in the Act. It is therefore apparent that the discriminatory price that buyers are forbidden by 2 (f) to induce cannot include price differentials that are not forbidden to sellers in other sections of the Act . . . . For we are not dealing simply with a `discrimination in price'; the `discrimination in price' in 2 (f) must be one `which is prohibited by this section.' Even if any price differential were to be comprehended within the term `discrimination in price,' 2 (f), which speaks of prohibited discriminations, cannot be read as declaring out of bounds price differentials within one or more of the `defenses' available to sellers, such as that the price differentials [440 U.S. 69, 78] reflect cost differences, fluctuating market conditions, or bona fide attempts to meet competition, as those defenses are set out in the provisos of 2 (a) and 2 (b)." 346 U.S., at 70 -71 (footnotes omitted).
The Court thus explicitly recognized that a buyer cannot be held liable under 2 (f) if the lower prices received are justified by reason of one of the seller's affirmative defenses.
The petitioner, relying on this plain meaning of 2 (f) and the teaching of the Automatic Canteen case, argues that it cannot be liable under 2 (f) if Borden had a valid meeting-competition defense. The respondent, on the other hand, argues that the petitioner may be liable even assuming that Borden had such a defense. The meeting-competition defense, the respondent contends, must in these circumstances be judged from the point of view of the buyer. Since A&P knew for a fact that the final Borden bid beat the Bowman bid, it was not entitled to assert the meeting-competition defense even though Borden may have honestly believed that it was simply meeting competition. Recognition of a meeting-competition defense for the buyer in this situation, the respondent argues, would be contrary to the basic purpose of the Robinson-Patman Act to curtail abuses by large buyers.
The short answer to these contentions of the respondent is that Congress did not provide in 2 (f) that a buyer can be liable even if the seller has a valid defense. The clear language of 2 (f) states that a buyer can be liable only if he receives a price discrimination "prohibited by this section." If a seller has a valid meeting-competition defense, there is simply no prohibited price discrimination.
A similar attempt to amend the Robinson-Patman Act judicially was rejected by this Court in FTC v. Simplicity Pattern [440 U.S. 69, 79] Co., 360 U.S. 55 . There the Federal Trade Commission had found that a manufacturer of dress patterns had violated 2 (e) of the Clayton Act, as amended by the Robinson-Patman Act, by providing its larger customers services and facilities not offered its smaller customers. 11 The manufacturer attempted to defend against this charge by asserting that there had been no injury to competition and that its discriminations in services were cost justified. Since liability under 2 (e), unlike 2 (a), does not depend upon competitive injury or the absence of a cost-justification defense, the manufacturer's primary argument was that "it would be `bad law and bad economics' to make discriminations unlawful even where they may be accounted for by cost differentials or where there is no competitive injury." 360 U.S., at 67 (footnote omitted). The Court rejected this argument. Recognizing that "this Court is not in a position to review the economic wisdom of Congress," the Court stated that "[w]e cannot supply what Congress has studiously omitted." Ibid. (footnote omitted). The respondent's attempt in the present case to rewrite 2 (f) to hold a buyer liable even though there is no discrimination in price "prohibited by this section" must be rejected for the same reason. 12 [440 U.S. 69, 80]
In the Automatic Canteen case, the Court warned against interpretations of the Robinson-Patman Act which "extend beyond the prohibitions of the Act and, in so doing, help give rise to a price uniformity and rigidity in open conflict with the purposes of other antitrust legislation." 346 U.S., at 63 . Imposition of 2 (f) liability on the petitioner in this case would lead to just such price uniformity and rigidity. 13
In a competitive market, uncertainty among sellers will cause them to compete for business by offering buyers lower prices. Because of the evils of collusive action, the Court has held that the exchange of price information by competitors violates the Sherman Act. United States v. Container Corp., 393 U.S. 333 . Under the view advanced by the respondent, however, a buyer, to avoid liability, must either refuse a seller's bid or at least inform him that his bid has beaten competition. Such a duty of affirmative disclosure would almost inevitably frustrate competitive bidding and, by reducing uncertainty, lead to price matching and anticompetitive cooperation among sellers. 14
Ironically, the Commission itself, in dismissing the charge under 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act in this case, recognized the dangers inherent in a duty of affirmative disclosure:
"The imposition of a duty of affirmative disclosure, applicable to a buyer whenever a seller states that his offer is [440 U.S. 69, 81] intended to meet competition, is contrary to normal business practice and, we think, contrary to the public interest.
"We fear a scenario where the seller automatically attaches a meeting competition caveat to every bid. The buyer would then state whether such bid meets, beats, or loses to another bid. The seller would then submit a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth bid until finally he is able to ascertain his competitor's bid." 87 F. T. C. 1047, 1050-1051.
The effect of the finding that the same conduct of the petitioner violated 2 (f), however, is to impose the same duty of affirmative disclosure which the Commission condemned as anticompetitive, "contrary to the public interest," and "contrary to normal business practice," in dismissing the charge under 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Neither the Commission nor the Court of Appeals offered any explanation for this apparent anomaly.
As in the Automatic Canteen case, we decline to adopt a construction of 2 (f) that is contrary to its plain meaning and would lead to anticompetitive results. Accordingly, we hold that a buyer who has done no more than accept the lower of two prices competitively offered does not violate 2 (f) provided the seller has a meeting-competition defense. 15 [440 U.S. 69, 82]
Because both the Commission and the Court of Appeals proceeded on the assumption that a buyer who accepts the lower of two competitive bids can be liable under 2 (f) even if the seller has a meeting-competition defense, there was not a specific finding that Borden did in fact have such a defense. But it quite clearly did.
The test for determining when a seller has a valid meeting-competition defense is whether a seller can "show the existence of facts which would lead a reasonable and prudent person to believe that the granting of a lower price would in fact meet the equally low price of a competitor." FTC v. A. E. Staley Mfg. Co., 324 U.S. 746, 759 -760. "A good-faith belief, rather than absolute certainty, that a price concession is being offered to meet an equally low price offered by a competitor is sufficient to satisfy the 2 (b) defense." United [440 U.S. 69, 83] States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S. 422, 453 . 16 Since good faith, rather than absolute certainty, is the touchstone of the meeting-competition defense, a seller can assert the defense even if it has unknowingly made a bid that in fact not only met but beat his competition. Id., at 454.
Under the circumstances of this case, Borden did act reasonably and in good faith when it made its second bid. The petitioner, despite its longstanding relationship with Borden, was dissatisfied with Borden's first bid and solicited offers from other dairies. The subsequent events are aptly described in the opinion of the Commission:
"Thereafter, on August 31, 1965, A&P received an offer from Bowman Dairy that was lower than Borden's August 13 offer. On or about September 1, 1965, Elmer Schmidt, A&P's Chicago unit buyer, telephoned Gordon Tarr, Borden's Chicago chain store sales manager, and stated, `I have a bid in my pocket. You [Borden] people are so far out of line it is not even funny. You are not even in the ball park.' Although Tarr asked Schmidt for some details, Schmidt said that he could not tell Tarr anything except that a $50,000 improvement in Borden's bid `would not be a drop in the [bucket].' Contrary to its usual practice, A&P then offered Borden the opportunity [440 U.S. 69, 84] to submit another bid." 87 F. T. C., at 1048 (Footnotes and record citations omitted.)
Thus, Borden was informed by the petitioner that it was in danger of losing its A&P business in the Chicago area unless it came up with a better offer. It was told that its first offer was "not even in the ball park" and that a $50,000 improvement "would not be a drop in the bucket." In light of Borden's established business relationship with the petitioner, Borden could justifiably conclude that A&P's statements were reliable and that it was necessary to make another bid offering substantial concessions to avoid losing its account with the petitioner.
Borden was unable to ascertain the details of the Bowman bid. It requested more information about the bid from the petitioner, but this request was refused. It could not then attempt to verify the existence and terms of the competing offer from Bowman without risking Sherman Act liability. United States v. United States Gypsum Co., supra. Faced with a substantial loss of business and unable to find out the precise details of the competing bid, Borden made another offer stating that it was doing so in order to meet competition. Under these circumstances, the conclusion is virtually inescapable that in making that offer Borden acted in a reasonable and good-faith effort to meet its competition, and therefore was entitled to a meeting-competition defense. 17 [440 U.S. 69, 85]
Since Borden had a meeting-competition defense and thus could not be liable under 2 (b), the petitioner who did no more than accept that offer cannot be liable under 2 (f). 18
Accordingly, the judgment is reversed.
MR. JUSTICE STEVENS took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
[ Footnote 1 ] Title 15 U.S.C. 13 (f) provides: "It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, knowingly to induce or receive a discrimination in price which is prohibited by this section." Title 15 U.S.C. 13 (a) and (b) provide in pertinent part: "(a) . . . It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, either directly or indirectly, to discriminate in price between different purchasers of commodities of like grade and quality, where either or any of the purchases involved in such discrimination are in commerce, where such commodities are sold for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, and where the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create [440 U.S. 69, 72] a monopoly in any line of commerce, or to injure, destroy, or prevent competition with any person who either grants or knowingly receives the benefit of such discrimination or with customers of either of them: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall prevent differentials which make only due allowance for differences in the cost of manufacture, sale, or delivery resulting from the differing methods or quantities in which such commodities are to such purchasers sold or delivered . . . . "(b) . . . Upon proof being made, at any hearing on a complaint under this section, that there has been discrimination in price or services or facilities furnished, the burden of rebutting the prima-facie case thus made by showing justification shall be upon the person charged with a violation of this section, and unless justification shall be affirmatively shown, the Commission is authorized to issue an order terminating the discrimination: Provided, however, That nothing herein contained shall prevent a seller rebutting the prima-facie case thus made by showing that his lower price or the furnishing of services or facilities to any purchaser or purchasers was made in good faith to meet an equally low price of a competitor, or the services or facilities furnished by a competitor."
[ Footnote 2 ] The Bowman bid would have produced estimated annual savings of approximately $737,000 for A&P as compared with the first Borden bid, which would have produced estimated annual savings of $410,000.
[ Footnote 3 ] Section 5 (a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 38 Stat. 719, as amended, 15 U.S.C. 45 (a), provides in relevant part: "(1) Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are declared unlawful."
[ Footnote 4 ] The Commission also found that the interstate commerce requirement of 2 (f) was satisfied.
[ Footnote 5 ] Under 2 (a) and (b) of the Act, a seller who can establish either that a price differential was cost justified or offered in good faith to meet [440 U.S. 69, 75] competition has a complete defense to a charge of price discrimination under the Act. Standard Oil Co. v. FTC, 340 U.S. 231 . See n. 1, supra. With respect to the meeting-competition defense, the Commission stated that even though Borden as the seller might have had a meeting-competition defense, A&P as the buyer did not have such a defense because it knew that the bid offered was, in fact, better than the Bowman bid. With respect to the cost-justification defense, the Commission found that Commission counsel had met the initial burden of going forward as required by this Court's decision in Automatic Canteen Co. of America v. FTC, 346 U.S. 61 , and that A&P had not then satisfied its burden of showing that the prices were cost justified, or that it did not know that they were not. The Commission upheld the Administrative Law Judge's dismissal of Count III of the complaint.
[ Footnote 6 ] The Court of Appeals, like the Commission, relied on Kroger Co. v. FTC, 438 F.2d 1372 (CA6), for the proposition that a buyer can be liable under 2 (f) of the Act even if the seller has a meeting-competition defense. The Kroger case involved a buyer who had made deliberate misrepresentations to a seller in order to induce price concessions. While the Court of Appeals in this case did not find that A&P had made any affirmative misrepresentations, it viewed the distinction between a "lying buyer" and a buyer who knowingly accepts the lower of two bids as without legal significance. See n. 15, infra.
[ Footnote 7 ] H. R. 8442, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935); S. 3154, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935).
[ Footnote 8 ] F. Rowe, Price Discrimination Under the Robinson-Patman Act 423 (1962). Section 2 (f) has been described by commentators as an "after-thought." Id., at 421; J. McCord, Commentaries on the Robinson-Patman Act 96 (1969).
[ Footnote 9 ] Commentators have recognized that a finding of buyer liability under 2 (f) is dependent on a finding of seller liability under 2 (a). McCord, supra, at 96 ("[Section] 2 (f) cannot be enforced if a prima facie case could not be established against the seller on the basis of the transaction in question under Section 2 (a) or if he could sustain an affirmative defense thereto"); Rowe, supra, at 421 ("the legal status of the buyer is derivative from the seller's pricing legality under the Act"); H. Shniderman, Price [440 U.S. 69, 77] Discrimination in Perspective 136 (1977) (a buyer can be liable under 2 (f) only if the price received "cannot be excused by any defenses provided to the seller").
[ Footnote 10 ] In presenting the Conference Report to the House, Representative Utterback summarized the meaning of 2 (f) by stating: "This paragraph makes the buyer liable for knowingly inducing or receiving any discrimination in price which is unlawful under the first paragraph [ 2 (a)] of the amendment." 80 Cong. Rec. 9419 (1936).
[ Footnote 11 ] Section 2 (e) provides: "It shall be unlawful for any person to discriminate in favor of one purchaser against another purchaser or purchasers of a commodity bought for resale, with or without processing, by contracting to furnish or furnishing, or by contributing to the furnishing of, any services or facilities connected with the processing, handling, sale, or offering for sale of such commodity so purchased upon terms not accorded to all purchasers on proportionally equal terms." 15 U.S.C. 13 (e).
[ Footnote 12 ] Contrary to the respondent's suggestion, this interpretation of 2 (f) is in no way inconsistent with congressional intent. "[T]he buyer whom Congress in the main sought to reach was the one who, knowing full well that there was little likelihood of a defense for the seller, nevertheless proceeded to exert pressure for lower prices." Automatic Canteen Co. of America v. FTC, 346 U.S., at 79 . Here, by contrast, we conclude that a buyer is not liable if the seller does have a defense under 2 (b).
[ Footnote 13 ] More than once the Court has stated that the Robinson-Patman Act should be construed consistently with broader policies of the antitrust laws. United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S. 422 ; Automatic Canteen Co. of America v. FTC, supra, at 74.
[ Footnote 14 ] A duty of affirmative disclosure might also be difficult to enforce. In cases where a seller offers differing quantities or a different quality product, or offers to serve the buyer in a different manner, it might be difficult for the buyer to determine when disclosure is required.
[ Footnote 15 ] In Kroger Co. v. FTC, 438 F.2d 1372, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that a buyer who induced price concessions by a seller by making deliberate misrepresentations could be liable under 2 (f) even if the seller has a meeting-competition defense. This case does not involve a "lying buyer" situation. The complaint issued by the FTC alleged that "A&P accepted the said offer of Borden with knowledge that Borden had granted a substantially lower price than that offered by the only other competitive bidder and without notifying Borden of this fact." The complaint did not allege that Borden's second bid was induced by any misrepresentation. The Court of Appeals recognized that the Kroger case involved a "lying buyer," but stated that there [440 U.S. 69, 82] was no meaningful distinction between the situation where "the buyer lies or merely keeps quiet about the nature of the competing bid." 557 F.2d 971, 983. Despite this background, the respondent argues that A&P did engage in misrepresentations and therefore can be found liable as a "lying buyer" under the rationale of the Kroger case. The misrepresentation relied upon by the respondent is a statement allegedly made by a representative of A&P to Borden after Borden made its second bid which would have resulted in annual savings to A&P of $820,000. The A&P representative allegedly told Borden to "sharpen your pencil a little bit because you are not quite there." But the Commission itself referred to this comment only to note its irrelevance, and neither the Commission nor the Court of Appeals mentioned it in considering the 2 (f) charge against A&P. This is quite understandable, since the comment was allegedly made after Borden made its second bid and therefore cannot be said to have induced the bid as in the Kroger case. Because A&P was not a "lying buyer," we need not decide whether such a buyer could be liable under 2 (f) even if the seller has a meeting-competition defense.
[ Footnote 16 ] Recognition of the right of a seller to meet a lower competitive price in good faith may be the primary means of reconciling the Robinson-Patman Act with the more general purposes of the antitrust laws of encouraging competition between sellers. As the Court stated in Standard Oil Co. v. FTC, 340 U.S., at 249 : "We need not now reconcile, in its entirety, the economic theory which underlies the Robinson-Patman Act with that of the Sherman and Clayton Acts. It is enough to say that Congress did not seek by the Robinson-Patman Act either to abolish competition or so radically to curtail it that a seller would have no substantial right of self-defense against a price raid by a competitor."
[ Footnote 17 ] The facts of this case are thus readily distinguishable from Corn Products Co. v. FTC, 324 U.S. 726 , and FTC v. A. E. Staley Mfg. Co., 324 U.S. 746 , in both of which the Court held that a seller had failed to establish a meeting-competition defense. In the Corn Products case, the only evidence to rebut the prima facie case of price discrimination was testimony by witnesses who had no personal knowledge of the transactions in question. Similarly, in the Staley Mfg. Co. case, unsupported testimony from informants of uncertain character and reliability was insufficient to establish the defense. In the present case, by contrast, the source of the information was a person whose reliability was not questioned and who had personal knowledge of the competing bid. Moreover, Borden attempted [440 U.S. 69, 85] to investigate by asking A&P for more information about the competing bid. Finally, Borden was faced with a credible threat of a termination of purchases by A&P if it did not make a second offer. All of these factors serve to show that Borden did have a valid meeting-competition defense. See United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S., at 454 .
[ Footnote 18 ] Because we hold that the petitioner is not liable under 2 (f), we do not reach the question whether Borden might also have had a cost-justification defense under 2 (a).
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in Parts I, II, and III of the Court's opinion, but dissent from Part IV. Because it was thought the issue was irrelevant where the buyer knows that the price offered is lower than necessary to meet competition, neither the Commission nor the Court of Appeals decided whether Borden itself would have had a valid meeting-competition defense. The Court should not decide this question here, but should remand to the Commission, whose job it is initially to consider such matters.
For the reason stated by the Commission and the Court of Appeals, I am also convinced that the United States made a sufficient, unrebutted showing that Borden would not have a cost-justification defense to a Robinson-Patman Act charge.
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, dissenting in part.
I agree with the Court that the Federal Trade Commission and the Court of Appeals applied the wrong legal standard in [440 U.S. 69, 86] assessing A&P's liability under the Robinson-Patman Act. However, I cannot join the Court's interpretation of 2 (f) as precluding buyer liability under this Act unless the seller could also be found liable for price discrimination. Neither the language nor the sparse legislative history of 2 (f) justifies this enervating standard for the determination of buyer liability. To the contrary, the Court's construction disregards the congressional purpose to curtail the coercive practices of chainstores and other large buyers. Having formulated a new legal standard, the Court then applies it here in the first instance rather than remanding the case to the Commission. Given the numerous ambiguities in the record, I believe the Court thereby improperly arrogates to itself the role of the trier of fact.
Section 2 (f) provides that "[i]t shall be unlawful for any person . . . knowingly to induce or receive a discrimination in price which is prohibited by this section." (Emphasis added.) The Court interprets the italicized language as "plainly meaning" that a buyer can be found liable for knowingly inducing price discrimination only if his seller is first proved liable under 2 (a) and 2 (b). Ante, at 76, 81. Under this construction, proceedings involving only the Commission and a buyer will turn upon proof of a seller's liability, and whenever a seller could successfully claim the meeting-competition defense, the buyer must be exonerated.
In my view, the language of 2 (f) does not compel this circuitous method of establishing buyer liability. Sections 2 (a) and 2 (b) of the Act define the elements of price discrimination and the affirmative defenses available to sellers. When Congress extended liability to buyers who encourage price discrimination, a ready means of defining the prohibition was to rely on the elements and defenses already delineated in 2 (a) and 2 (b). Thus, the phrase "which is prohibited by this section" in 2 (f) incorporates these elements and [440 U.S. 69, 87] defenses by reference, making them applicable to buyers. So construed, 2 (f) simply means that the same elements of a prima facie case must be established and the same basic affirmative defenses available, whether buyer or seller liability is in issue. The section does not require that another party actually satisfy all of the conditions of 2 (a) and 2 (b) before buyer liability can even be considered. Determining buyer and seller liability independently, I believe, places less strain on the "plain meaning" of the language of 2 (f) than does the absolutely derivative standard the majority announces today.
In construing 2 (f), the Court relies on Congress' delay in adding the section to the final bill and on a remark by Representative Utterback during the legislative debates. Ante, at 75-77, and n. 10. The delay provides little logical justification for the Court's interpretation; rather, it more likely reflects Congress' late realization that halting the abusive practices of buyers 1 could not be accomplished solely through imposition of liability on sellers. Representative Utterback's statement, 80 Cong. Rec. 9419 (1936), amounts to a slight paraphrase of 2 (f) and in no way supports the Court's derivative standard.
I agree with the Court's suggestion, ante, at 80, that we must resolve the dilemma confronting a buyer who properly invites a seller to meet a competitor's price and then fortuitously [440 U.S. 69, 88] obtains a lower bid. Congress could not have expected the buyer to choose between asking the seller to increase the bid to a specific price or accepting the lower bid and facing liability under 2 (f). Rather, it must have intended some accommodation for buyers who act in good faith yet receive bids that beat competition. This does not mean, however, that a buyer should be liable under 2 (f) only if his seller also would be liable. That solution to the buyer's dilemma would enable him to manufacture his own defense by misrepresenting to a seller the response needed to meet a competitor's bid and then allowing the seller to rely in good faith on incorrect information. The Court purports to reserve this "lying buyer" issue, ante, at 81-82, n. 15, but the derivative standard it adopts today belies the reservation. If "prohibited by this section" means that a buyer's liability depends on that of the seller, then absent seller liability, the buyer's conduct and bad faith are necessarily irrelevant.
I would hold that under 2 (f), the Robinson-Patman Act defenses must be available to buyers on the same basic terms as they are to sellers. To be sure, some differences in the nature of the defenses would obtain because of the different bargaining positions of sellers and buyers. With respect to the meeting-competition defense at issue here, a seller can justify a price discrimination by showing that his lower price was offered in "good faith" to meet that of a competitor. Ante, at 82-83; United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S. 422, 450 -455 (1978). In my view, a buyer should be able to claim that defense - independently of the seller - if he acted in good faith to induce the seller to meet a competitor's price, regardless of whether the seller's price happens to beat the competitor's. But a buyer who induces the lower bid by misrepresentation should not escape Robinson-Patman Act liability. See Kroger Co. v. FTC, 438 F.2d 1372 (CA6) (Clark, J.), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 871 (1971). This definition of the meeting-competition defense both extricates buyers from an impossible dilemma and respects the congressional [440 U.S. 69, 89] intent to prevent buyers from abusing their market power to gain competitive advantage. 2
Automatic Canteen Co. of America v. FTC, 346 U.S. 61 (1953), is entirely consistent with this interpretation of 2 (f). The issue there concerned the allocation of "the burden of coming forward with evidence under 2 (f) of the Act," 346 U.S., at 65 , not the precise contours of the elements and defenses that determine the scope of buyer liability. Automatic Canteen's general discussion of 2 (f)'s substantive requirements, quoted ante, at 77-78, merely explains that the affirmative defenses "available to sellers" must also be available to buyers. Far from pronouncing that buyer liability is derivative, Automatic Canteen began with the observation that 2 (f) is "roughly the counterpart, as to buyers, of sections of the Act dealing with discrimination by sellers." 346 U.S., at 63 (emphasis added). 3 [440 U.S. 69, 90]
In my judgment, the numerous ambiguities in the record dictate that this case be remanded to the Commission. The Court, however, avoids a remand by concluding in the first instance that A&P's seller necessarily had a meeting-competition defense. 4 In so doing, the Court usurps the factfinding function best performed by the Commission. 5 Neither the Administrative Law Judge, the Commission, nor the Court of Appeals determined that Borden would have been entitled to claim the meeting-competition defense. Indeed, the Administrative Law Judge suggested the opposite, 87 F. T. C. 962, 1021 (1976), and the Commission stated:
"We believe that it is very probable that Borden did not have such a defense. To have a meeting competition [440 U.S. 69, 91] defense, the record must demonstrate the existence of facts which would lead a reasonable and prudent person to conclude that the lower price would, in fact, meet the competitor's price. As noted, Borden had serious doubts concerning whether the competing bid was legal. Specifically, it believed that the other bid only considered direct costs. It should have asked A&P for more information about the competing bid. By not making the request, it was not acting prudently. As the record clearly indicates, A&P had knowledge of Borden's belief that other dairies might submit bids that did not include all costs." 87 F. T. C. 1047, 1057 n. 19 (1976) (citations omitted; emphasis in original).
Furthermore, if the Court truly intends to avoid deciding the "lying buyer" issue, then it should remand the case for determination of whether the exception applies here. Testimony before the Administrative Law Judge directly raised the possibility that A&P misled Borden to believe a still lower price was necessary than Borden had offered when it first responded to the Bowman bid. App. 117a-118a, 123a-124a, 141a-142a. 6 Both the Administrative Law Judge and the [440 U.S. 69, 92] Commission credited that testimony, see 87 F. T. C., at 979, 1021-1022; 87 F. T. C., at 1049 n. 3, but since evidence of misrepresentation was not material under the standard they applied, there were no clear findings of fact on the point. Under these circumstances, this Court should not attempt to elide such testimony by the unsubstantiated conclusion that Borden's final bid was unaffected by any misrepresentation. Ante, at 81-82, n. 15; see n. 6, supra.
Accordingly, I dissent from the Court's adoption of a derivative standard for determining buyer liability and its resolution of disputed factual issues without a remand.
[ Footnote 1 ] See S. Rep. No. 1502, 74th Cong., 2d Sess. (1936); H. R. Rep. No. 2287, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 3-7, 17 (1936); H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 2951, 74th Cong., 2d Sess. (1936); FTC, Final Report on the Chain-Store Investigation, S. Doc. No. 4, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935); FTC v. Henry Broch & Co., 363 U.S. 166, 168 -169 (1960); W. Patman, Complete Guide to the Robinson-Patman Act 7-10 (1963); F. Rowe, Price Discrimination Under the Robinson-Patman Act 8-14 (1962). See generally Hearings on Price Discrimination (S. 4171) before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 74th Cong., 2d Sess. (1936); Hearings on H. R. 8442, H. R. 4995, and H. R. 5062 before the House Committee on the Judiciary, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935).
[ Footnote 2 ] See S. Rep. No. 1502, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 3-4, 7 (1936); H. R. Rep. No. 2287, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 3-7, 14-17 (1936); Patman, supra, at 7-10, 148-151; Rowe, supra, at 8-23. The Court recently noted in United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S. 422, 455 n. 30 (1978), that "[i]t may also turn out that sustained enforcement of 2 (f) . . . will serve to bolster the credibility of buyers' representations and render reliance thereon by sellers a more reasonable and secure predicate for a finding of good faith under 2 (b)." (Citation omitted.) But if neither a buyer nor a seller can be liable when the seller relies in good faith on the buyer's misrepresentations, then enforcement of 2 (f) will not "bolster the credibility" of buyers. Thus, the derivative standard of liability adopted by the Court today is inconsistent with the premise underlying the Court's suggestion in United States Gypsum, see Note, The Supreme Court, 1977 Term, 92 Harv. L. Rev. 57, 288, 291-294 (1978), and it eliminates one means of reassuring sellers that they may rely on buyer representations.
[ Footnote 3 ] Given this preface to Automatic Canteen, language in that opinion provides little support for the Court's adoption today of a derivative standard with respect to the buyer's meeting-competition defense. Moreover, to the extent the majority believes its resort to literal construction of 2 (f) forecloses further inquiry, it ignores the broader teaching of Automatic Canteen. That case adopted a common-sense approach for [440 U.S. 69, 90] interpreting the often ambiguous Robinson-Patman Act, tempering a "merely literal reading of the language" with considerations of "fairness and convenience" when necessary to achieve Congress' purpose. 346 U.S., at 79 , and n. 23. On that basis, Automatic Canteen allocated to the Commission the burden of production regarding a buyer's cost-justification defense, even though the Commission does not bear that burden in a proceeding against a seller. Id., at 75-76; FTC v. Morton Salt Co., 334 U.S. 37, 44 -45 (1948). Indeed, the Court's interpretation of 2 (f) today, which places buyers in the litigating position of their sellers, may also be incompatible with Automatic Canteen's specific holding on the burden of production.
[ Footnote 4 ] Because the Court reverses the judgment without remanding for further consideration and does not expressly reach the merits of the cost-justification issue raised by A&P, ante, at 85 n. 18, I need not address that issue either.
[ Footnote 5 ] Considering the recent admonition in United States Gypsum, supra, at 456 n. 31, that "[t]he case-by-case interpretation and elaboration of the 2 (b) defense is properly left to the other federal courts and the FTC in the context of concrete fact situations," the Court's action is particularly inappropriate. While I question the Court's decision to undertake resolution of this factual question, without even determining which party bore the burden of persuasion, I do not understand Part IV of its opinion as purporting to modify in any sense what was said last Term in United States Gypsum about the scope of the meeting-competition defense for sellers.
[ Footnote 6 ] The Court's opinion creates the impression that Borden submitted only two proposals, ante, at 81-82, n. 15, 83-84. In fact, A&P induced Borden to make a third proposal, even though the second was already more favorable than Bowman's. When Borden initially responded to Bowman's bid, the A&P representative rejected Borden's offer on the ground that it included milk sold in glass gallon containers, whereas other bidders supposedly had not included that item. Actually, Bowman's bid had included glass gallons and A&P had subsequently decided against using glass containers. 87 F. T. C. 962, 979 (1976); App. 73a-74a, 116a-118a, 257a-260a, 774a-775a. The effect of forcing Borden to delete milk sold in glass gallons from the proposal without raising the overall bid, was to increase the savings to A&P on other products still covered because part of the promised savings had been derived from the sale of the cheaper glass gallons. See 87 F. T. C., at 979-980. In addition, while Borden was preparing a third proposal to reflect the deletion, A&P suggested that Borden make further price [440 U.S. 69, 92] reductions, saying "`sharpen your pencil a little bit because you are not quite there.'" App. 118a. As a result, Borden reduced its prices still further to yield additional savings of approximately $5,000 to $8,000. The bid finally accepted by A&P incorporated these price reductions as well as those attributable to the deletion of glass gallons. See id., at 117a-118a, 123a-124a, 141a-142a. [440 U.S. 69, 93]
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About Central Midwest HERC
Central Midwest HERC
NON-INVASIVE CARDIOLOGIST
Iowa City, Iowa
The University of Iowa, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine is recruiting a BC/BE non-invasive cardiologist for a faculty position at the rank of Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor in the clinical track. The successful candidate will join a large academic imaging group. Patient care will occur at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, affiliated outreach sites and the affiliated Iowa City VA Medical Center.
About University of Iowa
With over 31,000 students, the University of Iowa is one of the nation's top public research universities, a member of the Big Ten conference and the Association of American Universities. The University of Iowa is composed of eleven colleges and is known around the world for its balanced commitment to the arts, sciences, and humanities. It is home to one of the nation's largest academic medical centers and the pioneering Iowa Writers' Workshop. The University of Iowa promotes work/life integration and is located in the casual yet cosmopolitan environment of Iowa City, widely recognized as one of the country's most livable communities.
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Tag Archives: STEM fields
Baseball, Basketball, Science, School Teachers, and Supply and Demand
March 8, 2019 By The Central Standard Times in Culture, Politics Tags: baseball, basketball, Bryce Harper, Kansas University Jayhawks, LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers, market forces, Mike Trout, New York Yankees, political interventions, rare talents, school teachers, STEM fields, supply and demand, Wichita State Wheatshockers Leave a comment
Mostly we follow the political and economic news here at The Central Standard Times, being the civic-minded and clinically glum types we are, but occasionally we’ll turn a hopeful eye to the sports pages. There’s usually some dreary political and economic subplot there, however, and so it is with the case of the big deal baseball story about Bryce Harper signing with the Philadelphia Phillies
In case you’re one of those atheistic commie pinko America-hating types who don’t closely follow our national pastime, Harper is one hell of a player. There’s a strong case to be made that he’s not as good a player as the more clean-shaven Mike Trout, who is under contract to the Los Angeles Angels for the next months and then seems headed toward a big payday, but after six spectacular seasons with the Washington Nationals Harper was clearly the best player on this season’s free agent market, so the bidding war wound up at $330 million for 13 years in Philadelphia. Our faith in the ruthless and sometimes crazy laws of supply and demand tell us that even that eye-popping amount is reasonable compensation given the large number of teams seeking a player with Harper’s rare statistics, even if the atheistic commie pinko America-hating types will want to compare it to a school teacher’s pay, and we note with some regret that Harper’s bottom-line agent had to take politics into account in the negotiations.
A presumably apolitical sports writer at The Log Angeles Times reports that the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants offered Harper more money, but not enough more to compensate for the wide gulf of tax rates between California and Pennsylvania. California has the nation’s highest state income tax rate at 13.3 percent, Pennsylvania imposes a rare flat tax rate of 3.07 percent on both millionaires and minimun wage earners alike, and that makes hiring a rare talent such as Harper far more expensive in the Golden State. We imagine the same is true of those rare talents in the arguably more important science and technology and engineering and mathematics fields, not to mention school teachers, and being longtime red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalists we can’t help noticing how excessive taxation and other political interventions distort markets.
Even the almighty market forces don’t determine the ultimate outcome in sports and life, though, and neither do the futile interventions of mere humans and their petty politics. The Phillies will likely be better with Harper on the roster, but he’ll only be one of nine guys in the lineup, and he can’t guarantee a championship. The Los Angeles Angels haven’t won much with the arguably Trout in the lineup, The Los Angeles Lakers paid big buck for the arguably best-of-all-time LeBron James in its starting five and seems likely to miss the playoffs, and some guys are we’ve never heard of and don’t seem to have any impressive stats on the Denver Nuggets are going currently toe-to-toe with the almighty Golden State Warriors in the National Basketball Association’s western division. Our beloved New York Yankees are expected to contend for a championship this next baseball season, despite that state’s high tax rate and other left-wing craziness.
Somehow the the high-tax states seem to be faring to be faring well in the arguably more important science and technology and engineering and mathematic fields, and their school teachers aren’t so restive, and we can only surmise that all sorts of geographic and demographic climatic factors somehow figure in it all. Here in our part of Kansas the Wichita State University Wheatshockers are above .500 in conference and overall play even in a down season, the University of Kansas Jayhawks have ended a 14-year run as Big XII conference championships but the Kansas State University Wildcats are still in the chase, and the local economy is doing pretty good despite all the trade wars and tax cuts and tax hikes and other human interventions in the free market and the best efforts of our fellow human beings.
At this point all we have to say , about both sports and politics, is let the best team win.
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CAS from the Edge
Opinions about Africa from Edinburgh
Great News!! Paul is father … again!
Posted in Uncategorized on April 29, 2009| 3 Comments »
Just wanted to use this space to say congratulations to Paul for the arrival of his new little girl, her name is Laetitia or Jasmine [still to be confirmed, perhaps we should democratically have a vote on that??] and she was born on Saturday 25 April.
All the best to the Nugent family!!
Barbara and CAS
Democracy is taking hold in South Africa
Posted in Uncategorized on April 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I came home just in time to vote, and the turnout was comparable to the 1994 elections for the first time (increasing apathy in the two preceding elections), which is a sure sign of a revitalisation of interest amongst the electorate in the state of our government. It speaks to increasing calls for accountability among office bearers, and hopefully will result in a government that is more engaged with the people.
Apart from the comments made by Alex and Dan, the DA victory in the Western Cape is also significant for the opportunity to prove that they can govern effectively and inclusively – it will be decisive factor in increasing their numbers in the next elections. COPE’s showing was also spectacular, considering their resources and the fact that they were barely 100 days old at the time of elections. They are official opposition in three provinces (Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Limpopo) and within 1% of the DA in the Free State and North West).
Generally, the elections proved that democracy is taking hold in SA; the lack of serious violence, lack if intimidation (particularly in comparison to previous elections), and generally well run election process shows that while it is still in many respects a one party state, opposition is not curtailed and dissenting opinions are heard.
Lara de Klerk, Pretoria
More from South Africa
South Africa’s National and Provincial elections passed relatively peacefully in 2009 and have been recognised as free, fair and transparent. The elections largely passed without the political violence that some commentators feared – although there was a tragic shooting of a COPE member in Port Elizabeth and other allegations of intimidation elsewhere. However, these were not on the scale that some feared given the recent split between the ANC and COPE.
The performance of different parties at this election has been revealing. It appears that the end is nigh for many of the smaller parties. As one newspaper headline writer put it, ‘Puny Parties Panic’ after the implosion of the Inkhata Freedom Party, and the fall in votes for the Independent Democrats, Freedom Front Plus, Pan African Congress and the African Christian Democratic Party amongst others. It would seem that the next few years will see the consolidation of three main parties (the African National Congress, the Democratic Alliance, and the Congress of the People) and the likely assimilation of smaller parties into these.
On a Provincial level, the success of the DA in taking control of the Western Cape is a major victory for them. Their success in Guateng is also notable and while the party remains seen as a ‘white’ party it would appear that they are beginning to make in-roads into the black, middle-class urban voter. The failure of COPE in the Eastern Cape is surprising in many ways, given their association with Mbeki and the Xhosa population. However, as has been noted elsewhere, their failure to mobilise a branch network in rural and poor areas (focussing instead on the black, urban middle class) is likely to have been a major factor in this.
The role of the international voter, while minimal this year with less that 10,000 votes cast, is likely to increase in the future as voters have more time to register to vote and make plans to cast their ballots while overseas. The main beneficiary of this court ruling is likely to be the DA, who polled the vast majority of votes cast this year by South Africans overseas.
In terms of the experience on the ground in the weeks running up to election day, and the day itself, a number of things stand out. The one I will comment on here is the visual aspect of the election. In February, the first election posters began to appear in Cape Town – the DA stealing a march on the ANC with posting their lamp-post boards first along the major highways. The ANC were not far behind, and soon major roads were lined with posters for both parties.
In Johannesburg, a similar process occurred, with the DA and ANC posting on major roads and suburban areas in large numbers. Later in the campaign, posters for COPE and the Freedom Front also appeared in smaller numbers in Johannesburg. In Cape Town, these parties were supplemented by posters from the IFP, Independent Democratcs, the Pan African Movement, the Pan African Congress, the People’s Justice Congress, and many other smaller parties.
It was interesting to note how these visual displays differed between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Cape Town hosted a much wider range of political parties’ posters than Johannesburg, suggesting that certain parties (such as the ID) remained very provincial in their appeal. The posters deployed by the ANC in the different cities was also notable. In Jo’burg, many ANC posters were of Jacob Zuma entreating voters to vote ANC, whereas in Cape Town the majority of ANC posters outside of townships were text-based posters – ‘Vote ANC on 22 April’ or ‘Working Together We Can Do More’. This suggests the ANC felt ‘brand Zuma’ was a greater asset in Jo’burg than Cape Town. At the same time, the defacing of ANC posters in Jo’burg was not replicated in Cape Town. Many posters of Zuma in Jo’burg suburbs were defaced with the words ‘criminal’, a snake-tongue added to Zuma on others, and so on. The ‘working together’ posters often had ‘crime’ added at the end – ‘Working together we can do more crime’. These acts of vandalism – some would argue sub-vertising – reflect dissatisfaction and concern amongst sections of the electorate over the conduct of parties and political leaders. They also suggest a sense amongst some that their concerns and grievances are not being taken seriously by the state or by government.
Dan Hammett, Johannesburg
South African Election
Posted in South Africa on April 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Okay, I think that there are three main talking points. One is the ANC’s ability to maintain its majority, despite the presence of a new opposition force and a stronger DA. Another is Cope and what the 7.42% of votes it gained means for the party and its rivals. The third is the domination of Cope and the DA amongst the opposition and the near annihilation of the smaller parties and how this might lead to a reconfiguration of opposition politics in the future.
“You touch the ANC, you touch a lion”
Jacob Zuma declared at an ANC victory party on Friday that “you touch the ANC, you touch a lion”. The party has undoubtedly reaffirmed its position as South Africa’s political colossus by attaining 65.9% of the national vote. Whilst it fell short of the 2/3 majority it would need to unilaterally change the constitution in parliament, this was, nonetheless, a demonstration of strength that gives Zuma a resounding mandate.
Despite shedding some 4% of votes it attained in 2004, the result underlines a remarkable consistency in South African politics: the ANC has once again shown its ability to score a clear outright majority at the polls, beating even he closest opposition party into a very distant second. This highlights the continuation of race as a defining characteristic of voting preferences amongst South Africans: the black majority continues to strongly identify their aspirations with the ANC whilst the DA remains the primary champion of minority groups.
Seen through this lens, the opposition parties’ fixation with making the election into a referendum on (Zuma’s) political morality appears to have been a massive own-goal. The ANC, by contrast, has run a smart and sophisticated election campaign that has been very effective at communicating what seems to be its primary message: “we have done much, we acknowledge (some of) our shortcomings, and we will strive to do much more.” Zuma, far from being a political liability, has been one of the ANC’s greatest assets in delivering this message. His humble background and the perception that he is “in touch” with the concerns of South Africa’s poor has propelled both him and the party to another electoral landslide leaving the opposition in its wake. As ANC supporters sang at a rally in Soweto on Friday: “My mother was a kitchen girl, my father was a garden boy, that’s why he’s the President!”.
The ANC has no doubt underlined its credentials as the champion of South Africa’s black majority but that manner in which it has translated this into votes at the ballot box owes a great deal to a slick and well organized campaign machinery that has managed to stave off the threat of its latest political rival Cope from eating into its primary constituency. It has been well documented that the ANC has led a carefully choreographed campaign, that has hinged around the two goals of mobilizing its voters, as well as appealing to young, first-time voters. Reflecting what the Sunday Times calls “a campaign that had hints of Obama-like sophistication”, over the past months the party utilized its branch structures and an army of over 60,000 party agents to ensure that its core constituency were both registered and, ultimately, were at the polls on Wednesday. Whilst this might not be a new tactic, I think this has been approached with a great deal more vigour than usual according to those I’ve spoken to. Their first-hand accounts of branch activity and the drive to ensure that ANC voters were at the polls (even offering physical assistance) is testament to their claim that they would not be “defeated by complacency”. This perhaps relates to the point that political analyst Susan Booysen makes that the presence Cope has effectively galvanized the ANC and forced it to raise its game. Whilst the campaigning effort owes a great deal to the huge financial resources at the party’s disposal, it also forcefully demonstrates the unrivalled capacity of the ANC to mobilize huge numbers of motivated and engaged party members across the country. This allows the ANC to penetrate into communities through direct contact to a far greater degree than its opposite numbers.
In conjunction with its impressive national campaign strategy, the ANC has also been able to offset the votes it lost to the DA and Cope though its strong showing in KwaZulu Natal. This was down in part to the IFP’s own internal weaknesses but also to an extensive and highly visible campaigning effort in the province by the ANC and also Zuma’s well-publicised popularity in the area owing to his rural Zulu origins and his perceived understanding of Zulu ‘traditions’.
“A funeral for the late spoilt Cope”?
When a couple of high-profile ANC leaders split from the party to form Cope it created a buzz of excitement and a great deal of fanfare amongst a South African press that had been previously starved of what they felt to be a genuine opposition to the ANC. Whilst Cope was widely touted as a potential challenger to the ANC, threatening the political hegemony it had enjoyed since 1994, at its first outing at the national poles it only managed to gain 7.42% of the vote, despite more optimistic predictions from analysts. It also failed to make its mark in provinces such as the Eastern Cape which it had initially felt capable of taking from a Zuma-led ANC.
The press, once so willing to give Cope the significance and momentum that its short existence and lack of membership never really justified, are now quick to offer a post mortem for the party’s shortcomings at the polls. Cope’s campaign was, they argued, too late to be launched, lacking a distinct ideological platform, beset with petty leadership squabbles and, crucially, lacking the financial and human capital of the ANC. Whilst these are all true, the relative strength of Cope’s campaign was quite inconsequential for the trade unionists I spoke to. After its launch Cope was dismissed as being an organization formed by “cry babies” – those who could not accept that internal democracy within the ANC had delivered Zuma as the leader. It therefore lacked legitimacy in the first place. E mails and leaflets circulated around union offices and workplaces in the build up to the election predicted that Cope would be annihilated at the polls and invited members to a mock funeral “for the late spoilt Cope: born 12 oct 2008, died 22nd April.” Whilst this is perhaps an extreme sample – trade unionists that are often card-carrying members of the ANC – it does raise questions as to whether the top-down formation of Cope will prevent it from gaining legitimacy amongst those that have a long-standing loyalty and identification with the ANC.
Towards a reconfigured opposition?
It would be premature to write off Cope just yet; despite its relatively small share of the national vote, what it did achieve was unprecedented in South Africa for a party that has only been around for six months. Overall, the main opposition parties have faired well, whereas the smaller ones (UDM, ID) have been almost wiped out. This has led some prominent analysts to predict that this will lead to a smaller number of parties in the long term as many will be forced to disband. This will lead to a reconfiguration of the opposition, they argue, into a 2-3 party system. Even the relatively successful parties have recognized the need for a larger, united opposition force to challenge the ANC. As Helen Zille, leader of the DA has stated: “”We’ve got to realign politics in South Africa and that’s what I’m going to spend the next five years doing.” Whilst the smaller parties facing annihilation might be more inclined to enter into dialogue with the larger parties, it remains to be seen if Cope and the DA can build a united party to challenge the ANC. At this stage any such idea seems very distant. A tactical merger of the opposition parties based on a pragmatic assessment of their relative strength next to the ruling party would risk glossing over ideological and personality differences between the two parties.
If any merger of the opposition parties were to occur, the direction and ultimate product of any reconfiguration of the opposition will depend on which party can assert itself as the primary figurehead of opposition to Zuma’s government. The DA’s relatively strong election showing would suggest that it is placed well to take up this mantle but analysts such as Aubrey Matshiqi are predicting that Cope will eventually dethrone the DA due to its potentially broader appeal to the black majority in the long term. Any such merger, however, is bound to be fraught with practical difficulties, yet the greatest challenge any reconfigured opposition would face relates to the long-standing difficulty of any opposition in breaking the ANC’s hegemony among the black majority: pragmatically reconfiguring the opposition to challenge the ANC’s dominance is one thing, penetrating this voting demographic is quite another which will require a more holistic recalibration of opposition politics. Highlighting the Zuma governments’ shortcomings and failure to meet inflated expectations will be one obvious tactic but any genuine challenge would need to transcend this narrow focus and look to build a party rooted in the communities. This will not be easy: the ANC’s grassroots structures will be difficult to match. But such a presence would be essential for the opposition to begin to challenge the ANC’s position as the almost unrivalled champion of the majority’s aspirations.
Alex Beresford, Johannesburg
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American Legion Celebrates Centennial
Jordan Milne June 27, 2019 Businesses, Nonprofit Spotlight
This year, the American Legion celebrates 100 years of camaraderie. Posts all over the country, including those in Columbia, are each celebrating uniquely.
“The American Legion is the nation’s largest wartime veterans’ service organization, committed to mentoring youth, providing sponsorship of wholesome programs in our communities, advocating patriotism and honor, promoting strong national security, and continuing devotion to our fellow service members and veterans,” says Ron McMillan, commander of Herbert Williams American Legion Post 202 in Columbia. “Our ‘family’ of organizations within the organization is open to a huge population of the United States. As in our military, we are a colorblind organization, and we represent God and the country in all of our endeavors, which is ingrained in all of our principles.”
Aside from Post 202, there are two additional American Legion Posts in Columbia: Post 1111, a women-only post, and Post 238, a historically African American post made up of primarily World War II and Korean War veteran members.
The very first meeting of the group that became the American Legion was held in Paris, France, in 1918.
“The St. Louis, Missouri, caucus soon followed, and the rest is what we would call ‘history,’” says McMillan. “Post 202 began among other groups of World War I veterans from all across the country returning from war and seeking the comradeship of fellow veterans.”
To become a member, one must have served in the military during wartime. It is not a requirement to have been deployed overseas, only to have served during a period of conflict.
“All veterans seek the company of others who have shared experiences,” says McMillan. “We may not speak of our experiences with family or non-military friends, but we will share with other veterans, even if they weren’t involved in the same conflict.”
The largest of the posts in Columbia, Post 202 has a large building that can be rented to outside organizations or individuals. This gives them a revenue stream, which is then used to support veterans.
To honor the organization’s centennial, Post 202 has upgraded and added to their memorial room displays, which involved going through hundreds of pages of meeting notes from years past.
“In the early days, we met in the downtown offices of our members,” says McMillan. “Attendance was pretty low in those days.”
The American Legion now has approximately 4,000,000 members nationally and about 320 locally in Post 202 alone.
In addition to sprucing up the place (McMillan was in the middle of ripping off and replacing a large front portion of Post 202’s building when we spoke), the American Legion posts in Boone County celebrated their 100th birthday “party” in April.
“The event was very well attended,” McMillan says proudly.
The Family of Suborganizations
The Sons of the American Legion was founded by American Legion members in the 1930s to keep the organization going after the first generation passed away.
“This group, still today, is only open to males who have a father or grandfather who served during a time that makes them eligible for legion membership. Our sons organization, or SAL, is still active and is a means for many to join our organization,” explains McMillan.
For the more daring-at-heart veterans, there’s the American Legion Riders.
“This group of motorcycle enthusiasts is a great part of the American Legion family nationwide,” says McMillan. “The biggest ongoing accomplishment of the riders is the establishment of the Legacy Fund. This fund was started to ensure that every child of a service member post-9/11 who was killed or injured with a service connection rating of those injuries of 80% or greater has the means to go to college.”
Nationally, the riders have raised in the vicinity of $62 million thus far, and the state of Missouri contributed over $1 million last year alone.
The last, but not least, subgroup of the American Legion family is the American Legion Auxiliary. According to McMillan, these women support all of the legion activities, including the popular poppy distribution. The little paper poppies that are so often distributed outside of post offices, libraries, and grocery stores are a symbol of the fields of France, where so many “doughboys” lost their lives in World War I.
Carrying on a Legacy
The namesake of Post 202 is Herbert Williams, who was from the Hartsburg area. He was killed in 1918 while serving under General “Black Jack” Pershing.
“We have some outstanding pictures and memorabilia from Williams,” says McMillan. “Our Funeral Honors Guard also paid a visit to the gravesite of Williams and performed military honors to honor our hero namesake.”
In addition to supporting each other, legion members also support the community through youth organizations such as Diamond Council of Columbia and KidsFirst Optimist.
“Many of our members volunteer at the Harry S. Truman Memorial Veterans’ Hospital, and we partner with many of the VA programs in other ways,” says McMillan. “We also have relationships with scouting groups and constantly seek Eagle Scouts looking for their Eagle project.”
McMillan has “proudly served as commander of Post 202 for about three and a half years,” conducting the monthly meetings, helping veterans who are seeking assistance, maintaining relationships with other service organizations with common goals and projects, and handling the building rentals and outside usage. He will be stepping down in August.
McMillan’s vision in passing the torch to the next commander is that legion members will do the same for current and future generations of wartime veterans.
“Our membership is aging, and we must find ways to engage younger veterans,” says McMillan. “After they join, most find that being a veteran is not of age, but rather of experience.”
3669 Legion Ln.
Americanlegionpost202.org
Chartered: August 20, 1922
Ron McMillan, Commander & Finance Officer
Doug Garrett, 1st Vice Commander
Ryan Asbridge, 2nd Vice Commander
Joseph Toepke, Adjutant
Jackie Rogers, Judge Advocate
John Whitte, Service Officer
John Hendrickson, Sergeant at Arms
Dr. Edwin Hall, Chaplain
Melvin Bradley, Historian
Paul Hobbs, Chairman
Alan Wolfe, Vice Chairman
Terry McDonald, Secretary
Harold Brake, Member
John Jones, Member
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Sunday, July 24 • 11:30am - 12:30pm
Spotlight on Jordi Bernet
Superstar Spanish cartoonist Jordi Bernet is a Comic-Con special guest for the very first time. Known best for his work in his native country on such titles as Torpedo 1936 and Clara de Noche, Bernet has also made his mark in American comics on Jonah Hex, The Spirit, and Batman: Black and White. Fellow cartoonist Sergio Aragonés interviews this international treasure about his prolific career in comics.
Sunday July 24, 2011 11:30am - 12:30pm
1: Programs, Cartooning and Comic Strips, Comic-Con Special Guest Spotlights & Appearances, Comics
Tags Cartooning and Comic Strips, Comic-Con Special Guest Spotlights & Appearances, Comics
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EDD Data Library
Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) - Kern County
The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) Program is a Federal-State cooperative program between the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the California EDD’s Labor Market Information Division (LMID). The QCEW program produces a comprehensive tabulation of employment and wage information for workers covered by California Unemployment Insurance (UI) laws and Federal workers covered by the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE) program. The QCEW program serves as a near census of monthly employment and quarterly wage information by 6-digit industry codes from the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) at the national, state, and county levels. At the national level, the QCEW program publishes employment and wage data for nearly every NAICS industry. At the state and local area level, the QCEW program publishes employment and wage data down to the 6-digit NAICS industry level, if disclosure restrictions are met. In accordance with the BLS policy, data provided to the Bureau in confidence are used only for specified statistical purposes and are not published. The BLS withholds publication of Unemployment Insurance law-covered employment and wage data for any industry level when necessary to protect the identity of cooperating employers. Data from the QCEW program serve as an important input to many BLS programs. The Current Employment Statistics and the Occupational Employment Statistics programs use the QCEW data as the benchmark source for employment. The UI administrative records collected under the QCEW program serve as a sampling frame for the BLS establishment surveys. In addition, the data serve as an input to other federal and state programs. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the Department of Commerce uses the QCEW data as the base for developing the wage and salary component of personal income. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) and California's EDD use the QCEW data to administer the Unemployment Insurance program. The QCEW data accurately reflect the extent of coverage of California’s UI laws and are used to measure UI revenues; national, state and local area employment; and total and UI taxable wage trends. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes new QCEW data in its County Employment and Wages news release on a quarterly basis. The BLS also publishes a subset of its quarterly data through the Create Customized Tables system, and full quarterly industry detail data at all geographic levels.
kern, qcew, wages, establishments, total wages, average wages, es-202, covered employment
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Seeking Shelter
Why I am filing for asylum in my own country, Sweden.
Annika Hernroth-Rothstein speaks at a rally in Stockholm, 2012. Courtesy Anders Henrikson.
Annika Hernroth-Rothstein
Nov. 17 2013
Annika Hernroth-Rothstein is a syndicated columnist for Israel Hayom and a frequent contributor to the Washington Examiner.
1 121 Comments Print Email Kindle
Here in Stockholm this fall, we in the Jewish community have enjoyed our 21st annual Jewish film festival, a klezmer concert, and a number of other cultural diversions. I choose the word “diversions” advisedly. It’s thanks to such entertainments that so many of my fellow Jews can allow themselves to say that we’re doing okay here—that there’s no need to rock the boat or cause trouble.
But you know what? We are not okay, and this is not okay.
Kosher slaughter has been outlawed in my country since 1937, and a bill is now pending in parliament that would ban even the import and serving of kosher meat. Circumcision, another pillar of the Jewish faith, is likewise under threat. In my job as a political adviser to a Swedish party, I have dealt with two bills on this issue in the past year alone; a national ban is rapidly gaining political support in the parliament and among the Swedish public. When it comes to our religious traditions, those on both the Right and Left in Swedish politics find common ground; they take pride in defending both animals and children from the likes of us, and from what one politician has called our “barbaric practices.”
The avenues of aggression may be new, but the rhetoric is old and familiar—and so are the effects. In today’s Sweden, home to all of 20,000 Jews amidst a national population of some nine million, the public display of Jewish identity, like donning a kippah or wearing a Star of David pendant, puts an individual at severe risk of verbal harassment and, even worse, physical harm. Synagogues are so heavily guarded that Jewish tourists are turned away if they try to attend services unannounced. Inside the sanctuary, we celebrate our festivals and holy days under police protection. On the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, during the five-minute walk to the water for the ceremony of tashlikh, my young son asked a guard why so many policemen were accompanying us. Replied the officer: “so that no bad people can hurt you.”
This is the self-image—the reality—that Jewish children in Sweden grow up with: being Jewish means being under threat of harm from bad people. This is where we are at. One by one, our practices are being outlawed. Attacks on us are going unpunished. Politicians, journalists, and intellectuals describe us as barbarians. On November 9, the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a few hundred neo-Nazis marched through Stockholm in solidarity with their Greek allies in the Golden Dawn party. They marched legally, with police permits. Another few hundred leftists turned out in protest; a significant number were waving Hamas flags and sporting Palestinian kefiyahs. It made for a perfect synergy: a solemn anniversary, a day of shame, hijacked, with official permission, by two extreme and nominally opposite sides of the political spectrum, united by their hatred of Jews.
The recently released findings of a year-long survey by the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights show that we Swedish Jews are far from alone. On the contrary: out of fear of violence, a majority of European Jews avoid going to Jewish events or wearing identifiably Jewish items of clothing. But the fear is especially strong in Sweden, where 49 percent say they refrain from such activity and 80 percent report having experienced a rise in anti-Semitism over the past five years. Sweden’s own National Council for Crime Prevention confirms the facts: anti-Semitic crimes have tripled since 2010. Worst of all is the situation in the city of Malmö, which has witnessed an increase of 320 percent in crimes against Jews since 2011. And these are just the reported incidents; one can only imagine how many go unreported each year.
True: we are not being murdered, and we are not being physically driven out. But our religious observances are being interdicted, our persons are being threatened, our safety is being endangered, and—in short—our human rights are being violated. Why do we put up with it? And why do pundits and politicians assure me that Jews in Sweden are perfectly safe when what they really mean is that we will be safe only so long as we agree to become invisible as Jews and cease to practice Judaism?
When I raise these issues with sympathetic Jewish friends abroad, including in Israel, the usual response is that Europe is over for the Jews—finished; that it’s too late to change things; and that Swedish Jews should move to Israel. I cannot accept that. No matter how much I believe in and promote the idea of aliyah, what is happening here is simply not right. People from all over the world seek refuge in my country in order to be who they are, and to live freely. I want this for them, and I want this for us.
EU statutes provide that asylum be granted to persons with “well-founded reasons to fear persecution due to race; nationality; religious or political beliefs; gender; sexual orientation; or affiliation to a particular social group.” Jews in Sweden meet these criteria, and should be eligible for the same protection and support extended to non-natives.
And so today, November 18, I am legally filing for refugee status and asylum—not in America, not in Israel, but here in Sweden, my own country.
Absurd? No doubt. I can only expect that my application will be summarily dismissed. But the situation is beyond absurdity, beyond op-eds and strongly worded letters of protest. The situation calls for action. I would like to think that in making this statement, I am fighting on behalf of Swedish Jewry as a whole for the right to live a religious life, to preserve our cultural identity, and to be who we are without fear of persecution—the same rights enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and guaranteed in the Swedish constitution. Is Sweden, is Europe as a whole, truly no longer willing to enforce its own standards of justice where European Jews are concerned?
A month ago, I sought out the parliamentarian responsible for the latest anti-kosher bill and others like it. Feeling at once sad, lonely, and furious, I told him that instead of churning out all these different measures, each one aimed at outlawing yet another aspect of Jewish life, it would be much easier to write a single bill outlawing Jews. At least that would be honest. When he protested, I ended up arguing with him over the kashrut bill for almost twenty minutes, giving him the facts until, unable to refute me, he turned bright red in the face, leaned in, and said: “Well, you know us. This thing you call multiculturalism. All of that. We don’t want it. Not here. Not in our country.”
I was startled, but also relieved. Finally, some truth.
And that, too, is why I need to make my statement, before it is altogether too late. Where the lives and safety and freedoms of its citizens are concerned, the Swedish government has made solemn promises. Let it live up to them.
Read Mosaic‘s August report on the looming end of European Jewry here.
Annika Hernroth-Rothstein is a Swedish writer and political adviser and an activist in support of Israel.
More about: Anti-Semitism, asylum, Circumcision, European Jewry, slaughter, Sweden
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Between the Species
Home > Faculty Research > College of Liberal Arts > Philosophy > Between the Species > Vol. 10 (1994) > Iss. 1
David Boonin-Vail
Boonin-Vail, David (1994) "Reply," Between the Species: Vol. 10: Iss. 1, Article 10.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15368/bts.1993v10n1.8
Available at: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol10/iss1/10
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ICC Prosecutor appeals decision to release Jean-Pierre Bemba
ICC - August 25, 2009
Jean-Pierre Bemba should remain in custody to the end of his trial, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo stated in a filing presented to the Appeals Chamber. The ICC Prosecutor appealed the decision of the single judge on interim release as soon as it was rendered. Yesterday, the Prosecutor made known his arguments in support of Mr. Bemba’s continued detention.
The Prosecutor said that contrary to the Single Judge’s conclusions, there has been no change of circumstances in the present case. Most of the circumstances cited are pre-existing and have been cited previously by the same judge as either grounds for continued detention or irrelevant to an application for release. The only significant intervening factor, the issuance of the decision confirming the charges against the Accused, confirms and increases the risks posed by the Accused if released. The Single Judge’s decision is thus error.
The pending charges may result in conviction with an overall lengthy sentence. All prior decisions, including the Appeals Chamber’s decision denying Bemba’s release, noted that the gravity of the charges - crimes against humanity and war crimes - make “the risk of [the Accused] absconding […] more likely”. The Chamber confirmed those charges. The Accused is now closer to trial and, if convicted, subject to a potentially lengthy sentence. The confirmation decision increases the incentive to flee and to obstruct the prosecution. It also increases the capacity to harm witnesses, since the Accused knows the identity of the witnesses and will continue to discover essential prosecution evidence.
Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo also requested suspensive effect to the appeal, so that there is no possibility of Mr. Bemba’s release while it is under consideration by the Appeals Chamber.
“Mr. Bemba is still presumed innocent but must stay in the detention centre .We will do all we can to ensure he stands trial as soon as possible and that victims see justice done” said the Prosecutor.
The International Criminal Court is an independent, permanent court that investigates and prosecutes persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Bemba, Katumbi renew their support for joint opposition presidential candidate Fayulu (November 16, 2018)
Oppositioin leaders pick Martin Fayulu as joint presidential candidate (November 11, 2018)
Jean-Pierre Bemba banned from running for president (August 25, 2018)
Bemba says Katumbi should be allowed to run for president (August 4, 2018)
Jean-Pierre Bemba Returns to DR Congo (August 1, 2018)
Jean-Pierre Bemba named MLC presidential candidate (July 13, 2018)
ICC Confirms 14-Year Sentence Against Thomas Lubanga (December 1, 2014)
ICC Case Against Bemba Wrapping Up as Another Opens (November 12, 2014)
ICC confirms war crimes charges against Bosco Ntaganda (June 10, 2014)
ICC sentences Germain Katanga to 12 years (May 23, 2014)
ICC finds Germain Katanga guilty of war crimes and crime against humanity (March 7, 2014)
Rebel Leader Bosco Ntaganda Makes First Appearence Before the ICC (March 26, 2013)
Bosco Ntaganda in the International Criminal Court's custody (March 22, 2013)
Warlord Bosco Ntaganda Turns Himself In at US Embassy in Rwanda (March 18, 2013)
International Criminal Court Acquits Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui (December 18, 2012)
M23 Rebels Committing War Crimes (September 11, 2012)
Kagame May Face War Crimes Charges at the ICC, Says US Official (July 26, 2012)
US Cuts Military Aid to Rwanda Over Support to Rebels in DR Congo (July 21, 2012)
DR Congo, Rwanda Sign Pact to Fight Rebels in Eastern Congo (July 15, 2012)
Thomas Lubanga sentenced to 14 years (July 10, 2012)
U.S. Tells Rwanda to Stop Supporting Rebels in DR Congo (July 2, 2012)
Kagame Is A Problem for The U.S. and The U.K. (June 23, 2012)
ICC Prosecutor Seeks 30 Years for Thomas Lubanga (June 13, 2012)
Congo Army Advances On Rebels Holdout, Says Official (June 5, 2012)
Rwanda Should Stop Aiding War Crimes Suspect Bosco Ntaganda: Human Rights Watch (June 4, 2012)
UN Report Accuses Rwanda of Supporting Bosco Ntaganda Rebels (May 28, 2012)
ICC Prosecutor Seeks New Charges Against Ntaganda, FDLR Leader (May 14, 2012)
Army Suspends Military Operations Against Ntaganda Loyalists (May 6, 2012)
Kabila's Position on The Arrest of Ntaganda 'Has Not Changed' (April 13, 2012)
• International Criminal Court (ICC)
• Jean-Pierre Bemba
• Luis Moreno-Ocampo
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Growth & Jobs | Wigton Refinances Debt – Wind-Powered Electricity Provider To Offer Its Shares To The Public
Wigton Windfarm Limited (Wigton) has successfully completed refinancing loans amounting to US$49.2 million (J$6.4 billion), says Jermaine Deans, deputy general manager, JN Fund Managers Limited.
Refinancing these PetroCaribe loans now allows the wind-powered electricity provider to proceed with offering its shares to the public in the first quarter of 2019, Deans said. JN Fund Managers handled the debt placement on behalf of Wigton and the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ), which is managing the overall divestment of the state-owned power generator.
“We found that local pension fund managers, along with other local institutional investors, were very receptive to the series of bonds offered,” Deans stated. “The entire process was completed by December 18, 2018.”
A wholly owned subsidiary of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ), Wigton operates a 62.7MW wind farm complex and is the largest wind-energy facility in the English-speaking Caribbean. Wigton was built by the Government to diversify Jamaica’s energy mix and commenced operations in 2004 with 20.7MW capacity, then expanded to 38.7MW capacity in 2010 and to 62.7MW in 2016.
“The bonds were attractive to those investors seeking longer-term fixed-interest securities,” the investment banker pointed out. “In addition, the yields were attractive, based on current capital market conditions.”
Twenty-three government owned assets have been privatised by the DBJ since 2009, and the Wigton transaction represents a new stage of its privatisation programme, which seeks to introduce other modalities, including the listing of entities on the Jamaica Stock Exchange.
The DBJ is steering the privatisation of Wigton through its Privatisation and Public-Private Partnership Programme, which encourages local ownership in the economy by providing investment opportunities to the private sector.
Dr Nigel Clarke, minister of Finance and the public service minister, has recently publicly advocated a new thrust for the Government to utilise the local capital markets to open up broad-based access to the ownership of publicly owned assets.
Denise Arana, general manager, public-private partnerships and privatisation services at the DBJ, pointed out, “We have worked very closely with the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica and Wigton Windfarm to execute this transaction.
“The refinancing of the PetroCaribe loans by Wigton Windfarm represents reflows to the Government of US$49.2 million and paves the way for the Wigton Windfarm IPO (initial public offering), which is expected to be on the market by March 2019,” the DBJ executive explained.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20190101/growth-jobs-wigton-refinances-debt-wind-powered-electricity-provider-offer-its
admin February 7, 2019 February 8, 2019 News
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Mill Finish / Silver
Luxury / Standing Seam
ccc 133-1491
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Make ’em laugh
May 23, 2007 Eduflack NCLB, PR, Reading First, Spellings
When you think of cutting edge humor on the topics of the day, the first two names you think of are Jon Stewart and … Margaret Spellings? Greg Toppo of USA Today asks the important “why” question. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-21-spellings-daily-show_N.htm?csp=34
While yours truly is quoted in Toppo’s piece on Spellings’ appearance on the Daily Show, it forced me to think a little more about the question. What exactly is the communications benefit of opening one up to Stewart?
As always, we have three simple answers:
* First, Spellings is trying put the scandals behind her. After IG investigations and new concerns on student loans, Spellings and her team have been playing defense for well over a year. Opening oneself up to Stewart’s probing, laughing with the audience when he points to the failings of the U.S. Department of Education, and then offering a public “we’ll try harder next time” allows Spellings to declare these issues over with. She’s talked them out with the national media. She’s met with the trade media. She’s convened the bloggers. Now she’s doing the comedy shows. It is time to move on to a new topic. She’s exhausted the issue. Nothing left to say, and no one left to say it to.
* Second, she needs to personalize the issue. When Spellings first took office, she entered with press any public official would envy. Glowing profiles in major publications. Nonexistent criticisms in the media. A general lovefest. Today, no mention of Spellings or ED is complete without the terms “scandal” or “IG.” Putting Spellings out in front reminds us of the person behind ED. It no longer is the bureaucracy that has corrupted student loans or “the man” who has botched RF implementation. Now, you are attacking a nice woman who reminds you of your next-door-neighbor or your kid’s teacher or that woman who sings at the church. An appearance on the Daily Show reminds us of who is really behind the curtain. And she comes with a fairly decent Q rating.
* Finally, it has reached the stage where any publicity is good publicity. Consider this the policymaker’s 10 steps to media recovery. She has listened to the criticism. She has vowed to follow the IG’s reccs. She has stood up before Congress and the media. And tonight she is standing up to a top Bush critic, probably second only to the likes of Michael Moore and Al Franken. This is win/win for her. If Stewart makes her look foolish (which he likely won’t) then it was to be expected. If she does well (which we should expect) then she stood in the lion’s den and survived. She showed she was fearful of no issue and no man, and we credit her with suffering the slings and arrows. She gets good pub for putting herself out there in the first place.
At the end of the day, we can only hope her public affairs team has properly trained her for the Daily Show, giving her talking points, writing some witty zingers and responses, and drilling her until she is comfortable with dry, wry, sarcastic humor. She will survive, and she may even make them laugh.
Open Our Borders, Open Our Schools?
May 21, 2007 Eduflack ELL, Immigration, NCLB, President Bush, Reading First
When Eduflack was launched, I made clear the intent was to look at how effectively we are communicating education reform. But from time to time, issues come up where I just have to throw out a thought or hurl out a question. And this past week has been one of those times. I ask the question, someone knowledgeable, please provide the answer.
“With the expected passage of President Bush’s new immigration reform bill, what impact will the new law have on ELL education in the United States? And how does this fit in with the goals and expectations of NCLB, particularly as it faces reauthorization?”
I, for one, think ELL is one of those important issues that has gotten lost in current federal policy, particularly as it relates to Reading First. But I open up my doors, and my pages, to anyone who would like a chance on the soapbox here. I yield the floor.
Injecting the Education Continuum in the Campaigns
May 16, 2007 Eduflack higher ed, NCLB, PR, Presidential campaign, Students
Kudos to Inside Higher Ed’s Scott Jaschik for today’s piece on how the 18 active 2008 presidential candidates are talking about education — primarily higher education. http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/16/election If the early results are any indication, it seems that college access and student loans are THE message with regard to education platforms.
* It is easy to define. Most Americans understand the value of a college education. They know college is expensive. They know student loans are available. These are terms of issues the average voter understands and can relate to.
* It’s a hot PR topic. The New York State Attorney General has made student loans (and student lender relationships) the scandal of the day. It is in the news, it is the focus of congressional hearings. From a communications standpoint, it is the current wave that most need to at least test out.
* It’s relatable. The rich can afford to go to any college. Funny thing is, most Americans perceive themselves as being in the middle class, even if demographically they are not. When you start talking about fairness and ensuring the middle class have access and funding to attend the college of their choice. When those swing voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, Florida and the like here the argument that we need to make college more affordable for the average American, they think the candidates are talking to them.
What’s missing, though, is an equally passionate debate on the education continuum. Postsecondary education is important for virtually every student in America. But what will the candidates do to ensure that students are prepared for college? How will they deal with the 1.1 million high school dropouts each year? How about the 30-50% of college students who have to take remedial courses to get up to speed? And how will they ensure that students are gaining knowledge and skills related to what they want to do with their lives?
The general silence on K-12 issues at this stage of the presidential campaigns can only mean one of two things. Either all candidates agree that NCLB is essentially steering us in the right direction, and requires only the moderate tinkering Congress and its influencers are discussing or they simply don’t have answers (or even thoughts) on how to further improve primary and secondary education in the United States.
Unfortunately, it is probably the latter, and not the former. So I’ve got three pieces of advice for the candidates, Democrat and Republican, to remember when crafting their messages:
* As in generations past, we all want to see our kids do better than us. The key to that is education. Making sure they are achieving at grade level by fourth grade. Instilling independent thinking in the middle grades. And advocating for both rigor and relevance in high school. Success requires an education continuum, not just a college degree.
* K-12 education touches every U.S. citizen. We all went to school. We all pay taxes to support our schools. We all have or know of children in the schools. Promise us you will ensure that those kids are getting the best and that our taxes are being well spent. And tell us how you will measure it and hold policymakers and schools and teachers accountable.
* Education is not just a learning issue, it is a work issue. Too many people put school in one bucket, career in the other. A strong K-12 education is necessary to a strong, effective workforce. Whether you be wearing a blue or a white collar, you need core reading, math, problem solving, and teamwork skills to succeed. Want a good job, you need a good education. And it is up to the President, the Congress, the Governors, the Mayors, and the Superintendents to ensure that our schools are delivering such an education. It is the only way to truly keep our economy, and our nation, strong.
Now is the stage of the campaign where candidates start telling us what they stand for and what they believe in. And their are few issues that define character and a campaign than education and education improvement. Here’s wishing these ideas start making their way into stump speeches and campaign commercials.
Training a Better Teacher
May 11, 2007 Eduflack NCLB, SBRR
America’s teachers colleges are failing at effectively training a complete cadre of successful educators. That is news coming from a new study from the Education Schools Project, a effort headed by Art Levine. You can see a good write-up of the study in Education Week this week — http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/05/09/36levine.h26.html.
These are important conclusions, indeed. But are they news? For more than a decade, education researchers and education reformers alike have raised serious concerns about the quality and effectiveness of teacher training. That’s one of the reasons NCLB’s architects including HQT provisions in the law. And that’s why so many are clamoring for a “Flexner-style” study of our nation’s teachers colleges. (Kudos to Nancy Grasmick for actually attempting to do it in Maryland).
In fact, it is the same message that Reid Lyon has preached for more than a decade now. You can see in in the congressional record with testimony Lyon presented as early as 1997, well before NCLB was even a flicker in the eye of the greatest minds in Texas education.
So why the attention now? The answer is simple. Concerns about teacher preparation (as delivered in this study) are getting the attention they justly deserve because of the messenger. We’ve talked about this before. Successful communication requires a good message, an understanding of the audiences you are talking to, AND a credible messenger.
Art Levine is such a messenger. As a former teacher educator at Columbia, he is a member of the club. He understands the challenges and obstacles that face many a teachers college. He has credibility with the establishment. But while at Teachers College, he was also a reformer. He wasn’t afraid to throw rocks at that same establishment, pushing his colleagues to do it differently and do it better. As a result, he possesses the respect and gravitas that allows him to call on his former colleagues to change their ways.
When Lyon has said the same things, he is attacked for seeking to destroy our system of higher education and accused of showing no respect for teachers and teacher educators alike. Unfair? Unjust? Inaccurate? Absolutely. But if the audiences you are seeking to reach believe it, it sometimes doesn’t matter what the truth is. The legend, whispers, and sense of political correctness take center stage and become the new reality.
Regardless of the personalities, what remains solely important is the message here. We need more qualified, effective teachers in the classrooms. And with so many veteran teachers preparing for retirement in the coming years, that need is growing more acute daily. If the Education Schools Project study can get teachers colleges to strengthen their preservice training and build a better cadre of classroom teachers, then the message has been delivered effectively.
And if that happens, there will be many, including both Levine and Lyon, who deserve the credit.
Winning the Hearts and Minds of Youth
May 10, 2007 Eduflack Marketing, PR, Students
Recently, I was asked to write an opinion piece, entitled “Winning the Hearts and Minds of Youth,” for O’Dwyer’s PR Report (www.odwyerpr.com). The goal was to detail how to effectively market to youth. But the lessons move beyond simple youth marketing. They also have relevant application to education reform, where an increased focus on high school reform and transitions to college requires effective communication with the very students we are looking to educate and prepare for productive futures.
I won’t bore you with the full piece (if you’re interested, just email me). But my three recommendations are important for marketing to youth, adults, and any and all interested in improving our educational offerings. It comes down to three simple words — respect, preparedness, and diversity.
First, respect your audience. Nothing is more frustrating than warmed over rhetoric or materials that were clearly created for someone else. It shows a lack of respect and an absence of understanding. Understand the audience and communicate directly with them, on their terms. Can you imagine selling charter schools by using the same messages or brochures for teachers, school administrators, parents, and the business community? Of course not. We respect the actors in education reform too much for that. Or we should.
Second, do your homework. It’s Media Relations 101. Find the right media, and apply the right messages. It may mean moving out of your comfort zone, but it about reaching your audience. If you are asking them to change their behaviors, you have to be prepared to do the same to convince them. Instead of seeking coverage from NPR or The New York Times, you may have to look to YouTube or Flickr or MySpace.
Finally, integrate and diversify. There is no one-stop shopping in education communications. We have too many stakeholders. Too many demographic differences. Too many histories to expect one-size-fits-all solutions. Success comes from multiple activities hitting multiple audiences multiple times. It is the only way we move from informing folks to changing the way they teach, learn, and behave. Education conferences. Radio coverage. WOMA. Blogs. They all play a role in convincing a community (either geographic or demographic) to embrace a change.
Simplistic? Of course. Good communications usually is. More importantly, though it works. Such communications approaches should be non-negotiables for any education reform initiative.
Vote for Ed
May 5, 2007 Eduflack NCLB, Presidential campaign
Every election year, we seeing polling numbers that show education is usually one of the top three “issues” for the average American. Yet when it comes time to pull the ole lever in the voting booth, few Americans seem to cast their votes on education policy stances. Such a disconnect demonstrates the chasm between public awareness of an issue and public action on the same issue.
Along comes Ed. Or rather the Ed in ’08 (www.edin08.com) campaign launched last week (and this week) by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation. As part of their Strong American Schools initiative, Ed in ’08 seeks to make education reform the primary domestic policy issue in the 2008 presidential elections.
Many critics have been quick to discount the effort, believing that such issue campaigns have been unsuccessful in the past. But none have been envisioned at the size and scale that Ed in ’08 is intending. Others continue to believe 2008 will remain a one-issue race (begins with “I” and ends with “Q”), and everything else will get lost in the fringes. But I have greater faith than that.
Without question, Strong American Schools has some potential obstacles to face. The largest is voter apathy. The key to success for Ed in ’08 is driving new audiences into the political process, getting them to take a stand, demand attention on their issues, and casting their votes based on the attention those issues receive. That means engaging individuals who have either disengaged from the process or who have never wanted to play in the first place.
The second is the NIMBY factor. Reform is all about getting people to stand up and say the current system is failing ME, and I deserve better. But if you talk to the average parent, or even the average teacher, about eduction reform, you usually get the same response. “The nation and/or the state is in real trouble and needs fixing. But my own school is doing just fine.” We don’t want to believe we are teaching in or sending our children to a school that just isn’t up to par.
What does all this mean for Governor Romer and the folks at Strong American Schools? The mountain before them is not an easy one. They need to overcome cynicism, apathy, and the defenders of the status quo. But it is possible to reach that apex. By employing successful public engagement activities, by taking the message to the disengaged, and by establishing a new paradigm for using a singular policy issue to define a complex political process, they can achieve the bold goals they have set out to reach. We aren’t talking about a plank in a party platform here. We are talking about a shift in public thinking and public action. “We want to strengthen our schools, AND we vote!”
1. Demand More — Too often, such issue advocacy efforts are about the “no.” Don’t change Medicare. Don’t recalibrate Social Security. Don’t vote for Candidate X because he did Y or Z. Strong American Schools needs to be about the “yes.” What do we need to do to make our schools better? How do we improve NCLB? How do we better prepare and empower our teachers? That means real answers to some difficult questions. For instance, each of the presidential candidates should be asked to complete a survey of hard-hitting questions about K-16 education. And we’re not looking for simple answers to questions like “Do you support teachers unions?” or “Do you support student loans?” By requiring real answers that demand more than a 22-year-old research assistant culling responses from old campaign literature or voting records, the public can get substantive answers to “how” we strengthen our schools. And that information can be used to to engage and empower a new generation of activists and advocates. We aren’t looking for soundbites; we need substantive thinking that demonstrates and understanding for what is happening in my state, in my city, and in my school.
2. Change the Dynamic — Armed with the hard information on what the 18 (gulp) presidential candidates would do to strengthen our schools, we need to use new communications tools to engage those new audiences. 2004 taught us a great deal about new media. Traditional television ads and leafleting remain an important component of any information campaign. But they no longer can get the job done by themselves. The changes advocated by Ed in ’08 require bringing new audiences into the fold — individuals and groups that have not been involved in the presidential process in the past. That means effectively utilizing new media (web sites, blogs, chat rooms, meetups, etc.) and employing time-tested social networking efforts. The goal is to raise the sense of urgency with stakeholders. That means constant access to information and unwaivering calls to action.
3. Turn to New Audiences — As I’ve said earlier, success comes when we tap the concerns and the uneasiness of those previously avoiding the process. For those who are regular voters, it is safe to say 45% vote Democrat, 45% vote Republican, and the fight is for that final 10%, regardless of who the specific candidates are. That’s what pollsters and party activists depend on. You change the game when you introduce new voters into the process. MTV tried that in 1992, seeking to spur Generation X into the voting process. Ed in ’08 has a similar opportunity. Let’s look at Generation X and Generation Y. They are the closest to the issue. Their views of high school, for instance, are still fresh of mind. They know the shortcomings of our schools. They feel, day in and day out, the impact an irrelevant courseload is now having on their ability to win a good job. And they are still optimistic enough that want to fix the problem for their little brothers and sisters and their communities. Let’s get those audiences involved. When we add voices to the debate, we completely shift the playing field. And that shift requires a new look at issues and a new respect of those issues from candidates.
Education reform should be our central domestic policy issue. There is no single issue more important, and no single issue that touches more people in more ways. Education is a health issue. It is a jobs issue. It is an economic development issue. It is a crime issue. And it is an environmental issue. Education touches and influences them all.
What candidate or interest group is going to stand up to oppose strengthening our schools or improving the quality of education in our communities? Some will surely try. There are too many who fight to protect the status quo. And there are some that want to take a huge step backward, undoing the progress we have made in school improvement over the past five years. But by focusing on the end goal, and building a comprehensive, integrated communications effort that both informs and changes public action, Ed in ’08 can succeed.
Strong American Schools has raised the flag. Now is the time to salute and acknowledge that we can settle for nothing less that complete victory. The future of our nation depends on it.
Applying Social Networking to Public Education
May 4, 2007 Eduflack NCLB, SBRR
Earlier this week, Eduflack was involved in a discussion with Geoff Livingston, principal of Livingston Communications and author of a terrific business PR blog, Buzz Bin. http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/ The conversation quickly turned to how effective corporations are at using social networking tools, like blogs, in getting their message out to key audiences.
I’ll leave my opinions on the effectiveness of corporate blogging for another day. But it begs the question — just how effective is new media in general, and blogging in particular, in rallying key stakeholders and triggering meaningful reforms in our schools? Are they making a difference, or are we just contributing to the white noise.
Without question, the number of education-focused blogs seems to grow by the day. Some, like Eduwonk (http://www.eduwonk.com/) and This Week in Education (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/thisweekineducation/) are must-reads and go-tos for anyone involved in education or education reform. But what about the rest of us?
The concept behind blogs are really nothing new. You can even equate them with Saint Paul’s PR activities on behalf of the start-up Catholic Church or our founding fathers’ leafleting the countryside in an attempt to start a new democracy. Citizen publishers hold a long-standing position in the history of social and political change.
Such efforts worked because they recognized successful communication has two sides to it. First, we must inform — disseminate information and make sure that key audiences receive it and understand it. Second, and more importantly, we must use that dissemination to drive audiences to action. Armed with that information, we must have individuals and groups stand up to demand reform, to push for change, and to ensure improvement. Only by changing public behavior is reform communications truly successful.
And what does all that mean for education reform? We have seen it work successfully in the past, and there is no education issue more relevant to it than special education reform. During the passage of the original IDEA, advocates were expert at gathering supporters and advocates, disseminating information, and using key audiences to push for change. They were blogging before the Internet, getting information out to key communities, embracing social networks to learn from the successes of others, and joining together to bring about change on one of the largest stages available — the U.S. Congress. Since then, special education advocates have clearly shown that social networking works. And now that they are equipped with tools such as blogs, chatrooms, and email blasts, who knows the effect they can have on future IDEA and NCLB authorizations.
It is that sort of lesson that NCLB advocates are still struggling to learn, six years later. While the law runs from the federal to the state to the locality, successful communication on the law should and must run in reverse. Using the social networking principles developed and strengthened by special education advocates, NCLB supporters could begin to build a real web of citizen supporters — teachers, parents, business leaders, and the rest — whose voices must be heard during reauthorization. Those are the voices now embraced by NCLB opponents. Now is the time to hear from those who are benefiting from the law.
How do we do it? Three simple steps:
* Online networking — Let’s use the successes of online resources like meetup.com and myspace.com and others to bring together those audiences who have benefited from research-based instruction, better assessments of learning, or improved teacher quality in the classroom.
* Give audiences a voice — Cultivate a network of blogs, listserves, and other communication tools for the parents and teachers who are working hard to ensure NCLB succeeds. Those voices can inspire and can provide valuable lessons for others working through the same issues or looking for solutions to similar problems.
* Think outside the 20th century box — NCLB advocates remain mostly passive and reactive. That just doesn’t work in the 21st century media. Supporters need to take back the message, and redefine the law on their terms. They need to discuss the improvements. And they need to confront the dangers of returning to that same old status quo.
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Search Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
Manuscript Collection MS COLL 00282 2B Annex - Jon Pearce Papers
Jon Pearce Papers
Pearce, Jon
Jon Robert Pearce (1937-2015) was a Canadian educator, editor, writer and athlete. He was a member of the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games Team as a single-scull rower and a prominent Toronto squash player. He taught at Upper Canada College from 1975 to 1996, and served as head of the English department. He wrote and edited a number of books championing Canadian literature and poetry, including Marked by the Wild: Literature Shaped by the Canadian Wilderness (1973) (co-edited with Bruce Littlejohn), Mirrors: Recent Canadian Verse (1975) and Twelve Voices: Interviews with Canadian Poets (1980).
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
Gift of Jon Pearce, 1987 and 1993.
The collection consists of papers and tapes (with transcriptions) relating to Pearce's book of interviews with twelve Canadian writers titled Twelve Voices (1980). It also includes tapes and transcripts with Milton Acorn for an article in Canadian Poetry.
Material may be requested in person at the Fisher Library Reference Desk, or in advance using our online stack retrieval request form: https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/stack-retrieval-request
jon-pearce-papers.pdf
Acorn, Milton (Subject)
Textual records
Pearce, Jon (Creator)
Shelf: 2B Annex
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Discovering Amistad is a new, nonprofit organization that was formed in August 2015 as a result of a recommendation by a State of Connecticut Advisory Committee.
The Amistad is both a part of Connecticut’s history and a reflection of how far we’ve come as a nation. This ship has been a valuable educational tool for Connecticut residents for years and years. I am pleased that Discovering Amistad will continue this story and provide relevant education to our students and citizens of Connecticut.
— Governor Dannel P. Malloy
The Advisory Committee was set up by the state of Connecticut to determine whether a viable long-term, sustainable organization could be created to acquire the Amistad ship out of receivership. It was concluded that a new organization could be formed that could achieve success - and on November 6th, 2015, Discovering Amistad purchased the ship from the receiver. There is a great deal of work that needs to be accomplished, and Discovering Amistad’s board of directors has enthusiastically taken on the responsibilities of building this organization. Updates and repairs are underway on the ship, which is in good hands at Mystic Seaport where she was built.
Education programs and curriculum will be developed in partnership with education professionals and institutions. Education will not only be centered on the history of the Amistad but, importantly, it will focus on how that history has impacted our world today. Public events will be planned working with our community partners throughout the state. As Discovering Amistad grows, we encourage everyone to volunteer, collaborate and participate in our many worthwhile and meaningful projects in the months and years ahead.
Discovering Amistad is appreciative of support that has been received from the Department of Economic and Community Development. The Organization has been awarded nonprofit exemption status from the Internal Revenue Service.
In 1839, Mende captives from Sierra Leone took control of the ship, the Amistad. Unable to navigate back to Africa, the ship was captured and towed into the port of New London Harbor in Connecticut. The Mende were faced with slavery or execution, and their cause was taken up by many residents throughout Connecticut. U.S. Circuit and District courts ruled in favor of the Mende. This case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and in 1841 this court agreed with the lower court decisions and the Mende captives were ordered freed.
The role that Connecticut and its citizens played has been told and retold over the years, and in 1999 a new organization was formed and a replica of the Amistad ship was built in Mystic, Connecticut and launched in 2000. That organization went into receivership in 2015, and an Advisory Committee was formed to consider the future of the ship.
The Amistad is Connecticut's flagship and tall ship ambassador.
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« Disquiet Junto Project 0390: Pace Quickens
Cyberdeck 2019 »
The Chernobyl Effect
Scores that draw sonic material from the environments in which they're set
[ June 23, 2019 / Department: field notes / Comment: 1 ]
The first few years I taught my sound course, I found it interesting to observe which topics each new semester were natural to fold into the syllabus of the previous semester: a fresh employment of sound in product design, a further development of domestic surveillance amid the Internet of Things, a new advertising campaign aimed at pricking up consumers’ ears. Hildur Guonadottir’s excellent score to HBO’s Chernobyl mini-series provides a very different source of pedagogical intrigue: which once-abstract topics have, along the way, become normalized.
This is because as time has gone on, it’s become even more interesting (to me, that is) to observe which once-new (“new” to students, that is) topics have become familiar, even commonplace. And then, in turn, to probe how such familiarity alters the subjects at hand.
Each semester in my sound course I have taught, side by side, the scores to two very different thrillers, both of them set on submarines: Jeff Rona’s for the movie Phantom and Robert Duncan’s for the TV series Last Resort. Both scores draw from submarine field recordings as source audio for the music. The composers recorded sounds of the antiquated environments, capturing claustrophobic room tones and banging on equipment, and then tuned those tracks and turned the resulting sounds into digital instruments.
The similarities and differences between the Phantom and Last Resort approaches to submarine source audio are highly teachable, surfacing (pun!) various matters, such as how they extract sound, as well as the inherent musicality of everyday listening.
Of particular value during class discussion is the manner in which this approach manages to blur the distinctions between the diegetic (i.e., sounds with an on-screen source, like machinery and conversation) and the non-diegetic (i.e., sounds external to the action, such as score and voice-overs). And better yet: how the end results differ between films, despite the shared approach.
That last bit is important, because if the end results were the same, if Phantom and Last Resort sounded the same, the aesthetics would be reduced to something causal, and the technique to a matter of mechanics.
The films, however, do not sound similar at all. Duncan’s Last Resort is very much a classic, epic, retro-orchestral vibe, whereas Rona’s Phantom is more ethereal, bearing a Fourth World influence, perhaps from his time as a collaborator with Jon Hassell. Even more interestingly, the old-school music of Last Resort serves a story set in the present, whereas the highly contemporary, even futuristic, music of Phantom serves a story set way back in Cold War. As a result, in class discussion we can talk about how the approach of sampling the environment serves varied narrative needs, about expectations of genre norms, and about how the composers’ (and directors’) proclivities come into play.
There are mini-documentaries on both Phantom and Last Resort, and they’re worth watching for the parallels and divergences. Here’s the Rona/Phantom:
And here’s the Duncan/Last Resort:
They’re valuable to watch in tandem, great in the classroom as concise encapsulations of the technique.
Now, however, thanks to the well-deserved acclaim for Guonadottir’s work on Chernobyl, by the time next semester of my sound course begins, come February 2020, the students will be all “Oh, like Chernobyl,” when the subject arises of using place as source audio for the creation of music and atmosphere. Of course, I won’t know until class begins where students’ thoughts are, what they’ve collectively and individually taken as the new normal, versus what they see as “gimmick” (skepticism is a common response, and can be a healthy one), versus what they are, in fact, not familiar with. No doubt, though, I’ll show or assign in class something like this interview with Guonadottir, where she talks about working with Chris Watson to capture the sounds of one nuclear reactor in order to tell the story of another, much as Rona and Duncan did with submarines:
At a structural level, this “score” segment of my course usually occurs during the third week, toward the end of the sequence on “Learning to Listen” (it’s a three-part course: weeks four through 10 are “Sounds of Brands,” which is also the title of the course, and weeks 11 through 15 are “Brands of Sounds”). Perhaps I’ll move this part earlier, or perhaps it’ll make sense to move it later. I don’t know yet. Certainly, though, the praise for Guonadottir’s Chernobyl score will encourage other composers to adopt the process, and alert non-specialist newspapers, magazines, and blogs to composers also doing such things. Which is to say, there will almost certainly be even more material (call it the Chernobyl effect) to slot into discussion by next year. It’s a long eight months between now and the next semester. I have time to plan, and to listen.
Just as a side note, because Twitter can be an excellent place if you tweet the Twitter you want and work to avoid the rest, when I first explored these topics on Twitter, I ended up in conversation with Rona himself. Among other things, he described the compositional process as exploratory: “I think with my score, and I’d like to think it’s similarly true with the others, is that the genesis of it is a ‘what if’ process. I had no idea what it would sound like to sample a submarine and use it as the primary ‘instrument’ of a score. And as it happened it worked. That’s not always the case. I took it as a challenge to my process to use the various sounds I could get and somehow come up with a way to make them not only musical, but cover a fairly broad range of emotions.”
Asked if he’s explored approaches that haven’t panned out, he replied, “Literally every score I’ve done begins with an experimental phase with several casualties prior to the one path chosen.” He also drew an interesting connection between the mechanical source audio of Phantom and one of his solo albums: “Certainly the project that showed me a different way to find that musical path on any given project. My solo album Projector is done very similarly to Phantom in that it relies heavily on manipulation of organic sounds – in this case field recordings of the upper Amazon river.”
[ Tags: score, video / Comment: 1 ]
By WARREN ELLIS LTD | The Isles Of Blogging 25jun19 on June 25, 2019 at 12:12 pm
[…] Marc Weidenbaum on sound design and the CHERNOBYL show […]
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Infighting begins within Obama’s team
EconomyPolitical Economy
By Edward Harrison On Feb 5, 2009
We are barely two weeks into Barack Obama’s tenure and reports are surfacing everywhere that his “team of rivals” is at each other’s throat. President Obama had said just after the election that he was looking to pull together the best and the brightest. However, this strategy comes with a cost as the outsized egos assembled in his team are starting to jockey for political position.
A well-informed reader alerted me to the latest and most depressing story, which involves former Harvard President and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers shunting aside legendary ex-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. Summers is trying to exclude Volcker, who is legendary for righting the U.S. economy after the stagflation of the 1970s. If he succeeds in sidelining Volcker, we will be the worse for it.
Paul Volcker has grown increasingly frustrated over delays in setting up the economic advisory group President Barack Obama picked the former Federal Reserve chairman to lead, people familiar with the matter said.
Volcker, 81, blames Obama’s National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers for slowing down the effort to organize the panel of outside advisers, the people said. Summers isn’t regularly inviting Volcker to White House meetings and hasn’t shown interest in collaborating on policy or sharing potential solutions to the economic crisis, they said.
While Summers, a former Treasury secretary, oversees the official White House economic policy apparatus, Obama tapped Volcker for a new Economic Recovery Advisory Board charged with injecting fresh, outside ideas into policy debates.
“When you have two strong, highly accomplished, driven people, it’s not unusual that there is going to be a battle over turf,” said James Cox, a professor at Duke University Law School in Durham, North Carolina. “I would hope that Obama doesn’t lose Volcker’s counsel. They need someone to help them think outside the box.”
The contretemps shows the difficulties Volcker, perhaps the world’s most respected economist, may encounter as an outside adviser charged with providing policy alternatives to the president, said William Silber, a finance professor at New York University’s business school.
Outsider’s Disadvantage
Volcker “is not in the White House and he doesn’t have a bureaucracy to command,” Silber said. “It puts him at a disadvantage.”
After testifying at a congressional hearing yesterday, Volcker declined to respond to questions. His office said he doesn’t grant interviews.
Summers, in an interview, played down any conflict.
“Paul’s got a kind of experience that no one else has, and the president enormously values his advice,” said Summers, 54. “I think this board is going to be very useful, because it’s very easy sitting here to kind of lose sight of what’s happening on the front lines of the economy.”
Obama named Volcker on Nov. 26 to head the new panel, saying he wanted an outside voice to keep administration policy planning from becoming “too insular.”
Tensions between the two could hamper Obama’s efforts to get consensus on how to combat the financial crisis at home and reshape the international banking system. While Summers has a West Wing office, Volcker’s group is supposed to scrutinize economic and regulatory policies and their impact on average Americans.
Felix Salmon has a similar view:
I didn’t like the idea of appointing Larry Summers to be Treasury secretary, largely because he’s bad at politics. And given his jealous and petty spat with Paul Volcker now that he’s running the National Economic Council, the decision to deny Summers the Treasury job looks even better:
Are we already running into a too-many-cooks problem in the Obama economic team? Having lots of smart people on board is only going to work if they can play nice with each other, and be, well, collegial. The former president of Harvard should be able to work that one out.
Quite frankly, I am fed up with all of this nonsense: the tax problems, the jockeying for position in foreign affairs, the politics in economic affairs. It does not give one confidence that this team is going to get the job done. I remain hopeful, but I am increasingly disappointed in the direction Obama’s team is taking.
Summers vs Volcker – Felix Salmon
Volcker Chafes at Obama Panel Delay, Strains With Summers Rise – Bloomberg.com
Obama Embraces ‘Team of Rivals’ – Time
Barack ObamagovernmentPoliticsUnited StatesVolcker
U.S. jobless claims foreshadow an ugly unemployment number
Sobers says 10 years ago
So Barack Obama isn’t the 2nd Coming after all? How disappointing. All my liberal leaning friends over here in the UK seem convinced he can walk on water, and solve any problem by the laying on of hands.
I, on the other hand, being a bitter and twisted old right winger, am more sanguine about his chances of actually achieving anything of note at all.
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Mercy opens the door to understanding the mystery of God, pope says
In Catholic News Service, Vatican
CATHOLIC_NEWS_SERVICE
Pope Francis waves as he leads the 'Regina Coeli' from his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square at the Vatican April 23, Divine Mercy Sunday. (Credit: CNS/Reuters.)
“Mercy, in short, commits us all to being instruments of justice, of reconciliation and peace. Let us never forget that mercy is the keystone in the life of faith, and the concrete form by which we give visibility to Jesus’ resurrection,” Pope Francis said.
ROME — Mercy is a true form of knowledge that allows men and women to understand the mystery of God’s love for humanity, Pope Francis said.
Having experienced forgiveness, Christians have a duty to forgive others, giving a “visible sign” of God’s mercy, which “carries within it the peace of heart and the joy of a renewed encounter with the Lord,” the pope said April 23 before praying the “Regina Coeli” with visitors gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
“Mercy helps us understand that violence, resentment and revenge do not have any meaning and that the first victim is the one who lives with these feelings, because he is deprived of his own dignity,” he said.
Commemorating Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope Francis said St. John Paul II’s establishment of the feast in 2000 was a “beautiful intuition” inspired by the Holy Spirit.
God’s mercy, he said, not only “opens the door of the mind,” it also opens the door of the heart and paves the way for compassion toward those who are “alone or marginalized because it makes them feel they are brothers and sisters and children of one father.
Only Jesus, in his infinite mercy, would die for sinners, pope says
Where there is sin, there will always be God’s mercy, pope says
Passiontide calls us to trust completely in God
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Marx at the Movies
Published in Films
To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx this year, John Green gives a brief outline of some of the influences of Marxist thought on moviemakers.
What influence has Marx had on film and the cinema? A rather odd if not idiotic question the reader might think. After all, Marx died in 1883 and the first commercial, public screening of moving images, organised by the Lumière brothers in Paris only took place on 28 December 1895 – 12 years later. However, silly as it may at first appear, Marx and his ideas have had a profound influence on the development and evolution of film-making.
The Soviet film-makers, Sergei Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov, founder of one of the world’s first film schools, should probably be credited with being the first to attempt to apply Marxist ideas directly to film-making. They immediately recognised the strong affinity between Marxist philosophy and the peculiar, unique essence of film and the creative possibilities it offered.
For Kuleshov, the essence of the cinema was editing, the juxtaposition of one shot with another. To illustrate this principle, he created what has come to be known as the Kuleshov Effect. In this now-famous editing exercise, shots of an actor’s face, looking at something were intercut successively with different images of objects (a casket, a bowl of soup, etc.), as if the actor were looking at them. Viewers apparently thought they could perceive subtly different expressions in the actor’s face corresponding to what he was supposedly looking at.
In actual fact, however, Kuleshov used exactly the same image of the actor, thus making the point that the mere fact of juxtaposing different images creates a third, imaginative image or perception in the heads of the viewer. Editing techniques can change or influence viewers' interpretations of images.
Another one of his famous inventions was creative geography, also known as artificial landscape. Those techniques were described in his book The Basics of Film Direction (1941) which was later translated into many languages.
But it was Eisenstein who was able to translate Marxist ideas most effectively through his films. Marxist dialectics, the recognition that change in the world comes about primarily through a conflict of opposites to create a new synthesis, and that human history unfolds as the result of class conflict are central to Eisenstein’s approach.
Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin, 1925
While other Marxist film-makers chose more traditional ways of editing (montage) and story-telling, Eisenstein was convinced that the unique medium of film allowed – demanded even – a new approach. He became the father of what we today understand by the term film montage (creative, non-linear, editing). Following Kuleshov, he also recognised that by placing two very different images in conjunction, each would attain new meaning and lead to a new and deeper comprehension of reality.
By consciously framing and arranging elements within the frame of each image, in order to create a formal conflict, he also underlined this contradictory character. In his use of music too, he employed it not as mere accompaniment, to give emphasis to the emotional charge contained in the images, but as an aural commentary upon the visual, and as a counterpoint.
Eisenstein was also a master of choreography, to emphasise the role played by the masses in creating history and underlining the fact that it is not individuals who are paramount in bringing about change, but mass movements. In his films Potemkin or Alexander Nevsky, for instance, this aspect of his approach is demonstrated to awesome effect.
In order to break away from Hollywood’s ‘dream machine’ film-making culture, which used narrative structures that over-emphasised individual characters’ actions, Eisenstein shunned narrative structure by eliminating the individual protagonist. Instead, events were related in which the action is moved forward by the group and the narrative unfolds through a clash of one image against the next, whether in composition, motion, or idea. In this way, the audience is never lulled into a stupor of believing that they are watching real life, but something that has been worked upon, constructed.
While his films are immensely powerful historical statements, and his use of montage has influenced numbers of film-makers throughout the world, Eisenstein’s tendency to over-theorise could become something of a straitjacket on the narrative. Other film-makers, who would also have defined themselves as Marxists, while readily utilising some of his methodology and ideas, chose to follow more traditional narrative paths.
Although strongly influenced by those early Soviet innovators, few film-makers since have chosen to follow Eisenstein’s methodology strictly, but have chosen instead to incorporate Marxist ideas and a Marxist outlook more through their choice of subject matters. Although Bertolt Brecht, in his short foray into the film world, did use similar montage elements to Eisenstein and Kuleshov in his film Kühle Wampe, about working class life in Germany.
Kuhle Wampe, a 1932 film about unemployment, homelessness and left wing politics, conceived and written by Bertolt Brecht
Certainly many film-makers in a whole number of countries have at one time or other been members of their respective communist parties, and have espoused Marxism. Most of the Italian neo-realists were members of the CPI, including de Sica, Rosi, Pasolini, Bertolucci, Visconti. French filmmakers like Jean Renoir and later Jean-Luc Godard and the documentarist Chris Marker, as well as the Dutchman Joris Ivens, were all influenced in very different ways by Marxist ideas.
The Italian neo-realists sought to tackle the subject of capitalism, fascism and social injustice in their films, clearly indicating, if not overtly, that a socialist organisation of society would be a better alternative. But they did this more through the use of amateur actors, raw, outside settings, and using natural lighting rather than the artifice of studio set-ups.
The Indian Marxist and film director, Mrinal Sen, played a significant role in the development of Indian film. The films he made were overtly political, and earned him the reputation of being ‘a Marxist artist’. He was working during the time of large-scale political unrest in India (1955 onwards). Particularly in and around Calcutta, this period was marked particularly by the Naxalite insurgency. He went on to make a series of films that revealed a shift in focus, and instead of looking at enemies outside the country, he sought the enemy within his own middle class milieu. This was his most creative phase.
British filmmakers like Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and the US-born Joseph Losey, as well as modern filmmakers like Ken Loach, have also been strongly influenced by Marxist ideas, expressed itself largely through their choices of subject matter and a class-based approach to story-telling.
Ken Loach, The Navigators, 2001
There has also been a large body of work devoted to Marxist film theory. This work, though, has largely taken place in academic circles and media studies departments, rather than in the film industry itself.
Since the French Nouvelle Vague movement of the 50s and 60s, there have been few identifiable groups of filmmakers one could be characterise as following certain guidelines or a unifying philosophy (and even the Nouvelle Vague was a somewhat amorphous group, born from the pages of the French cinema journal, Cahiers du Cinéma).
However, in 1995 a small group of Scandinavian filmmakers, called Dogme 95, did attempt to define a new approach film making in answer to the dominant, commercialised Anglo-Saxon model, and found inspiration in Soviet cinema and Marxism. Founding members were the Danish directors Lars van Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. In their manifesto they formulated ten rules, involving strict adherence to what they saw as a ‘natural way’ of filmmaking. They also wrote:
Sergei Eisenstein and many other Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s expressed ideas of Marxism through film. In fact, the Hegelian dialectic was considered best displayed in film editing through the Kuleshov Experiment and the development of montage.
While this structuralist approach to Marxism and filmmaking was used, the more vociferous complaint that the Russian filmmakers had was with the narrative structure of US cinema.
Eisenstein's solution was to shun narrative structure by eliminating the individual protagonist and tell stories where the action is moved by the group and the story is told through a clash of one image against the next (whether in composition, motion, or idea) so that the audience is never lulled into believing that they are watching something that has not been worked over.
French Marxist film makers, such as Jean-Luc Godard would employ radical editing and choice of subject matter, as well as subversive parody to heighten class consciousness and promote Marxist ideas.
Marxist film theory has developed from these precise and historical beginnings and is now sometimes viewed in a wider way to refer to any power relationships or structures within a moving image text.
So, again we have an example of modern filmmakers seeking inspiration in Marxist ideas when formulating their own cinematic philosophy or filmmaking theory vis-à-vis the hegemonic commercial cinema.
In the British magazine Screen, published in the early seventies, there was a discussion of Screen Theory which is based on a combination of Marxism and psychoanalysis. To discuss that in detail here would be perhaps somewhat outside the scope of this short resumé. But briefly, the theoreticians of the "screen theory" approach – Colin MacCabe, Stephen Heath and Laura Mulvey –describe the ‘cinematic apparatus’ as a version of Althusser’s ideological state apparatus.
According to screen theory, it is the spectacle that creates the spectator and not the other way round. The fact that the subject is created and subjected at the same time by the narrative on screen is masked by the apparent realism of the communicated content. Screen theory's origins can be traced to the essays ‘Mirror Stage’ by Lacan and Miller’s ‘Suture: Elements of the Logic of the Signifier’.
Another group of filmmakers, the so-called Situationists, also adopted an approach based on a critique of capitalist film industry. Situationist film maker Guy Debord, author of The Society of the Spectacle, began his film In ‘girum imus nocte et consumimur igni’ (Wandering around in the night we are consumed by fire) with a radical critique of the spectator who goes to the cinema to forget about his ‘dispossessed daily life’. This resonates with Marx’s ideas on alienation.
Situationist film makers produced a number of important films though, where the only contribution by the situationist film cooperative was the sound-track. In Can dialectics break bricks? (1973) a Chinese Kung Fu film was transformed by redubbing into an epistle on state capitalism and proletarian revolution. The intellectual technique of using capitalism's own structures against itself is known as détournement.
Marxist film theory has developed from precise and historical beginnings and is now sometimes viewed in a wider way to refer to any power relationships or structures within a moving image text.
A massively broad understanding of Marxist film theory could be viewed as an attempt to decentre the narrative of the film away from individuals as the central drivers of a film, and as an attempt to analyse or re-contextualise hierarchical relationships regarding gender, race, socioeconomic status etc. or as propaganda to raise class consciousness.
One of the latest incursions into Marxist film theory has been made by the flamboyant neo-Marxist philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. in A Perverts Guide to Ideology, made by him in collaboration with Sophie Fiennes. Specifically, A Perverts Guide attempts to examine the hidden ideology immanent in films, and attempts to understand the message this ideology is seeking to convey.
In his terms, ideologies aren't political doctrines codified into ‘isms,’ but rather the fantasies and beliefs that underlie the functioning of all societies. In showing how these are reflected in the stories of individuals conveyed to us through films.
He analyses a number of famous films, ranging from Jaws, Full Metal Jacket to Taxi Driver, using them to explore the deep-seated power of ideologies and how they surface in such seemingly unconnected elements as Nazi propaganda films, the London riots or Coke commercials from the 1980s.
He remarks, for example, on the similarities between The Searchers and Taxi Driver, and attempts to draw a parallel between such films and the US military experiences in Vietnam and Iraq – one of many instances where he teases out connections between imaginary constructs and political realities. He concludes that, ‘The depressing lesson of the last decades is that capitalism has been the true revolutionising force, even as it only serves itself.’
Books Please! The Russian Revolution, Arts and Culture
Published in Cultural Commentary
Mike Quille outlines some of the ways the Russian Revolution has influenced art and culture across the world in the last 100 years.
The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 was the world’s first attempt to create a socialist society. It was based on the active support of the majority of the population, workers and peasants alike, and apart from ending Russia’s disastrous involvement in the First World War, it liberated and enfranchised the Russian population politically, socially and economically. It was radically progressive in its social policies – for example towards women and children – and in particular in its truly comprehensive education policies, as outlined in an article by Megan Behrent in this new, commemorative section of Culture Matters.
What about its impact on culture? Unquestionably, the Revolution gave a massive boost to creativity and imagination and led to an explicit recognition, by artists and Bolsheviks alike, that art could serve the general population rather than elites, and thus advance the aims of the Revolution. The natural links between artistic creativity and emancipatory politics were made – not for the first time in human history, but in the strongest way to date.
This explosion of creativity occurred in the visual arts, film, poetry, ballet, children’s literature, music and many more popular cultural pursuits including sport and science, theatre and theology, fashion and clothing. Hardly an area of human cultural activity was unaffected by the Revolution - for an illuminating discussion of its effect on science, see Andy Byford's Revolution and Science under the Bolsheviks.
Children's literature from the 1920s
Complementing the energy and political focus of cultural workers like artists and poets - see John Ellison's article on Alexander Blok - came a qualitative and quantitative change in the reception and appreciation of culture. There was a massive improvement in the ability and willingness of the mass of working people to engage with and enjoy the arts and other cultural activities, thanks to the government’s progressive educational policies and bold, imaginative attempts to connect the masses to culture, for example in the agit-trains and agit-boats that carried the political art of Mayakovsky, Lissitzky and Malevich to hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants.
Agit-train; Agit-boat with theatre on board
These kind of bold, ambitious initiatives, developed in a relatively poor and backward country a century ago, make a telling contrast with our Arts Council’s timid attempts to encourage 'community engagement'. State policy towards the arts in this country is still dominated by the elitist mission of subsidising the interests of the richer segments of metropolitan populations.
What is often less discussed is the cultural impact of the Revolution across the world outside of Russia. It was a massive influence at the time, and has been for the last hundred years. Indeed, the purposes, meanings and effects of the Revolution on culture are still being played out today - a kind of 'cosmic background radiation', as Andrew Murray vividly describes it.
This brief survey will sketch out those influences, with a few examples where space allows. They are grouped into three kinds of influence.
The revolutionary impact on cultural workers
Firstly, there was the direct and worldwide influence of the Revolution on cultural activities such as art, literature, music and sport. The constructivist movement in the visual arts and in architecture, for example, was possibly the most influential global artistic movement in the twentieth century - see Jean Turner's article on avant-garde architecture.
Tatlin's Tower;socialist architecture
As Owen Hatherley and others have pointed out, abstraction, pop art, minimalism, abstract expressionism, the graphic style of punk and post-punk, and architectural brutalism, postmodernism, hi-tech and deconstructivism are all heavily indebted to the constructivism which sprang from the Russian Revolution. Constructivism combined a radical new approach to technology and engineering with an explicitly communist social purpose. Malevich, Tatlin, Rodchenko and Stepanova all represented different strands of the constructivist movement, and their influence can be seen in buildings across the world in the twentieth century.
Numerous examples could also be drawn from the literary arts. In poetry and literature generally, the ‘turn to the people’ that the Revolution represented, the replacement of an elite perspective with a focus on the lives and concerns of ordinary people, took a massive step forward, particularly in developing and increasingly anti-colonial countries.
Diego Rivera at work on The Uprising; Agrarian Leader Zapata
The kind of mutuality and affinities which the Revolution sparked in Indian literature and Asia can also be traced in African and South American art and culture, too, notably in the the work of Diego Rivera.
Up until the Revolution, the global dissemination of art and culture had always had an imperialistic dimension. It was inextricably entwined with the capitalist exploitative colonial project, a means of imposing metropolitan cultural values on other peoples. After 1917, just as the Revolution strengthened radical political opposition across the world, so it enabled indigenous cultural and artistic traditions to flower and make international connections, on a scale not seen before in human history.
Closer to home, an example of this international effect was the leftist poetry movement in 1930s Britain led by Auden, Macneice, Spender and others. They were inspired by the Revolution to create a more overtly political, even didactic literature. In both form and content they aimed to connect more closely with the mass of the population. And there’s no doubt of the huge influence of the Revolution on many other writers like George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Virginia Woolf.
George Bernard Shaw; W.H.Auden and Benjamin Britten
This literary movement itself influenced musicians and composers like Alan Bush and Auden’s friend Benjamin Britten, who was also independently attracted to communist and specifically Russian culture.
It spread also to documentary film-makers like the GPO Film Unit and its successors, who started a fine tradition of compassionate and sometimes overtly socialist documentaries on the living conditions of the British people, before, during and after the Second World War.
It is a tradition which was continued by the ‘kitchen-sink’ dramas of the fifties theatre, in TV dramas such as the Wednesday Play and Play for Today, and the exemplary work of Ken Loach right up to the present day.
The wider world was if anything even more influenced by the Revolution than Britain. In literature, art, and music the list is virtually endless. It is striking how left wing political perspectives are so common across all the arts in the twentieth century, and this is partly due to the influence of the Revolution on global culture.
Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin; Poster for Vertov's Kino-Glaz produced by Alexander Rodchenko
In cinema, the innovative techniques of Sergei Eisenstein, using ‘oppositional’ montage to create a new cinematic language, and Dziga Vertov, capturing ‘film truth’ in a radically new type of documentary, laid the foundations of world cinema - see John Green's comprehensive and authoritative survey of Soviet cinema. It is widely recognised that John Ford, Orson Welles, the Italian neo-realists, Carol Reed, Hitchcock, Coppola, Scorsese, and many others were heavily influenced by these Russian pioneers.
The revolutionary impact on appreciation and enjoyment
Secondly, there is another kind of influence, which is the impact of the Revolution not only on production but on consumption - on ways of accessing, experiencing and enjoying cultural activities.
Joan Littlewood; the People's Theatre, Newcastle
For example, there was the establishment of workers’ film societies in Britain, which brought quality cinema closer to working class people. The people’s theatre movement in Britain also grew very strongly in the 1920s, encouraged by G.B. Shaw, a strong sympathiser with the ideals of the Revolution. They were taken forward by Joan Littlewood and Ewan MacColl into both popular theatres and folk music clubs, before and after the Second World War. Joan Littlewood was heavily monitored by MI5: what better evidence can there be of Bolshevik influence?
Radical workers’ theatre in the rest of Europe and the United States was massively stimulated and energised by the democratising, anti-elitist influence of the revolution, and there was also a workers’ radio movement in Europe.
The revolutionary nature of art
The third kind of positive influence of the Revolution on art and culture was deeper and more general. It is an influence shared with every other progressive revolution in history.
Just as one of the main benefits of the Russian Revolution was to strengthen not only specifically radical political and economic alternatives to class-divided societies, but the very possibility of realising an alternative at all, so the Revolution did the same for artistic and cultural activities.
This is because as William Blake and others have recognised, artistic and cultural activities like poetry, art and music are fundamentally social and communal activities. That is why and how they evolved in human history: they are essentially acts of powerful, rousing and empathic communication which develop and deepen human sympathy and solidarity. Art – and other cultural activities such as sport and religion – can overcome and break down all kinds of barriers between humans. Cultural activity can overcome and dissolve, in reality as well as in our imaginations, the fundamental class divisions in human societies based on unequal shares of private property that have existed since ancient times.
The challenge to class-based society which the Revolution represented enabled and empowered artists, writers, musicians and their publics across the world to make, understand and enjoy art which was critical, challenging and oppositional to the status quo.
These countercultural, challenging strands can be traced in all the arts. This was something peculiar to the Russian Revolution, or totally new – evidence of artistic opposition to injustice, inequality and hierarchical oppression can be traced back through human history, as can the insistence of artists on the liberating power of creativity - see Doug Nicholl's article on Lugalbanda. But the Revolution strengthened that liberating, oppositional strand which is always, everywhere present in human cultural activities, the 'counter-hegemonic' forces identified by Antonio Gramsci.
Pablo Picasso, Guernica
Without the Revolution, there might well have been artistic protests against war and imperialist aggression, progressive religious movements, museums and art galleries, and cultural education for more people. But would there have been Guernica? Liberation theology? People’s museums? Comprehensive arts and sports education?
The Revolution enabled a more confident, collectivist and communal challenge to elite forms of art – not only its themes and content, but its mode of production, distribution, accessibility, reception and criticism.
Inspiring art and progressive politics have always been inextricably intertwined, which is one of the reasons why conservatives and liberals always want to keep them separate. The Russian Revolution firmly connected them, and all the debates about art and politics since then have been influenced by it. For example, the very idea of art and other cultural activities needing to respond to the needs of the mass of the population and not just serve ruling elites was given an enormous boost, which has influenced arts and culture policies across the world ever since. Those agit-trains agitated the world!
The revolutionary impact through resistance and reaction
All these positive influences of the Russian Revolution on art and culture have also been resisted, undermined and often beaten back, in ‘cultural wars’ which continue today.
This takes us to a fourth, very mixed legacy of the Revolution in world culture today, which is a consequence of the deep and long-lasting opposition of the capitalist powers to the Russian Revolution.
From the beginning there was diplomatic, economic and military opposition from the United States, Britain and other European powers to the anti-capitalist nature of the 1917 Revolution. This was temporarily replaced by an antifascist alliance in the Second World War, but thereafter quickly degenerated into various open and proxy conflicts across the globe during the Cold War.
This hostility and failure to support the fundamentally democratic advances made in Russia after the overthrow of autocracy caused tremendous suffering in 1920s and 1930s Soviet Union, directly and indirectly. Enforced isolation and the crushing of attempts to spread the radical impulse internationally were tragic, missed opportunities for what could have been an international flowering of human life, materially and culturally. Western elites, through acts of commission and omission, carry a huge responsibility for the sufferings of peoples across the world in the twentieth century.
In the Soviet Union, the defensive reaction to capitalist reaction and aggression led to the submersion and disappearance of some of the positive aspects of revolutionary culture. The pluralism of cultural policy under Lenin and Lunacharsky, and the bold ambition of the Proletkult - see article by Lynn Mally - was eroded into a much narrower approach to the arts and culture generally. Although the early Soviet state was always far more directly supportive of the arts and culture than capitalist democracies – particularly regarding literacy, cultural education and general access for the masses, for example – it also developed heavy-handed censorship arrangements, and intolerance of artistic and musical dissent and nonconformity.
The cultural influence of anti-communist hostility of the West was also expressed within capitalist countries. It took – and takes – many forms. Just to take one country, the United States, for example, there was the blatant, career-threatening persecution and blacklisting of left-leaning screenwriters, actors and directors in the film industry and other creative industries.
American postcard, 1930s
Another clear example is how the CIA covertly funded certain art forms such as abstract expressionism, and put pressure on various cultural institutions, in order to counter the left-leaning realist traditions in the visual arts (photography as well as painting) which were developing in Thirties America.
It is important to remember that this anti-communism is still current. The elites of Western powers have not forgotten or forgiven the power of artists to advance progressive and revolutionary political agendas. It is evident in the continuing prejudice of the American and British film industries against genres such as social realism and other cinematic attempts to tell the truth about capitalist exploitation and oppression. Individualistic, sexist themes which are congruent with capitalist culture, such as lone brave violent males supported by emotional caring females, dominate our screens. Because films generally are made for quick profit rather than for quality of insight and enlightenment, they rely overwhelmingly on superficial values including melodrama, sentiment, spectacle, glamour and celebrity, over real insight, intellectual depth and social relevance.
Poster, Go to the Stadiums!
Sport provides another instructive example. As Gareth Edwards relates in his piece, the Revolution opened up the possibility of more grassroots-driven, widely-practised and co-operative forms of sport which did not rely solely on the excitement generated by individual competition. The remarkably progressive approach to womens’ rights in the polity and economy was paralleled by advances in the access of women to sport and physical pursuits, for example in the growth of womens’ athletic organisations. This caused a hardening of elite attitudes in the West. It was at least partly responsible, for example, for the crushing of womens’ football by the FA in 1921 and other attempts to maintain the cultural dominance of white men.
The Cold War and the triumph of neoliberal capitalism, with its accompanying culture of competitiveness, elite celebrity and individual excellence, has also tended to corrupt sporting ideals. The Olympics, instead of being a celebration of human sporting ability, was turned into another proxy ideological and nationalistic battle between capitalism and socialism, and has still not fully recovered. Recent and ongoing drugs scandals across swathes of sporting activity bear witness to the insidious pressures of commercialism, individual achievement through winner/loser competitiveness, and celebrity culture.
Great art and poor curating at the RA: Alexander Deineka, In Defence of Petrograd; Malevich, Woman with a Rake
This anti-communism has also manifested itself this year, in various TV programmes and exhibitions. The exhibition of post-revolutionary Russian art at the Royal Academy, for example, was strikingly reactionary. Funded by the Blavatnik Foundation, a beneficiary of the sell-off of state-owned assets when the USSR collapsed in 1991, the exhibition abandoned the usual liberal approach of trying to provide a balanced historical account of the political background and art of the Revolution. Instead, it promoted an openly hostile perspective, which downplayed, denied and derided links between the progressive politics of the Revolution and the marvellously energetic and powerful art that it inspired. In general, mainstream media coverage of the centenary has been predictably hostile, uncomprehending, tepid, or plainly mistaken - exactly the same problems that characterise its coverage of Corbynism, and for exactly the same reasons.
The revolutionary influence today
In complex and deeply interwoven strands across all of human cultural activity in the last hundred years, the Revolution has had a massive effect. Its power and influence can still be detected in debates about the links between politics and economics on the one hand and art, sport and religion on the other. In all these debates, the example of Russia is inescapable.
It has left us with some tremendous and enduring examples of excellence in all forms of artistic and cultural activities, across all the world and across the hundred years since 1917. And because of the resistance of ruling elites, it has also led to a polarisation of debates and of practices.
Ever since 1917, there has been debate about the detailed legacy of the Revolution for art and culture. But one thing we can surely all agree about, at least on the Left, is the way it strengthened the capacity and confidence of art and artists to creatively imagine difference, improvement, and radical alternatives to what is.
This influence is extremely relevant today. We face increasing struggles against the incursions of capitalism into our human culture these days. There are all kinds of different barriers and pressures – financial, geographical, thematic – which tend to twist and corrupt human culture. Naturally healthy and developmental cultural activities such as art, sport, religion, eating and drinking, in all their myriad forms, are facing pressures to become corralled into expensive, inaccessible, privatised and patrolled enclaves for the rich and powerful.
In the current struggles that we face to democratise culture, to make it accessible and relevant and affordable to the mass of working-class people, the example of the Russian Revolution is like a beacon of inspiration. It shows us that things don’t have to be the way they are, that tomorrow may not be the same – and that we can achieve and enjoy a better life.
The team at Culture Matters hope that this piece, and the accompanying articles in this section of Culture Matters, give you some sense of the power and range of global cultural influences which sprang from the Russian Revolution. However, perhaps the most enduring influence of the Revolution lies not just in our appreciation and enjoyment of its tremendous cultural legacy, but in the way it still stimulates and motivates us to act now to fulfil its promise – by replacing the culture, politics and economics of capitalism with a socialist alternative.
Published in 1917 Centenary
'The most important of the arts': film after the Russian Revolution
John Green outlines the role of film in the Bolshevik Revolution, and the profound and lasting influence of Russian revolutionary film-makers on cinema not only in the Soviet Union but across the world.
According to the Bolshevik government’s first Commissar for Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Lenin remarked that, ‘Film for us is the most important of the arts’. What is particularly significant in this position is that Lenin not only clearly recognised film as an art at a time when many still considered it merely a form of cheap entertainment, but that he also recognised, even at this early stage in its development that it would have a huge and influential future.
The young Soviet Union was faced with a large population made up of many nations and ethnicities. Overwhelming numbers were illiterate and the means of communication in the country were undeveloped. The Bolshevik leaders were faced with the daunting task of explaining the revolution to the people and galvanising their latent energies, but they didn’t have the luxury of time or tranquil conditions in order to do so. The promise of the new medium of film – at that time still only a silent medium and used as a fairground entertainment only – was recognized immediately by those with imagination and vision.
The possibilities of cinema as a propaganda, agitational and educational tool intrigued the Soviet leaders. Their fascination with new technology in general as a means of transforming a backward society probably contributed as well. Lenin dictated this note to the Commissariat of Education, which was responsible for the cinema, with a request that it draw up a programme of action based on his directives. In an early conversation that Lunacharsky, the first Commissar for Education, had with Lenin, he recalls that Lenin uttered his oft quoted statement ‘that of all the arts the most important for us is the cinema.’
A declaration was issued by the People’s Commissariat for Education on the organisation of film showings. A definite proportion should be fixed for every film-showing programme. And while it recognised that film is very much a medium of entertainment, in programming it insisted that there must be a strong educational and propaganda component.
The Commissariat for Education also stressed that films ‘From the life of peoples of all countries,’ should be screened in order that film-makers should have an incentive for producing new pictures. ‘Special attention should be given to organising film showings in the villages and in the East, where they are novelties and where our propaganda, therefore, will be all the more effective.’ (First published in Kinonedelia No. 4, 1925).
The new young Turks like Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Vsevolod, Pudovkin and Alexander Dovzhenko took up Lenin’s challenge with alacrity. The young film medium, based as it was on mechanical proficiency and industrial expertise, captured the interest of the new generation of communist artists who realised that the new society they wished to construct could only be built on the basis of rapid industrial development and technological innovation. These pioneers grasped this new ‘entertainment medium’ with both hands and transformed it into a powerful means of communication. These directors were inspired by Marxist theory and saw that they could apply Marxist ideas to the making of films, but each film-maker did so in their own individual way. Eisenstein was, though, the only one to elaborate an all-embracing Marxist theory of film-making. He put this into practice in his own film-making, in terms of selection of camera angle, juxtaposition of images during the editing process, movement within the frame and later in terms of sound and music also. For the first time the ideas of Marx and Marxist theory were applied to film-making.
Eisenstein was undoubtedly the most influential of the new young Soviet film-makers – a trained architect, he took to film like a duck to water. Seeing far beyond the idea of moving pictures, he developed a whole new science of film-making based on Marxist dialectics. Eisenstein was a pioneer in the use of montage, a specific technique for film editing. He, alongside his colleague and contemporary, Lev Kuleshov, were two of the earliest film theorists to argue that montage was the very essence of cinema, and, used effectively, could enable us to see and comprehend a deeper reality. Eisenstein’s essays and books – particularly Film Form and The Film Sense – explain his theories of montage in detail and provide a theoretical grounding for future film-makers.
By using a unique form of montage i.e. how the individual celluloid takes were spliced together, he demonstrated that meaning could be created by juxtaposing images rather than, as had been done up till then, splicing them in simple chronological sequence. By placing one image (in Marxist terminology, the thesis) immediately next to a very different or ‘opposing’ image (the antithesis), a new concept (the synthesis) is created.
He saw editing as the key to a film’s impact. Film was for him much more than just a useful tool in expounding a scene through a linkage of related images. He felt the ‘collision’ of shots could be used to influence the emotions and consciousness of an audience and that film could achieve a metaphorical dimension. While making films, he developed a comprehensive theory that he termed, ‘methods of montage’.
His iconic film Battleship Potemkin is probably the most famous example of this approach, but Strike (1924) was his first film. It depicts life at a factory complex in Tsarist Russia and the conditions under which the workers laboured. The plot is centred on the workers organising a strike which in response to repression escalates into a full-blown occupation. Such a blunt depiction of ruling class repression had never before been visualised in this way. But what makes this and Eisenstein’s other films so special is that the audience is not allowed for a minute to remain passive, but is drawn into the struggle and becomes almost part of it. It is difficult to imagine today when you look at old grainy prints of Battleship Potemkin, that audiences were so stirred by its imagery that they swarmed out of the cinema determined to make their own revolution. The ruling classes were so frightened of it that its public showing was banned for many years almost everywhere outside the Soviet Union.
After the success of Strike (1924), Eisenstein was commissioned by the Soviet government to make a film commemorating the unsuccessful revolution of 1905. He chose to focus on the crew of the battleship Potemkin. Fed up with the extreme cruelties of their officers and their maggot-ridden meat rations, the sailors mutiny. This, in turn, sparks an abortive citizens' revolt on the mainland against the Tsarist regime. The film's centrepiece is the classic massacre on the Odessa Steps, in which the Tsar's Cossacks methodically shoot down innocent citizens. The image of a dying mother who lets go of the pram she is pushing, leaving it to career down the steps with the baby still in it, has become one of the most iconic and moving shots in the history of cinema.
He was the first cinematographer to develop a proper film language, one appropriate to the challenges facing the new Soviet republic. His best known films, Strike, Battleship Potemkin, October, Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible all bear testament to his contribution and the power of his imagery.
Many of his plans were, sadly never brought to fruition. During his unsuccessful sojourn in the USA, he proposed making a film of Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man and of Sutter’s Gold by Jack London but the ideas failed to impress Hollywood producers at the time and were vehemently opposed by anti-communist elements in the Hollywood hierarchy. The same happened with his proposal to film Theodor Dreiser’s American Tragedy. While there, though, he developed cordial relations with Charlie Chaplin who introduced him to the socialist writer Upton Sinclair. Their subsequent attempt to jointly produce a film in Mexico was also, in the end, unsuccessful although the footage they were able to shoot was later, posthumously, edited into the film, Que Viva Mexico.
With all this wasted effort, Eisenstein was getting itchy feet to return home, as the Soviet Film industry was, in the meantime, already experimenting with soundtracks on film. Also, in the wake of an increasing Stalinisation of the arts, his techniques and theories were coming under attack for ostensibly ‘ideological’ reasons and he was being accused of ‘formalism’ and he wished to counter such criticisms.
Back in the Soviet Union he embarked on his epic Alexander Nevsky with a musical soundtrack composed by Sergei Prokoviev. Unfortunately he died at the age of 50 so was unable to realise his mature potential. It is a moot point whether his specific cinematic language could have been adapted to a post-revolutionary period, and in a different historical context. But there is no doubt that his work has influenced numerous film-makers down the ages and still does.
Soviet film-makers and their use of film inspired film-makers and cultural workers throughout the world. What characterised them, in contrast to their many colleagues in the West, was that they viewed film, in the first instance, as an educational medium. They were more interested in the use of film in its educational, propaganda and informative roles than as pure entertainment. and saw the medium primarily as a means of promoting human betterment and the promoting of socialist values.
The influence of Soviet cinema
The influence of Russian film-makers can be seen throughout the succeeding history of film. US classics like Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, with its adventurous camera angles, framing and editing would have been unthinkable without Russian cinema. The Italian Neo-realist wave leant heavily on its Russian forerunners. Directors like de Sica, Rossellini, Visconti and Rosi had all studied the way in which Soviet film-makers had been able to capture life on screen in a totally new, gripping and realistic way that superseded its former theatrical straitjacket. The films of the Hollywood greats like Billy Wilder, Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, William Wyler, Howard Hawks and so on all reveal the seminal influence of these early Soviet film-makers.
Early Soviet cinema ‘led the world, and laid much of the groundwork for the practice and theory of film for the 20th century,’ according to Annette Michelson, Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University. At a lecture she gave in December 2003, she and Naum Kleiman, Director of the Moscow Cinema Museum, discussed the ways in which Soviet and Russian film have interacted with the American film industry.
Kleiman pointed out that Russian émigrés like choreographer George Balanchine and actor Michael Chekhov, in addition to their influential roles in the world of dance and theatre, were active in Hollywood. As Michelson pointed out, Eisenstein never made a film in the US, after Paramount Pictures invited him to Hollywood in 1935, but the then never took on any of his projects. Nevertheless, she argues that Eisenstein's use of montage influenced American film, and is visible, she says, in such well-known scenes as the shower sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Hitchcock and other American directors re-interpreted montage usage.
According to Michelson, ‘In the hands of those Americans who admired Eisenstein's work, [montage] became a kind of tried-and-true conventional, visual, rhetorical device for indicating the passage of time, or the passage from one country to another.’
Kleiman underlined that many US filmmakers in the 1920s and 30s had seen and admired Eisenstein's films. He noted that in the 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola had told him that he had found artistic inspiration in October and Ivan the Terrible. Both Kleiman and Michelson felt that Eisenstein's influence was even more noticeable in movies made outside Hollywood. Michelson argued that montage was an important intellectual and artistic device in independent films produced after the Second World War, such as those by Maya Deren. Kleiman also noted the influence of other Russian artists, such as émigré actress and producer Alla Nazimova. In his opinion, Nazimova's film Salome clearly reflected traditions of Russian literature, theatre and set design. This movie, along with other movies featuring Russian actors and directors, was seen by American filmmakers and influenced their future work in many subtle ways.
Workers' Film Societies
Elsewhere in the West, in response to the dramatic transformation taking place in the young Soviet Union and the new films emerging from the country, progressives grasped the opportunity to use this new potent medium in their own way. Communists here in Britain became centrally involved early on in setting up workers' film societies from the twenties onwards, as a means of creating opportunities for working people to watch Soviet and other progressive films. Ralph Bond, a foundation member of the British Communist Party, published in the Sunday Worker – a forerunner of the Daily Worker – an appeal for interested parties to get in touch to facilitate the setting up of a London Workers’ Film Society, and the response to this appeal surpassed all expectations.
The Soviet director, Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin had an unprecedented impact on audiences everywhere with its revolutionary montage techniques and searing imagery. This was followed by other, equally powerful and iconoclastic films from the Soviet Union. However, these films were banned for public showing in many countries, including the UK, as they were deemed too inflammatory and seen as dangerous communist propaganda.
The first workers’ film societies were set up to provide a means of showing such films (and they were also seen as a way of getting around the censor, as such films could be shown in private clubs without a licence). The first, founded in London in 1925, had as its object the ‘showing of films of artistic interest, which could not be seen in ordinary cinemas’. Such societies had already been active on the continent of Europe. However, before the new London film society even got off the ground it was already involved in skirmishes with the London County Council (LCC) over permission to show their selected films, even to members. (The LCC was London’s licensing authority for film screenings under the 1909 Cinematographic Act). In 1928, the LCC banned the showing of Battleship Potemkin, and then also banned a showing of Pudovkin’s The Mother. This led many progressive individuals, including J. M. Keynes, Julian Huxley, Sybil Thorndike, Bertrand Russell and George Bernard Shaw, to protest, but even they failed to have the ban rescinded.
When the London Workers’ Film Society’s tried to show two Soviet-made films at the Gaiety Cinema in Tottenham Court Road in November 1929, the cinema owner refused the booking at the last minute after pressure from the London County Council. Such run-ins between the LCC and the LWFS became regular occurrences. While the LCC adhered to its bans on the Soviet films mentioned above, it relented as far as permitting the LWFS to put on Sunday shows in the West End.
After the setting up of the London society, several others soon appeared around the country, and an attempt was made to create a national federation of film societies to facilitate easier access to films, better distribution and co-ordination. The Federation of Workers’ Film Societies (FOWFS) was founded in the autumn of 1929 and led to the creation of a network of local workers’ film societies all over Britain.
The Labour Party itself showed no interest in setting up workers’ film societies but with the success of the London Society, it became highly suspicious of the latter’s activities and denounced the society as being merely a communist propaganda vehicle.
The Communist Charles Cooper was a ‘movie enthusiast whose Contemporary Films opened new horizons for British cinema audiences. His early interest in film had led Charles to become, in 1933, secretary of the Kino group, an association of left-wing film enthusiasts who were determined to circumvent Britain's draconian film censorship, which was especially aimed at the new Soviet cinema. Kino organised 16mm screenings of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin for trade union and Soviet friendship groups, as well as producing a ‘workers' newsreel’ and agitational films such as Bread, in which a starving, unemployed worker is harshly treated by police and magistrates.
Although Eisenstein is undoubtedly the greatest and most innovative of all Soviet film-makers, his contemporaries should in no way be ignored, as they also made innovative and influential contributions to the film medium. Below I take a cursory look at the most significant.
Dovzhenko
After returning to the USSR from a prisoner of war camp in Germany, Dovzhenko turned to film in 1926 after landing in Odessa . His second screenplay was Vasya the Reformer which he co-directed. He gained greater success with Zvenigora (1928) which established him as a major filmmaker. His following Ukraine Trilogy (Zvenigora, Arsenal and Earth) established his reputation worldwide. Its graphic realism was impressive and inspiring. After spending several years writing, co-writing and producing films at Mosfilm Studios in Moscow, he turned to writing novels. Over a 20-year career, Dovzhenko only directed 7 films.
Pudovkin
A student of engineering at Moscow University, Pudovkin, like Dovzhenko, saw active service during the First World War and was also captured by the Germans. During this time he studied foreign languages and did book illustrations. After the war, he joined the world of cinema, first as a screenwriter, actor and art director, and then as an assistant director to Lev Kuleshov.
Pudovkin adopted a very different approach to Eisenstein. While his films are just as revolutionary as the latter’s in terms of the content and their powerful impact, he took a more traditional approach to narrative. A student of engineering at Moscow University, Pudovkin, like Dovzhenko, saw active service during the First World War, also being captured by the Germans. During this time he studied foreign languages and did book illustrations. After the war, he abandoned his professional activity and joined the world of cinema, first as a screenwriter, actor and art director, and then as an assistant director to Lev Kuleshov .
His first notable work was a comedy short Chess Fever (1925) co-directed with Nikolai Shpikovski. In 1926 he directed what came to be considered one of the masterpieces of the silent era: Mother. In this he developed several montage theories, but in a different way to Eisenstein.
His first feature was followed by The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm over Asia, about the impact of the Bolshevik revolution on what was then seen as a backward region. After an interruption caused by poor health, Pudovkin returned to film-making, with several historical epics: Victory (1938); Minin and Pozharsky (1939) and Suvorov (1941). The last two were often praised as some of the best films based on Russian history, along with the works of his colleague Eisenstein he was awarded a Stalin Prize for both of them in 1941.
In 1928, with the advent of sound film, Pudovkin, Eisenstein, and Grigori Alexandrov signed the ‘Sound Manifesto’, in which the possibilities of sound are analysed, but always understood as a complement to image.
Dzigha Vertov
Vertov attempted to do for the documentary what Eisenstein had been doing in the fictional field. He was born in 1896 and is considered one of the ‘greats’ of early Soviet film-making, a director who concentrated on documentaries. He began by making newsreels but also developed his own theories about film-making that differed markedly from those of the fictional film-makers mentioned above. His work and writing would be very influential on almost all future documentarists, particularly the British school around John Grierson, Basil Wright, Alberto Cavalcanti and Paul Rotha, but also later on the French Cinéma Verité movement.
After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, at the age of 22, Vertov began editing for Kino-Nedelya (Кино-Неделя, the Moscow Cinema Committee's weekly film series, and the first Russian newsreel), which first came out in June 1918. While working for Kino-Nedelya he met his future wife, the film director and editor, Elizaveta Svilova , who at the time was working as an editor at Goskino She began collaborating with Vertov, and working as his editor but later his assistant and co-director on subsequent films, such as the iconic Man with a Camera (1929), and Three Songs About Lenin (1934).
Vertov worked on the Kino-Nedelya series for three years, helping establish and run a film-car on Mikhail Kalinin’s agit-train during the ongoing ongoing civil war between the Bolsheviks and the white Russian counter-revolutionaries. Some of the cars on the agit-trains were equipped with actors for live performances and printing presses: Vertov's had equipment to shoot, develop, edit, and project film. The trains were taken to battlefronts on agitation-propaganda missions aimed at bolstering the morale of the troops, and to engender revolutionary fervour and commitment. In 1919, he compiled newsreel footage for his documentary Anniversary of the Revolution, and in 1921 he compiled History of the Civil War.
Kino-Pravda
In 1922, the year that O’Flaherty’s seminal Nanook of the North was released, Vertov started his Kino Pravda series. It took its title from the Bolshevik government newspaper Pravda. Kino-Pravda (Film Truth) continued Vertov's agit-prop bent. The Kino-Pravda group began its work in a basement in the centre of Moscow. It was, as he himself described it, damp and dark. There was an earthen floor and holes one stumbled into at every turn. He said, ‘This dampness prevented our reels of lovingly edited film from sticking together properly, rusted our scissors and our splicers’. ‘Before dawn damp, cold, teeth chattering I wrap comrade Svilova in a third jacket’.
Vertov's driving vision, expounded in his frequent essays, was to capture ‘film truth’—that is, fragments of actuality which, when organised together, contain a deeper truth than can be seen with the naked eye. In the Kino-Pravda series, he focused on everyday experiences, rejecting ‘bourgeois concerns’ to film ordinary people, marketplaces, bars, and schools instead, sometimes with a hidden camera. The episodes of Kino-Pravda did not usually include re-enactments or stagings, although he did so on odd occasions. The cinematography is simple and functional. Vertov appeared to be uninterested in traditional ideas of aesthetic beauty or the perceived grandeur of fiction.
Vertov clearly intended an active relationship with his audience in his Kino Pravda series, but by the 14th episode the series had become so experimental that some critics dismissed his efforts as ‘insane’. Vertov responded to their criticisms with the assertion that the critics were hacks nipping revolutionary effort in the bud, and concludes his essay with a promise to ‘detonate art's Tower of Babel’. In Vertov's view, ‘art's tower of Babel’ was the subservience of cinematic technique to narrative.
With Lenin's admission of limited private enterprise through his New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921, Russia began receiving fiction films from abroad, a situation that Vertov regarded with suspicion, calling drama a ‘corrupting influence’ on the proletarian sensibility. In this view, he was taking an extreme and, one has to say, very narrow viewpoint. By this time Vertov had been using his newsreel series as a pedestal to vilify dramatic fiction for several years; he continued his criticisms even after the warm reception of Eisenstein’s Potemkin in 1925.
By this point in his career, Vertov was clearly and emphatically dissatisfied with narrative tradition, and expressed his hostility towards dramatic fiction of any kind both openly and repeatedly; he regarded drama as another ‘opiate of the masses’ – a rather extreme position.
The Man with a Movie Camera
In his essay ‘The Man with a Movie Camera’ Vertov wrote that he was fighting ‘for a decisive cleaning up of film-language, for its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature’. By the later segments of Kino-Pravda, Vertov was experimenting heavily, looking to abandon what he considered film clichés (and receiving criticism for it); his experimentation was even more pronounced and dramatic by the time Man with a Camera was filmed in Ukraine.
Some have criticised the obvious stagings in this film as being at odds with Vertov's principle of ‘life as it is’ and ‘life caught unawares’, but its sense of realism is overwhelming. The film has become synonymous with the use of specifically cinematic technique, with the use of double exposure, fast and slow motion sequences, freeze-frames, jump cuts, split screens and tracking shots etc. He also uses footage played in reverse and the idea of self-reflexivity.
In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight and Sound poll film critics voted Man with the Camera the 8th greatest film ever made and the work was later named the best documentary of all time in the same magazine. Although in the Soviet Union at the time it also had its staunch critics who called it ‘formalistic’ a criticism aimed at a number of Soviet film-makers and artists, including Eisenstein.
Like other Russian filmmakers, he attempted to connect his ideas and techniques to the advancement of the aims of the Soviet Union. Whereas Eisenstein viewed his ‘montage of attractions’ as a creative tool through which audiences would be better able to comprehend complex processes and thus the ideological content of the films, Vertov believed that Kino Eye would have an influence on the actual evolution of mankind, from being a flawed creature into a higher, more precise, form of being. ‘I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see’, he was quoted as saying.
There is no doubt that all these pioneering film-makers and theoreticians during the early years of the Soviet Union have had a lasting influence on film-makers worldwide. Despite the fact that many ‘movies’ made today for cinema and television today show all too clearly that their makers should perhaps return to school and learn from these masters, the better film-makers still reveal in their work the seminal influence of those early Soviet pioneers.
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UK partners are developing `disruptive` EV drivetrain
The motor developer Oxford Yasa Motors and the Gateshead-based electric vehicle (EV) controls specialist Sevcon have formed a business alliance to develop an integrated electric motor and controller package that, they say, will set new standards in EV drivetrain efficiency, packaging and performance.
The two companies are collaborating to integrate the Yasa (yokeless and segmented armature) direct-drive motor with a Sevcon 400V controller for use in all-electric and hybrid EVs. Previously separate components will be replaced by a single, compact two-wheel drive system offering a combined torque-to-weight of more than 30Nm/kg – claimed to be up to four times better than its closest rivals – in the volume typically occupied by a conventional differential.
The collaboration will be led by Mike Dowsett, Oxford Yasa Motors’ vice-president of business development (above), who will report to Oxford Yasa’s CEO, Nick Farrant, and Sevcon’s president and CEO, Matt Boyle.
Farrant, describes the planned integrated motor-control package as “highly disruptive”, adding that it “breaks with convention, presenting automotive customers with a unique option for high-performance direct-drive vehicle applications”.
Oxford Yasa Motors was formed in 2009 to commercialise an axial-flux motor technology originally developed by Oxford University’s Energy and Power Group. The Yasa motor offers a high specific torque (torque-to-weight ratio), a high efficiency (typically up to 95%) and the possibility for low-cost manufacturing.
The motor’s stator is formed from a series of magnetically separated segments. A 500Nm version, developed for EVs, is 34cm in diameter and 7cm wide, and fits in the space normally occupied by a conventional front or rear differential (which is no longer needed). The motors can deliver a peak torque of 700Nm (for one minute) and a continuous torque of 400Nm.
Oxford Yasa Motors and Oxford Brookes University recently secured more than £100k of government funding for a two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership to improve the production potential of the Yasa motors. Using advanced materials and joining technologies, the project aims to cut manufacturing times and materials costs. Part of the project will investigate ways to disassemble the motors at the end of their lives to reclaim their components.
Oxford Yasa Motors is targeting the automotive, aerospace, marine and industrial markets where torque, efficiency and low motor mass are critical ingredients for high-performance drives.
Sevcon is a global leader in designing and manufacturing microprocessor controls for zero-emission electric vehicles. Its latest controllers can control either AC asynchronous or PM AC synchronous motors and are said to be the smallest in the industry, relative to their power output. It recently announced that it is developing its own integrated motor and control system for use in electric and hybrid vehicles.
Sevcon has operations in the UK, the US, France and the Far East. Its customers are manufacturers of on- and off-road vehicles including cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, forklifts, airport tractors and other electrically powered vehicles.
Functional safety architecture cuts costs for CNC machine-builders
Composite busbars are 35% cheaper and half the weight
Prices of compact AC drives drop by 4% in Europe
HMS acquires German comms specialist to create `world leader`
New HQ doubles distributor’s floor space
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One more illusion
Thursday Apr. 4th, 2019
by Loren Martell
Ilustration by: T. Heinonen
Yes, I’m back with the Red Plan — not out of love, hate or popular demand. The Red Menace is being resurrected because it remains news. What happened ten years ago once again dominated the discussion during the March, 2019, school board meeting.
The March meeting actually started off a fairly nice note, with a group of student musicians playing a mini concert for the Board. After that, things moved along at a pretty good clip by school board standards. During some of the meeting’s business — votes to accept department grants and other routine items — I leaned back and let the pronouncements, pontificating platitudes and general verbosity of our elected leaders recede into the background, like mosquitoes outside a screen door.
Eventually, however, the evening’s relatively smooth ride reached that vexing spot where grit often starts crunching in government gears: the Business Committee. The budget issue that sparked a lengthy Board debate this evening was, on more than one level, Red Plan-related. Despite all the narratives emanating from the group that has controlled our school district all these years, the shabby condition of the district’s finances is directly related to its huge, misguided facilities investment. In spite of millions more pouring in now from a big jump in local tax revenue and more money projected from a spike in State aid, ISD 709 is STILL projecting a budget deficit for 2020.
The dire condition of the budget described during this evening’s discussion was astounding. Without all the additional funding, ISD 709 would have been facing a boardroom massacre. I’m not sure enough cuts could have been made. If our improvident district hadn’t been bailed out by millions more in operating revenue, with its next two-year teachers’ contract already signed and locked in, I believe ISD 709 would have careened into statutory operating debt. On the first day of the new fiscal year — July 1st — the money problems of our public school district would have started getting more attention from the State of Minnesota.
Hard to undo the handiwork of fools
Of all the risks run during the Red Plan’s high-stakes gamble, the most foolish of all was implementing a financial scheme that robbed money from the district’s general fund to pay for facilities. This ill-conceived scheme was a sure-fire recipe for financial disaster, yet the human race has a mystifying penchant for perpetuating irrational behavior. Sometimes making a foolish move only tempts us to keep laying one loser scam on top of another, as we try to find our way out of trouble.
During this meeting, the Board debated an Administration recommendation to reduce the amount of money (now about $3.5 million a year) coming out of the fund to pay Red Plan debt in the short term. Administration’s theory was that this move would “free up” about $700,000 a year to help ease the budget crunch. In order to achieve this goal, the recommendation was to extend payments out six years longer. It is important to note that freeing up $700,000 over the next ten years ($7 million total) was not going to reduce the amount of money eventually coming out of the general fund to pay Red Plan debt. No debt was being retired. In fact, the cost of refinancing and restructuring the debt actually added $4.3 million more to the total amount that would eventually be drawn from the operating budget.
Those money worries, however, would be shifted to the shoulders of a school board ten years from now. As I’ve pointed out several times previously in this column, the Red Plan has reduced the district’s budget to a shell game.
Business Committee Chair Sally Trnka did not attend the Business Committee meeting the previous week, but apparently had watched it on YouTube. She started off the questioning, asking Administration for a clarification of the cost of restructuring this debt--a figure that had been kept so much on the down-low during the Committee meeting, I’d had trouble picking up the exact amount as well.
Bureaucratic obfuscation continued to cloud this meeting, which I assume explains how the Duluth News Tribune erroneously reported that the proposal the school board was considering would cost “nearly $500,000 more in the long run…”
The paper’s reporter apparently heard the CFO talk about an “additional investment” of $493,000, then somehow missed subsequent statements.
To her credit, member Trnka pressed Administration on the precise cost of this financial maneuver: “My question is: if we are extending this by 5 to 6 years, what will this cost — how will this impact the students who will be in our schools in those 5 to 6 years?”
The CFO, Kathy Erickson, responded in the kind of gauzy lingo used at the Committee meeting the prior week: “The extension of the bond payments would just be shifting those obligations just for those extra years, allowing us the opportunity to have access to the $7 million, currently, in the first ten years. So, in those out years, that obligation continues to carry on. But, using those dollars in the first ten years would help us provide stability to keep moving forward, so as we continue on with those debt payments in those future years, hopefully we have done what our obligations and our needs are, so that we can continue to pay those future payments and have those plans so there would not be a negative impact on future years.”
Unsatisfied, member Trnka followed up: “I’m still struggling with the answer to my question…Can you put this to me in really clear language? So: if I buy a car on a ten-year loan cycle versus a fifteen-year loan cycle, I’m incurring additional interest costs for those additional five years. Can you maybe use that analogy to help us understand?”
Apologizing for all “the numbers involved,” Erickson replied that an approximate cost figure was $493,000. “That is what we would consider the investment--the additional investment, that we would have to be making in value, to access the $7 million now, versus not having access to it. In a sense, we’re making revenue available to us to utilize now — and, in order to do that, we’re extending that debt instead of taking out a loan, per se, in order to create some fiscal stability in the district…We don’t have very much room for error in our upcoming budget, because we currently do not have a large (reserve) fund balance. And for us to have this ability to make sure that those things that need to be met, we can meet--to give us fiscal stability, this gives us that tool. So, that is the purpose for bringing this forward, tonight. So, I hope that helps clarify.”
Readers can judge whether or not this explanation clarified anything, but the bottom line definitely remained obscured. If it wasn’t for the persistence of Board members Trnka and Sandstad, I don’t think the true bottom line in all of this would have ever been publicly revealed.
Sandstad stepped up next, to pry open the bureaucratic code: “I just want to clarify what I heard. So, in today’s dollars, the cost of restructuring the 2009B (bond debt) is $493,000, and, over the course of this, through 2036, that $493,000, with interest, turns into about $4 million. Is that what I heard you say?”
From what I gathered between the lines, members Sandstad and Trnka had made some inquiries prior to this meeting, because obviously $4 million wasn’t brought up in the previous explanation.
Put on the spot publicly, the bond broker answered: “That is correct, yes. The total difference in payments as a result of restructuring (this debt) would be about $4.3 million.”
According to the Red Plan’s financial documentation, the remaining outstanding debt on the 2009B bond is $30,943,600. $4.3 million added onto that debt equals a 13.9% increase, not a bad profit margin for the bond people, but another loser layered onto a whole series of fiscal losers for ISD 709.
Pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today
Our school board dove into this extended debt debate, with arguments pro and con. Member Kirby responded to member Trnka’s auto-purchasing analogy: “Tell me if I’m wrong, here — but you could buy your car for ten years, but have no money for gas, or you could pay a little bit (obviously, a relative term) over a longer period of time, and have money for gas.”
On the other hand (certainly applicable here,) you could find yourself out of gas a decade down the road, with six more years of payments on a ten-year-old car.
Member Sandstad began her comments by thanking “our CFO and the business team,” for searching out “strategies to increase our available revenue, to address long-standing budget issues.” She said she appreciated that the Board was “coming to a point where we’re finally ready to maybe have some harder conversations about things that do need to change in our district’s budgeting for the long-term.”
Everyone could hear her building up to an objection, which arrived this way: “With that said, I disagree with the proposal, because I do not want to impose the extension of these payments onto the district, ten years from now. I think all of us agree that we wish we were not burdened with the $3 million we’re having to spend — $3.5 — out of the general fund…I understand that (the debt on the 2009B bond) is related to facilities money, and I still don’t quite understand why it couldn’t have been handled with levy funds rather than general funds, but that ship sailed a decade ago, and I want to make sure that a decade from now, the ship finally arrives at port — I don’t want to say, ‘sank’ — that would be terrible.”
A ripple of chuckling laughter went through the boardroom.
“But, on behalf of our future Board, in 2031,” Sandstad continued, “who will have a great party — having paid off this debt! — I can’t support this restructuring — especially at a cost of $4.3 million. And so, I know we’ll have to look elsewhere for dollars, in order to balance the current budget, and I’m prepared to do that.”
“Well stated, member Sandstad.” Member Gorham, generally a man of few words, stated. He also thanked the “efforts that have gone into this thinking,” but added that the “long-term cost for me, right now, is just too much to take on, thinking of the future.”
Member Trnka spoke next. She said the Board had given the CFO a “clear directive” to be as “creative as possible,” and that she appreciated the district’s top money manager was trying “to present us with a balanced budget, and that’s really difficult given our current fiscal state.” She also expressed misgivings, however, about the plan being presented: “I’m just really struggling with taking on this additional debt,” and stretching out payments “longer than (they) already are.” She pointed out that the district will be looking at maintenance issues on all the Red Plan buildings, and worried about additional debt making it difficult to “approach facilities management and how we pay for it.”
Member Oswald asked for more clarification of the numbers, and the bond broker repeated earlier claims by the CFO that “a $493,000 investment today would get (access to) seven million over the span of ten years.” The long-term costs however did not seem to sway member O, initially.
“The point I’m getting at, unless you can convince me otherwise, is that it doesn’t seem worth it.”
Member Lofald next jumped out of the gate, filled with conviction that this fiscal move was legitimate and propitious for the district: “I feel like our budget, right now, is in crisis. We have no reserve funds to lean back on. We can all make analogies…We can all talk about car loans and gas money and I think about the same thing. I think about if I had a medical crisis right now in our family, and I needed to access money somewhere. We’d be looking for every place, if it meant I could get an extra $200. I’d be looking at refinancing. Now, granted, I wish I had lots of money in reserve, but I don’t…I also would tell you I have a lot of respect for our CFO--that doesn’t mean that none of us do — but I actually think that we have a really good team, and I trust that you (our crack financial team) would not let us go down a path that you could not live with…”
Of course our current Superintendent was part of the crack team that led prior Boards down THIS path, and he’s clearly now having trouble living with it.
The student representatives on the board asked what the freed-up money ($700,000/year) would be used for, and “what methods will be employed to ensure our district does not fall into future debt, if (the Board) agrees to follow through with this extension?”
“I can’t say it ties to anything in particular,” the CFO said about the extra money. “I wish I could say in specific what that could mean. It just becomes a tool in regard to helping us balance the budget.”
As to question # 2, she said: “I think what we have seen in history tells us that every single year we have a lot of uncertainty. And where we are right now is from multiple years of having to make very difficult decisions…And so, I don’t think I personally can give any assurances…”
The Superintendent added that every year the district has been in “reduction mode,” and forced to balance that reality with a “list of needs that we’re looking at.” He talked about how hard it has been to keep saying, “No, we’re not going to do that.” He said that year after year the district “has put off buying buses; we’ve put off buying cafeteria tables; we’ve put off buying technology — any number of things…The need that we have, as a district, is great.”
The obvious tradeoff of using $700,000/year to meet that great need now is that it denies others the same luxury in the future. The $4.3 million long-term cost of this fiscal move effectively erases 6 x $700,000 some future Superintendent won’t have to work with.
Mr. Gronseth will not be the Super affected. He has already announced he will depart ISD 709 in 14 months, when his current contract expires.
The surprise of this evening came from member Oswald, who did a pivot and was the swing vote in a 4-3 Board approval of the plan. Before the vote was taken, member Sandstad made one more plea, in opposition:
“There’s been talk of ‘savings’ and ‘investments,’ and I’m sure that we could come up with 700,000 ideas to spend that $700,000 a year. But I want to clarify that $700,000 (of extra money now) is not benefiting us in the long run. It’s money we’re borrowing from the future, and any idea of ‘savings’ here is an illusion.”
Every word Nora Sandstad spoke during this debate was clear-eyed and true, and I always take heart from hearing someone speak the truth in the boardroom, even if the speaker is on the losing side — almost invariably the pattern.
Loren Martell
View more of Loren Martell's work »
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Masood, M. (2012). Ecological distribution of snakes' fauna of Jazan region of Saudi Arabia. Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences, B. Zoology, 4(1), 183-197. doi: 10.21608/eajbsz.2012.14299
Mostafa Fathy Masood. "Ecological distribution of snakes' fauna of Jazan region of Saudi Arabia". Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences, B. Zoology, 4, 1, 2012, 183-197. doi: 10.21608/eajbsz.2012.14299
Masood, M. (2012). 'Ecological distribution of snakes' fauna of Jazan region of Saudi Arabia', Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences, B. Zoology, 4(1), pp. 183-197. doi: 10.21608/eajbsz.2012.14299
Masood, M. Ecological distribution of snakes' fauna of Jazan region of Saudi Arabia. Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences, B. Zoology, 2012; 4(1): 183-197. doi: 10.21608/eajbsz.2012.14299
Ecological distribution of snakes' fauna of Jazan region of Saudi Arabia
Article 18, Volume 4, Issue 1, Summer and Autumn 2012, Page 183-197 PDF (270.86 K)
Mostafa Fathy Masood
1-Department of biology, Faculty of Science, Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2- Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Al Azhar University (Assiut-Egypt)
This study was carried out in Jazan region in the Southwestern part of Saudi Arabia, bounded in the south and east by the Republic of Yemen, Asir area in thenorth and the Red Sea in the west.
The study area is one of the richest regions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with animal biodiversity, where the region is characterized by the presence of a large group of wild animals that belong to different animal families. This work is devoted to the study of the biodiversity and geographical and ecological distribution of snakes found in the region.
The results showed that there are 36 species of eight families of snakes living in Jazan region; family Typholopidae represented by two species, while families Leptotypholopidae, Boidae and Atractaspididae represented by one species only respectively; whereas family Colubridae was the most represented one having 12 species, and family Elapidae was represented by three species. Family Viperidae was represented by six species and family Hydrophiidae represented by ten species. Nevertheless, this work concentrated on terrestrial snakes.
This work was suggested to throw light on the biodiversity of snakes' fauna in Jazan region as an important part of the ecosystem that has to be maintained. Since there are no enough studies on the animal species in the region.
The study included also the discussion of snakes that were ecologically surveyed in the study area according to: zoogeography and temporal distribution, mode of feeding, type of food and behavior.
Despite the fact that these snakes may be harmful to human life in some cases, it may also be useful to him in many aspects of life, the study showed the relationship between these snakes and human. It also threw light on the economical, medical, and scientific importance of these snakes as well as their importance for the process of environmental balance. The study presented some methods of the conservation of these species as one of the natural resources that must be maintained for not being a victim of extinction.
snakes; Reptiles; Ecology; biodiversity; conservation; zoogeographical distribution; Behavior; status
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Legacy HomepageNewsNews Archive
Tag: Veterans
Montford Point Marines Receive Honors in Illinois Town
COLP, Ill. — A distinguished group of African-American Marine Corps veterans were honored in the town of Colp, Illinois, for their service during World War II and subsequent conflicts.
‘Old Guard’ Soldiers Salute Fallen With ‘Flags In’ Tribute
ARLINGTON, Va. — The 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, known as the “Old Guard,” kicked off Memorial Day weekend honoring America’s fallen heroes by placing U.S. flags at gravesites in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Mattis Praises Former Defense Secretary Hagel’s Selflessness
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel always put service to others above self, as the two men unveiled Hagel’s official portrait at the Pentagon.
President Signs Bill to Extend Veteran’s Choice Health Care Law
WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump signed the Veterans Choice Program Extension and Improvement Act so military veterans can continue receiving health care in the civilian sector when care is not easily accessible from a Veterans Affairs Department provider.
Medal of Honor Recipient Recalls Challenges of Returning to Civilian Life
ATLANTA — Retired Army Staff Sgt. Ryan M. Pitts, who earned the Medal of Honor during service in Afghanistan, recalled his life's triumphs as well as the challenges inherent in his journey to transition to civilian life.
100 Years Ago Today, America Fought in WWI
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Kansas City Ceremony Marks Centennial of U.S. Entry Into World War I
WASHINGTON — The U.S. entry into World War I on April 6, 1917, marked the beginning of the American Century, retired Army Col. Robert J. Dalessandro, the commissioner of the World War I Centennial Commission, said at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri.
Annual Reunion Honors Sacrifice of POW, MIA Service Members
JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-RANDOLPH, Texas — Members of the 560th Flying Training Squadron hosted the 44th annual Freedom Flyer Reunion and 20th annual POW/MIA Symposium at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, to honor service members' sacrifices during the Vietnam War.
Lessons From the Past Guide Future Air Force Leaders
ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, S.D. — Robert Schilling, a former airman and gunner on the AC-47 “Spooky” aircraft, told stories about his experiences as an enlisted troop deployed to Vietnam and shared leadership lessons with students attending the Airman Leadership School at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.
Face of Defense: Army Reservist Doubles as Volunteer Firefighter
JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. — Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class Bill Coan, 58, who’s also a volunteer fireman working with the Hurffville Fire Company at Station 10-3 in New Jersey, has been recognized for his work as a firefighter multiple times. Coan said being a firefighter brings its own rewards. “Over the years, I’ve delivered babies and that’s great, but when you actually save a life, that’s special.”
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By Army Staff Sgt. Scott Raymond, Kentucky Army National Guard
Kentucky Guard Women Excel in Previously Male-Dominated Specialties
FRANKFORT, Ky. --
"It's really an exciting time for women in the military," said Army Staff Sgt. Kathleen Braithwaite. "The perception has changed a lot in my time in uniform. It's no longer just little boys who grow up to be soldiers; little girls have that dream, too."
Kentucky Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Kathleen Braithwaite removes a wheel from a M977 Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck in Frankfort, Ky., March 16, 2017. Kentucky Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Scott Raymond
Photo By: Kentucky Army National Guard
VIRIN: 170316-Z-GN092-064
Her feelings are not unique. More than 1,000 women wear the uniform in Kentucky Army and Air National Guard units, and women make up roughly 15 percent of the U.S. military.
Braithwaite works full-time as a wheeled vehicle mechanic at Field Maintenance Shop No. 5 at the Army Aviation Support Facility here. She is one of two women in the shop. She said she no longer worries about working in "predominantly male environments.''
"The guard has always treated me as an equal. It is about being a soldier; your gender doesn't really matter. If you work hard and you want to learn, you will succeed," she said. "My first squad leader was also a female and she was fantastic. She is very passionate about her job and she has risen to become a chief warrant officer now and runs an FMS shop. I was the only female for a long time in my current position and the guys there treated me as an equal from the very beginning."
‘I Don’t Feel Any Different’
Army Pfc. Meghan Aube is one of only two female helicopter mechanics in the Kentucky Army National Guard. Like Braithwaite, Aube enlisted into a primarily male-dominated occupation, something neither of them thought too much about before swearing in.
"Being one of a select few females in my job, I don't feel any different," Aube said. "If you go out there and do your job and complete it as well as any of the guys do, there is no difference."
Army Pfc. Meghan Aube checks an emergency hatch on an UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter at the Army Aviation Support Facility in Frankfort, Ky., March 16, 2017. Kentucky Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Scott Raymond
She added, "They treat you the same as anybody else and it's been that way the whole way through for me, through basic training, through [advanced individual training]. If you do your job, there is no male or female, you're a soldier, and that's just how it is."
Warrant Officer James Foley is the shop manager and Braithwaite's boss. He said he also feels that gender doesn't play a role in getting the job done.
"There is no difference based on her gender," Foley said. "Braithwaite is a [noncommissioned officer] and she conducts herself as such. She is a senior mechanic in the shop and is continuously sought after for technical advice from lower-grade mechanics. She's a strong leader, comes to work every day with the mindset to work and conducts her duties proficiently."
Both soldiers enlisted to challenge themselves, but neither originally considered becoming mechanics. Braithwaite said she couldn't even change her own oil in her car; now she's training other soldiers how to maintain millions of dollars' worth of U.S. military equipment.
"No one in my family knew much about vehicles and I remember spending time on the side of the road when one of ours broke down. Now my family calls me when they're having problems with their cars," she said. "I wanted a challenge when I enlisted; something I didn't know much about. Learning about mechanics has presented me with great challenges and I thoroughly enjoy it."
"I also have met some of my best friends in the Guard. I grew up as an only child and now I have all these brothers and sisters in uniform, and it's a wonderful feeling. We are a family."
Army Pfc. Meghan Aube, left, and Staff Sgt. Kathleen Braithwaite stand with the military equipment they maintain on a daily basis. They are two of the few female mechanics in the Kentucky Army National Guard. Kentucky Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Scott Raymond
Forget stereotypes, these female mechanics say
Photo By: Staff Sgt. Scott Raymond
VIRIN: 170327-A-YG824-001
‘Get in There, Do It’
While they have only served a few years, Braithwaite and Aube have solid advice for other women considering the military.
"My advice to women is to just get in there and do it. It was the best decision of my life," Braithwaite said.
"There are so many opportunities for women today, a complete ‘180’ from when I was little," Aube said. "There're more jobs open. You can stay enlisted, become a warrant officer or commission as an officer; if you set your mind to it, you can do anything you want to do."
Army Col. Michael Stephens commands the 63rd Theater Aviation Brigade, which Aube's unit falls under. He said there are more than 70 women serving in his brigade. He has seen many step up in a variety of roles and represent women in uniform with the utmost distinction.
"I never sit and think of the soldiers in my command as whether they are male or female," he said. "I have hundreds of great soldiers, aviators, mechanics, personnel specialists, logisticians, et cetera; and oh, yeah, many of them are female. They do their job and duty, and do it well. We should stop making a distinction with regard to their gender, and focus more on what they have accomplished as great human beings, who just happen to be female."
Women continue to break through the barriers of military service. It's been nearly two years since the Pentagon announced that all combat jobs are opened to women. With the additions of the first female Rangers and even the first females in the artillery and armor branches, strides are being made to level the playing field and allow female soldiers to become the newest trendsetters in the military.
Education Features Guard Kentucky Army National Guard Women's History Month Womens History Special
Special Report: Women's History Month 2017
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DELFI ENBusiness
Antanas Guoga: Blockchain can empower lots of people to help change the world
The Parliament Magazine
Antanas Guoga tells us why he is betting big on blockchain technologies. The Lithuanian EPP group deputy knows a winner when he sees one, and he is very excited by the opportunities that blockchain technologies can offer. He finds the technology "fascinating".
Antanas Guoga
© DELFI / Domantas Pipas
When the Commission published its 2015 white paper on virtual currencies and bitcoin, Guoga saw the opportunities that this new digital technology offered for managing finances in the future. "I became an early adopter of the technology. To experience it myself, I participated in the industry by investing." With this experience, he feels he could "definitely contribute to the discussion on blockchain."
Guoga, whose life reads more like that of a James Bond character than a political nerd, was a Rubik's cube champion in Lithuania before the age of 11, spent his formative years in Australia. From the age of 18, he started playing professional poker. At the same time, he studied accounting and finance and, after graduating, worked in investment banking in Asia.
When he moved back to Lithuania, he established a series of successful companies. To 2011, Tony G, as he is known in the poker world, was calculated to have won up to US$4m. Along the way he also married one of Lithuania's top models.
Lithuania could become one of fintech leaders - Wilson
Lithuanian c. bank initiates dialogue on cryptocurrencies
Elected in 2014, the Baltic MEP says, "I came into politics to change Europe for the better." He adds, "I wanted to have more meaning in my life and be able to do something outside of business and playing poker." Building upon his past experiences, he says, "I felt that I had a good perception of how things worked and I thought I could contribute in a positive way."
In the last few years he has been organising a major yearly ICT and entrepreneurship conference in Lithuania titled #SWITCH. Previous speakers have included Commission Vice-President for the digital single market Andrus Ansip, Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, and representatives from companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Uber, to name but a few.
Therefore, his interest in blockchain and its potential should come as no surprise. According to its champions, blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.
For Guoga, this brings the advantage of making transactions "more transparent, where everyone can see everyone's position, so in effect making sure checks and balances are carried out all the time. Based on this factor it offers many advantages."
Like all new innovations, it's still not a sure bet to financial success.
Bitcoin, the most famous virtual currency based on blockchain technology, in December 2017 was valued at €17,800 per coin. Such was the speculative hype surrounding the cryptocurrency that companies not related to the technology that added blockchain to their company name saw their stock price jump. This included an iced tea company that renamed itself "Long Blockchain."
The speculative bubble surrounding the virtual currency was compared to the 17th century investment mania in tulip bulbs in the Netherlands. As with all bubbles, it burst, and the price crashed to a mere €6600 per coin.
Guoga admits it was overvalued at the time, and believes the current market price is the correct value. "I'm glad that the bubble burst. The price is two thirds lower than what it was at its peak, which I think is healthy. There could be a further correction, which doesn't really matter."
For the Lithuanian, the bitcoin market is more about the development of the technology and less about its financial value. He emphasises that blockchain and bitcoin "can empower lots of people to help change the world, by funding their projects. That was the whole idea behind the innovation."
Despite current interest from financial investors and the EU, cryptocurrencies have been associated with organised crime operating on the dark web. Even although it is used by criminals, the deputy is quick to defend the technology, saying, "Obviously that's a risk, but I ask people: Where do most organised crime funds come from, crypto-currencies or US dollars? What is being used to trade in illegal arms and drugs?"
He points out that the value of trade in criminal activities using cryptocurrencies is still much smaller than those of government-recognised established 'paper' currencies. "In fact, with blockchain technology there is the advantage that since there is a digital trail, this makes it harder to launder than traditional, paper cash."
For Guoga, the key opportunity about blockchain is not currencies, "It's more about the creation of smart contracts and in those smart contracts, we can put assets, such as real estate. Where in the future poor people all over the world can own assets like rich people can now. It's an easy way of purchasing assets virtually."
Though blockchain has many exciting innovations, Guoga admits there are challenges for its widescale use. "One of the biggest challenges for cryptocurrencies is how they become securitised, like other financial assets. Trading should be fair for everybody. This will be a step forward. Once this phase starts, people can buy real things with their cryptocurrency."
Another challenge is scalability, "at the moment the cost of doing transactions is still expensive." But he stresses, "there is still a lot of innovation to happen and that's exciting and fascinating."
The lack of a regulatory framework is also holding back its wide scale use. However, Guoga believes that "we don't need to rush into creating legislation, I think for now, as little regulation as possible is good. Let's just observe and see.
"The European Central Bank has been good and proactive. A lot of the central banks in each member state have also been good in terms of the warnings on the risks of cryptocurrencies. I think investors are now aware and this is better than having regulation that bans everything."
The deputy is confident that blockchain has the potential for the EU to compete with the US in global equity and security markets. "This will be an innovation which Europeans can lead on, having assets securitised in cryptocurrencies could be the next big wave within the finance industry."
Blockchain could also be used by political and government institutions to empower citizens, such as "registering cars and houses. Storing digital health documents which you can also be encrypted. The cryptography within blockchain technology can be used in artificial intelligence and can keep machines in check."
When it comes to the digital single market strategy, Guoga backs his fellow Baltic Andrus Ansip on his achievements so far, saying his leadership "has been very strong and very good."
But he wishes more could be achieved. "Obviously, we'd like to see more done, there hasn't been enough, but then that's the nature of bureaucracy in Europe, which is a very slow-moving machine. We have a long way to go to becoming a digital single market in Europe, though I'm hoping to see more progress soon. I expect most of the bigger results and plans will come in the next Commission, as we're now coming to the end of a political cycle."
Commenting on the Facebook scandal on using private data in political campaigns, Guoga says, "The behaviour of Facebook was totally reprehensible. I don't think anyone wants to see such a company have so much power and possibly interfere in European politics in the future. They may even have already have done so.
"We don't know what's happened, we need to have more details. Maybe even on Brexit, if they had some influence, we should look at all of this and see if Facebook is liable."
He is confident that "European lawmakers will take a very close look and see if any appropriate action needs to be taken or any fines be given.
"Everyone is concerned, even someone like me who is very liberal in principal wouldn't want companies broken up. We consider this a serious problem with Facebook and I think we will have to look at this issue and they may need to be brought to justice."
Although he is a campaigner on improving the business conditions for European tech companies, such as reducing red tape, he accepts that people are now becoming fearful of the growing size and power of tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google. "I think everyone is fearful. No one wants to see trillion-dollar companies. They will be become bigger than governments."
"Europe is not ready for such powerful companies to have so much influence. I think there will be some adjustments over time." He does not rule out fines, like those Microsoft received from the Commission, having been found guilty of abuse of its dominant position in the market according to EU competition rules.
Though currently a member of the EPP group, when he was first elected he was a member of the ALDE group. "I switched from ALDE because my political group in Lithuania were no longer in power. It was purely related to domestic politics. I'm now proud to be in the biggest and the most powerful political group in Europe."
Even although he has switched political groups, he is still very respectful of his Liberal colleagues, saying, "ALDE a great group and I get on very well with group leader Guy Verhofstadt. I still know lots of people in ALDE."
He admits there have been challenges in adapting to the world of EU policymaking. "Dealing in politics, I always knew that it was frustrating and slow, with lots of different groups with vested interests. But on the poker table, you expect things straight away and here you must learn patience. It's been different and a steep learning curve."
Despite his political career and interest in blockchain, Guoga is still not ready to fold on his interest in cards. "I shall never give up poker, I will keep playing as much as I can in my free time."
First published by The Parliament Magazine, 23 04 2018
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2 Oct 2016 20 Feb 2018 Liam
Interview with Munia El Harti Alonso
Munia El Harti Alonso is a very talented international lawyer currently based in Paris. She has worked in large organizations, such as the EU council, EU delegation to the UN and more. She has played an important role by assisting and advising in the legal process of free trade agreements and investment treaties.
She very kindly agreed to an interview with Eurobizweekly.
Munia El Harti Alonso
When part of the EU delegation to the UN, what were your main roles and objectives?
When you join the European External Action Service (EEAS) just as when you join a Ministry of Foreign Affairs your main roles are to represent the entity you work for in my case it was towards the UN System and UN member states, and secondly to report back to the Head Quarters. You are the liaison. In the EU Delegation to the UN we are dealing with multilateral diplomacy, your objectives are to mainly negotiate resolutions as the European Union, while coordinating before with our 28 member states. We aim for consensus on all UN Resolutions.
From a legal perspective, what is most important when negotiating trade agreements?
Nowadays most agreements come in the form of combined trade and investment agreements, such as the well known TTIP, from a legal perspective the most important thing is to maintain a balance between regulation and liberalism, the way each article is written will determine the life of the Treaty with implications such as who can be protected by the Treaty and claim it falls under its protection rationae personae so the scope has to be carefully determined.
Munia at the EU delegation in New York
How did you successfully help to achieve EU objectives, as an advisor?
First off I had great guidance from the lead negotiator from the Macro-economic section of the EU Delegation, as a junior it is key to have a mentor, especially in diplomacy when it is not only your technical knowledge but also your knowledge of the savoir faire of diplomacy that will allow you to achieve your objectives. My technical skills in business law and trade allowed me to report back to Brussels with exactitude, but it was my previous experience at the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Minister Counsellors mentorship at the EUDEL that helped to construct a strategy for the EU 28 member states in macroeconomic resolutions, as well as to maintain consensus among all UN Member States.
In basic terms, how can legal framework protect against corruption?
Laws are inefficient if not combined with political will, and the equation is synallagmatic, both go hand in hand. Some governments have the will, but not the legal framework which is essential. You cannot act against illegality if it is not considered illegal either because there is no law or no law enforcement. Transparency International in that regard works on the ground with national chapters so that countries can develop capacity building, it achieved tremendous advancements especially in North Africa. At an international level, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and the OECD Anti Bribery Convention have helped to foster political will at an international scale.
You have worked for many international organizations, how did you successfully adapt to the different international legal frameworks?
In the future, what are your biggest ambitions?
I think I adapted because of my international background: I studied international law, and international law as one of my Professors Judge Bennouna said is something you have to live, so I got out of my comfort zone very young, left my household in Brussels when I was 18 to study in France, then I saved some money and decided to spend a semester at UCLA. Sacrifice is something inherent to an international career, and you have to integrate soon and make a choice. I also believe the fact that I acknowledge with pride that my diversity, as half Moroccan half Spanish, allowed me to connect with people from very different horizons.
As to my biggest ambition, younger I said to myself I want to be a lawyer, a diplomat and an entrepreneur at the same time, I want to have an impact on the world in a meaningful way and those are three ways. I mentioned Judge Bennouna earlier because I had him as a Professor during a course at the Peace Palace, and he is the person that touched me the most professionally speaking. He was a lawyer, he started his career in France and reconnected with Morocco after, he then became the Ambassador for Morocco to the United Nations, he was also the Director to the Institute of the Arab World in Paris, and now Judge at the International Court of Justice. Envisaging law practice with diplomacy and social entrepreneurship by promoting the Arab World and the EU: building bridges, I would say is my biggest ambition.
Do you have a motto in life/career?
Previous Interview with Bożena Głowacka
Next Interview with Natasha Bank
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Store Hours: 10am – 9pm
Contact: 069 708 201
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Whilst RA’s are retirement-savings products aimed at self-employed individuals (or those who want to augment their existing employer-offered retirement savings vehicles), pension funds (and provident funds) are available to formally employed individuals in the form of a pooled retirement fund offered by their employer.
Contributions to a pension fund are tax-exempt for the employee, but the proceeds are taxed when paid out in future. This serves as a savings incentive offered by governments to encourage people to save for their old age instead of becoming a burden on the state.
Should an individual leave the employment of the company before the official retirement age – due to dismissal, retrenchment or resignation – the proceeds of their pension savings in the employer’s fund can be either:
cashed in (in part or in full)
or transferred (in part or in full) to a preservation fund (see further down).
However, if the employee stays with the company all the way to retirement age, and then officially retires from a pension fund, the investor can only take a once-off lump sum pay out of their pension savings to a maximum of 1/3rd of the value of their funds at that point. The balance (2/3rds) has to either stay in the fund (if allowed by the fund rules) or go into a Living Annuity (where it will be stuck until death or slowly depleted by way of maximum annual withdrawal limits).
The Preservation Fund Option:
A preservation fund serves as a savings fund into which proceeds from a pension or provident fund are paid. It is essentially a ’parking place‘ from where the funds can be moved into another retirement product at a future date (e.g. a Living Annuity). It ”preserves” retirement investments and is tax neutral.
If transferred in full directly into a preservation fund (i.e. no withdrawal made), one single withdrawal can still be made from a preservation fund at a future date – either in part or in full. This is a benefit of a preservation fund over for example, an RA, where the funds will be stuck until 55 (and then only 1/3rd available). On the other hand, if transferred only in part (i.e. a withdrawal had in effect already been made) the funds will be stuck until retirement.
How can E8 help?
Once funds have been cashed in (either the full or 1/3rd Pension Fund option, or one full Preservation Fund withdrawal if eligible), the cash can be taken abroad as a foreign investment allowance. This is a relatively simple process via your bank. We can help you to understand and do that: > Exchange Control And Your Assets/Cash
On the other hand, if the funds are in a Preservation Fund it may be possible to convert the Preservation Fund into a Retirement Annuity, and then to cash out the RA by way of the Formal Emigration route provided for in SA’s legislation (see Retirement Annuity in the menu left). We can help you to understand the conversion process, and thereafter provide all the administrative tools (information, individually tailored processes, all necessary documents) and assistance for you to cash out the RA in full and at any age:
Read more here: > How will E8 assist me?
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About Books Columns TV/Press Contact
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Identity, not ideology, is moving the world
The Fourth of July, for me, is one of those special American holidays that celebrates not religion, ethnicity or sect but rather freedom and the country’s unique national identity, which is based on it. But around the world these days, we’re seeing the rise of another kind of nationalism, one that can be darker and more troubling. In the recent elections for the European Parliament, nationalist, populist and even xenophobic parties did extremely well. The U.K. Independence Party defeated all of the established parties. France’s National Front won handily against the ruling Socialist Party. In Greece, the quasi-fascist Golden Dawn won half a million votes, giving it seats in the European Parliament for the first time.
Many commentators have explained the rise of these parties as a consequence of the deep recession and slow recovery that still afflict much of Europe. But similar voting patterns can be seen in Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden, which are thriving economically. And the parties that do well center their agendas not on economics but on immigration and other expressions of nationalism.
You can see this rise of nationalism not just in Europe but also around the world. Consider Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to reinterpret his country’s pacifist constitution. Leaders such as Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Xi Jinping in China have made appeals to nationalism a core part of their agenda and appeal.
There is, of course, a healthy nationalism that has often been part of the expansion of liberty and democracy. Britons and Americans take pride that their countries embody values they hold dear. Poles and now Ukrainians take pride in their struggles for independence and success. But today we seem to be witnessing mostly a different kind of nationalism, based on fear, insecurity and anxiety. And, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin has noted, like a bent twig, this kind of nationalism always springs back with a vengeance.
Why is this happening now? One explanation is that as globalization and technological revolutions race ahead and transform the world, people feel uneasy with the pace of change and search for something to hold on to for succor and stability. If the bond is strongest at the level of the nation, nationalism surges. But if the national project is fragile or viewed as illegitimate, then you see the pull of older, deeper forces. From Catalonia to Scotland to the Middle East, subnational identities have taken on new meaning and urgency.
It is a strange mixture of insecurity and assertiveness. People worry that their society is changing beyond recognition and that they are being ruled by vast, distant forces — the European Union in Brussels, the International Monetary Fund or the federal government in Washington — that are beyond their control. And by people who do not share their values.
In the United States, we do see one parallel: the rise of the tea party. Scholars Vanessa Williamson and Theda Skocpol concluded that immigration is a central issue — perhaps the central issue — for tea party members, something that has been reinforced by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s loss in his primary election in Virginia. I don’t recognize my country anymore, say Mike Huckabee, Glenn Beck and many others on the right. The same line could be repeated by every one of those European nationalists who won in the polls in May.
In an age of globalization, elites have discussions about political ideology — more government, less government — but, as Samuel Huntington noted many years ago, the bottom-up force that seems to be moving the world these days is political identity. The questions that fill people with emotion are “Who are we?” and, more ominously, “Who are we not?”
Even in America, even on the Fourth of July.
Washington PostFareed Zakaria July 6, 2014
Obama caves to conventional wisdom on Syria
Washington PostFareed Zakaria July 9, 2014 Barack Obama, Syria
Hillary Clinton’s truly hard choice: Change or continuity?
Washington PostFareed Zakaria June 27, 2014 Hillary Clinton, presidency, United States
Fareed's Global Briefing
Insights, analysis and must reads from Fareed and the Global Public Square team.
© Fareed Zakaria, 2019
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By Andrew Bolton
The kilt has come to signify a natural and unmistakable masculinity, but it has a long history of outside intervention and deliberate reinvention. From its origins as the basic garb of the Highlander, Scotsmen and non-Scotsmen alike have embraced it as uniform, formal and semiformal wear, and casual, everyday wear. The kilt's ability to remain recognizable while responding to changing circumstances and consumer demands has been instrumental in maintaining its popularity through successive generations and, increasingly, throughout the world.
Form and Evolution
The kilt as we know it today originated in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Known to the Gaelic-speaking Highlander as the "little wrap" (feileadh beag), it evolved from the "big wrap" (feileadh mor), or belted plaid, the first identifiably "Scottish" costume that emerged in the late sixteenth century. Earlier, the Scottish Gaels had worn the same clothes as their Irish counterparts, namely a shirt known in Gaelic as the léine and a semicircular mantle known in Gaelic as the brat.
Men Wearing Skirts and Dresses
Scottish Dress
The belted plaid consisted of a four- to six-yard length of woolen cloth about two yards wide. In Highland Costume (1977), John Telfer Dunbar explains how the belted plaid was arranged on the body. It was laid out on the ground and gathered in folds with a plain section left at each side. The man lay down on it with one selvage at about knee level, and fastened it with a belt. When he stood up, the lower part was like a kilt, and the upper part could be draped around the body in a variety of different styles. Several dress historians, however, have discounted this method on the grounds of impracticality. They propose that the most pragmatic and time-effective method was to gather the pleats in the hand, pass the plaid around the body, secure it loosely with the belt, and then tighten it after a final adjustment of the pleats.
The kilt as worn in the early 2000s is the lower half of the belted plaid with the back pleats stitched up. Its invention is credited to Thomas Rawlinson, an English ironmaster who employed Highlanders to work his furnaces in Glengarry near Inverness. Finding the belted plaid cumbersome, he conceived of the "little kilt" on the grounds of efficiency and practicality, a means of bringing the Highlanders "out of the heather and into the factory" (Trevor-Roper 1983, p. 22). However, as Dorothy K. Burnham asserts in Cut My Cote (1973), it is more likely that the transformation came about as the natural result of a change from the warp-weighted loom to the horizontal loom with its narrower width.
Romanticism: The Kilt as National Dress
Not long after the kilt's invention, the Diskilting Act was passed in the wake of the Jacobite Uprising of 1745. This rebellion, organized by Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), marked the final attempt by the Jacobites to regain the British throne. As in the previous Jacobite risings, the "Young Pretender" sought and won the support of many Highland chiefs and their clans. When the Jacobites were defeated at the Battle of Culloden (1746) by the duke of Cumberland and his troops, a campaign of "pacification" of the Highlands was undertaken "beginning with fire and the sword, and leading on into social engineering of various kinds" (Chapman 1992, p. 125). The latter included the proscription of Highland costume, which was seen as a symbol of rebellion and primitive savagery.
The Diskilting Act made an exception for those serving in the armed forces. Originally, the Highland regiments were dressed in the belted plaid, but in order to conform to the other regiments of the British Army they wore a red coat cut away at the skirts to allow for its voluminous folds. Other distinctive Highland features of the uniform included a round blue bonnet, a small leather sporran, red and white knee-length hose, and black buckled shoes. By about 1810, however, the Highland regiments had replaced the belted plaid with the little kilt. At the same time, the small, practical leather sporran developed into a large, hairy, decorative affair. This early-nineteenth-century military style was to have a lasting impact on civilian dress. Several dress historians have claimed that Highland costume would not have survived in civilian form had the Highland regiments not been raised and uniformed in elements of their native dress.
In 1782, through the efforts of the Highland Society of London, the Diskilting Act was repealed. By the time of the repeal, the kilt had fallen out of use as an item of ordinary dress, allowing for what Malcolm Chapman in The Celts: The Construction of a Myth (1992) calls the "romantic rehabilitation of Highland dress." The romantic gaze was a reaction against the urban and the industrial and a celebration of the untamed wilderness. No longer the threat from the North, the image of the Highlands could represent this wilderness within the bustling economy of the "new" Britain. Rather than dangerous, bare-legged barbarians, the Highlanders became admirable, a kilted version of the noble savage.
The romantic rehabilitation of the kilt reached its apotheosis with King George IV's carefully stage-managed state visit to Edinburgh in 1822, during which he disported himself in full Highland dress. This "publicity stunt" promoted the kilt as fashionable wear among the Scottish nobility and, in so doing, helped establish the kilt as the national dress of Scotland. However, the king's clothes, like those worn by Scottish noblemen, were far removed from those worn by the Highlanders of the previous century. Given the fact that they were largely designed for the levee, assembly, and ballroom, the emphasis was on the dramatic and spectacular. As Hugh Cheape points out in Tartan (1991), "'Highland dress' turned into 'tartan costume.' A practical dress with style became … a fashionable dress with little regard for function" (Cheape 1991, p. 52).
Throughout the nineteenth century, aristocratic patronage continued to provide cachet for this new urban-based national style, which began to have "correct" items and styles of wear for day and evening. From the 1840s, it was given new impetus through Queen Victoria's cult of the Highlands. Queen Victoria shared King George IV's romantic vision of Scotland, and in 1852 Prince Al bert bought Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire. Parts of the interior, most notably the queen's private suites, were decorated with tartan. Queen Victoria herself wore dresses made from "Dress Stewart" or "Victoria" tartan, sparking a trend for tartan fashions worldwide. It was not until the twentieth century, however, that women embraced the kilt as fashionable attire. After World War II, a simplified version of the kilt emerged in the form of a pleated, wrap-around skirt belted at the waist and secured near the hem with a large pin. Popular with middle- and upper-class women, it also formed a component of the uniforms of private girls' schools in England and America, thus maintaining the kilt's connotations of wealth and class privilege.
Re-Contextualization
As Scotland gained a new level of cultural and political confidence toward the end of the twentieth century, "a new generation of [young] radical Scots … reclaimed the wearing of the kilt from the embrace of nearly two hundred years of establishment, commodified gentrification" (Taylor 2002, p. 220). The Victorian styles of day wear and evening wear gave way to contemporary usage. Many younger Scotsmen began to wear their kilts for everyday use with a T-shirt or sweater, a denim or leather jacket, sneakers or chunky, heavy-soled boots, and woolly socks falling around the ankles. As Lou Taylor observes in The Study of Dress History (2002), "Now young Scotsmen wear their kilts according to their own cultural codes and on their own national identity terms" (Taylor 2002, p. 220).
Recently, the kilt has become increasingly popular among non-Scotsmen wishing to project a self-confidently fashionable image. This can be attributed, at least in part, to the immense success of such films as Rob Roy (1995) and Braveheart (1995). In the tradition of the Romantic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these films portray the Highlander as "warrior hero," embodying timeless, masculine values. This image has been reinforced in the arena of sport, most obviously through the Highland Games, now broadcast around the world. In putting the shot, tossing the caber, and throwing the weight, men of obvious stamina are shown competing in kilts. Most recently, however, Scottish football supporters have promoted the Highlander as a beau ideal. Their tribal antics and kilted uniforms received widespread publicity in France during the World Cup in the summer of 1998. Through such images, the kilt has come to represent a ready access to Highland male sexuality. For non-Scotsmen, it provides the means of asserting a self-consciously yet unambiguously masculine persona.
Contemporary designers have drawn heavily on the kilt's hypermasculine connotations in their attempts to appeal to the young fashion-conscious male. At the same time, various designers have attempted to blur the lines between the "kilt" and a "skirt" by reworking elements of the kilt's design. Most typically they have focused their efforts on foregrounding the cut over the culturally specific tartan, employing nontraditional "street" materials like denim or leather, and even adapting its cut, length, and construction. These "skirt-kilts" offer men a means of expressing a frank masculinity while simultaneously projecting a self-confidently unconventional persona. As such, they have proved particularly successful among youth and countercultural movements such as punks in the 1970s and new romantics in the 1980s. Since the early 1990s, kilts and skirt-kilts have entered the lexicon of gay fashion. Worn by gay men as an expression of hypermasculinity and a flaunting of perceived femininity, the kilt has become a standard item in the masculinized gay wardrobe.
See also Europe and America: History of Dress (400-1900 C.E.); Fashion Gender and Dress; Tartan; Military Uniforms.
Burnham, Dorothy, K. Cut My Cote. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1973.
Chapman, Malcolm. The Celts: The Construction of a Myth. London: Macmillan, 1992.
Cheape, Hugh. Tartan: The Highland Habit. Edinburgh, U.K.: Weatherhill, 1991.
Dunbar, John Telfer. Highland Costume. Edinburgh, U.K.: Laurier Books Ltd., 1977.
--. The Costume of Scotland. London: B. T. Batsford, Ltd., 1981.
Scarlett, James D. Scotland's Clans and Tartans. Guildford, U.K.: Lutterworth Press, 1975.
Taylor, Lou. The Study of Dress History. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2002.
Trevor-Roper, Hugh. "The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland." In The Invention of Tradition. Edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Theories of Fashion By Marilyn Revell DeLong
Religion and Dress By Linda B. Arthur
Ancient World: History of Dress By Phyllis Tortora
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The Dawn Wall Really Is The Hardest Climb In The World
Jan. 15, 2015 , at 1:10 PM
By Reuben Fischer-Baum
Filed under In One Chart
After 18 days and 3,000 vertical feet, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson completed the first ever free climb of Yosemite’s Dawn Wall on Wednesday. The route is technically difficult and extremely long, which are two distinct concepts in the world of climbing. The crux of the Dawn Wall on its own is among the world’s most difficult climbs, and it’s just one section of 33. Routes like this are practically nonexistent.
The best available data for climbing routes comes from the Mountain Project, a crowdsourced database that contains 123,307 distinct routes worldwide. (It does not currently include the Dawn Wall, as no users have added it.) The chart above breaks down all Mountain Project routes, plus the Dawn Wall, by their difficulty and length. Difficulty is measured on the Yosemite Decimal System — over 5.12a is very difficult, and over 5.13a is the kind of climb that only expert climbers can pull off. Length is measured in pitches, with one pitch representing a single section of ascent limited by the terrain and length of the climbing rope. (Pitch length is variable depending on rope length and courage.)
Taking these user-generated numbers with a grain of salt, just 227 routes in the database rated as 5.14a or higher (the Dawn Wall is 5.14d) and just 32 climbs of any difficulty were listed as greater than 30 pitches. Only one climb in the database was both: Magic Mushroom, also on Yosemite’s El Capitan. Caldwell was the first to free climb it in 2008 — and he did it in less than 30 pitches.
For Caldwell and Jorgenson, in other words, the Dawn Wall really is peerless.
CORRECTION (Jan. 15, 2:24 p.m.): An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the scale of the Yosemite Decimal System. Ratings for technical climbs begin with “5” not “15.”
Reuben Fischer-Baum is a visual journalist for FiveThirtyEight. @reubenfb
In One Chart (17 posts) Dawn Wall (1) Kevin Jorgenson (1) Rock Climbing (1) Tommy Caldwell (1) Yosemite (1)
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Titans’ Marcus Mariota tweaking mechanics to improve accuracy
The Tennessee Titans won their first postseason game last year since 2003. If they want to make the playoffs in consecutive seasons their quarterback must improve.
Tennessee has improved since drafting Marcus Mariota with the second overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft. The Titans have finished over .500 in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2007 and 2008 and made the playoffs last season.
However, Mariota has yet to take the next step in development as a pro quarterback and he’s is trying to improve that this offseason, specifically with his footwork.
“It’s tough because it’s hard to break old habits,” Mariota told Jason Wolf, of The Tennessean. “I think for a long time I’ve been playing with such a narrow base. If I’m able to accomplish, really, that goal of mine, to stay in a good solid base throughout, I think I can make a lot of the throws that are asked of me in this offense. As I continue to be out here, I’ve just got to continue to be mindful of it and find ways to just self-correct and just get better.”
The 2017 season was Mariota’s worst of his three-year pro career. Despite throwing for 3,232 yards he only threw 13 touchdowns. What stood out the most were his 15 interceptions, a career high. He threw the third most interceptions in the entire league; the only two players that threw more were Cam Newton and DeShone Kizer.
In an effort to help Mariota become a better quarterback, Tennessee hired offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur. Before joining the Titans, LaFleur was the offensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams.
LaFleur played a key role in the development of quarterback Jared Goff, who threw for 3,804 yards, 28 touchdowns and only seven interceptions. He helped guide the Rams become the top scoring team in the NFL in 2017.
It wasn’t a complete disaster for Mariota in 2017. According to Pro Football Focus, he had the highest passer rating on play action in the regular season and was one of the league’s most efficient passers under pressure.
Earlier this offseason the Titans picked up Mariota’s fifth-year option. There is no doubt that he is in the team’s long-term plans. But, the team can’t afford another poor season from Mariota or they will quickly fall behind in a very competitive AFC South.
Broncos should be encouraged by Drew Lock’s decision
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The Most Educated Countries in the World
Thomas C. Frohlich
24/7 Wall St. September 11, 2014
Ground crew members hold a Japanese flag as they wave to a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force's P3C patrol plane as it leaves the Royal Malaysian Air Force base for Australia to join a search and rescue operation for the missing Malaysia Airlines, flight MH370, in Subang, Malaysia, Sunday, March 23, 2014. Search planes headed back out to a desolate patch of the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday in hopes of finding answers to the fate of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, after China released a satellite image showing a large object floating in the search zone. (AP Photo/Lai Seng Sin)
According to data recently released by the Organization for Co-operation and Development (OECD), more than half of Russian adults held tertiary degrees in 2012 -- the equivalent of college degree in the United States -- more than in any other country reviewed. Meanwhile, less than 4% of Chinese adults had tertiary qualifications in 2012, less than in any other country. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 10 countries with the highest proportion of adults holding a college degree.
The most educated populations tend to be in countries where tertiary education spending is among the highest. Tertiary education spending in six of the most educated countries was higher than the OECD average of $13,957. Spending on tertiary education in the U.S., for example, was $26,021 per student, by far the most in the world.
ALSO READ: Best Economies in the World
According to Andreas Schleicher, director for education skills at the OECD, education in the U.S. has become much more expensive, and student debt burdens have reached troubling levels in recent years. Despite these facts, it is still considered a good investment, as U.S. residents with higher degrees earn substantially more than their less educated peers.
It is also a worthwhile investment for the government. Schleicher explained that “taxpayers in the U.S. get $200,000 more out of every graduate than what they actually invested, so it’s a good business for the government as well.”
Despite the value of investing in education, there are exceptions. Korea and the Russian Federation both spent less than $10,000 on tertiary education per student in 2011, considerably lower than the OECD average. Yet, they still have among the most educated populations.
Qualifications do not always translate into stronger skills. While only 1 in 4 of U.S. college graduates reach the top-end of literacy skill, more than 35% reach that level in Finland, Japan, and the Netherlands. As Schleicher explained, “We typically describe people by their formal qualifications, but this data suggests that the skill value of formal qualifications vary considerably across countries.”
Nevertheless, countries with strong higher education systems tend to have higher levels of advanced skills. Roughly 12% of adults across the OECD performed at the highest literacy proficiency level in 2012. The percentage of adults performing at the highest literacy level exceeded that figure in five of the most educated countries.
Those higher skills may be paying off for residents. Only Ireland had an unemployment rate higher than the OECD rate of 7.5% in 2012. According to Schleicher, this relationship may also work the other way around because those who are employed are far more likely to pursue higher education and training. Unfortunately, this means “those who need life-long learning the most actually get the least out of it.”
To identify the most educated countries in the world, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 10 countries with the highest proportions of residents aged 25 to 64 with a tertiary education in 2012. These data were included as part of the OECD’s 2014 Education at a Glance report. The countries considered included the 34 OECD member countries, and ten non-OECD nations. Included in the report were data on the proportion of adults completing various levels of education, unemployment rates, as well as public and private education expenditure. We also reviewed data from the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills, which included advanced adult proficiency in both math and reading. The most current figures for education expenditure by country are from 2011.
ALSO READ: Countries Spending the Most on Health Care
These are the most educated countries in the world.
10) Ireland
> Pct. population with tertiary education: 39.7%
> Average annual growth rate (2005-2012): 5.2% (4th highest)
> Tertiary education spending per student: $16,095 (12th highest)
Nearly 40% of Irish adults between the ages of 25 and 64 had tertiary qualifications in 2012, the 10th highest rate among all countries reviewed by the OECD. This represents a substantial increase from more than a decade ago when just 21.6% of adults had completed some form of higher education. Worsening employment opportunities in recent years may have made higher education more attractive to the country's residents. More than 13% of the population was unemployed in 2012, one of the highest rates among countries reviewed. The unemployment rate for college-educated adults, however, was considerably lower. Pursuing higher education is especially attractive for citizens of European Union countries because their tuition is heavily subsidized at public institutions in Ireland.
9) New Zealand
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2011): 2.9% (13th lowest)
> Tertiary education spending per student: $10,582 (15th lowest)
The global financial crisis did not have as dramatic an impact on public education spending in New Zealand as it did in many other countries. While public educational expenditure declined in a number of OECD nations between 2008 and 2011, public education spending in New Zealand increased by more than 20% over that time, among the larger increases. Still, spending on higher education is low compared to other developed countries. In 2011, $10,582 was spent per student in the country on tertiary education, less than the OECD average of $13,957. Despite spending less than the average per tertiary student, however, spending on all other forms of education accounted for 14.6% of total public spending in New Zealand, more than any other country reviewed.
8) United Kingdom
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2011): 4.0 (11th highest)
ALSO READ: States Spending the Most (and Least) on Education
While many national economies, including the United States, grew between 2008 and 2012, the United Kingdom’s economy shrunk over that time. Despite the downturn, public education spending as a percentage of GDP increased in the country more than any OECD nation over the same period. The United Kingdom is one of just a few countries with a “sustainable approach to higher education financing,” according to Schleicher. Every student in the country has access to an income-contingent loan, meaning repayment is not required until the student's income exceeds a certain threshold.
7) Australia
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2011): 3.5% (15th highest)
More than $16,000 was spent per student on tertiary education in Australia, among the higher rates in the OECD. Australia's higher education system is one of the most popular among international students, attracting 5% of all foreign students. By comparison, the U.S., which has many times the number of schools, attracted only three times as many foreign students. And higher education seems to pay off for graduates who remain in the country. The unemployment rate among residents with tertiary qualifications was lower than all but a handful of countries reviewed in 2012. Additionally, nearly 18% of adults performed at the highest literacy level in 2012, considerably higher than the OECD average of 12%.
6) Korea
> Tertiary education spending per student: $9,926 (12th lowest)
Despite spending less than $10,000 per student on tertiary education in 2011, less than any other country on this list except for Russia, Korean residents have become among the world’s most educated. While just 13.5% of Korean adults aged 55-64 had completed tertiary degrees in 2012, over two-thirds of 25 to 34 year-olds, had. The 50 percentage points was by far the largest generational improvement among all countries reviewed. Nearly 73% of tertiary education spending came from private sources in 2011, more than all but one other country. High levels of private spending tend to exacerbate inequalities. The growth in educational attainment and educational mobility, however, is likely due to relatively equitable access to higher education in Korea. Koreans were the most likely to access higher education among all countries reviewed, according to the OECD.
ALSO READ: 11 Countries Near Bankruptcy
5) United States
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2011): 1.4% (the lowest)
> Tertiary education spending per student: $26,021 (the highest)
In 2011, more than $26,000 was spent on tertiary education per student in the U.S., nearly double the OECD average of $13,957. Private expenditure in the form of tuition fees accounted for the majority of this spending. High education expenditures have paid off to some degree, as a large proportion of U.S. adults have very high levels of qualification. Because of the slow growth rates of the past decade, however, the U.S. has slipped behind many other nations. While spending per tertiary student between 2005 and 2011 increased by 10% across OECD countries on average, U.S. spending decreased over that time. And the U.S. was one of only six countries to cut public education spending between 2008 and 2011. Like other countries where education is controlled by regional authorities, tertiary attainment levels vary widely in the United States, from as little as 29% in Nevada, to as much as 71% in the District of Columbia.
4) Israel
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2011): N/A
Most 18-year old Israelis are subject to at least two years of mandatory military service. Perhaps as a result, country residents tend to complete higher education degrees later in life than in other countries. The compulsory conscription, however, has not lowered educational attainment rates, as 46% of Israeli adults had attained tertiary qualification in 2012. More than $11,500 was spent per student on tertiary education in 2011, lower than most other developed countries. Low education spending in Israel has resulted in low teacher salaries. New secondary teacher hires with minimum training were paid less than $19,000 in 2013, versus an OECD average of more than $32,000.
3) Japan
ALSO READ: 10 Countries Spending the Most on the Military
Like the U.S., Korea, and the United Kingdom, private spending accounts for the vast majority of spending on tertiary education in Japan. While this can often lead to social inequalities, Schleicher explained that like most Asian countries, Japanese families are by and large willing to save money for their children’s educations. Strong education spending and participation in higher education does not necessarily translate to higher academic skills. In Japan, however, higher spending did lead to better learning outcomes, as more than 23% of adults performed at the highest level of literacy proficiency, nearly double the OECD average of 12%. Younger students also seem to be well-educated, as Japan reported exceptionally high Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores in mathematics in 2012.
2) Canada
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2011): 2.3% (8th lowest)
> Tertiary education spending per student: $23,225 (2nd highest)
More than half of Canadian adults had received tertiary qualification in 2012, the only country other than Russia where a majority of adults had some form of higher education. Canada's education expenditure of $23,226 per student in 2011 trailed only the United States' expenditure. Canadian students of all ages appear to be very well-educated. Secondary school students outperformed the majority of countries in mathematics on the PISA in 2012. And nearly 15% of adults in the country performed at the highest level of literacy proficiency, versus an OECD average of 12%.
1) Russian Federation
> Tertiary education spending per student: $7,424 (the lowest)
More than 53% of Russian adults between the ages of 25 and 64 had some form of higher education in 2012, more than in any other country reviewed by the OECD. The country has reached this exceptional level of attainment despite spending among the least on tertiary education. Russia's tertiary education expenditure was just $7,424 per student in 2010, roughly half the OECD average of $13,957. Russia was also one of just a few countries where education spending declined between 2008 and 2012.
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Lal Bagh
For the locality in Mangalore, see Lalbagh, Mangalore. For the Mughal fort in Dhaka, Bangladesh, see Lalbagh Fort.
Lalbagh Botanical Gardens or Lalbagh is an old botanical garden in Bengaluru, India. First planned and laid out during the rule of Hyder Ali and later adorned with unique plant species by his son Tipu Sultan, it was later managed under numerous British Superintendents before Indian Independence. It was responsible for the introduction and propagation of numerous ornamental plants as well as those of economic value. It also served a social function as a park and recreational space, with a central glass house dating from 1890 which was used for flower shows. In modern times it hosts two flower shows coinciding with the week of Republic Day (26 January) and Independence Day (15 August). As an urban green space along with Cubbon Park, it is also home to numerous wild species of birds and other wildlife. The garden also has a lake adjoining a large rock on which a watchtower had been constructed during the reign of Kempegowda II.
Lalbagh
The Lalbagh Glass House in the Botanical Garden
Location in Bengaluru, India
Coordinates: 12°57′N 77°35′E / 12.95°N 77.59°E / 12.95; 77.59Coordinates: 12°57′N 77°35′E / 12.95°N 77.59°E / 12.95; 77.59
Bengaluru Urban
0.971246 km2 (0.375000 sq mi)
The bandstand
Lalbagh Botanical Garden Glass House, dating from 1889
Lalbagh Gardens of Bangalore were originally laid out by Hyder Ali and were modeled on gardens in Sira[1] laid out by its last Mughal Subedar, Dilawar Khan (r.1726–1756).
The Lalbagh Glasshouse at night
"Lalbagh or Red Garden" by Nicholas Bros. (1860s)
Hyder Ali commissioned the building of this garden in 1760 but his son, Tipu Sultan, completed it. A Bagh is Hindustani for garden while the reference of the prefix Lal is debated and could refer to the colour red due to its original floral composition but Lal also means "beloved". Hyder Ali decided to create this garden on the lines of the Mughal Gardens that were gaining popularity during his time. Hyder Ali laid out these famous botanical gardens and his son Tipu Sultan added horticultural wealth to them by importing trees and plants from several countries. Hyder and Tipu's Lalbagh gardens were managed by Mohammed Ali and his son Abdul Khader and were based on design of the Mughal Gardens that once stood at Sira, at a distance of 120 km from Bangalore. At that time, Sira was the headquarters of the strategically important southernmost Mughal "suba" (province) of the Deccan before the British Raj.[2]The Lalbagh gardens were commissioned by the 18th century and over the years it acquired India's first lawn-clock and the subcontinent's largest collection of rare plants.[3] After the British conquest of Mysore in 1799, the garden was under the charge of Major Gilbert Waugh, Company paymaster and in 1814 its control was transferred to the Government of Mysore with an appeal by Waugh to the Marquis of Hastings that it should be under the botanical garden at Fort William, Caclutta. This was accepted and the charge for supervision was given to Nathaniel Wallich on 24 April 1819. This continued until 1831 when charge moved to the Mysore Commissioner. An Agricultural and Horticultural Society had been formed with William Munro, an army officer and amateur botanist in charge of the Bangalore chapter. The Society wrote to the Mysore Commisioner, Sir Mark Cubbon, requesting charge of the Lalbagh garden. Cubbon granted control and during this period it was used for horticultural training. The Bangalore chapter of the Society was dissolved in 1842, leaving the gardens unmanaged. In 1855, Hugh Cleghorn, was appointed as a botanical advisor to the Commissioner of Mysore. Cleghorn and Jaffrey, superintendent of the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society looked at various sites for a horticultural garden and found that Lalbagh suited their purpose despite being located at a distance from the Cantonment, the British centre of the city. He suggested that a European Superintendent be appointed with control under the Chief Commissioner. Cleghorn was against the use of Lalbagh for commercial enterprise and instead suggested that it should aim to improve the use of indigenous plants, aid in introducing useful exotic species and help in the exchange of plant and seed materials with other gardens at Madras, Calcutta and Ooty. Under Cubbon's orders, Lalbagh was made into the Government Botanical Garden in August 1856 and a professional horticulturist was sought from Kew. William New was recommended and he arrived at Bangalore on 10 April 1858. New's contract ended in 1863-64 and he was replaced by Allan Adamson Black who worked at the Kew Herbarium. Black however suffered from poor health and resigned in 1865 and died after visiting his brother in Rangoon aboard HMS Dalhousie, off the Coco Islands on 4th December 1865.[4] New was then re-appointed. In his 1861 catalogue of the plants of Lalbagh, there were numerous economic and ornamental plants including Cinchona, coffee, tea, macadamia nuts, hickory, pecan, rhododendrons, camellias, and bougainvilleas. New died in 1873 and was followed by John Cameron, also from Kew. Cameron had the additional support of the Maharaja of Mysore who was appointed in 1881 and introductions included Araucarias (A. cookii and A. bidwilli), cypresses (Cupressus sempervirens), topiaries made from Hamelia patens. In 1890-91, a central bandstand and the glasshouse (for flowershows) made with iron pillars cast by Walter Macfarlane and Company of Glasgow were added. Cameron also helped introduce commercial crops like cabbage, cauliflower, turnip, radish, rhubarb, celery, and kohlrabi. Trees introduced included the babobab from Africa, Brownea rosea from the Caribbean, and Catha edulis from Yemen.[5] Cameron retired in 1908 and was followed by Gustav Herman Krumbiegel.[6] A menagerie established by Krumbiegel in the 1860s in 1914. Captain S.S.Flower reported that it included a court built between 1850 and 1860 having tigers and rhinoceros; an aviary; a monkey house with an orangutan; a paddock with blackbuck, chital, Sambar deer, barking deer, and a pair of emus; a bear house and a peacock enclosure.[7][8]
In 1874, Lalbagh had an area of 45 acres (180,000 m2). In 1889, 30 acres were added to the eastern side, followed by 13 acres in 1891 including the rock with Kempegowda tower and 94 acres more in 1894 on the eastern side just below the rock bringing it to a total of 188 acres (760,000 m2).[9] The foundation stone for the Glass House, modeled on London's Crystal Palace was laid on 30 November 1889 by Prince Albert Victor and was built during the time of John Cameron.[9][10] It was built with cast iron from the Saracen Foundry in Glasgow UK. This structure was extended in 1935, this time with steel from the Mysore Iron and Steel Company at Bhadravathi.[6]
Lalbagh is a 240 acres (0.97 km2) garden and is located in south Bengaluru. It holds two flower shows and has over 1,000 species of plants with many trees that are more than a hundred years old.[11][12]
The garden adjoins one of the towers erected by the founder of Bengaluru, Kempe Gowda. The park has some rare species of plants brought from Persia, Afghanistan and France. With an intricate watering system for irrigation, this garden is aesthetically designed, with lawns, flowerbeds, lotus pools and fountains. Most of the centuries-old trees are labelled for easy identification. The Lalbagh Rock, one of the most ancient rock formations on earth, dating back to 3,000 million years, is another attraction that attracts the crowds.[11]
GatesEdit
Lalbagh has four gates The western gate is situated near Siddapura Circle and one can enter this gate and enjoy the sylvan atmosphere of the garden. The north western wall adjoins Krumbiegal Road named after G.H. Krumbiegal, the last pre-Independence Superintendent.
The eastern gate has a wide road with Jayanagar close by. The southern gate is often referred to as a small gate and opens near Ashoka pillar. The northern gate is a fairly wide and big road leading to the Glass House and serves as the primary entrance.[13]
Tourism and eco-developmentEdit
Flower shows are conducted every year during the week of Republic day and Independence day, to educate people about the variety of flora and develop public interest in plant conservation and cultivation.[14]
The Government of Karnataka organises "Janapada Jaatre" in Lalbagh[15] on the second and fourth weekends (both Saturday and Sunday) of every month. Janapada Jaatre, which translates to Folk Fair, features folk dance, music and plays performed by troupes from all parts of Karnataka. The show mainly depicts the cultural folklore of Karnataka, the traditional costumes and musical instruments.[11]
A geological monument for the peninsular gneiss formation is also a tourist attraction at the gardens. This monument has been designated by the Geological Survey of India on the Lalbagh hill which is made up of 3,000 million-year-old peninsular gneissic rocks. One of the four cardinal towers erected by Kempegowda II, also a major tourist attraction, is seen above this hillock. This tower gives the full view of Bangalore from the top.[16][17]
Lalbagh management and public protestsEdit
The Lalbagh botanical gardens is managed by the Department of Horticulture and is no longer maintained as a botanical garden and is not a member of the Botanic Gardens Conservation International.[18] With an increasing pressure to serve as a park and social space, much of the garden has been converted into walking paths and lawns. Many tree have been trimmed or cut down to make way for public amenities or due to perceptions that falling branches may threaten visitors.[19] A part of the garden was taken over and many trees cut down amid protests for construction of the Lalbagh Metro Station as part of the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. Entry fees of INR 25 with a camera fee of INR 60 have also been a point of contention.[20] There have been repeated proposals to build various recreational amenities such as rock gardens, fountains and boating facilities. Some of these proposals of the management have been halted in the past due protests from enlightened public who have pointed out the impacts these have on the environment.[21]
ConnectivityEdit
Lalbagh is well-connected by Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation buses from Kempegowda Bus Station/Shivaji Nagar. All buses towards Jayanagar/Banashankari areas pass through one of the four gates of Lalbagh.
Lalbagh is connected by the Greenline of Namma Metro.
Lalbagh Gallery
Lalbagh or Lalbagh Botanical Gardens is a well known botanical garden in southern Bengaluru, India.
Panoramic view of the Kempegowda tower
A beautiful side view of Glass House
Interior view of the Glass house
Largest known Kapok specimen, located in Lalbagh
Evening View of the Lake
A Japanese decorative monument found in Lalbagh
A very old tree from Lalbagh
Lalbagh Lake
A statue of Sri Chamarajendra Wodeyar, ex-ruler of Mysore at Lalbagh. He also sponsored the famous journey of Swami Vivekananda to Chicago in 1893.
Lalbagh lake view
A view of lake at Lalbagh
Green Grasses
^ Vinoda, K. The Lalbagh - A History. p. 5. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
^ Benjamin Rice, Lewis (1897). Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for the Government, Volume I, Mysore In General, 1897a. Westminster: Archibald Constable and Company. p. 834.
^ "History of Lalbagh Botanical Garden". Retrieved 20 August 2015.
^ "Death". Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette. 23 January 1866. p. 3.
^ Cameron, John (1891). Catalogue of plants in the Botanical Garden, Bangalore and its vicinity (2 ed.). Bangalore: Government Press.
^ a b Bowe, Patrick (2012). "Lal Bagh - The botanical garden of Bangalore and its Kew-trained gardeners". Garden History. 40 (2): 228–238. ISSN 0307-1243. JSTOR 41719905.
^ Flower, S.S. (1914). Report on a Zoological mission to India. Cairo: Government Press. pp. 40–41.
^ Vinoda, K. (1989) The Lalbagh - A history 1760-1932. Department of History, Bangalore University.
^ a b "A jewel in Lalbagh's crown". Deccan Herald. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
^ Suresh Singh, Kumar (2003). People of India: Karnataka Vol. xxvi. Affiliated East-West Press (Pvt.) Ltd. ISBN 978-8-1859-3898-1.
^ a b c "Department of Horticulture, Bangalore". Retrieved 20 August 2015.
^ Bowe, Patrick (2002) Charles Maries: Garden Superintendent to Two Indian Maharajas. Garden History 30(1):84-94
^ http://www.horticulture.kar.nic.in/Design_final/lalbagh/History_of_Lalbagh.html
^ "Lal Bagh Flower Show 2008 Ticket Booking". Retrieved 1 March 2009.
^ "Lalbagh Botanical Garden Info".
^ "Peninsular Gneiss". Geological Survey of India. Retrieved 27 February 2009.
^ National Geological Monuments, pages 96, Peninsular Gneiss, page29-32. Geological Survey of India,27, Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Kolkata-700016. 2001. ISSN 0254-0436.
^ Lalbagh Botanical Garden
^ Tree felling in Lalbagh. August 7, 2010. Deccan Herald.
^ Entry, parking fees at Lalbagh set to go up. 8 October 2018. The Hindu.
^ Making Lalbagh see green. 21 July 2014. Times of India.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lal Bagh Botanical Garden.
Catalogue of plants in 1891
The Lalbagh - A History
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lal_Bagh&oldid=905622170"
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2 Foubert Place London, W1
Number of locations
26 in UK; 90 international franchises
Toys, Games
£43 million (2011)
Reliance Retail
www.hamleys.com
Hamleys is an Indian-owned toy retailer, one of the largest in the world. It is currently owned by the Indian company Reliance Retail.
It was founded by William Hamley as "Noahs Ark" in High Holborn, London, in 1760, it moved to its current site on Regent Street in 1881. This flagship store is set over seven floors, with more than 50,000 lines of toys on sale. It is considered one of the city's prominent tourist attractions, receiving around five million visitors each year. The chain has ten other outlets in the United Kingdom and also has more than 60 franchises worldwide.
2 United Kingdom stores
2.1 Regent Street
2.2 Other UK stores
3 Global stores
Hamleys, Regent Street
Hamleys is the oldest and largest toy shop in the world.[1][2] It is named after William Hamley, who founded a toy shop called "Noah's Ark" at No. 231 High Holborn, London, in 1760. Ownership of the shop passed through the family, and by the time it was operated by Hamley's grandsons in 1837, the store had become famous, counting royalty and nobility among its customers.[3]
A branch at No. 200 Regent Street was opened in 1881; the original High Holborn shop was destroyed by fire in 1901 and was subsequently relocated to Nos. 86–87 High Holborn.[4] The Regent Street branch later expanded to Nos. 188-196.[3]
In 1938, Queen Mary, consort of King George V, gave Hamleys a royal warrant.[3] During the Second World War, the Regent Street store was bombed five times. In 1955, Queen Elizabeth II gave the company a second royal warrant as a "toys and sports merchant".
Hamleys was bought in June 2003 by the Baugur Group, an Icelandic investment company. When Baugur collapsed, its stake in the toy store was taken over by the Icelandic bank Landsbanki. In September 2012 Groupe Ludendo, a toy retailer based in France with shops also located in Belgium, Spain and Switzerland, bought Hamleys for a reported £60 million.[5] In October 2015 it was reported that Groupe Ludendo was negotiating the sale of Hamleys, possibly to a Hong Kong company owned by a relative of the owner of department store House of Fraser.[6] It was subsequently purchased by C.Banner, a large Chinese footwear and fashion wear conglomerate based in Nanjing.[7]
In May 2019, Indian retail company, Reliance Retail, part of the Reliance Industries, announced that it has acquired Hamleys for 67.96 million pounds (around ₹620 crore) in an all-cash deal.[8]
United Kingdom stores[edit]
Regent Street[edit]
Regent Street shop interior
Hamleys expanded and moved its flagship store from No. 200 Regent Street to its current site at Nos. 188–196, Regent Street, in 1981, which is the largest toy shop in the world.
Hamleys' flagship store has seven floors covering 54,000 square feet (5,000 m2),[9] all devoted to playthings, with different categories of toy on each floor. The ground floor is traditionally for stuffed toys (including Steiff), and is decked out with a diverse array of stuffed animals, from regular teddy bears to more exotic plushes such as turtles and dolphins, and enormous life-sized giraffes and elephants.
Other UK stores[edit]
In 1987 Hamleys' second store was opened in York, however it was closed less than 12 months later.[10]
In 1987 Hamleys opened a new store in one of the richest shopping streets in the UK, Northumberland Street, Newcastle upon Tyne. Surprisingly, it traded for only 12 months, and closed in 1988. It had seemed a "perfect combination" (Hamleys and Northumberland Street) but it didn't work out. Sadly, despite extensive research, no photos of Hamleys in Newcastle seem to exist.
Now, in 2019, there are ten Hamleys stores across the UK, including sites at the St. Enoch Centre in Glasgow,[11] at the Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester, at Lakeside Shopping Centre in Essex, St David's Centre in Cardiff, York and at airports including London Heathrow, London Gatwick, London Stansted[12] and Manchester.
Global stores[edit]
A Hamleys store at the shopping mall Emporia in Malmö, Sweden.
Hamleys' European footprint existed in Denmark (three small stores) and, since October 2008, the Republic of Ireland, when it opened a 3,250-square-metre (35,000 sq ft) store in Pembroke Avenue, located adjacent to the Town Square in Dundrum, Dublin.[13][14][15] On 12 October 2012, a Hamleys store opened at Nacka in Stockholm, Sweden. On 19 September 2013, a Hamley store opened as part of Steen og Strøm department store in Oslo, Norway. In April 2014 the Hamleys Denmark toy chain closed all four of its Danish locations when its Nordic parent company, Kids Retails, filed for bankruptcy.[16]
Hamleys opened its first store outside Europe in Amman, Jordan, on 18 June 2008. The three-storey store on Mecca Street is run by the group's franchisee Jordan Centre.[17] A Dubai franchise opened with two stores on 4 November 2008.[18]
The first store in South Asia was opened in Mumbai, India, on 9 April 2010.[9] The 22,000-square-foot (2,000 m2) store is located in an upmarket shopping district in India's financial capital. A second store in India is located in the city of Chennai at the Express Avenue Mall. The 11,000 sq ft store has a London bus that customers can walk up through. It now has 78 stores in India, including three stores in Punjab with a recently opened store in Amritsar on 1 February 2018. Hamleys also opened its first store in Bhubaneswar at Esplanade One Mall On 10 January 2019. Hamleys also opened its first store in Lucknow at Fun Republic Mall. With this addition, the brand is now present in 26 cities with 50 stores across India. In Gujarat, Hamleys opened its first store at Ahmedabad One mall with 11,000 sqft on 9 November 2014.
Hamleys' opened a store in the Saudi capital Riyadh on 26 January 2012. The 2,100 sq m shop is located in the Panorama mall at Takhassusi Street's intersection with Prince Mohammed Road.[19]
In 2012 Hamleys opened its first store in Russia. It now operates two in Moscow, one in Saint-Petersburg and one in Krasnodar.[20]
In 2013, Hamleys announced plans to open 20 stores across India in collaboration with Reliance Brands Ltd..[21] The company also announced that a store would open in the One Utama Shopping Mall in Kuala Lumpur, in November 2013, the first in south-east Asia. Malaysia is now a home for 3 Hamleys stores, with new outlets opened in the Quill Mall, Kuala Lumpur and in the satellite terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
In 2014, Hamleys opened its first store in the Philippines. The store opened in Central Square, Bonifacio Highstreet, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.[22] A second Philippine Hamleys store is also set to open the following year.[23] Stores Specialists Inc. (SSI) Group is the exclusive distributor of Hamleys in the Philippines.
In 2015, an Abu Dhabi franchise opened with two stores in World Trade Centre Mall (WTC) and Yas Mall, Yas Island.
In July 2015, a store opened in Plaza Singapura, Singapore. This is the first Hamleys store to be established in Singapore.[24] Subsequently, a second store was introduced at Marina Bay Sands.[25]
On 20 August 2015, a store opened in Greenstone Mall, Johannesburg, South Africa. Two other stores have opened in South Africa: at Mall of Africa and Eastgate.
In November 2015, a store opened at Antara Polanco Fashion Mall in Mexico City, its first store in Mexico. As of June 2018, there are 4 stores in Mexico: one in Querétaro at Antea Lifestyle Center, one in Veracruz at Andamar Lifestyle Center and two in Mexico City at Antara Polanco Fashion Mall and Artz Pedregal.
There's one store in Nicosia, Cyprus. There is also a store in Malta.
In 2016, Hamleys opened a store in Prague (Czech Republic), at the centre of the city, Na Příkopě street.
In 2017, a Hamleys store was opened in Hull, England to celebrate the UK City of Culture, in the shopping centre, Princes Quay.
In April 2018, it was confirmed that the Dublin store would close after being open for 10 years.
In December 2018, it was also announced that the Trafford Centre branch would close after a short time in operation.
In April 2019 it was reported that an Indian Company Reliance Retail was planning to buy out the British toy store chain.[26]
In May 2019 it was confirmed that Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited on 9 May 2019 signed a definitive agreement for Reliance Retail to acquire 100 per cent shares of Hamleys Global Holdings Limited.[27]. Kuwait is planning to open a Hamleys in The Gate Mall [28]
Website[edit]
In the 1990s Hamleys had two websites, one for the UK which did not sell anything, and a US version[29] with a basic inventory. This changed in 1999 with the launch of hamleys.com. The site offered worldwide shipping and focused on user experience, customer service and the sale of traditional products and collectables.[29] The chief executive of Hamleys told Marketing Magazine "I do not want to become embroiled with the likes of Toys 'R'Us, Toyzone and eToys, which are fighting on price alone and will end up making next to no margin".[30]
In 2006, a glitch on the website allowed customers to claim a 60% discount on any product.[31][32]
Econsultancy critiqued the site for its basic approach in 2013, and felt that it "doesn't do a lot to represent the brand, in fact it may even detract from it".[33]
Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop
Gamleys
^ Peter Matthews, Michelle Dunkley McCarthy (1994). The Guinness Book of Records 1994. Facts on File. p. 134.
^ Donald McFarlan, Norris McWhirter (1990). The Guinness Book of Records 1991. Guinness. p. 135.
^ a b c "The history of Hamleys". BBC News. 11 February 2010.
^ History - once upon a time a boy dreamed of owning a toy shop, Hamleys, retrieved 4 August 2009
^ "Hamleys toy chain sold to French firm Groupe Ludendo". BBC News Online. 17 September 2012. Retrieved 17 September 2012.
^ Shah, Oliver (18 October 2015). "Hamleys handover". The Times.
^ "Official website - C.banner International Holdings". cbanner.com.cn. C.banner International Holdings. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
^ "Reliance takeover of Hamleys". Mumbai Mirror. 10 May 2019.
^ a b "UK toy retailer Hamleys opens first store in India". NDTV. 8 April 2010. Archived from the original on 10 April 2010. Retrieved 8 April 2010.
^ "Hamleys returning to York after 17 years", The Press (York), Newsquest Media Group, 18 October 2005, archived from the original on 4 July 2009, retrieved 8 April 2009
^ Garavelli, Dani. "London toy shop Hamleys opens its doors in the St Enoch Centre, Glasgow, today.". The Scotsman. 26 November 2009
^ "A new store at Stansted Airport is child's play for Hamleys". Herts and Essex Observer. Archived from the original on 19 December 2014. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
^ Hamleys Toy Store Opens In Dublin, British Embassy in Ireland, archived from the original on 27 October 2008, retrieved 8 April 2009
^ http://www.dundrum.ie/pdf/FINAL_03%2006%202008_Hamley%27s%20Consumer%20Release.pdf[permanent dead link]
^ Fagan, Jack (4 June 2008), "€1 million rent for top toy store Hamleys in Dundrum", The Irish Times, retrieved 8 April 2009
^ "Hamleys Denmark closes outlets following bankruptcy". cphpost. 2 April 2014. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
^ Thompson, James (18 June 2008), "Hamleys opens first store overseas", The Independent, retrieved 8 April 2009
^ Roberts, Katie (4 November 2008), "Hamleys Dubai opens today", Toy News Online, retrieved 8 April 2009
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 22 September 2012. Retrieved 28 January 2012. CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
^ "Магазин Hamleys (Хэмлис) – плюшевые и интерактивные игрушки, детские товары, конструкторы, гаджеты". www.hamleys.ru.
^ "Reliance Retail aims to have 20 Hamleys stores in next 3 yrs". 3 February 2013. Retrieved 17 July 2013.
^ "SSI Group brings in iconic toy brand", Philippine Daily Inquirer, 22 December 2014, retrieved 22 December 2014
^ Vila, Alixandra Caole (22 December 2014), "Largest toy shop in the world opens branch in the Philippines", Philippine Star, retrieved 22 December 2014
^ http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/british-toy-giant-hamleys-lands-in-singapore-8238262
^ hermes (23 July 2015). "British toy store Hamleys opens here". The Straits Times.
^ "Reliance Retail may buy out British toy store chain Hamleys". 17 April 2019.
^ "Reliance Industries buys global toy retailer Hamleys". The Economic Times. 19 May 2019.
^ title=Hamley's Opening in The Gate Mall|url=https://248am.com/mark/toys/hamleys-opening-in-gate-mall/
^ a b Doward, Jamie (21 November 1999). "Accountant's plan to make fun of Hamleys Once a Virgin high-flier, Simon Burke now has a British institution as his play thing". The Observer. Retrieved 8 April 2014.
^ "Hamleys revamp aims at US", Marketing Magazine, 15 December 1999, retrieved 7 April 2014
^ "Net Vikings pillage Hamleys website Voucher scheme error provokes festive carnage". theregister.co.uk. 19 December 2006. Retrieved 7 April 2014.
^ "Hamleys website suffers web glitch - offers toys 60% below true price". computer weekly. 19 December 2006. Retrieved 7 April 2014.
^ Charlton, G. "Why is Hamleys failing to make the most of ecommerce?". econsultancy.com. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
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Coordinates: 51°30′46″N 0°08′25″W / 51.5128°N 0.1402°W / 51.5128; -0.1402
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The Body (King novella)
(Redirected from The Body (novella))
Find sources: "The Body" King novella – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
2009 audiobook edition cover
Coming-of-age story
Print (Hardcover)
The Body is a novella by American writer Stephen King, originally published in his 1982 collection Different Seasons and adapted into the 1986 film Stand by Me. Some changes were made to the plot of the film, including changing the setting year from 1960 to 1959 and the location of Castle Rock from Maine to Oregon.
The story takes place during the summer of 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. After a boy from Chamberlain, Maine, named Ray Brower disappears and is presumed dead, twelve-year-old[1] Gordie Lachance and his three friends, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio set out "on a quest"[1] to find his body along the railway tracks[1] after telling their parents they will be camping out because they consider it to be a "rite of passage."[2] "Because they are young, the idea of finding the body excites them, making this trip an adventure." [1] During the course of their journey, the boys, who all come from abusive or dysfunctional families, come to grips with death and the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that does not seem to offer them much in the way of a future.[1] "It is not until they actually see the boy's body that they finally confront the reality of death."[1]
"The kid was dead. The kid wasn't sick, the kid wasn't sleeping. The kid wasn't going to get up in the morning anymore ... or catch poison ivy or wear out the eraser on the end of his Ticonderoga No 2 during a hard math test. The kid was dead."[1]
In comparison to King's prior works, the narrative of The Body is complicated in that it is told in first-person point of view by the now adult Gordon Lachance. Most of the story is a straightforward retrospective of what happened, but comments, or entire chapters that relate to the present time, are interspersed throughout. Although he is only 12 at the time of the story, Gordie's favorite diversion is writing and storytelling. During the narrative, he tells stories to his friends, and two stories are presented in the text as short stories by Gordon Lachance, complete with attribution to the magazines in which they were published.
1 Plot summary
2 Accusation of plagiarism
3 Critical reception
Plot summary[edit]
Vern Tessio informs his three friends that he has overheard his older brother, Billy, talking with his friend Charlie Hogan, about inadvertently discovering the corpse of Ray Brower, a boy from Chamberlain, a town 40 miles or so east of Castle Rock, who has gone missing while going out to pick blueberries. The four friends decide to find it so as to be famous.
Gordie explains how he and each of his friends come from either abusive or dysfunctional homes:
Gordie's older brother Dennis (a.k.a. Denny) has been killed in a car accident while undergoing basic training in the army, and his parents (who are old enough to be his grandparents) have largely ignored him since then. Gordie also struggles over his brother's death and searches for a way to make peace with his loss.
Chris is regularly abused by his alcoholic father and older brother, and is treated with contempt by his teachers because of his family's criminal reputation.
Teddy's father suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from World War II and burned both of Teddy's ears against a stove in a fit of rage that caused him to be sentenced to a sanitarium. Although he suffers vision and hearing problems, Teddy still holds his father in high regard due to his military service.
Vern, although his parents do not seem to be abusive towards him, is harassed by his brother and continues a long-term search for a jar containing several dollars' worth of pennies he buried under his porch. Gordie, Chris, and Teddy all believe that Vern's brother Billy stole the jar. Vern refuses to believe this since he hates his brother and doesn't want to admit Billy outsmarted him.
The boys walk along the railroad tracks toward the presumed location of the corpse. Along the way, they trespass at the town dump and are chased by Chopper, the dump custodian Milo Pressman's dog. Milo insults Teddy's father, which causes Teddy to unleash his anger on Milo. Gordie and Vern are nearly run over by a train while crossing a trestle. While at a resting point, Chris predicts that Gordie will grow up to become a famous writer – perhaps he will even write about his friends one day.
When the boys finally find the body, a gang of bullies arrives just after they do. The gang is composed of leader John "Ace" Merrill, Vern's older brother Billy, Chris's older brother Richard (nicknamed "Eyeball"), Charlie Hogan, Norman "Fuzzy" Bracowicz, Vince Desjardins, and Jack "Jackie" Mudgett. The older boys are upset to see the younger group of four friends, and during an argument, Chris pulls a gun belonging to his father from his bag and fires into the air. Chris then threatens Ace, and after a brief standoff, Ace realizes that Chris is serious and the teenagers leave. Having seen the body, the boys realize that there is nothing else to be done with it and return home without further incident.
The older boys ultimately decide to phone in the location of the body as an "anonymous tip", and it is eventually found by the authorities. Some days after the confrontation, Ace and Fuzzy break Gordie's nose and fingers, and kick him in the testicles, and are on the verge of harming him more seriously when they are run off by Gordie's neighbor, Aunt Evvie Chalmers. Eyeball breaks his brother's arm and "leaves his face looking like a Canadian sunrise". Teddy and Vern get less severe beatings, but the boys refuse to identify their assailants to the authorities, and there are no further repercussions.
The narration then goes into fast-forward, and Gordie describes the next year or so briefly, stating that Teddy and Vern drifted off, befriending some younger boys. In high school, just as Chris predicted, Gordie begins taking college preparation courses; unexpectedly, so does Chris. In spite of abuse from his father, taunts from his classmates, and distrust from teachers and even school counselors, he manages to be successful with help from Gordie.
The final two chapters describe the fates of Gordie's three friends, none of whom survive past young adulthood:
Vern is killed in a house fire after a party in 1966.
Teddy, while under the influence of alcohol and drugs, crashes his car in 1972, killing himself and his passengers.
Chris, who became an outstanding high school and college student, and is in his second year of law school, is fatally stabbed after trying to stop an argument in a fast-food restaurant.
Gordie, the only survivor, continues to write stories through college, and publishes a number of them in small literary journals and men's magazines. His first novel becomes a best-seller and a successful film. Since writing about the events in 1960, he has written seven novels about the supernatural. Gordie has a wife and three children, and is revealed to be a veteran of the Vietnam War and the counter-culture of the 1960s, occasionally referred to in the flash-forward narratives during the main story.
The story ends with Gordie visiting Castle Rock and seeing Ace, realizing that he managed to escape the town and is finally able to make peace with the painful memories of his childhood.
Accusation of plagiarism[edit]
In Lisa Rogak's unauthorized biography Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King, a friend of King's, George McLeod, claimed that King had cribbed the idea for The Body from a short story McLeod had written, but these claims are disputed by King. McLeod requested a portion of the royalties from The Body and Stand by Me; King refused. McLeod sued, which ended their friendship. Since then, King has refused his fans' requests to read their manuscripts for advice; King has claimed that he is concerned that there may be further accusations of plagiarism.[3]
Critical reception[edit]
Aaron Burch, a lecturer in English at the University of Michigan, wrote Stephen King's The Body: Bookmarked,[4] which analyzes the novella and describes how it influenced Burch's life, including inspiring him to become a writer.[5]
Stephen King short fiction bibliography
^ a b c d e f g May, Charles E. & Magill, Frank N. (Eds). (2001). Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press Inc.
^ May, Charles E. & Magill, Frank N. (Eds). (2001). Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press Inc.
^ Rogak, Lisa (January 5, 2010). Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King (First ed.). St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0-312-60350-9.
^ Burch, Aaron (15 July 2016). Stephen King's The Body: Bookmarked. Brooklyn, New York: Ig Publishing. ISBN 978-1632460301. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
^ Rich, Jacob (7 September 2016). "Author Aaron Burch talks Stephen King's 'The Body' in his new book". The Michigan Daily. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
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Equity Crowdfunding & THE JOBS Act: A Presentation by Kendall Almerico
By Elizabeth Breedlove | July 31, 2016
Check out the video above to hear from Kendall Almerico, one of the country’s leading crowdfunding and JOBS Act attorneys, and learn more about equity crowdfunding.
Kendall:
I’m Kendall Almerico, crowdfunding and JOBS Act attorney. I’m here today to talk to everyone about the JOBS Act and to explain to you things that relate to how the JOBS Act works, so you’ll understand the law itself as it relates to equity crowdfunding, but also more importantly so you’ll understand as to the world of marketing how it fits in. One of the things you have to know is a little bit about the law before you actually can apply the marketing to it. There are several different ways this law works and there are several different ways people will use the law. I’m going to go through all of that. Some of it may be a little bit technical and wonky. I’ll answer questions later, but I’m going to make it as easy as possible because it’s really not that complicated.
Just by way of to prove that I really am kind of a big deal, I’m one of the top crowdfunding and JOBS Act attorneys in the country according to Forbes. Of course, I may well be the only JOBS Act and crowdfunding attorney in the country, at least when they said that. I’ve been recognized as an expert in this stuff for quite some time. I’ve known Roy for quite a while and I’m here to try to educate you the best I can, but the reality is, that’s me. My little [inaudible 00:01:10] every now and then. I’ve got 27 years’ experience helping people start and grow businesses, and that’s not just as a lawyer. I’ve always been involved as an entrepreneur. I’ve always been involved in the marketing end of things. I get involved with people from the top to bottom. When I get involved with their company, it’s not just, “Here’s your legal documents,” and go away. I like to stay involved and be a part of everything because getting them funded is only part of the problem. Once you get that done, then there’s a whole another world that needs to be taken care of.
Let’s start off and everyone in this room knows what rewards crowdfunding is, but I’m going to use this as a very simple example first to start and talk about why crowdfunding and equity crowdfunding came to be because this is something you may actually get asked at certain points in time, people historically are sometimes interested. Crowdfunding has been around forever. People have passed the hat at churches forever, that’s crowdfunding. The base of the Statue of Liberty was crowdfunded. Actually, Joseph Pulitzer was the editor of the New York World newspaper and famously went to his readers and said, “We don’t have money to put the Statue of Liberty on something,” and got 100,000 readers to give a dollar or less. They raised $125,000. They gave away a reward, a little Statue of Liberty to people. They actually did like on Kickstarter, and they built the base.
It’s been around for a long time. It really had its stride in response to 2007-2008 when the country went through a financial crisis. Banks simply stop loaning money to people. Before 2007 and my practice for 20 years, I would, if Jessica came to me and said, “I want to start a business Kendall.” She gave me a business plan and I liked it, and I signed on to be a part of it. I could go to any of the banks in Tampa where I lived, go to the bank president and say, “Jessica needs $100,000 line of credit to start her business.” Now, Jessica doesn’t have a house. She doesn’t have collateral, but she has a great business plan. I like it. I’m going to be a part of it. They would write her a line of credit to be able to start her business. I probably caused the entire financial crisis by doing that. The reality is, it was easy to get money from a bank.
Once 2007-2008 came around, banks stopped lending to everyone. Small businesses had no way to raise money initially if they weren’t B, C funded or something else. They weren’t getting money. Crowdfunding came out of that interestingly. Indiegogo launched in 2008. Kickstarter launched in 2009. They really hit their stride with … I’d like to tell the story of the $10,000 watch. That’s a Breitling Bentley. I happen to be wearing one right now, mine cost $80. I bought it in Times Square for my [inaudible 00:03:51]. This is the $10-million watch which we’ve all heard the story of the Pebble watch. The Pebble watch of course was one of the first really big Kickstarter rewards campaigns that kind of put Kickstarter on the map.
You started reading about crowdfunding. You started reading about these types of rewards crowdfunding campaigns in the news. The Wall Street Journal covered it. All the big press covered it because all of a sudden, a company had gone out and done what you guys do all the time. They raised money for something that doesn’t exist. A product that is going to be made. You were pre-ordering a product. They raised $10 million doing this. When I first heard about this, and I was trying to explain this to people. I just show this picture if I’m trying to explain this to my grandmother if she were still around. “Grandma, you’re going to send $150 to this company for a watch they haven’t made yet. In 6 months, if they figure out how to do it and make it, they’re going to send you the watch.” Her head would have exploded.
This concept was very foreign to people. However, it started to catch on. As a result, the success is in the rewards world. People like me who are lawyers started going, “Why can’t we start selling securities like this? If you can get people to send you $150 to buy something, why can’t they send you $150 for a couple shares of stock in your company?” They can’t. It was blatantly, totally illegal. For 80 years in the United States, the securities laws said you’re not allowed to sell securities to the general public online. You’re not allowed to advertise that you’re selling securities unless you’re a publicly traded company. Those companies you see in the New York Stock Exchange or those kinds of companies, they can do it, but private companies couldn’t.
The whole thing started as a result of this. Now, I’m going to give you an example of a company that I represent right now that’s about to do an equity crowdfunding campaign to kind of illustrate how it can work, and how it’s a little different than doing something on Kickstarter. BrewDog is a client of mine. In about 7 to 10 days, they’re going to launch their first equity crowdfunding campaign in the United States. There’s already equity crowdfunding going on in the UK. Their law went into effect at about the same time as the US laws. However, US laws didn’t get, put into effect by the SEC for over 3-1/2 to 4 years. The law was passed, but you couldn’t use it.
In UK, the law got passed and people are allowed to use it. BrewDog has done 4 equity crowdfunding offerings over the last 4 years and has raised 26 million pounds from 46,000 investors using their law. They went from 2 guys and a dog, in the back of a pickup truck to now the largest craft brewery in all of Europe. They have 44 brew pubs that are from São Paulo to Tokyo, all of which are profitable. They employ over 600 people, and they are the fastest growing food and drink company in the UK, the past 4 years straight. That all started with equity crowdfunding. They didn’t raise a dime from venture capitalists, or equity, or angel investors that all shows how this can work. They’re about to do one here in the United States. It’s going to be what we call Regulation A offering. I’ll talk about that in a minute.
They’re going to use this to build their own brewery here in Columbus, Ohio, which by the way is now 80% done. They’re raising the money to not only finish it, which they’ll finish it without the money. They are building this thing because they want to take their beer which when you … Anybody who doesn’t know about craft beer, a little education. Craft beer is not like buying Miller beer or buying Budweiser. There’s no preservatives in it. It’s not built to last on store shelves. You can’t ship it somewhere, sell it 6 months later. It has about a 90-day shelf life max, because there’s no preservatives. They would take their beer from the UK. They were in Whole Foods in all over the United States. They would ship it to the United States. It would sit in the port. By the time it got through customs, and it got under trucks, and got to the stores, half of the shelf-life was gone.
These guys are master brewers. These are not jokers that just decided to do this. 3 of the top 11 Master Cicerones which is ultimately the same thing as a sommelier, 3 of the 11 work for BrewDog. These guys are very serious about their beer. They didn’t like the way their beer taste in the United States. They said, “It’s the biggest market. We’re going to go into that market. We’re going to build our own brewery,” which is twice the size of their brewery in the UK. They’re going to employ 3- or 400 people the day it opens in the UK. They’re going to fund the entire thing through equity crowdfunding. It’s just a great example of how the stuff kind of work. It’s on a scale that could be much, much larger than anything that can be done on Kickstarter.
What’s the JOBS Act? The JOBS Act interestingly enough, people look at this and say, “Oh, it must have something to do with jobs.” JOBS Act stands, it’s actually an acronym for the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. This is the law that legalized equity crowdfunding in the United States. It was signed into law on April 5th, 2012 after passing through congress, both sides of congress, bilateral support, very few people objected to it. The brilliance of this law is that it really was like 7 different laws crammed into 1 that don’t make a lot of sense to each other. I’ll talk about some of those in a minute. They put it all under this heading called the JOBS Act.
There was a congressional staffer who named it because they’re having trouble getting support for this in congress, because they were all these different weird laws that didn’t make sense together. Congressional staffer said, “If we call it the JOBS Act and come up with something that has the word jobs in it, everyone’s going to vote for it.” That’s how it ended up be called the JOBS Act, even though as you’ll see the parts we’re going to talk about today, 3 different laws all of which involved equity crowdfunding, all of which have totally different rules that make no sense together. That’s where it gets complicated for all you guys.
There’s 3 different parts of it we’re going to talk about today. There’s Title II, Title III, and Title IV. I’ll talk about this specifically one at a time here so you have an understanding of what they actually are. Title II was the first part of the JOBS Act to go into effect. Title II is also known as a Private Placement, Regulation D, section 506(c). These are all the magical terms people use, but I call it accredited investor crowdfunding. What you’re allowed to do with a Title II offering is you can raise money, but only from accredited investors. Accredited investors are people that qualify. They have to either make $200,000 a year in income, have a net worth of over a million dollars, or with their spouse of over $300,000 a year in income.
You’re talking about a limited number of people. They have to prove that they have the money. They have to prove that they meet this criteria, or they’re not allowed to invest in these deals. It’s been legal since September of 2013. There’s actually been about $70 billion go through this method of raising money since it happened which is a lot of money, but a fraction of the money that actually goes through the private placement world at this time. The big thing that this law did, it opened the doors for the other things that you guys will do a lot more of, although I’m sure you’re involved in some of these before. I know Roy and I worked on a couple. The big part about this law was, it was the first securities law ever to allow general solicitation for private companies. The means, you’re allowed to advertise.
General solicitation simply means, you can market and advertise. It was 80 years of that’s totally illegal. If you sent an email to somebody saying, “I’m selling stock.” Your company had violated securities laws. If you took an ad out, a press release saying you’re selling stock as a private company, those were all violations that could get you in a lot of trouble with the SEC. This was the first part of the JOBS Act that said, “Hey, we live in 2012. People advertise online. People have social media. Let’s let them use it.” This opened the door for the things that we’ll talk about later, but this was the first law that ever allowed general solicitation.
What’s interesting about this law is you can raise as much money as you want. There’s no limit. If you want to go out and try and raise a billion dollars, you can raise a billion dollars through a private placement. There’s no cap on it. Accredited investors can invest as much money as they want. If they want to put in 10 million, 20 million, $30 million, they can invest anything they want because the theory is, they’re rich. They’re smart enough to know if it’s a bad deal. That’s the theory behind it. You realize as we grow into these other ones that the congress and the SEC seem to think that anyone who’s not rich isn’t smart enough to figure out what to do. They’re just going to throw all their money away on some horrible investment. They put all kinds of caps and things like that.
Title III, or as we call it the True Equity Crowdfunding Law, or Regulation CF, it’s been in effect for now almost 60 days. The law was passed in 2012, 4 years, 5 months, and 6 days later, but who’s counting? The SEC finally made it legal to actually use this law literally 2 months ago. I waited that long for this law to go into effect. It’s exactly like going on Kickstarter. It looks just like a Kickstarter campaign. The only difference is instead of you saying, pushing the button and donating, you push the button that says I’m investing. When you go into the checkout process, you’re not allowed to use credit cards. It’s not legal to use credit cards to buy securities. You have to either wire the money, write a check, type in your bank account information and ACH the money. They’re just starting to let people use debit cards which just happened in the last week literally. Ultimately, it’s almost the exact same thing as going on Kickstarter and doing something.
Anyone can invest. Under these Title III rules, anyone can invest, not just accredited investors. You’re limited to raising a million dollars as a company under this law. There’s a cap. You can only raise a million dollars, and the most important thing is, it’s very much like a Kickstarter campaign and that it is an all or nothing campaign. When you do a Title III campaign, if you set a goal and don’t hit your goal, you don’t get any of the money. I want to show you or talk to you about some of the examples of the early stages of people doing this wrong which you guys already know I’m dealing with Kickstarter before, very, very important part of the process is setting a goal that’s reachable. The difference is, you screw up in Kickstarter, the worst thing that happens is some people get mad at you. Maybe some attorney general somewhere might come after you for false advertising, but that rarely ever happens.
Here, when you set a goal, you better be able to do what that goal money, what you say you’re going to do if you’re a company. If you’d go in and say, “I need to build a brewery and I need $500,000 to build the brewery.” You’ve got to set a minimum of $500,000. You can’t say, “I have to build a brewery. I’m going to raise $25,000 right now, and then hopefully I’ll somehow get the other money and build a brewery.” If you do that, you are going to get sued by a whole lot of people, and you are going to get an enforcement action by the SEC which can include criminal charges. You wouldn’t be making those decisions.
When companies talk to you about this, it’s a little bit more dangerous on the all or nothing. I encourage clients to set their number as low as possible. Then create what we call a Use of Proceeds where you tell people we’re going to use this money for X, Y, and Z, but make it something you can do with that money. Don’t say, “I have to build a brewery.” If you need $500,000 to build a brewery you say, “We’re going to raise $50,000 or $25,000 and that’s going to be used for X. If we get to $100,000, we’re going to use that for Y. If we get to $500,000, we’re going to build the brewery.” As long as you do it that way, you’re okay.
Title IV, this is my favorite part of the JOBS Act. This is Regulation A or regulation A+, they actually mean the same thing, the mini-IPO. This went into effect last year in June. Again, it looks exactly like a Kickstarter campaign or Indiegogo campaign online. Anyone can invest in the general public. There’s a limit of $50 million you can raise with this law, not 1 million. It’s not all or nothing. If you want to raise $20 million but you only raised $10 million, you get to keep it if you’re a company. You’re probably sitting there looking at these 2 going, “Well, why in the hell would anybody use Title III? It makes no sense this law is clearly better. Everything about it is better.” The problem is, it cost a small fortune to do this.
Title III cost not a lot to do. There’s a lot of regulation that goes with this that you don’t have with Title III. We’ll talk about some of those things later because if the JOBS Act were just, here are 3 different ways to do and all the rules are the same, nobody would use anything but this. There would be no reason to. However, this is the hardest one from a legal standpoint, an accounting standpoint, a cost standpoint to do. Good news for you guys, all the marketing is the same for any of these things. We’ll talk a little bit about Title II which is a little different.
The ones where you’re going to the general public, what you’ve been doing for Kickstarter campaigns or Indiegogo campaigns is the same. It’s not going to change. You’re still trying to do the same types of things, build a crowd, get people excited, get pressed for the thing, drive people to a certain page to invest all the things you already do, building social media. None of that’s going to change except you have to follow new rules which you have to deal with, which we’re going to talk about. You will want to take notes when we get to that part because I even have to look at these things and I’m going off. A little scary.
This is just an example of what a page would look like. It doesn’t look much different. This is what BrewDog’s page will look like when it launches in 7 days. The only difference is I wanted you to see the Invest Now button. Pretty much every site has a button that says invest now instead of donate. They all pretty much look the same when you get them online. With Title III, this is something that’s kind of interesting, so I wanted to point it out. This is a live offering on a site called Wefunder right now, which is sort of taken the lead in the Title III world. Title III again, up to a million dollars that you can raise from anybody in the public. One of the things that Title III requires is that you have to have a communication section on the site where people can communicate with the company. People can post questions. You can have a chat room. You can have a question and answer. However you do it, it’s required by law.
As marketing people who are involved in this, this is going to become a very important part of what you do, because the only place a company is allowed to communicate back and forth with investors about an offering is on the actual website. This is the place where everything has to be public. You’re going to have a whole list of people making comments. Guess what? If you go on as the company’s marketing firm and you post some things, “Oh, this is great. I love this. This is wonderful.” You just committed a giant securities law violation. Any communications that are done on here by the company have to be identified as coming from the company. You have to say, “I’m the president of the company, I’m posting this,” or “I’m the neighbor of the president of the company.” Any relation you have to disclose. This is very important because as marketing people, as we all know, people like to post some negative things.
This was the very first comment on which I thought was great. That’s why I picked this very first comment for this Legion M offering that’s going on right now on Wefunder. It’s “I don’t understand what happens after investment. Everything is very vague. I’d like to know 100% of what my investment is getting me.” Imagine, this is going to be very common. I would imagine one of the things you guys would want to do is come up with a pretty standard Q and A with your clients and make sure that you have things that addressed the common questions that people would have. This is an opportunity to sell also. You take that question. You turn it into a positive. “Now that you asked, here’s what you get.” It’s a great opportunity to address problems publicly, and like many people used Twitter as their customer service now. It’s all public, so use it. Use it as a positive.
Who can invest? Each of these laws is different. I’m going to go through a few slides here. I go through each of the laws and talk to you, so you can kind of see how they all work together. Who can invest in a Title II private placement? Again, Title II is just to the accredited investors. People in the general public, not allowed to invest. What does that mean? If you go to a site that’s running a Title II private placement, you have to check a button, a little box before you’re allowed to even see most of the offering. You can see a little bit of it. If you actually want to invest and see the documents, you have to check a box that says, “I’m telling you, I’m an accredited investor,” to be able to even see it.
Then once you decide to invest, and you’re checking out in the process and saying I’m putting this money in, you actually have to be verified. There’s an independent process that takes place behind the scenes to make sure you’re an accredited investor. I won’t go in all the details, but that all happens behind the scenes on these websites. If you’re not an accredited investor, you’re not allowed to invest at all. With Title III and Title IV, with a million dollar and the $50 million, anyone can invest. There are some limits on what you can invest that we’ll get into. This is my most complicated slide. I actually put an arrow and just to be as complicated as possible. Let’s talk about the easy one first. Title II, accredited investors can invest as much as they want, as little as they want. There’s no limits whatsoever on what they can invest.
With Title III, the one that goes up to a million dollars, it’s a complicated formula. I actually have to read it every time to figure it out. Now on the sites, this will all get taken care of automatically. How much do you make? What’s your net worth? How much do you want to invest? You’re allowed to invest $100. It will tell them. The reality is, there’s 2 different categories. If you have an annual income or net worth of less than $100,000 you can invest 5% of the lesser of the 2, or $2,000. It’s just like I need an abacus, I’m going to the diagram to keep this … If you actually have a net worth, an income both over $100,000, you’re allowed to invest up to 10% of whichever is less. Again, don’t try to memorize this. I just keep a little chart on my desk because I can’t remember it.
Regulation A, mini-IPO, the one you can raise up to $50 million. There’s no limit on accredited investors. By the way in Title III, that applies to accredited investors also. Even though you’re smart, and sophisticated, and a billionaire, you can only invest a certain amount of money on a regulation they’re offering. You’re limited to what you can invest. In Title IV, when you’re doing the mini-IPO, accredited investor is going to invest as much as they want, but everyone else is limited to pretty simple formula, 10% of your income or net worth is the max you’re allowed to invest. Again, that’s all done on the site.
How much can you raise? In a Title II offering, private placement from accredited investors, there’s no limit. Whatever you can raise, you’re allowed to raise. Title III, it’s a million dollars. Title IV it’s $50 million. I put a little star, a little asterisk there because there’s actually 2 parts of Title IV. There’s a part where you can go on a local level and just stay in one or 2 states, and the law is a little different. That one, you’re capped at $20 million, but most people don’t use that. If you ever get into a situation where somebody’s using that, it’s a different world altogether. It’s actually very useful for certain things, but most people are shying away from it and just going to the $50 million cap.
Is it all or nothing? Again, the only one that’s all or nothing here is Title III, the million dollar one. Now, the reason I put the asterisk next to the other 2 is something I said before. You can pretty much make a private placement or make a mini-IPO into all or nothing because if you really have a minimum in your offering, “Look, I got to raise $500,000 or I can’t keep the money,” you sort of de facto create your own minimum. The reality is most people that have good lawyers don’t do that. They figure out a way around it, so that they can keep the money that they raise from the very beginning.
SEC, what do you have to do with the SEC? What do you have to file? This probably isn’t all that important to what you do but it’s good to know because you will get questions from people that ask you about, “Oh, do I have to file something at the SEC and all of that?” Just really lawyer questions do, but there’s a specific form for each one of these that gets filed. With the private placement, there’s something called Form D which you don’t file in advance. You file once you’ve gotten your first check in from somebody, the first investment. You file a simple 2-page form that anybody, a third grader could fill out that says, “We got our first money in.” You never file another thing. The SEC just wants some record that you’re raising money, but it’s totally private. There’s no disclosures, not even records. Nothing is in the public record for you.
Title III on the other hand, you file a form C. In Title IV it was called a Form 1A, both of which are extensive forms that give a lot of details about your company, all of your financial records. A lot of that stuff is all public record. Both of those have to be filed with the SEC and qualified by the SEC, meaning the SEC has to kind of check off, “Yeah, you filed this and all the paperwork. It’s here.” They don’t actually approve what you’re doing. They don’t say, “Yeah, this is okay. We like it.” They just say, in fact it’s a felony to say that the SEC approved any of these offerings. The SEC says, “Yeah, you filed all the paperwork. You did it right. Check box off. Now you’re allowed to go and raise money.”
Ongoing SEC filings, so after you’ve raised money, you don’t have to file anything if it’s a private placement, just that one form and nothing else. With the other 2 with Title III, a company has to file an annual report every year. With Title IV, they have to file a lot of stuff. It’s almost like being a public company. It’s cheaper. It’s not as much, but they’re still quite a bit of compliance ongoing. If there’s change in management, you have to file something. If you change the auditors of your company, you have to file something. Twice a year, you have to file audited financial records. It can be a very expensive process to do.
Speaking of expensive, least expensive, not too expensive, and very expensive. The reason I say that is across the board here with the exception maybe of Title II, the marketing expenses really don’t change. The marketing is the marketing. It’s always going to be a huge piece of all of these. I’m talking here about legal, accounting compliance, all of the things you have to do to just start the process. Typical private placement, you can probably get going for about $25,000 may be less. Typical Title III depending on what you’re doing if you have to get some financials done, it’s probably less than that, but it’s probably about the same amount, it looks at it. Title IV typically, if people don’t have a budget in the 6-figure range, they can’t afford to do it. Between the legal fees, the compliance cost, they have to get 2-years of audited financial records which in of itself could cost 30- or $40,000. It’s a very expensive process to go through, but you can also raise $50 million.
What’s the role of marketing? In the private placement world, I’m saying it’s not as important. It’s important but I’ll talk about that in a second. It’s incredibly important in the other 2. When I met with clients, the first thing I talk to them about is not the legal part, the compliance part, the SEC. The first thing I talked to them about is marketing, because if they don’t understand that this is all about marketing, they’re not going to succeed. I make that very clear from the very beginning. When somebody comes in to me and they say, “I want to go raise money.” They don’t come in and say, “I want to do a private placement. I want to do equity crowdfunding.” They just say, “I want to raise money.” I vet their process and see what it is they have. The things I look for are, do you already have a crowd? Same things you guys look for. Do you already have a big following on social media? Do you already have a bunch of customers?
You’re a startup, you don’t have anything. If you don’t have anything, you’re going to have hire someone, command partners to come in and build the crowd for you, because if you don’t where’s this money going to come from? People in the traditional investment world will look back and like … We all hear about the IPOs, Facebook IPO. They raised $14 billion whatever it is. I don’t even know what the numbers are. IPOs are driven by investment banks. The investment banks out there, the Goldman Sachs of the world and those people, they come in. They guarantee a certain amount is going to be sold. They create the market. They go to their hundred thousand brokers around the country and say sell this for us. Nobody’s doing that for anybody here.
You as a company, and you as marketers are the ones who are creating the people who are going to invest. A lot of people will come in thinking, “I just created a stock. All of the sudden people are going to show up and start. It’s just like Kickstarter. If you build it, they will come.” People think I’m going to put this on Kickstarter, all of the sudden people are going to come out start … No, it’s the exact same thing. The reason I say it’s not as important in Title II, it’s a little different in importance because in Title II, where it’s a private placement and you’re just looking for accredited investors, it’s a lot harder as a marketing company to say, “I’m going to go out and find very, very rich people and just market to them.”
You put out a press release. If you get an interview with a newspaper or a broadcast source, you’re going to hit those people. It’s really hard to target the people and it’s a little different story because those people, and when I say those people, I’m talking about accredited investors. I for example get 20 or 30 private placements sent to me a week. Just there are thousands of these things out there. People are trying to raise money from accredited investors. I didn’t even open them; delete, delete, delete. Now if someone I know, if Roy sends me one of those, “Kendall, this one’s kind interesting. I’m thinking about investing in it.” I’ll open that one. If it’s not a personal recommendation or someone who I know, I just delete them all. If I saw an ad for one, man, it would have to be compelling for me to even look at it. “Wow! That’s an interesting company.”
We get bombarded with opportunities to invest in these companies. The more marketing you do, the marketing really should be for those more of a branding marketing where you get people excited about it. Where you’re helping them build their company also. Doing stuff that would peak the interest of people, make it look unique to an accredited investor as opposed to the other ones where you got to do all that. You can spray it out there like buckshot and get as much as you can. Then target people with Facebook and all the other things. Title II is a little different in the marketing world than everything else.
Here’s where you need to take some notes. We’re going to talk about the minefield of marketing in equity crowdfunding. You guys obviously have a copy of this to be able to look at, but anytime you have any questions, feel free to call me about this. Specifically what I want to do is let’s talk about the easy ones first. Title II when you’re just going to accredited investors, you’re allowed legally to generally solicit. You can do anything. You can run ads. You can go over to the stadium and have a plane drag something behind it. You can do smoke signals. You can do whatever you want. There’s no limits on it as long as it’s not false or misleading. Keeping in mind when you’re doing this advertising, you guys are advertising for the sale of securities.
Unlike, “Hey, we’ve got this really cool product, it’s the best product in the world. It really works phenomenally great, because when you buy this, it’s going to change your life.” You start saying that about a security, “Hey, we’re selling stock. It’s the greatest stock in the world. You’re going to triple your money. You’re going to quadruple. You’re going to become a billionaire.” You have to be very careful to not overpromise and be misleading because the one thing that can happen in any kind of securities, the SEC will come out and say, “This is just false and misleading.” What they mean is you exaggerated. Stick to being truthful. Stick to being not misleading in any way. If it looks like it might be misleading, don’t do it. Things you could probably pull off with a product on Kickstarter, you got to think twice. If anybody [inaudible 00:31:32] “That look a lot …” It’s the best product in the world? You got to be really careful about these things.
Regulation A+, the mini-IPO where you can raise up to $50 million, again you can generally solicit. You can advertise. You can do whatever you want. Same rules as what we just talked about, but there’s one thing that’s a little different about this one. There’s a provision called testing the waters. Before you launch the campaign to raise the money, so this is only before. Once the campaign is launched, same rules as everything else, you can do whatever you want as long as you’re not false and misleading. Before you launch the campaign, anything you do to advertise or to do lead generation which is a typical part of the process, it’s called testing the waters.
There’s part of this law that basically says, before you’re going to spend all the money hiring lawyers and everything, you can go out create a splash page, go on a website, and see if there’s interest in what you’re doing. If people all of a sudden come to you and say, “We want to invest,” and you got millions of people come in and say, “They want to invest.” “Okay, I’ll just spend the money to do this.” It’s a great provision although as a practical matter, it really doesn’t work because who’s going to find this on some website to determine if they want … You have to spend the same money to market, to get people to the testing the water’s page. If you can do that, you might as well done it this time with the page when you’re live, where you can actually keep the money.
Here on the testing the water stage, people are just going … They hire you guys and they spend thousands of dollars. You drive a bunch of people to a page that, “Yeah, I’ll give you $100 in 6 months when the SEC approves,” because of the process. My personal feeling is they shouldn’t do a lot of that. However keeping in mind, if you’re doing any pre-marketing lead page generation, anything like that, there’s a simple legend of little paragraph disclaimer that you put at the bottom of every page, every email, everything that’s approved by the SEC. The exact wording is on there. As long as it’s on there, you can do this. There’s the testing the waters legend that you have to put on every page. As long as you do that, you’re totally clear.
Now, we’re going to talk about the scary one. Title III is really scary when it comes to marketing. Up until about a week ago when I got some new information from talking to some people at the SEC, and talking to some colleagues of mine, there were a lot of attorneys out there who are saying you cannot do any marketing whatsoever. Not just about what’s coming, but even for your company in general because the SEC may come in if you do it before you do a crowdfunding offering and say, “You were doing this to promote your crowdfunding offering and it’s not legal.” There were people that said that. I wasn’t one of them, but there were very smart people saying, “You can’t do anything to market your company when you’re getting ready to launch a campaign.” I’m going to go through this with you. This is the important part, because these Title III things are brand new. No one’s really doing them yet. When you start getting them, you got to follow these rules.
Keep in mind, we’re only 60 days into this. There’s no precedent. Some of the stuff I’m going to tell you right now, there’s nothing in writing. These are things I’ve been told by the SEC. These are things that I’m interpreting as to how I would feel comfortable having a company do it. A lot of this could change. I do want to walk you through with it because it’s very important. That yellow language that says that’s the law, itself. The JOBS Act itself actually says an issuer, an issuer is just the company raising money. “An issuer may not advertise the terms of the offering except for notices which direct investors to the funding portal or broker.” When you read that you’re thinking, “What am I allowed to do?” Nothing. All I can do is say, “Go look at the place where it’s all online and read it there.” You can do whatever you want on that page by the way. Once you’re on the funding portal, that’s fine. You can have the videos and everything there.
How do you get people there? The first time I read that I went, you can’t. You literally can’t do anything other than to say, “Go look on here.” I’m not even sure if you could say we’re raising money. It’s really kind of a scary thing to look at. What it’s kind of evolved into is 2 different things. You have to analyze this when somebody comes in as to what can you do before you launch a campaign and after. That’s the step number 1. Number 2 is, are you going to be discussing the terms of the offering in what you should do in the market? I’m going to go through this very detailed, so you’ll understand it. Pre-launch, before you launch, what can you not do? Number 1, you can’t do anything that the SEC would consider to be an offer. You can’t send something out that says, “Hey, we’re going to raise money. We want you to invest in this. It’s coming soon. Go look at this page. We’re going to give you information about it.”
Anytime you sort of tell people you’re going to be selling something, that the SEC considers to be an offer. You have to be very careful about the wording you use, pre-launch. Any communication that’s made before you file the paperwork, now that’s basically the same thing there. Now keep in mind, this only applies to Title III. This doesn’t apply to the other ones, only applies to that $1 million new law. No meetings with potential investors. You cannot sit down with somebody and say, “Hey, this is going to be coming. We’d like you to invest on day 1. Boy, can you guys? We really want to hit 25 or 30% of our goal on day 1. Can you come in and make sure you …” You cannot do any of that. You can’t talk to them. You can’t communicate with them. No sneak peeks or first looks. “Hey, here’s the page that we’re going to launch in a couple of weeks. We just want you to see what it looks like.” You can’t do that.
No public announcements about it. You can’t set out a press release and say, “Next week, we’re launching this.” You can’t even call the journalist up and say, “Next week, we’re launching this.” You’re not allowed to do any of that. Last one, no discussions at a conference or demo day about the intentions to do a crowdfunding offerings. In other words, if you’re out there at a demo day, or someone’s demoing the product or something, you can’t say, “Oh, by the way next week we’re launching a funding campaign.” You can do the demo day. You just can’t talk about the facts. Pretty much the general rule is, before the thing launches, you really can’t do much. Keeping in mind, a lot of what you do in the rewards world that you built the way that you do your business practices on, you cannot do here right now. Now, these will also probably change. The one thing you have to keep your mind is you will be able to do all the things you did. You’re just going to have to do it after the launch happens.
Pre-launch, what can you do? First thing you do is, you can have all the communications you want as long as they don’t mention the offering. You can do your normal advertising, your normal marketing of the business, your normal building of social media. You just can’t do it saying we’re about to launch a crowdfunding campaign. There’s nothing to prevent you from doing that. Up until a week ago, there were literally lawyers that said you couldn’t even do that which was absurd. Prior to filing the forms in, this is the magic wand that you have to kind of think about when you’re helping craft messages. There’s this term called conditioning the market. When you guys go out on a Kickstarter campaign and you build a crowd, that’s conditioning the market. You’re actually building the market. You’re getting people ready to invest.
Anything that could be seen as you creating a crowd or getting people ready to invest in any kind of communication, publicity, whatever, that’s a problem. You cannot do that. Regular marketing and advertising is okay. The SEC has made it pretty clear to me that you can have conversations amongst yourselves. People can come in and talk to you about we’re going to do this offering and create things. They can talk to their lawyers. They can even, kind of look and build things if they want to do. They just can’t. It’s okay if you later on, even invest in the product or the company. What you can’t do is, you can’t do that type of thing purely for the purpose of having someone invest.
All right, what are the terms of the offering? This is the magic thing that these 4 things, you definitely need to know because the difference of what you can market and cannot market, this is after the launch. After their campaigns are out there, if any of these 4 things are in what you create as marketing materials, you have a totally different set of rules. If none of these are in what you’re creating, you can pretty much do whatever you want after you launch. It’s the amount of securities offered. In other words, we’re selling 500,000 shares. The nature of the security of common stock in our company, the price of the securities for $30 a share, and the closing date of the offering. This is available until July 30th, 2017.
Those 4 things are considered the terms of the offering by law. If you don’t put those in what you’re doing, you can do pretty much whatever you want after you launch. These are very, very important. This is not an area where I would like the amount offered. We’re really not talking about the amount offered if we talk about the number of ship … Don’t play games with this. If it looks like a duck and smells like duck, this is a duck. Stay away from it. Don’t do something stupid here. If you’re not going to mention those 4 things in terms of the offering as a marketing company, you can [inaudible 00:40:40] whatever that means. You can market whatever way you want to as long as it’s truthful. All the different things that you guys do, you can do. There’s no problem with that.
One of the other things to keep in mind is whatever you do on the funding portal itself, the site where this is live, that can have whatever you want, videos, pictures, all of those things. You can do all of those things on social media. All of those things on advertising as long as you’re not mentioning the terms of the offering after it’s launched. If you want to mention the terms of the offering, we get into what we call the tombstone ad. For anybody who’s ever seen typical securities, related banks, there are something called the tombstone ad. That’s a classic example of line words that’s as boring as hell, white on black. Chrysler Corporation a division of American Motors raised a million dollars from such and such bank, very, very basic simple information.
What the SEC has said and what the law says is, if you want to mention the terms of the offering, you have to do a tombstone ad. That’s what you have to put on Facebook. That’s what you have to put on the scoreboard at the stadium, a tombstone ad. No one’s going to do this. Just the reality is, why do it? Do your normal marketing, send them to the website where they can have all the information about the terms of the offering. They can invest. Just do your marketing. Hey, we’re selling stock. You don’t have to say how much. You don’t have to say when it ends. You don’t have to say what kind. We’re selling stock. Go to fundingportal.com and check out the details. All of that is okay. Beautiful video, fun graphics, whatever you want to do, all of that’s okay. If you want to do the terms of the offering, you have to do a tombstone ad. Just don’t use the terms of the offering. It’s really simple process.
I put in some of those little thing from the actual law that says what you can put into a tombstone ad. I’m not going to go through all the boring details. Basically, it’s things like factual information. You’re also allowed to put like name of your company. One of the things that’s in the law, it says a brief description of your business. You’re allowed to put into the tombstone ads so you could kind of say something like, ‘We’re a digital marketing firm.” You wouldn’t be able to say, “We’re the best digital marketing firm and our success rate is X. We have raised a zillion dollars for people.” Brief means brief. Again my advice would be, don’t mess with this. Stay away from the terms of the offering and you’re okay.
A few tips and tricks of things that these are right now my opinion. This is based on conversations I’ve had. This is based on my research. This is based on what I tell clients today, July 11th, 2016. Tomorrow, I may have a conversation with an examiner of the SEC and change these things. This is a very fluid situation. My disclaimer, don’t rely on my legal advice on this. This is what I’m doing right now. I think it gives you a good basis of ways to look at this, all right? After the launch, after you’re live, it looks like you can talk off the funding portal about the offering as long as you don’t mention the terms of the offering. What I told you before, I think you can use every tool in your trick. Everything you have, I think you can do that and I tell people they can.
In all communications, there’s only one place you can link. This is very important. You always want to have whatever you link you have, go to offering page and no place else. You do not want to link people to your website, and then have a little splash page on your website. Your own little glorified offering page, or anything like that. You don’t want to link that. One of the things that I’m very curious about, and this is the third one here. You guys are in the business of obviously generating publicity. Let’s say you got a wonderful story written about somebody in the USA Today, great story about the offering. The journalist does a bang up job, awesome. You’re so excited about it. You got this great placement for a client. The journalist put some of the terms of the offering into the story. They’re selling 800,000 shares of common stock. If the journalist says that in the story, you cannot link to that story, period. You basically can’t use the story in the market.
Now, that’s the problem. Controlling the messages especially in your press release is to stay away from this terms of the offering. It may be even kind of educating some of the journalists when you’re talking to them about, “Look, it would be really helpful if you didn’t mention these 4 things because if you do, it kind of hurts the business.” Most people journalists, you know how they are. They either will say yes or they don’t listen to you, but part of the process is trying to make sure journalist don’t use the terms of the offering because if they do, you can’t do it. Then I did put down there, obviously don’t put the terms of the offering on a press release. If I’ve beaten one thing into your heads already it’s, “Don’t talk about the terms of the offering.”
Last three of this is if you’re running a tombstone ad, as I said before, stick to the very strict language you have to do, don’t vary from it at all. If you’re going to do something, and let me talk about this middle thing in a second because I think it’s kind of important. A lot of people have, and I think this is going to become sort of a way people do this. You want people to come to your website. When I say your, the company raising money. You want people to come to your website naturally to find out about this offering, all right? You can’t really talk about the terms of the offering on your website. Things we might do with a Regulation A offering or a private placement where we might have, “Hey, learn about investing in our company now. Click here.” You got to be really careful.
I think, my personal opinion, what I’ve been advising clients to do on this is create a splash page at the front of your website. Almost like when you get to an alcohol site, it’s like, “What’s your age? Click here.” Then you can go in. Create a simple splash page at the beginning that says, “Are you interested in learning about our offering? We are raising money through Title III offering. Are you interested in learning about this?” This is after your live, “Click here.” If they click there, they’re taken to the offering page wherever that goes. If it says no, then they come into your website. I’m very concerned about creating pages within the website because if you create a page within the website but does that as opposed to before you get into the site, I think everything on that website is subject to the SEC reviewing.
If somebody comes out on a message board or sends it in a review or something, and talks about the terms of the offering by accident, and it’s on the website after you let people get into the website, you potentially have a problem. Clients, and this is part of the lawyer’s job really more so than what you guys do, but monitoring to make sure that kind of stuff doesn’t happen is very important. Then the last tip is whatever information companies give out, it should be consistent. Don’t play favorites. “Hey, you’re a customer of ours. You’re a good customer. We’re going to tell you a little bit more here.” That’s just securities law 101. You have to be very even-handed about the information you hand out. You don’t play favorites in the world of securities, because if you do, the SEC comes out and then they throw you in jail. That’s no fun for everybody.
These are the questions that Joe sent me that I guess were gathered from the staffs. I’m going to kind of go through these. I’ve got 6 or 7 of these and we’ll be done. I’ll take any questions you have. Number 1 is what are the risks of investing? The risk of investing in these types of deals are almost always very high. Particularly with Title III, you’re going to be talking a lot of startup companies. There’s a good 80%, 60 to 80% failure rate within 5 years of startup companies in general. People that are investing in these types of deals, they are inherently dangerous investments. They’re inherently high risk investments. That’s why the SEC makes every investor check a little box off that says, “I understand that I could lose every dime that I’m investing in this, on every single investment they do.”
As a company, you at least have the assurance that somebody before they gave you 20 bucks, or 50 bucks, or 100 bucks, check the little box and says, “Okay, I realized that I could lose this money.” These are going to always be risky investments. Now, with risk comes reward. Obviously, if you were able to give Facebook $100 in 2004, that $100 might be worth a million dollars today. Those types of risk-reward benefits or what comes with this, but all crowdfunding even on Kickstarter is risky. You give money to people, they may not make the product. It’s just like anything else. High risk, high reward.
How does a company become eligible? In each of these situations, there’s different eligibility. In Title II, the private placement world, pretty much any company. Even foreign companies can raise money. In Title III, the up to a million dollars, you have to be a US company. In Title IV, the mini-IPO, US or Canadian company. You’ll notice in each one of these things I said company, which is very important. People can go on Kickstarter and raise money without being a company. The first thing people need to know is you have to form a company. You’re selling stock in a company. You can’t go, “Anybody want to buy 30% of Kendall Almerico?” You can’t do that, but you can buy 30% of Kendall Almerico LLC, the company that I happen to run or whatever I make up. Other than that, there’s no financial eligibility. There’s no, you have to have been in business for a certain number of years. You have to have so much in assets. None of those things apply. It really is these laws were created to let almost any company use them if they can actually afford to use them.
What kind of company does it work for? This one should be easy for you guys? If it works for rewards-based crowdfunding, it’s going to work for Title III or the mini-IPO. If it’s a product that comes in, and it’s a consumer product, they’ve already got a fan base or they got a really cool thing, they’ve got a good management team, if they got a great video, all the same things you guys look for, it’s the same thing. The one difference is when you’re talking about Title II. When you’re just going to accredited investors, keep in mind what I said before. The guys that are getting pitched these deals are getting pitched hundreds of these things. Something needs to make it stand out. Personally when I invest in companies of things I look at, number 1, I look at the management team. That’s to me, I invest in what they say invest in the jockey not the horse. A lot of times I do that.
If I see people that I can go look and go wow, they’ve created the world’s most tasty ice cream but these people were all car mechanics, I’m not investing in them. On the other hand, if they were from Carnival, and Baskin-Robbins, Ben & Jerry’s, and these guys know a little bit something ice cream. Looking at the management team is very important. Now, how important is that in Title III and Title IV where you’re going to the general public? My personal feeling is, it can be important. If you have a huge name person, if Richard Branson said, “I’m starting a new company and I’m going to the crowd to raise money.” People recognize Richard Branson because he’s been on the news or whatever, that would help.
If you’re a guy who started a tech company that became a billion dollar company but nobody knows your name, I don’t know that the average Joe on the street cares. They are more interested in, “Well, this is a cool company.” With BrewDog for example, “I like craft beer. I like their beer. I get to be part of this culture in this community. That’s I want to do.” It’s the same kind of thing as … Keeping in mind it depends on what you’re raising money for. When you’re going to the general project the same marketing concept that you guys always use, will play us to what kind of company it works for. One other thing to keep in mind and it may not really applies much to you guys is, Title III of the new law, I have been preaching this for people.
I wrote an article on Entrepreneur that if you guys want to look it up, I said there’s 4 different kinds of companies that I really think are great for Title III that most people won’t think of. The Pebble watch kind of company, that’s an obvious one. One of the ones that I think is very important is, like a local business. What was the name of the place we went to lunch at? Savor, awesome burger, great food. Now if Savor said, “You know what? We want to open up a second location here in Charlotte,” but it’s I don’t know, the other side of town. There’s a big population base there. They went to their customer base and said, “We need to raise a half million dollars under Title III and we’re going to open this up. By the way, you’re going to own 10% of our company. You get a coupon for every time you come in to the company. Every time you come in for a dollar off your burger for the next year.”
That’s a very small micro-marketing offering that I think people can raise a lot of money to open up a second location of a successful business in the city. Those kinds of things, they’re no brainers. If you already have the customer base, already have the people that are excited about you, “Wait, I get to actually own a little piece of this?” Then again, most of these companies that fit in that fold probably don’t have any trouble raising money privately anyway. If they wanted to do it, to do it to be smart, to use it not just as let me raise the money, but also let me raise the money and build another 1,500, 2,000 brand ambassadors. We’re going to be bringing all their family members to the other location of Savor to come and eat because that’s where their money is. You got to come to this restaurant. That’s the kind of thing that actually can make it work.
What’s the best way to identify investors? No different than the way that you target people on your rewards campaigns. Again, the same analysis you use as to who would possibly by this product? Who would possibly donate to this product? That doesn’t change. You’re still going to be micro-targeting the people that you think are the target audience of the product, or the business to find the investor especially when you’re talking about going to the general public. It’s a lot more complicated when you’re talking about accredited investors because there, you really just have to get to accredited investors, put the message in front of them, and hope they like it. General public, it’s no different than marketing like you put on Kickstarter.
How long should it take to get funded? In the private placement world, in the Title II world, the average time it takes to get funded is between 6 and 9 months. It’s a long process, sometimes a year. The reason for that is you’re going to people who aren’t going to go on a website, click a button, and wire $100,000 to people. Nobody does that. They want to meet the founders. They want to have a phone call with the founders. They want to do research. They want their broker to look at it. They want their lawyer to look at it. They want to negotiate things that are in the paperwork. It’s a process. Very few people just click the button online, and wire a bunch of money.
Now ultimately when they’re happy, they’ll click the button and wire the money. That process takes time. Everyone thought that this online process would speed that up. I said, “No, it won’t because you got the same people that were 2 years ago, insisting on meeting with people and doing all those things.” They’re not going to change this because they saw a cool video. They’re still going to want to do what they’ve always done for 20 or 30 years. Now, as this generation fades away, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, absolutely it’s going to be a totally different world. People are going to go, “I like this. I did all my research, maybe make a phone call, click the button and do it.” For the next 5 to 10 years, no chance. It’s a longer process.
With Title III because the numbers are smaller, I think it’s going to be just like Kickstarter. The only difference is you don’t have that 3-month, 6-month lead up to your Kickstarter campaign where you built the crowd. Build that into the beginning of the offering, and then 30 to 90 days, you should be able to get funded. You’re really probably talking about 4 months to 6 months to get funded because you have to have that period of time. Now, somebody comes to you and they already got the built-in crowd to go to, you should be able to do in 30 days. You should be able to do it in 30 days. Title IV, the other one, the 50 million one, most of those are going to stay open for a year. $50 million is a lot of money to get from people, 90, 50, $100 at a time. You got to get a lot of people involved. You got to have an ongoing campaign.
I was telling Roy for BrewDog for example, when they launch in a couple of weeks they’ll have their big typical, “Hey, we’re launching this thing. Hey, let’s get some publicity.” Every 30 days for the next year, they will have another event, another media outreach. Something else to go to the media because as with all know in this room, I’m preaching to the choir. Crowdfunding campaign goes off, you get a bunch of hits and then it goes like this. You got to find something to make it go back up. Normally, the only thing people have to make it go back up is either a big media event, or campaigns about to close, and they start going to people, “It’s last chance, last chance, last chance.” When you’re doing this, it’s no different, but $50 million is a lot different than raising $500,000. You got to go a lot more people involved, and lot more people closed. I think the average you’re going to see most people do is at least 6 months and probably 6 months to a year to close most of those big ones.
Do I need an attorney to launch an offering? I love this question. The answer is of course, you need a lawyer, obviously do. Now, the reality is you don’t. I just had to do that. The reality is let’s talk about each one of them. Title II, the private placement, you don’t legally and none of these do, legally have to hire a lawyer. Lawyers charge a ridiculous amounts of money to do things that they shouldn’t charge people ridiculous amounts of money to do. The way I bill people is because they end up using our platform, bankroll to do the raise. I don’t charge them very much for the legal fees. I basically charge them just enough upfront to cover my expenses. Whereas other law firms there was an article that just came out. The average attorney’s fees on a Regulation A+ offering is between 100, and $150,000 right now in the first year. I’ve never charged anybody ever near that. I also know, it’s going to be on my platform. There’s money to be made down the line. I’m willing to take that risk.
Let’s talk about the 3 real quick and then I’ll take questions. Title II where it’s a private placement, there is a document that should be created, it’s not legally required, but there’s a document that should be created called the PPM or a Private Placement Memorandum. It’s basically a big thick document that lawyers draft the company gives to someone that’s all the reasons you shouldn’t invest in the company. It’s literally the cover your ass memorandum. It is a big thick thing of lawyer stuff that says, “Here’s all the risk factors. Here’s all the bad things that can happen. Here’s all the reasons why you don’t want to invest in the company.” Then it talks about how great the company is. The reason you give that to investors in the private placement world is because if the investor loses his money and sues you, you can say, “Remember this thing that you signed? It’s said right in here. One of the things that’s in there is our company may not make any money and make a bankrupt.”
Literally, it says things like that. We may not follow our business plan. We may not do well. We may not hit our market. You put all these things in there. Now the reality is, accredited investors, very sophisticated, they get these things all the time. Nobody reads the risk factors. They don’t even read any of that. They go to 2 or 3 things. Maybe they’re looking at the projections. Maybe they’re looking at the management team. They just skip over that 30 pages of risk factors because they know it’s just in there to cover the company’s butt. A lawyer needs to draft that. The reason you want the lawyer to draft this, if it’s done wrong, you want somebody to go after. You can copy one off the internet and change the names, and hope that it’s right. I can assure you, lawyers are going to do a lot of research to make sure they do it the right way.
Title III, do you need a lawyer? This is a really interesting one. That Form C that you file to start a Title III campaign is created so that you don’t have to have a lawyer. It’s really pretty easy to fill out. If anybody ever looks at it, it’s a little long, 10 pages or so. A company could go in what’s your name? How much are you raising? What kind of stock do you have? A company’s CFO and a CEO could probably fill that out all by themselves without a lawyer. The problem is, there’s a section there called risk factors and disclosures. The exact same reason you have a lawyer did a PPM or Private Placement Memorandum, that thick thing, you want that same thing written in that form because again, anything goes wrong and they sue you, you want to be able to say, “Well, we told you we have these risks.”
Now, can a company come up with 10 or 12 risk factors themselves by copying other ones that are on another offerings? Yeah. I’ll give you a classic example. I was involved with a company once that did business in Brazil. I had 2 or 3 pages of risk factors just about doing business in Brazil that you wouldn’t find it anywhere else. The currency fluctuates. The government changes. They take all the people’s … There’s all kinds of crazy stuff that happens in Brazil. You got to tell that to investors, right? If you don’t tell that to investors and one of those things happens, you get in trouble. That’s the one section that I would encourage people to at least have a lawyer look at and make some suggestions. It shouldn’t cost a lot of money for a lawyer to be involved in the Title III offering.
Title IV offering, the mini-IPO, that is almost like you’re registering as a public company. There’s a lot that goes into that. The BrewDog filing was 267 pages long. It’s a lot of work. It’s a ton of work. There’s all kinds of things in there, not just all the same disclaimers and all those other things. Nobody should try and do a Title IV offering without a lawyer. That would be literally suicide. It’s a terrible idea. I’ll take some questions now, anybody?
Speaker 2:
What’s the secondary market for, like you bought shares and then turn around and try to sell them later? Are there going to be secondary markets?
Great question. That’s the big question about all crowdfunding. Is there a secondary market and what is it? Secondary market is, let me kind of explain it in terms, because I remember the first time I got asked this question, I was like, “Oh that’s great.” I read the JOBS Act. I was like, “There’s nothing in here about a secondary market.” A secondary market is basically if you go buy Disney stock right now from Merrill Lynch or E*TRADE online, and you want to sell your shares, you can sell them. Just go back to E*TRADE and they’ll sell your shares for you to somebody else who wants to buy them because it’s all traded on an exchange. You can see what the price is. “Oh, today it’s $50. Tomorrow it’s …” That’s the way stocks work. Those are publicly traded companies.
None of these companies are public companies. There is no stock exchange. You don’t go online and go, “I just bought these shares and a Title III offering. Now, I can go figure out what they’re selling for?” That doesn’t exist. Now, let me go through the 3 different kinds and tell you what the answer is. With the private placement with the Title II or just accredited investors, there is no resale of those shares right now, none. You have to wait. It’s a wait and hold. You’re investing in a company. You’re hoping the company that goes public, does an IPO, does something to give you an exit of that, but rich people are assumed that they can hold on to this for a long time. It’s a long term investment. There is no trading of that. Now after a year, there are places where you can find private buyers and selling trade. It can be done but you got to go back to the company, get permission to do it. It’s a very complicated process.
Title III has no liquidity of their shares at all. When you sell shares, on the new law, the million dollar law, you can’t sell them anywhere for at least a year. For one year, you have to hold their shares. After a year, there’s nothing in the law that says what happens to the shares. Nobody knows what’s going to happen to their shares. One of the big questions in front of the SEC is, what happens after a year. Nobody knows. Most people assumed they’re treated like the private shares from a Title II thing where you have to hold on to them. If you could find a buyer that’s an accredited investor, you could sell them, but no one really knows yet.
In Regulation A, the shares are liquid immediate when you sell them. You got and raised money. You get your shares. You can go sell them to somebody if you can find a buyer, but there’s no market place for them yet. Those are being developed. They will be developed. Now, what you can do with Regulation A is, “I just bought these shares. I want to sell them.” You could go on eBay if you wanted to. You could find buyers for them. You could go back to the company and say you want to buy them back or you know someone that wants to buy them. It’s possible to sell them. The magical thing about Regulation A is, you can then go and list them on an exchange.
You can take those shares as soon as the offering is closed, not you but the company could go on and say, BrewDog could close our offerings. Say we got our $50 million. We now have 500,000 investors. Now, we’re going to go list on NASDAQ. All of the sudden your shares are just like Disney or IBM or whatever. They’re traded through online or whatever. One company has done it already. They raised $17 million, took their stock, went to what’s called the OTC markets. They went on, listed their stock. Their stock went from $14 to $70 in about 2 weeks. Their market cap went up to over a billion dollars. Then their stock went down to 13. This is not a good thing.
For most companies that you’ll be dealing with, it’s not the kind of thing. I advise people not to do it, because what happens is when you become a public company, you stop worrying about growing your company and building your company. You start worrying about managing your stock price. Every quarter, you got to be out there saying, “Oh I did this.” Just so your stock price doesn’t go crazy. If you’re in a young company, you’re trying to grow your company. That’s a whole another world. Grow your company. Grow sales. Grow revenues. Grow profits. Then hire the people that know how to do that and go public. To answer your question, no secondary market yet. There are a lot of people developing secondary markets and a year from now you’ll see them. Any other ones?
If you run like a Title III campaign and you maxed out of the million. Say, can you run another one after that?
One year. You can do it one time per year. You could then go into a Regulation A offering, or you could do a private placement, but you can only do one Title III campaign per year, per calendar year.
What about the other?
The other ones, pretty much … The private placements you can do as many as those as you want. As soon as you close one down, you can start another one. You could do 10 of them in a year if you wanted to. There’s no restriction on those, the Title II. Regulation A is the same thing, one per year.
The use of that is a calendar year so you could have one [inaudible 01:06:52]
Yeah. One year from the year you started. It’s not like-
Okay, so there using the 12-month period?
12-month period. Yeah, I’m sorry. If you started in June, you could do another one the next July.
It’s not, “Oh you did one in 2012. Now, you can’t do one in … ” No, it’s not like that. I’m sorry, that’s probably the better way to say it.
What typically does well for us on Kickstarter are companies that have a physical good or physical product?
What other opportunities do you think there are for any type of equity crowdfunding that doesn’t have a physical good?
First of all, one of the things that’s going to happen is you’re going to get people to come in and say … I get asked this question all the time. When I tried to explain to people, because it’s so new. Nobody really knows for sure what’s going to happen. The opportunity to raise more money with the exact same work that you guys do, is much greater with equity crowdfunding. It cost more to do, but it’s much greater because you’re not just looking at people that want to buy the product. You’re looking at people that, the same people that want to buy the product, or going to buy the product, just add on a few shares to it. Now, you got people that are going, “I want to invest also.” The same people that would go in and say, “I want that product.” If they’re getting the product and some shares in a Regulation A offering, they’re going to do the shares.
Then you’re going to get people that are more interested. “I like this company. I want to invest in this company.” They’re not going to just say, “Let me give you $150 for a watch.” They’re going to say, “Let me give you $1,500 because I want 10 shares of the company plus the watch.” The amount of money you can raise should be remarkably bigger for the same amount. Now, your question was, outside of this people. Right now, it’s going to be very hard for any company that doesn’t have a customer base to raise money using these things. If you don’t have a customer base or some big … I think films could do this all day. Do they have a built-in customer base? No. I think if celebrity comes out and goes, “I’m going to make a movie,” like Zach Braff did, or Veronica Mars, or something like that and says, “I’m going to use Regulation A and I want to raise $20 million to finance this film.” I think they could do it in a heartbeat.
Okay, they don’t have a physical product. It’s the same kind of thing as Kickstarter. Outside of that, unless you have a customer base, or a fan base, or a user base, it’s going to be very difficult. If I wanted to open up a consulting business, no one’s going to invest on it. I don’t have anything sexy to sell anybody. Now, if I’ve been consulting and I’ve had 100,000 satisfied customers for years, and I go, “I’m going to open a new consulting business.” I could go to those people. I could raise money. It really just comes out of the same kind of metrics of is there a crowd? If there’s not a crowd, I’m not saying it won’t work for other businesses. That’s where you guys come in. There are may be something that’s really an awesome business idea.
I say this a lot of times when I was speaking. I go, “If someone could come up with the coolest brand new algorithm that Google want to buy and pay a billion dollars for it because it’s incredible what it does to search engines.” It would be the hardest thing in the world to crowdfund because how the hell would you explain that to people? On the other hand, creative marketing campaign that goes, “Google wants to buy this from a [inaudible 01:09:54] dollars, or this is the kind of thing that gets bought for a billion dollars.” You get out to the right people and the right press, you could do that. You could make that marketed. It would just take incredibly creative marketing on your behalf to be able to build a crowd around, or excitement around something that’s not a sexy product. I don’t think it’s going to work in most cases.
I get phone calls all the time. People tell me, “I want to raise money. I want to do this. I want a crowdfunding.” It’s not going to work. I’m not saying, it can’t be built. You want to spend a million dollars on marketing to try and build a crowd? If you got a million dollars to spend on marketing, let’s give it a shot. If you don’t, probably not going to happen. I think anything ultimately, you can build a crowd for it. If it’s the right thing. It’s just not going to be easy.
[inaudible 01:10:38] answer this question but can some of those like the mini-IPO to private placement, and private placement and then to Title III, or Title III then go to a mini-IPO?
They can do it. It doesn’t matter. They can do a rewards campaign at the same time. You can do all these, at any order you want to do, but you just can’t do them at the same time. You can go one to the other. You don’t have to go through a progression or anything like that. The rewards thing tying in. If you wanted to do a rewards campaign and then do another one, or do a rewards, the problem there is mixing the marketing message. Where are you going to direct people? Are you going to send them on a Kickstarter, or are you going to send them over here? It really makes sense from a marketing standpoint to just do one thing. You could do, we combine. I’m always telling people, “Let’s combine rewards with the equity because you’re getting the best of both worlds. Why not throw in BrewDog?” Why not throw in, “Hey, you’re getting a free beer on your birthday.” It’s just more things people are going to want to invest more.
You’re mentioning cap in terms of the investment allotment for accredited and nonaccredited. Is that based on the individual offering that can invest up to the next amount percent or is that over the course of the offering?
I think it’s Title III, I got to look at it. I’m almost sure Title III. It’s an amount that you can invest per individual offering, but I think I have to get back to it. I got to look it up. I think in Title IV, it’s over the course of the year in all offerings. One of those has a cap that’s for all offerings. I’ll have to look it up and tell you because I’m not sure. I mean right now, no one’s ever had that happen. It’s one of those things we’re like. It’s actually, it is Title III. Now that I think about it because I remember this issue I came up with the SEC when I wrote my comment letter to them. It’s with Title III. There’s a cap on the amount you can invest in all Title III offerings over the course of a year. That cap actually applies to that. If it’s 10% of your income, that’s over the course of the year for all offerings.
However, there’s no database out there. If you went on one website and put money in, and another website and put money in it. They don’t have to share data. There’s no centralized database. There’s no way to enforce it. That was one of the questions I had with the SEC when they were writing the rules was, how do you enforce this if you’re a funding portal? How do you know if somebody has gone on another site? Where do I look this up? There is no database. Basically what people do to cover to cover their ass, with your funding portal, check a box that says you have not invested more than X on another funding portal, click. That’s what we’re doing. That’s a good question. Anything else?
If you’re an investor, how is it treated from tax standpoint?
The same way any other investment will be treated. If you went in and bought shares through Merrill Lynch of anything, if you sell it and make money, capital gains stocks. If you’re investing in something through Title III, or Title II, or Title IV, it’s just an investment. The same tax benefit of any stock that you would buy anywhere else. There’s really no magical benefit. You don’t get to write it off on your taxes. I’m not a tax attorney. I’m not giving tax advice, but you don’t get to say, “I invested in this, and therefore I get some kind of tax credit.” If you lose the money, it depends on whether or not you’re allowed to write off that loss as a business loss or a tax loss. You’d have to talk to your accountants to know that. There’s no magical formula like, “Hey, we want to encourage people to invest in this. If you invest on a Title III campaign. You get a tax …” There’s nothing like that.
For the company, that’s kind of the same question. People have asked me this a lot of times. I raised money on Kickstarter, is that taxable income? Oh yeah. If you’re taking money from someone, there are tax ramifications. Does that mean it’s the same as somebody buying something? I mean there’s a lot of nuances there. People that are raising money, generally or spending the money as part of their business, there’s offset there. They don’t really have taxable income. There’s then more than one story of companies got hit with tax bills because they didn’t think about paying taxes on monies they raised through Kickstarter, very similar process here for a company.
[inaudible 01:14:38]
There are. This is very real. What happens is when you get through the process to the end, there’s usually what we call a transfer agent that’s involved. There’s a company that manages the stock for the company that raised the money. They will send out, if you’re issuing stock certificates, they’ll send out stock certificates. At the end of the year there is a K-1 that’s issued just like, or 1099. Any dividend on stocks you get, broker at the end of the year sends you things as how much money you made? How much money you lost on the stock? 1099-Q or R, whatever it is, you’ll definitely get one of those for those too.
What is the future of equity crowdfunding look like?
It’s interesting. I think it’s very bright. I think it’s going to be a very slow adaptation. We’ve already seen that. The fact that Regulation A has been out for a year. There has been 103 filings, 44 were qualified with the SEC. I think only 14 actually went live. Probably of those, 4 or 5 raised a lot of money. By a lot of money I mean more than $500,000. For a year it’s taken a long time to do things, but there hasn’t been a big mass commercial product. Elio Motors was probably the closest to that, but it’s a specialized 3-wheeled car thing that unless you’re in the automotive world or something, probably didn’t even read about it or know about it. They raised $17 million, but it’s still pretty specialized product.
It’s going to take 1 of 2 things. Either going to take somebody who just blows the doors off of the marketing world which something like BrewDog could do that kind of brings it into the vernacular of everybody because it’s beer. Everybody knows about beer. What we’re going to see, I can assure you within the next 12 months, some well-known company that already has a well-known product out there is going to look at Regulation A and say, “I can go raise 20 or $25 million from my customer base that I’ve had for 5 years. My millions of customers, let them own a piece of my company and do something really cool to launch a new product. When that happens, it will have to be a private company that does it. It can’t be Mattel or someone like that.
When someone does that, then everyone’s going to know about it. They’re going to realize it. That’s going to happen. I know for a fact there are a couple of very large companies that are talking about doing just that. It’s got to be the right company with the right product and the right thing. Once you see something mainstream like that happen, Title III is the same thing. Think about Kickstarter. They launch in 2008 or ’09. The Pebble watch was really the first big deal. That was 2011. They’re around for 3 years before there was a huge, huge success. Even then, it took them a couple of years to really get to the point where they were iconic.
Title III started 60 days ago. It’s been not a good track record for 60 days, but that doesn’t surprise me. These companies are out there trying to raise money without having any ability to pre-market. The next round that comes out that understands the rules, you’ll start to see some traction. I think it’s going to be a boon for you guys because I think in the next 2 or 3 years, it’s going to become huge. I’ve been saying this for a long time. Now that all the rules are out, I really think what’s going to happen is people are going to go for the right kind of product. First thing they’re going to do is the rewards campaign. They’re going to come to you and they’re going to do a Kickstarter campaign. Then I can say, “Well, that worked. Now we have all these backers. I wonder if those people would like to invest in a company?” Then they’re going to do a Title III campaign if they only need a million dollars. If they need more, they’ll do a Title IV campaign.
I think that’s going to start happening all the time. Then you’ll get people to the point where they then are ready for a real IPO, or they’ll be ready to go in the venture capital route, or they’re already making enough where they don’t need more funding. [inaudible 01:18:34] that has been a normal process [inaudible 01:18:36]. Rewards crowdfunding is not going anywhere. It’s just going to get bigger. Equity crowdfunding is going to step in for the next round for almost everybody, because banks are never going to start lending money. The B, Cs have moved away out of the space now. They’re not talking to companies that are at that level. It’s going to work, but they got to fix some of these laws. These marketing thing is absurd.
Just to give you a little example. Last week, this is kind of funny. Law was passed in 2012. The law said by January 1st, 2013, the SEC has to release these rules to let people use the law. I’m talking about Title III. January 1, 2013, I’m kind of online waiting, wondering what’s going on, nothing. Another year goes by, nothing. Another year goes by, nothing. Finally, 4 years, 5 months, and 6 days later, the law comes out. Two-and-a-half years into this, the guy who introduced the law, Representative McHenry from North Carolina submitted a new law called JOBS Act 2.0. He said, “We know there’s a lot of problems with this law. It’s not even in effect yet. Let’s fix the law before it goes into effect.” It got shoot away. People are like, “What are you crazy? We haven’t even seen what happens.”
Last week, as the law went into effect in May. Last week, McHenry got a bill through the house subcommittee unilaterally. The house voted on it last week. They passed the house bilaterally with no problem. It’s in front of the senate right now to fix some of the problems that are in the law. There’s going to be changes. The marketing is not part of it, but they’re talking about raising the cap up to $5 million which would be great. They’re talking about letting people test the waters with Title III campaigns which would be much better for Title III than it is for … One of the other things from a legal standpoint, they’re building in the ability to put in what we call a special purpose vehicle where you can take all of the investors and put them into one LLC that invests in the company. You don’t have 100,000 people listed on a cap table.
It means nothing to most people but venture capitalist hate going to a company to invest in if there are 100,000 investors. They don’t want to do it. If all those 100,000 investors just show up on a cap table as investor LLC whatever, and they’re all in one little place, that’s one of the legal things that the lawyers were pretty pissed off about that, weren’t allowed to do. That’s in the new law. They’re fixing this as it goes along. Anything else?
Have you noticed any sorts of industries that do really well like real estate, or list of products or services, or is it all over the board?
Real estate has done great. Real estate has been the benchmark for crowdfunding. I mean it’s done phenomenally well. It’s developed in its own industry all on its own. There is no question that Title III and Title IV are great for real estate. There was a Title IV campaign in Portland, Oregon that really cool company called Gorilla Construction. I think it’s their name is Gorilla something. These guys built these funky looking buildings that are just awesome looking really. They built 3 or 4 of these in Portland. They’re small office buildings but they’re really kind of funky and cool. They did a Title IV campaign. They said, “We need to raise $750,000.” They just marketed it in Oregon, just in Portland. Their whole campaign was own a piece of the office building in your neighborhood. That’s all they did. They raised $750,000 in 30 days from average everyday people for this coolest [inaudible 01:22:00] building, it’s just looks really cool.
These kinds of things will continue to happen and there’s a whole lot of different ways to do it. Products by all means, a company with a product. The same things that work on Kickstarter. Those are going to be home runs. Everything else is out of area. If you don’t have a crowd … I think no one’s tried a film yet. I’ve got a client that’s Grammy award-winning client who’s talking about doing this to finance her next tour and next album. No one’s done that yet. We’re going to try. All of the stuff that’s happened on Kickstarter, now people are trying to go over here and this. You’ve got also the opportunity to do things that don’t work on Kickstarter. It’s just how good can you guys handle the marketing. That’s what it comes down to.
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“The Best of Enemies,” Reviewed: A Tale of Interracial Friendship Only Slightly Less Offensive Than “Green Book”
By root Last updated Apr 5, 2019
“The Best of Enemies” Reviewed A Tale of Interracial Friendship Only Slightly Less Offensive Than “Green Book”
The best thing that can be said about “The Best of Enemies,” which opens Friday, is that it isn’t quite this year’s version of “Green Book.” Like this year’s Oscar winner, “The Best of Enemies” is a historical drama, based on a true story, that’s set in the Jim Crow-era South and centers on an unlikely relationship between a black person and a white racist who, as a result of that relationship, comes to reconsider his racism. The differences between the two films are significant, in ways that are to the modest advantage of the new film. But their similarities, which are marked, reflect a narrow, bowdlerized view of modern American history with which Robin Bissell, the writer and director of “The Best of Enemies,” is positioning the film.
“The Best of Enemies” is set in Durham, North Carolina, in 1971, a time when that city’s schools were still segregated. It stars Taraji P. Henson as Ann Atwater, a black resident of Durham and a community organizer who helps other black residents on issues of housing discrimination, and Sam Rockwell as C. P. Ellis, a white Durham resident who is the leader of a Ku Klux Klan chapter in the town. After an elementary school for black children is damaged by a fire, local officials—all white, all male—refuse to let these circumstances hasten school integration. Though black parents insist that their children be allowed to attend classes in a school reserved for whites, the officials force the black students back into a few usable classrooms in the damaged building.
With the town in conflict, a local white judge, hoping to defer imposing a decision (and seemingly hoping to placate white residents), accepts a suggestion from his white assistant, Wilbur Hobby (Ned Vaughn). Wilbur calls a colleague named Bill Riddick (Babou Ceesay), a black academic who has had success organizing charrettes, or conflict-resolution meetings, in other communities. Bill goes to Durham to run a town charrette on school integration—and taps Ann and C. P. to co-chair. It’s in the course of the subsequent reckoning, a rigorous, stressful, highly publicized ten-day affair, that Ann and C. P. are compelled to spend time together. C. P., in acknowledging his growing friendly feelings for Ann, must overcome a lifelong and deep-rooted hatred for black people, leading to his ultimate, and public, renunciation of his Klan membership and repudiation of white supremacy and segregation.
“The Best of Enemies” opens with images of a Ku Klux Klan initiation, accompanied by a voice-over (of the real-life C. P. Ellis, taken from “An Unlikely Friendship,” Diane Bloom’s 2002 documentary about Atwater and Ellis) talking about the sense of belonging that he got from his Klan membership. When the fictionalized C. P. is first seen, he’s chairing a Klan meeting and setting out the group’s hatreds but adding that the movement is about being “a part of something bigger” than oneself. Even here, Bissell muddies the historical waters: where, in the documentary, Ellis talks about the Klan’s main trio of enmities, toward “the blacks, Jews, and Catholics,” in “The Best of Enemies,” the fictionalized C. P. inveighs against blacks (using, of course, the N-word, which is said repeatedly throughout the film), Jews, and Communists—not Catholics. In the next sequence, a group of four Klansmen are shown shooting up the house of a white woman whom they say has a black boyfriend. It’s not clear whether they’re trying to kill her or scare her; the scene is filmed in stylized slow motion, set to Roy Orbison’s recording of “Blue Bayou.” Is the woman injured? Does she speak of the incident to the police, to friends, to family members? Bissell, from the start, is interested in perpetrators, not victims, in illustrations of plot points, not curiosity about context.
Ann’s activism is on view from the start of the film as well, as she represents a young black woman who’s facing eviction from a notorious slumlord named Abe Greenfeld (who’s never seen). When Ann leads a group of black citizens into City Hall for a meeting with a councilman, she finds that all the seats have been taken by whites, led there by Ellis, at the behest of the council president. Yet Atwater, in the documentary, describes the closed-door meeting as addressing “children being mistreated in a school” and says that, at the council meeting, it was, in fact, robed Klansmen who were there filling the chamber in full public view.
The story that the real-life Atwater tells is one that grows ever more confrontational and ever more audacious. The temptation to compare the sanitized fictionalization of “The Best of Enemies” with the historical record of the documentary isn’t a matter of mere critical diligence—it’s something Bissell virtually invites himself, both opening and closing his film with clips from that one. The clips show the real-life Atwater and Ellis discussing the events separately and then, at the end, appearing together to display their friendship. In this way, Bissell relies on Bloom’s documentary, and the real people in it, to lend an air of authenticity to a story that he has freely changed in ways that downplay the controversies that were, in fact, roiling Durham at the time.
Another historical participant who turns up as a fictional character in “The Best of Enemies,” Howard Clement (played by Gilbert Glenn Brown), tells Bloom that Durham was a site of demonstrations led by younger, more assertive black activists (he was one of them), and that these resulted in counter-demonstrations by the Klan, led by Ellis. What’s more, the city’s schools were, at the time of the events dramatized in “The Best of Enemies,” already under court order to desegregate. As a result, there was a lot to hash out in the charrette—and, inasmuch as it brought residents together for ten days, twelve hours each day, plenty of tough and substantive talk took place there.
But Bissell displays little interest in those discussions. When the charrette gets started, he offers a bland montage sequence centered on shots of Ann looking bored, while the discussions themselves are muffled, on the soundtrack, to an indecipherable walla. In the documentary, Atwater and Ellis both say that, because they were thrown together in a single office, and were going on missions together in local schools (one is briefly seen in “The Best of Enemies”), they started conversing and then kept going (Ellis says, “We begin to talk about what was on our heart”); from there, they developed a mutual understanding. I have nothing but contempt for the condescension with which Peter Farrelly, the director of “Green Book,” treated the character Donald Shirley. But it’s at least noteworthy that Farrelly has the inclination, and the skill, to make scenes of two men talking in a car dramatic. Bissell doesn’t even try.
“The Best of Enemies” isn’t silent; it’s full of plot-advancing dialogue in which conflicts are defined and challenges are pressed, but the dramatic core of the movie—the long discussions that forged the protagonists’ friendship—is displaced by a secondary, offensive story line. One of C. P.’s sons, Larry (Kevin Iannucci), is mentally disabled and living in a nearby institution, where he’s not getting the care that C. P. and his wife, Mary (Anne Heche), think he needs—and which the Ellises can’t afford to provide on their own. Knowing this, Ann pulls strings with a black nurse at the facility, securing Larry a private room and earning the Ellises’ gratitude. The altered action shifts the premise of “The Best of Enemies” drastically. Instead of being about a relationship that develops on a basis of understanding and empathy between equals, it is about the effect of an act of personal service, as if Ann had to prove to C. P. that she could be both benevolent toward him and helpful to him in order to earn his acknowledgment as an equal.
Though the movie’s ostensible subject is the politics of race, Bissell seems to be more interested in questions of class. Throughout the film, he plants small details (as in several brief conversations between C. P. and high-handed city officials) in which, it’s suggested, the town’s moneyed white leaders are stoking the racism of poor whites, which keeps them from questioning a system that keeps them disadvantaged. But Bissell gets at the theme of ostensible economic anxiety as fuel for racism only in winks and nods. Here, too, he exhibits a desire to downplay and sanitize. (For instance, a title card states that the real-life Ellis went on to become an A.F.L.-C.I.O. organizer, which is all the more significant inasmuch as the charrette itself was sponsored by the union—a fact that’s absent from “The Best of Enemies.”) Bissell exhibits a preconceived, prefabricated, predigested notion of what constitutes a movie story—or, perhaps, of the kind of story that current-day audiences are likely to embrace—and he makes the events of Durham in 1971 fit into that Procrustean template. In the process, he does a disservice to the people, the history, and his own fictional world.
Ku Klux Klanmoviemovie reviewsRacism
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The Ugly Underside of an Iconic Insurgency
By root Last updated Apr 19, 2019
Remy Mauduit, The Insurgent Among Us: My Life as a Rebel, French Officer and Desertor (Independently published, 2018).
History and time can obscure both the brutality and the complexity of revolutionary warfare. Historians craft digestible narratives focused on pivotal actors and actions. Those mining history for lessons about both insurgency and counter-insurgency tend to gravitate toward key strategic issues, such as the external support received by combatants on either side, fluctuating popular support for the counter-insurgency, and the strategic choices and tactics of both the rebels and the government. The messy details of brutal communal conflicts, however, often fall to the cutting room floor. Compounding the problem, accounts that come from victorious rebels normally portray their struggles in glowing terms — as noble and heroic. Massacres of civilians and rivals, internal purges, and fratricide are edited out of the retelling or glossed over.
The Algerian War of Independence, fought from 1954 to 1962, is one such conflict that is often over-simplified. It is frequently laid out in binary terms as a contest between the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), which was fighting for Algerian independence, and France, its colonial ruler. France, so the story is often told, won militarily but undermined its own political legitimacy by employing brutal tactics — especially torture during the Battle of Algiers. The FLN, on the other hand, prevailed through deft use of terrorism, which provoked French excess and aggressively pushed the conflict onto the world stage. In this telling, the FLN was a monolithic and popularly-backed movement — a portrayal hardened by the iconic film, The Battle of Algiers. FLN leaders, who continue to rule Algeria, carefully maintain that heroic image.
The reality, however, was decidedly different. Far from monolithic or noble, the FLN was a cauldron of leader ambitions and jealousies that precipitated brutal violence. In addition, FLN rebels ruthlessly targeted the group’s rivals and lethally enforced their control over the populace. In a series of purges, the FLN tortured and executed thousands of its own fighters and supporters.
The French side was similarly complicated. A rapid succession of French governments not only fought the FLN guerrillas, but also dealt at various points with mutinous generals, an uprising by French-Algerian settlers, and a violent challenge from the Secret Army Organization (OAS), a shadowy group that became known for indiscriminate terrorism.
An Insider’s Perspective of the Algerian War: Factionalism and Slaughter
A remarkable memoir by former FLN fighter Remy Mauduit, recently published in English, helps shatter the myths of the conflict. Mauduit paints a nuanced and sometimes unsettling portrait of the iconic FLN insurgency: in some areas enlightened and democratic, but also fractious and murderous, abandoning — in Mauduit’s estimation — the principles upon which the movement was founded. He also sheds light on the chaotic endgame that gave rise to the OAS.
If published as fiction, Mauduit could be criticized for stretching the boundaries of credibility. Joining the FLN in 1955 as a 15-year-old, he rose from a courier to become an intelligence officer and regional leader. In 1960, he was detained, tortured, and marked for execution by fellow rebels who suspected that he was a French agent — a suspicion planted by French intelligence officers. Narrowly escaping his captors, Mauduit surrendered to a nearby French unit and then voluntarily assisted the French in targeting his FLN tormentors. Accepting an opportunity to join the French Army, Mauduit was made a lieutenant and helped lead a regimental commando unit, continuing to launch attacks against his former comrades-turned-torturers. Always motivated by a vision of an independent, moderate Algeria that embraced all ethnicities, he became deeply dismayed by French President Charles De Gaulle’s decision to abandon the war and negotiate with the FLN, essentially ceding victory to the undemocratic and venal group. In frustration, he joined the OAS, intending to start an insurgency against the French and then the FLN. However, the ineptness of OAS leaders doomed his ambitions — he was quickly captured and imprisoned by the French for more than two and a half years until he was pardoned.
Mauduit claims that he wrote his memoir to convey the power and drama of insurgency. In this, he succeeds, but in the process he also exposes the factionalism and wholesale slaughter that plagued the FLN. Mauduit was aware of, witnessed, participated in, or was a victim of at least five campaigns of FLN violence that focused on targets other than the French. Some he condemned; others he condoned or even participated in.
Mauduit notes that the FLN’s 1956 Soummam Conference — which set the group’s organization, strategy, and political doctrine inside Algeria — strongly condemned FLN reprisals and massacres targeting the population. Mauduit decries this behavior as “a kind of contagion.” Yet, the “FLN’s indiscriminate attacks multiplied, bloodying Algeria” and sparking counterattacks from pied noir extremists.
The FLN did not hesitate to ruthlessly eliminate its Algerian opponents, whether they fought with or against the French. Mauduit labels the FLN’s fight with the Messalists — a separatist party that had refused to join the FLN — as a “civil war” that “did not stop until the Messalists were exterminated or forced to rally to the French.” Mauduit claims that 10,000 were killed and another 25,000 wounded in the conflict, which raged in both Algeria and France. Mauduit also describes the FLN’s destruction of a communist separatist effort, whose activities the FLN found to be “troublesome.” “We wanted to destroy this tiny inconvenience,” according to Mauduit. The “Red Resistance” was ultimately eliminated when a local inhabitant, encouraged by the FLN, reported the group’s location to the French.
Mauduit also claims to have taken part in targeting an Algerian self-defense group whose leaders, purporting to be nationalists, had duped genuine nationalists into working on the French side. Sparing the group’s rank-and-file, the FLN dispatched the leaders “with a bullet to the head close to a charnel-house where they were piled on top of each other…” In another episode, Mauduit narrowly escaped being sucked into a conflict between Arabs and Berber natives of the Kabilya region of Algeria that erupted in the FLN’s Sahara wilaya (guerrilla zone). In an effort to consolidate his personal control over the region, a local FLN commander was attempting to exterminate the Kabyles, as well as numerous FLN cadre and fighters who he viewed as a threat. Mauduit, learning of the scope of the atrocities this particular commander was overseeing, escaped, dramatically fleeing on horseback across the Sahara to report the fratricide to his superiors.
The most vivid section of Mauduit’s book deals with his arrest and torture at the hands of his fellow insurgents. Mauduit was one of thousands of FLN members who were suspected of treason because of their French education. French intelligence sparked and stoked the purge by skillfully leveraging the paranoia among certain FLN leaders and the group’s proclivity to use torture and execution to enforce discipline. Thousands were killed. “One of the great human butcheries of the Algerian War,” according to Mauduit.
Mauduit was one of the very few to avoid execution — he knows of no others — and his description of his weeks of torture makes for grim reading. Yet, his narration offers important insights into what insurgents often do to their own. Mauduit’s is the only FLN fighter account of the FLN purge, as far as I have been able to ascertain, making the book a worthy addition to the thin literature on the anatomy of insurgent purges (see, for example, this account from the Philippines).
Mauduit survived torture without succumbing to the temptation to make a false confession, as so many of his fellow fighters did. As a result, he became a life-long opponent of torture, a practice he came to view as not just immoral but counter-productive.
The Evolution of an Insurgency
Beyond the internal violence that punctuated his time in the FLN, Mauduit’s account of the evolution of the group as an insurgency is worthy of study for those interested either in the FLN specifically or in insurgencies more generally. Mauduit was uniquely positioned to understand this evolution, joining shortly after the FLN’s insurgency was launched. His roles in the insurgency, first as a courier and then as a rising leader, put him into contact with many of the group’s founders and leading lights. Many of Mauduit’s observations often contradict the established FLN narrative; for example, his claim that the FLN made a strategic mistake by engaging in the 1957 Battle of Algiers. He acknowledges the deep damage done to France’s reputation stemming from its army’s abuses in Algiers. However, he claims that without the FLN’s terrorist attacks and the subsequent urban battle that ensued, Algiers could have served as the revolution’s political, intellectual, propaganda, and financial center. Instead, according to Mauduit, Algiers “became a forbidden zone for the FLN… and it stayed that way until independence.”
Mauduit writes about the FLN’s realization early on that the population would not reflexively support the insurgency. This forced the movement to change its strategy to focus on mobilizing the Algerian people, politicizing them, and then turning them into a weapon against the French. The FLN’s methods were essentially coercive. As the FLN proselytized the population, it deployed sticks alongside carrots: The rebels “forgave past errors but slit the throats of recidivists like sheep.” Mauduit also admits that the FLN launched attacks intended to provoke French and European settlers to counter-attack native Algerians as a ploy to rally the people to the insurgency’s side. He is frank in his appraisal of the FLN’s methods: “Today I ask myself if the people had really chosen to make war despite the perversion of the colonial system. The population is driven into all of these conflicts; does anyone ask their opinion? They are forced to fight, which was the case in Algeria.”
The author’s appraisal of the FLN’s methods is no doubt colored by the venal turn of the insurgency that ended — in his view — in tyranny: “the memories recounted in this book trace the stages that corrupted a people’s revolution against a colonial system.” From his insider’s perspective, Mauduit describes the resentment that built up as the FLN leaders living in relative comfort in Tunisia and Morocco essentially abandoned the guerrillas, failing to supply them. Mauduit makes it clear that this abandonment was at least, in part, owed to those leaders’ opposition to the Soummam conference that placed the guerrilla leaders inside Algeria above those living outside the country. He describes the process as a coup de état that hijacked the FLN: “[The leaders outside of Algeria] began a war without mercy against … the ‘chartists,’ the followers of the Soummam Platform.”
Mauduit describes internal struggles for leadership as the real weakness of any insurgency. Yet, he makes no specific recommendations for how counter-insurgency efforts can best exploit that weakness. He does, however, critique the French counter-insurgency, noting France was slow to appreciate the challenge that the FLN represented and relied too much at first on counter-productive sweeps and pursuits. He also argues that France’s repression of the Algerian population, including collective punishment, “became our best recruiting agents and we intensely exploited each act of repression.”
The narrative is rich with insights and is apparently augmented by some subsequent research, which reveals one of the books weaknesses. Although Mauduit provides numerous footnotes to explain developments and terms to readers unfamiliar with the conflict, he does not reveal how he knows certain details about events to which he was not a witness. Readers are left to ponder where Mauduit’s insights come from and whether his they are affected by the bias of an unnamed source.
Mauduit describes The Insurgent Among Us as an “account of an average man thrown into an extraordinary situation.” The tale, however, refutes Mauduit’s modesty. The Algerian Revolution was indeed extraordinary, and the detail, literacy, and unique perspective with which Mauduit relates it will help a range of readers to understand the nuances — often bloody — of this iconic conflict.
Lincoln Krause is a retired intelligence officer who served in the U.S. Army, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency. He is currently an adjunct professor of political science at High Point University. He previously taught in the Security Studies Program of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
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S1 E22 One Night at Band Camp
Amy has flashbacks to when she first met Ricky.
All Five Seasons Now Streaming
Cast: Francia Raisa, Molly Ringwald, Shailene Woodley
Amy Juergens is an ambitious and musically-talented high-school student, whose life is forever changed by a Band Camp fling with the handsome and popular Ricky Underwood. Follow Amy, Ricky and their close-knit families and friends at Grant High School as they wrestle with Amy’s unplanned pregnancy — among other secrets.
Amy's life is turned upside down when she discovers that she is pregnant.
Ricky continues to look for more from his relationship with Amy.
Amy is scared her secret may be revealed to her parents.
Amy and Ben's relationship grows stronger.
What Have You Done to Me?
Amy makes a decision about her pregnancy.
Amy reveals her secret to her mother.
Amy considers a change in her living situation.
Amy's Grandma visits and wants to help.
Adrian searches out her own father.
Back to School Special
Adrian s mother encourages Adrian to have a relationship with her father.
Adrian is missing which prompts her dad to get involved in her life.
The Secret Wedding of the American Teenager
Amy and Ben make a rushed decision that could change their lives.
Baked Nevada
Adrian's father tries to find out who is behind the fake I.D.s.
The Father and the Son
Ricky's father has a plan for Ricky and the baby.
That's Enough of That
Amy has a chance to find out the sex of the baby.
George is approached by his co-worker about possibly adopting Amy's baby.
Amy's parents interview potential adoptive parents for the baby.
Making up Is Hard to Do
Ashley tries to convince Ben to return to Amy.
Money for Nothing Chicks for Free
Jack raises money for underprivileged children.
Amy's friends come up with a plan to help Amy's decision about the baby.
Whoomp! (There It Is)
Adrian and Grace plan Amy's baby shower.
One Night at Band Camp
And Unto Us, a Child Is Born
Amy has a hard time transitioning into a full time mother.
Follow The Secret Life of the American Teenager:
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Square Enix announces partnership with People Can Fly for an unannounced Triple A project
By Rajesh V On Jun 1, 2017
Square Enix has announced a new partnership with People Can Fly, the studio responsible for titles like Bulletstorm and Gears of War Judgment. The two companies are currently working on a new project not announced for PC and console.
Square Enix, one of the most important publishers in the world thanks to the famous series such as Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider, today announced a new partnership with People Can Fly, the studio of Warsaw that developed Bulletstorm and co-developed Gears of War: Judgment. The two companies will collaborate to develop a new AAA title for consoles and PC.
“We’re massively excited to be working with the talented team at PCF in Warsaw, a studio filled with people who really know their craft,” said Lee Singleton, Head of Studio at Square Enix London Studios. “We’re building a game we all want to play which will be the perfect addition to our portfolio.”
“It’s an exciting time,” said Sebastian Wojciechowski, Studio Head at People Can Fly. “We’ve got a great and experienced team in place, and it’s incredible to be working with Square Enix, a world-class publisher who shares our passion and excitement for the project.”
The game in question (definitely a Triple A project) should not be announced at E3 2017 in Los Angeles, at the moment there are no details of this kind but the two parties involved have been excited about this collaboration.
People Can Fly is currently looking for various professionals including programmers of gameplay, AI and VFX Artist.
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Search Results for latest games
Kaillera For Arcade Games
Kaillera is add-on to already existing arcade emulators like MAME, Atari, N64 etc and is designed to aid networked multiplayer play for these emulators. And like most network multiplayer gaming systems, Kaillera is also implemented to work on client–server architecture.
Kaillera’s latest update is its implementation with MAME(Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). MAME is a famous emulator and is able to run almost all types of arcade games and with Kaillera attached with the MAME emulator these games can now be played online or on a computer network like LAN or internet.
The latest emulator of MAME equipped with Kaillera is Mame32 plus plus v0.119 is available to download for free on kaillera’s official website http://www.kaillera.com.
With an option to either create a server or join an exiting servers Mame32 plus plus is gaining popularity, and is providing great competition to Online Gaming systems like xbox live, gameranger etc. For gamers with particular interest in classic arcade games like street fighter, metal slug series, King of Fighters etc this multiplayer option to play against human player over internet is a blessing.
Lost are the days when people used to meet other classic gamers in game shops (popularly called noise factory) this new system is providing an opportunity for classic arcade gamers all around the globe to play with each other while enjoying the comforts of the home.
So, what are you waiting for arcade game lover lets load you computer with MAME equipped with Kaillera and download all the MAME games and enjoy them with human players….. its so better than playing with CPU
You can download zip files of almost all the arcade games form http://www.rom-world.com. SEE YOU ON KAILLER SERVERS
Posted in Action-adventure Games, Arcade Games, XBOX360
Tags: 3D games, Arcade Games, Internet network, Kaillera, Mame32, Multiplafer games, multiplayer, xbox
Moon Chaser
Have you played the games of tiny wings and dragon fly? What if you are treated with one of the newer mobile app like the above with newer characters and a more interesting story line? I think now you have started up reminding of the story of the both of them…
Here comes one of the Android Phone app which made you to fly higher and higher in the sky which you have ever wanted in your dreams and the game has been given the name “Moon Chaser” which is one of the popular action racing game in which the hint is hidden to let you guess about the game play.
Ninja wants to fly in the sky and you have to help him in completing his mission by playing the role of the Ninja is different from you as he has the ability of both running and flying. The task that will be given to you is to run and fly over the hills and reach to a particular destination. Seems so much easy!!!
But as there are always twists around, so this is not also so much easy as you might be thinking. And one of the reasons of this is that you have to reach before the moon eclipse occurs. This difficulty level is not over yet and you have to cross the dangerous hills within the time limit given.
Even this is not all and the control of the gravity which you have to do mainly for making the Ninja to be controlled by you to whether you want to run or fly.
Controlling the Controls of the MOBILE SCREEN
You have to play like a controller and get the control of the screen of your Android phone within your hands. Whenever you will touch the screen, the gravity of the Ninja increases and when you release there then the gravity decreases and thus the control is done by only using the concept of the increases or decreases of the gravity.
On declivity, if you touches out the screen then the acceleration of the spreen occurs increasing the overall speed while on acclivity, the release will make the Ninja to fly. Now you have to make the fine-tuning of the gravity to make the Ninja to properly fly and to reach his destination.
Features and some facts about the GAME
The designing of the game has been done by Reverie and the point which makes this work to be praised is that due to Reverie, this game is available on the Android Phones for the 1.6 users or above.
The latest version of the game which is available is 1.1.2 and it supports App 2SD.
The graphics are of very simplistic type that makes it more attractive for the users of mobile phones.
Are you interested in seeking out more often any of the missions? If yes, then you can have the pleasure here also be doing the unlocking of the missions or also called the ‘achievements’.
By reading the above overall story if you have read out the whole of it, you might be agreeing on one of the issue that this game can be called as physics based game play.
The difficulty level increases with the advent of the higher levels and the third level seems to be completed to be only by a fantastic player!!!
The game is absolutely free and you may have an easier way to download this Ninja GAME by just clicking on the DOWNLOAD MOON CHASER link.
You might also can read about more games like:
Uncharted: An Award Winning Action-Adventure Video Game
Most Anticipated Games of 2012
To share the games with friends follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Posted in Action-adventure Games
Tags: action racing game, Android Phone app, Reverie
Have you ever played any of the game of the series of Elder Scrolls??? No… Doesn’t matter as the newer series of the franchise has been coming up which consists of all the exciting and mixture of all of the back series for you…
It is one of the extraordinarily role playing video-game that is the newer addition in the franchise of Elder Scrolls Universe. It will be multiplayer video game that is first of its kind in the whole of its series. You will be able to play it on your PC and Macintosh.
Let now talk about the developer and publisher of the game and see if you recognize the name or not! So, here we go with the ZeniMax Online Studios as the developer of the game and Bethesda Softworks as the one of the famous publisher of the game. I think you might be known with one more name that is Matt Firor who has directed the whole scene. You will be able to play it on your PC and Macintosh.
Story Line of the Game
The game starts with a newer story that includes all the previous ages and exciting material with a newer story so that you are able to go through all the excitement and fun with one of the great story which you cannot be able to in the previous series.
For showing all of the stuff the game has been taken to the millennium of years back to the latest come up series – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The story roams around the world of Tamriel where one of the stronger contenders has come up named as Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince that want to conquer all of the territory and is considered to be the main competitor of the game.
After reading this much stuff for the game, you definitely wanted to know the date of its release and thus revealing the secret of Game Informer that they have revealed in their magazine also, the date is going to be released in 2013 and thus the fans have to wait a little more. Why don’t have a cup of coffee till that time!!!
Bully PS2 Game
Posted in Role-playing
Tags: Bethesda Softworks, role playing, video game, ZeniMax Online Studios
Borderlands 2 is a forthcoming first-person shooter video game with role-playing elements in development for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. Gearbox Software is currently in development of the Borderlands 2 and 2K Games is its publisher. The game is scheduled to be released on September 18, 2012 inU.S.and September 21, 2012 inU.K.
Borderland 2 is a sequel to its predecessor Borderland, a 2009 video-game, developed by Gearbox Software and is build upon the gameplay elements as implemented in its predecessor Borderland. The game is entirely a role-playing shooter video game including character-building elements.
The game offers four different characters to play with, each with their unique special skills and with expertise with definite weapons. The game begins; player takes on quests, and is rewarded with money, points and sometimes with an item throughout the gameplay, the game features certain abilities of killing enemies and the allocating the rewarded points into a skill tree that will feature three distinct powers of the character giving you a thrashing gameplay experience.
The game features glorious graphics and includes unique graphic style. The game offers online multiplayer cooperative mode that supports up to four-player along with class-mod, three branch skill tree. Borderlands 2 features unique, expansive and customize weaponry system, smooth-drifting vehicles, dynamic quest system. The game includes a complete new AI encouraging team-work in the gameplay. Get ready to experience a thrashing combat against your enemies, beat them up and smash them down with latest technologies weaponry system or i would say “Get ready to joy puck your face off!!!”.
Posted in PS3, Role-playing, Shooting Games, XBOX360
Tags: 2K Games, Borderland 2, latest games, PS 3 game, upcoming games 2012, xbox game
The Ratchet & Clank Trilogy
“THE GALAXY’S GREATEST DUO RETURN IN THE ORIGINAL SMASH HIT TRILOGY ‘QUACK-O-RAY’ IN GLORIOUS HD ‘SHEEPINATE’ IN 3D WITH FULL TROPHY SUPPORT AND ONLINE MULTIPLAYER MODES”
Sony has given a new HD polish to its many of the games that have been loved for years and the Ratchet & Clank Trilogy is trilogy of Ratchet & Clank series. The Ratchet & Clank Trilogy is a high-definition and remastered collection. The Ratchet & Clank Trilogy was first announced on March 2, 2012, after the game got listed on AmazonFrance’s official website, but got official confirmed on March 15, 2012 by Sony Computer Entertainment. The game has been developed by Games in union with Idol Minds, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.
The story remains unchanged with remastered versions in the game as the trilogy has included three original games. The overhaul graphics make the game very attractive with a complete HD stereoscopic 3D support. In the gameplay character includes animal-like alien mechanic Ratchet and his tiny robot chum Clank.The game actually includes three original PS 2 games, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando and Ratchet & Clank. It also offers multi-play gameplay up to 8 players over the PlayStation network for Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. New glorious graphics make the game look even better. The game features 1080p and 720p stereoscopic 3D support giving game an astonishing look that attracts the gamers.
Experience the whole new HD adventure with Ratchet and his tiny robot chum Clank, I bet every gamer would love the latest adventure of Ratchet & Clank series.
Tags: chip-munks, ONLINE MULTIPLAYER gaming, Ratchet, Sony Computer Entertainment, The Ratchet & Clank Trilogy
Medal of Honor: Warfighter is an upcoming first-person shooter video game being developed by Danger Close Games and set to be published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii U.It is a direct sequel to Medal of Honor (2010) and 14th installment in the Medal of Honor Series.
The game is scheduled to be released on October 23, 2012 in North America and on October 26, 2012 in the United Kingdom. The key philosophy that makes the Medal of Honor series extraordinary is the respect for the soldiers and honoring those who serves.
This is why Danger close games are extremely proud to announce the exclusive Medal of Honor series Military Edition i.e. Medal of Honor: Warfighter for U.S. military and government employees.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter was nominated for multiple awards at E3 2012 and was awarded as Best FPS game of E3 2012 by Game Chronicles. The game features incredible HD quality visuals, the real world settings and much more for an epic gaming experience.
The Game features both single and multiplayer campaign. Engine the game will run onto is DICE’s Frostbite 2, which supports Windows vista/7 and DirectX 10 and 11. Both single player and multiplayer mode will use Frostbite 2 latest update.
In the single player mode, the game will feature various locations include Philippines and Somalia. The story will continue to follow the story of tier 1 operators. In Multiplayer mode, the game will feature 12 different tier units from 10 different nations. Player will be able to choose desired country to defend in the gameplay.
Posted in PS3, Shooting Games
Tags: chronicles, Danger Close, Electronic ARTs, FPS game, Medal of Honor, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, multiplayer games, Philippines, PS3, wii u, windows 7, windows vista, Xbox 360, Xbox games
F1 Online The Game
We all love racing games that are for free. So codemaster launched the first in the world of online gaming “F1 online” ready to set to launch in Q1. Free to play racing will feature all the cars, stars and circuits in the game to give players the chances to be the driver.
Though this game fans will be able to race with their favorite team in online multiplayer race events and practices with their favorite team and the team boss in a game create or manage there own team. Gamers will easily choose their level game and share their progress or dashboard of the score board and some social networking websites. F1 online provide features to multiplayers in six different games mode.
Player can choose any mode of playing game including 1 practice , 2 qualifiers , 3 time trials, 4 challenges,5 grand prix . Players can easily designee their game also and can select team , manage controls , research , production , function of race to win on the track . players can register now and see the latest screens and videos of the game at http://www.f1onlinethegame.com/. F1 Games , formula 1 game online about formula one racing and Play games 3D F1 racing Flash online free Games these two games are very famous games of F1 Online ‘The Game’
Posted in Online Game
Tags: 3D games, F1, F1 Game, F1 online, multiplayers, Online The Game
Here’s some good news for gamers. Glimpse to Future Gaming comes with new and interesting online games. This online internet games takes one through different stages of evolution and blends fun with information. We provide you best and latest online games. Stay Connected….
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