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Are you happy living in Singapore?
Posted by Alex Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Most of you know that last year, Singapore was ranked the 22th most liveable country, right? Well, the good news is, this year, in the Monocle’s list of the world’s most liveable cities, Singapore has been ranked number 18!
The top was Zurich, and only 2 other Asian countries, Tokyo and Fukuoka in Japan are rated in front of Singapore. Singapore has aimed to try to replicate the glamour of Monaco by adding the Formula One road race and the new casinos. The cities are selected based on such factors as shopping hours, access to green spaces, the number of Zara and Starbucks stores in the cities and the ease of setting up business in the cities.
In April, American human-resource consultancy Mercer ranked Singapore Number1 for the basic structure and system in its global survey of the top cities to live in. But, these surveys do not include what the people think of their hometowns. Another recent survey has found out that the citizens in Singapore and South Korea has voted their cities as the most stressful places to live in. I think that it is because of the competition in Singapore. But, it is found that these two countries have the highest per capita incomes in Asia and this is ironical.
Maybe one of the reasons is that Singaporeans are worried about their financial security and retirement. Quite a lot of people are concerned that they may not have enough money after they retire to grow old in the country.
GLA founder, Mr. Philip Merry, says that he wants to look out for Singaporeans who find joy in everything and learn from them how they approach life.
Eight Asian economies- China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore, took part in another survey by life insurer AXA on the feelings of the citizens about the country’s future. The people in Singapore are the most pessimistic in Asia.
The survey polled residents between 25-50 on their views about life in the next 5 years. The survey covered four aspects in life-career, retirement, family and health. Sadly, Singaporeans had the lowest scores in all the four categories.
Angela Lau, the head of AXA, says that they are not very confident about their health and career, and how they are going to cope with the challenges in life. She also says that one in four people are worried about whether they can continue their jobs in the next five years. That was probably one of the reasons why they are not very optimistic about their futures. But, the ironical thing about this is that Singapore is the least affected countries by the turmoil.
On the current happiness index, the top five countries are:
1. Vanuatu
3. Costa Rica
4. Dominica
A random survey also shows that UK is at the108th position, while USA is ranked at position 150. This shows you something, right? This shows that money cannot buy you happiness. Most of the countries that have a high country output (how much a country produces) rank lower in this happiness index. One reason is that life is very competitive in the progressive economies. Hence, people there may feel depressed and unhappy.
So next time you feel deprived of good things in life, think again. You may be the happiest of the lot in reality.
A Fun Day With Old Friends
The C's
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John Hoppner
Portrait of Lady Ibbetson
Artwork date(s): c.1780-1790
Measurements: 925x715
Keywords: three-quarter-length seated portrait; landscape; woman with wig
This portrait was designed to be hung with a companion portrait of the sitters husband, Sir James Ibbetson, High Sheriff of Yorkshire, also painted by Hoppner. Both works were probably painted between 1780 and 1790, and remained in the hands of the Ibbetson family and descendants in Yorkshire until they came onto the market in the early 20th century. At the time when they were painted, copies of both were produced by Hoppners studio for Lady Ibbetsons uncle. These were still in the family in the late 20th century, but were both destroyed by a fire at the family home of Fingringhoe Hall, Essex, in 1976.
Agnews acquired both the original portraits, from different sources, in the course of 1911. They sold them in turn to Christies in 1918, and Leggatt Bros bought them from Christies in this year, the Lady Ibbetson for 1000gs, the Sir James Ibbetson for the much smaller sum of 110gs. Leggatts sold this latter work to a Count Matsukata of Japan, where it was still recorded as being in the 1970s. The other was bought from them by Bailey.
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BACK IN ACTION? MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS MOVIE IN THE WORKS?
Original five rangers morphing into action. From L-R: Amy Jo Johnson (Kimberly), Thuy Trang (Trini), Austin St. John (Jason), Walter Jones (Zack), and David Yost (Billy).
GO, GO POWER RANGERS!
It's morphin' time...potentially.
Announced yesterday, Lionsgate films along with Haim Saban are looking to reboot the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers franchise with a revival on the big screen. The "teens with attitude" starred in two films in the late 1990's and the franchise has had over 15 different incarnations.
The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers ran on FOX from 1993-1995, and was arguably the biggest show in the world for that time. The cast featured all relative newcomers in Thuy Trang, David Yost, Walter Jones, Amy Jo Johnson, Jason David Frank and Austin St. John, each with their unique talent set brought to their character. Frank, who played Tommy, the Green/White Ranger and St. John who played Jason, the Red Ranger, were incredible young martial artists. Yost, who played Billy the Blue Ranger, and Trang, who was Trini, the Yellow Ranger, were gifted with superior intelligence. Johnson played Kimberly, the Pink Ranger and was an outstanding gymnast. Jones, who was Zack, the Black Ranger, had a great mix of martial arts and hip-hop dancing, which he called Hip-Hop Kido.
The teens were summoned by Zordon and his robotic partner and best friend Alpha 5 to defend the world against Rita Repulsa, Goldar, Squatt and Baboo, along with the villain creator Finster. Each week, the Rangers would face new challenges and would always overcome the odds in some fashion, whether it be combining their weapons to form the Power Blaster or by summoning their Power Zords, creating the Megazord and defeating the larger foes.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a cultural phenomenon and one would have to expect that with the recent revival of older superheroes like Captain America, Ironman, Batman, Spiderman, and the Fantastic Four, that Lionsgate is looking to capitalize on that success.
Is this the right time? Will people be interested? Is it a prequel, or spin-off, or a true adaptation? How will the film work as a live action movie? Some actors from the previous series have passed away, will that affect the movie?
And my biggest question: Is this really a good idea?
Don't get me wrong; I'm as big a Power Rangers fan as anyone, and I've dreamed of seeing the Rangers suit up again, but from the early rumblings of the movie, it will not feature the same characters. It will be a "reimagining" of the franchise. To me, no one will ever replace the original Jason, Tommy, Billy, Trini, Zack, or Kimberly, nor will they be able to replace Bulk and Skull, Zordon, Alpha 5, Rita, Ernie, Mrs. Applebee, Mr. Kaplan, and everyone else who made the series as memorable as it has been.
Plus, if you don't have Austin St. John or Amy Jo Johnson, in the film, then what's the point? I'm 50/50 on the idea of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers returning to any screen other than in syndication.
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Sluggish First Quarter 2018 Raises Concerns for Year-Long Giving Outlook
While relatively little giving occurs in the first three months of the year, data from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s (FEP) 2018 First Quarter Report shows some early warning signs for charities and giving.
The Report, which looks at giving data from January to March 2018 and compares it to the same time period in 2017, reveals that every metric the FEP analyzes is on the decline—with the exception of revenue produced by donors giving $250 or less.
Key metrics in the study include the total number of donors (down 6.3% compared to first quarter 2017); total revenue (down 2.4%); and overall donor retention rate (the percentage of donors who continue to give to the same organization from one year to the next, down 4.6%). The number of new donors fell significantly (down 12%), as did the number of newly retained donors (new donors last year who have made a second gift this year, down 18 percent).
“The reason we’re so concerned with these first quarter numbers for 2018 is because of what we saw in 2017,” said Jon Biedermann, vice president of DonorPerfect CRM Fundraising Software. “For the first three quarters of 2017, giving was way behind the pace of 2016. Only a record-breaking 4th quarter increase is why giving increased overall by the end of the year. So far, giving is off to an even worse start in 2018, so we’re concerned about what charities may experience in their fundraising throughout the year.”
Elizabeth Boris, founding director of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, cautioned that there were two major caveats to the findings. First, previous studies by other organizations have found that a large majority of giving occurs in the final three months of the year, October through December. Declines in giving in the first quarter and beyond do not necessarily portend a year of decreased giving.
Second, the new federal tax law, passed late last year, significantly changed giving incentives and may have been a key factor in the extraordinary level of giving that occurred in the last quarter of 2017 (a 47% increase for donors donating $1,000 or more compared to the last quarter of 2016). While it is too early to conclusively state what the exact impact of the new tax law was on giving, it is very possible that the higher levels of giving in the fourth quarter of 2017 created a sense of donor fatigue and led to lower-than-usual levels in the first quarter of 2018.
“The bottom line is that we are now in a very different charitable landscape than we were 12 months ago,” said Jay Love, chairman and chief relationship officer of Bloomerang. “The work of the FEP and the use of the Growth in Giving database—the world’s largest database of actual nonprofit donation history available for public and private research—is going to be critical as we help charities navigate this new environment and inspire donors to support their causes.”
Another concern that the latest data underscores is the continuing trend of fewer donors giving more money. With the number of donors down more than six percent, but giving revenue decreasing by just 2.4 percent, the charitable sector continues to see fewer, typically wealthier donors accounting for more and more of giving totals. “This situation simply isn’t financially sustainable for the 1.5 million organizations that make up the charitable sector,” said Mike Geiger, MBA, CPA, president and CEO of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. “Donors who give $50 – $250 annually are the mainstay of many charities that don’t have major gift programs. The slow, long-term drop in the number of these donors is jeopardizing the work and impact of many charities.”
Data from the FEP’s First Quarter 2018 Report is based on a panel of charities selected from the Growth in Giving database of 154 million transactions from 17,597 organizations and $68 billion in donations since 20015. Organizations included in the panel have raised $5,000 or more from 25 or more donors in each of the last six years. Revenue figures have been adjusted for inflation.
Jeff Gordy, CEO of NeonCRM, which contributes data, notes that charities should be very concerned by the decrease in recurring giving, as well as the decrease in major gifts. “Not only are nonprofits attracting fewer major donors, but they are not retaining the donors they already have,” said Gordy. “Nonprofits will need to do a better job of promoting their work and staying in touch with their donors to reverse this trend. This report covers the averages, but there are many nonprofits that are breaking this mold and doing much better.”
You can download the Fundraising Effectiveness Quarterly Report for Q1 2018 here.
Michael Nilsen
Vice President, Communications and Public Policy at Association of Fundraising Professionals
Michael Nilsen is the Vice President of Communications and Public Policy for the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
Latest posts by Michael Nilsen (see all)
Fundraising Effectiveness Project Quarterly Fundraising Report for Q4 2018 - February 25, 2019
World’s Largest Giving Database Finds Modest Growth in 2017 Giving, Retention Rates - August 21, 2018
Sluggish First Quarter 2018 Raises Concerns for Year-Long Giving Outlook - May 31, 2018
Posted in FEP News.
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From Blocks to Block Diagrams
In the previous post, we looked at an archetypal ‘invention', the interpenetrated wall block building, from the point of view of claimless patents. Now let's try applying the principles developed there to the more difficult case of a real patent.
The patent we'll look at is US 8,698,473, uninformatively titled "Switching Regulator", from Takeshi Kimura of Yokohama, Japan, assigned to Spansion LLC here in my home town of Sunnyvale, CA. If you like picturesque places, you should visit Yokohama rather than Sunnyvale, preferably the Yokohama that never actually existed, as depicted in Goro Miyazaki's From Up On Poppy Hill. No one appears to have spent their time reading patents up on Poppy Hill.
US 8,698,47 is a pretty typical patent: a modest variation on an existing class of products. The topic is a device that converts one electrical voltage to another. For example, a device like the one described could convert the 3.7 volts it gets from a battery in a cellphone into 1.8 volts needed by the interface that the parts in the phone use to talk to each other.
The normal way to look at this application is to focus on the "inventive concept", whatever the heck that is. Instead, in the proposed claimless patent system, we will focus on what you tell a person of ordinary skill in the relevant art to do in order to make the patented thing, and how that set of instructions differs from any previous set. Kimura provides a particularly convenient example that does exactly that, at least if you happen to know something about electrical block diagrams, which a person of ordinary skill in this art certainly would. (For readers whose expertise is thankfully elsewhere, rest assured: you only need to know that the right person would understand what the funny symbols are, not that you do.)
Figure 1 below shows what's called a block diagram for an electrical part. (The figures shown are simplified and annotated versions of Kimura's Figures 1 and 12.) The various funny symbols represent electrical components that do something useful, like resisting the flow of current, storing charge, or amplifying a signal (making it bigger). Each line with dots on the ends represents a wire that conducts electricity between places in the circuit. "VIN" is the input voltage, to be converted to some other voltage "VOUT" (e.g. from 3.7 to 1.8 volts). This picture is an instruction set, telling our skilled person what components they need and how the components are to be connected together.
If Kimura's converter were to be built using discrete parts (that is, individual resistors and capacitors with wires, like the ones you can still find at Radio Shack), the instructions would also include a bill of materials. The Bill of Materials, or BOM for short, is a long list that tells someone how to buy the parts you need. For each part, there's typically a vendor, a model or part number, and optionally some specifications and pricing. If Kimura's converter were an integrated circuit, constructed as a chip on a silicon wafer, the bill of materials would be at least partially replaced by a specification for each component: how big a transistor to use, what value of resistance is needed for a resistor, and so on. In modern integrated circuit design, many parts are already available as libraries of designs, so the specification might also include something similar to the BOM, describing which library to use, and which named design to place in the circuit. For simplicity, we'll stick to the discrete-part approach below.
So the instructions provided to our skilled person for the prior art stuff would be, for example, the schematic diagram above, and a bill of materials for the parts, or a set of specifications. The skill of our person of ordinary skill in this art is to turn that set of instructions into a product that works as intended. Note that, even if you the reader don't understand what you are looking at, Kimura's application has defined for us the person of ordinary skill: a person for whom our Figure 1 DOES make sense and DOES suffice to describe what they are to build. If you hand this diagram to someone and they look blankly at you and ask "does COMP stand for Compromise?" then you've got the wrong person. The definition of a person of ordinary skill is thus testable, an important distinction from the existing patent system.
Figure 2 shows a similarly-cleaned up image with the new stuff added.
How do these instructions change when we include the new stuff (the stuff in the green-shaded box in Figure 2)? We need to add something like this:
1. Connect a current source [ok, it's actually a current sink in this case, and yes, only EE nerds care] to point X of the schematic. The new wire that connects this source is shown in green in the figure. Current sources have some specifications: the amount of current they conduct, the voltage range over which they work, and so on. This current source can be switched on and off, so we'd provide some other specifications: how much current is carried when the switch is off, how fast the switch turns on and off, and how you control the state of the switch. The other side of the current source is connected to ground, the reference voltage for all other voltages (typically e.g. the case of an instrument).
2. Connect a new wire to switch the current source on and off, also shown in green. Note that in order to implement this switchability, we have to describe how the wire controls the switch in the current source, and when the switch is to be on or off.
3. Connect a new (green) wire to the wire marked "PFM_COMP". Again we need to define what this wire does (in this case, carry a logic signal), and when that signal would be HIGH (a logical YES or 1) and LOW (a logical NO or 0).
4. Change the definition of the wire that used to connect to the little bubble on the Negative Current Detector box (a comparator, and no, COMP doesn't stand for compromise, in case you were wondering): we have a different specification for when this wire is HIGH or LOW than in the prior art diagram.
The need for each of the specifications that define e.g. the current source is part of the prior art. Once I tell you I need a current source, the first thing you ask is "how much current?", and the second thing is "over what voltage range?" Anywhere we need a current source, everyone we will work with knows we need to provide the specs for it. So the part that's different is the fact that we are connecting a current source to point X, where no such current source existing in the prior version. That's one new instruction. The details of the instruction are (in this case) all known prior art; the only new part is the existence of the component at this place. So we count this as one new thing. Like the kid with the block building, our person of ordinary skill needs to know what a current source is and how to get one that works. We just need to tell them where to put it.
Similarly, each new or changed wire needs a specification describing what it is up to. Everyone who can read one of these silly diagrams knows that if I put a wire somewhere I need to tell you what it is doing. That's part of the prior art. So each new wire is one new thing, carrying with it the questions whose answers are needed to make the new part work.
Note that the box marked "MODE_CNT" isn't counted as new, even though it was not present in prior art diagram in Figure 1. The MODE_CNT box is a known method of making sure that the wires do what they are supposed to do. Any other method could be substituted. Implementing it is part of the instructions for the wires.
Thus, when we finish counting, we find that, if we accept Kimura's representation of what the prior art is, then we have added four new instructions to something that existed before. The Hamming distance of this invention is four instructions from the prior art.
Note that we're not making assertions about what is obvious, only what is new. We are assuming a specific set of skills for the people who receive the instructions. This is a verifiable set of assumptions. The description of the prior art defines for us the person we are looking for: a person who can read Figure 1 and turn it into a working voltage converter. This person then needs to be able to implement the new voltage converter when provided with the four additional instructions.
Now, imagine I read Kimura's patent, and happened to have an old converter lying around on my desk (e.g. left over from my failed plot to take over the world using self-assembling robots, abandoned when it turned out the robots ran on 5 V and I only had 9 V power supplies). I could disassemble that converter. Let's imagine that I found that it had all the same parts, or functionally equivalent parts, as those shown in Figure 1. In addition, it had a current source as shown in Figure 2, but not the new wires connected to PFM_COMP and the Negative Current Detector (or their equivalents). Then I would have shown that the correct distance to the prior art was only 2 instructions instead of 4. That narrows the scope of Kimura's claimless patent, and makes it easier for me to improve it enough to no longer infringe. The more new instructions a patent has, the more space it protects for its owner. Claimless patents block copying but not progress.
In the next post (the final one for this series), we'll examine the issues that arise in trying to implement claimless patenting: how to choose the hierarchical level at which an instruction is defined, how to verify the efficacy of the instruction set, and how the choices made may differ from one area of art to another.
[Posted at 11/29/2014 09:39 PM by Daniel Dobkin on Patents comments(0)]
CincoUnoQuatroNine:
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Books, Fantasy
By Edo Bosnar January 10, 2020 January 9, 2020
This whole post takes its cue from Greg Hatcher’s recent column about the ‘on-ramp’ to get younger people, whether teens or preteens, interested in reading. In the comments there, I mentioned my favorite author, Ursula Le Guin, and, among other things, the books in her absolutely outstanding Earthsea cycle – which is where I first discovered her writing when I was about 11 or 12 years old.
That actually got my wheels turning and I started to think about Le Guin as an author of children’s and YA books – a smaller but, I think, vital part of her total ouevre. So what follows are some of my thoughts on her various offerings for younger readers, most of which I think can be serve as suitable on-ramps to the world of reading. The Earthsea books, however, will be conspicuously absent here, because some time in the hopefully near future I’m going to reread them all and then possibly write a separate post.
So I won’t start at the beginning, neither my own first encounter with Le Guin’s work nor her first YA book, but instead I wanted to touch on The Beginning Place. This one isn’t necessarily a YA book, although mostly reads like one. However, the two main characters are not children or teens, but rather a man (Hugh) and woman (Irene) in their early twenties. Both of them are living in a sort of limbo; working at steady but dead-end jobs and not entirely independent of their parents/families. The depiction of their home lives is very unsentimental and rather gritty.
At the different times, both of them find a place in a forest on the outskirts of town where they both live which leads to a sort of enchanted place (that we later learned is called Tembreabrezi). It always seems to be twilight there and time passes very slowly – the equivalent of a few days is only a few hours in the ‘real’ world. The people speak a strange language and seem to live in some type of preindustrial society. Both Hugh and Irene feel strangely at home there, and prefer it to their real lives, so they come as often as they can. However, some unnamed dread overcomes all of the people in Tembreabrezi and they claim that only Irene and Hugh can overcome it. So they go on a sort of quest that turns out to be a harrowing experience, and they come out of it with a very different perspective on themselves, each other and their place in the (real) world. This is basically a coming of age story, and that’s sort of a unifying theme of all of Le Guin’s YA books.
Very Far Away From Anywhere Else is very much a young adult novel, and also non-genre (i.e., there’s no science fiction, fantasy or any speculative elements whatsoever). It’s a story that focuses on a thoughtful and intelligent, yet socially awkward teenage boy, who soon meets and befriends an equally thoughtful and intelligent teenage girl who’s also a bit of an outsider (and who’s a musical prodigy as well). The story deals with the ups and downs of their friendship during their senior year of high school, mainly through the lens of the boy’s own confusion about whether they are friends or something more (remember, he’s a teenager…). Again, as in The Beginning Place, what we see is the gradual process of both main characters moving toward adulthood and general maturity.
The cover of my current copy, which is the British edition; don’t know why the title was changed…
This book may not necessarily be a good jumping-on point for the types of genre fiction we usually talk about here, but it is a good book to give any confused teenager, and hell, it’s LeGuin – there’s no such thing as a bad LeGuin book or story.
Next up is a trilogy of books sometimes referred to as the Annals of the Western Shore, and also Chronicles of the Western Shore. We’re back to the realm of fantasy in a setting somewhat similar to Earthsea: a pre-industrial society that resembles what most people associate with medieval Europe. The denizens of the ‘Western Shore’ live in a variety of communities, from wealthier city-states through village communes and nomadic or sedentary tribes to wandering bands of outlaws hiding out in forests and swamps.
Gifts is set in a far north, a hilly region called the Uplands where the agrarian residents eke out a living from the rather unforgiving terrain. Their society is tribal, with wider kinship groups living in villages under a chieftain. Sometimes the various tribes engage in violent feuds with each other. There’s just one twist about these people: many of them have hereditary, basically magical abilities, called gifts, such as being able to communicate with animals (handy for hunting as well as taming and training draft animals), but also less pleasant stuff like being able to bend other people to do your will, or something called ‘unmaking’ – basically being able to make anything, organic or inanimate, crumble apart with a focused glance.
The story involves two adolescents, a girl named Gry, whose family’s abilities are to communicate with animals, and Orrec, whose family members are known, and feared, for their ‘unmaking’ ability. Early on, while Orrec is still a boy of about 12 or 13, his father claims that his son can’t control his unmaking power and forces him to wear a blindfold for several years.
It turns out, however, that Orrec has another talent, and that is an affinity for telling stories and singing songs, and eventually he and Gry decide to leave their homeland and seek their destiny elsewhere, with Orrec propelled by his desire to learn new stories and songs from the people they meet as they wander through their world. They become supporting characters in the remaining two books.
The main character in the second book, Voices, is a teenage girl named Memer who lives in a coastal city-state far to the south of the setting in Gifts. The city had been violently conquered some years previously by a war-like, austere people from the harsh inland desert plains to the east. They are strict monotheists, and find the more lax polytheism of the city-dwellers heretical. They also consider books, and anything written, abhorrent. As Memer moves toward adulthood against the backdrop of this tense situation in her home city, she is taught to read by the lord of the household she lives in, where there is also a secret library. This household also has an Oracle, and Memer becomes aware that she is able to interpret its messages, which she calls ‘voices.’
She eventually meets two intriguing visitors to the city, Orrec and Gry, both of them now quite well known throughout the land. Orrec in particular is renowned far and wide as a storyteller and singer. They befriend Memer and serve as a catalyst for the events that follow in the city.
The last book, Powers, is centered on a boy named Glavir. He was initially living a happy life with his older sister in a large wealthy manor in a city-state in the north central section of the Western Shore. Glavir and his sister, though, are slaves. Glavir, furthermore, is often troubled by visions, which he calls ‘remembering’, even though what he sees are glimpses of the future. And true to one of these visions, his life gets turned upside down when the city-state is attacked by the army of a rival city, and Glavir eventually flees. Trying to elude a rather determined slave-catcher from the city, for the next few years, he wanders through the countryside. He sometimes lives with the people he encounters, like forest-dwelling outlaws or a community of fishers and farmers who live in an immense marshland (where he learns about his true heritage), but he always moves on, fearing the possibility of being enslaved again. He eventually decides to make his way to a ‘free’ city farther north. It’s only near the end of the story that his path crosses with that of Gry and Orrec, but that also marks a crucial turning point in his life.
These are my favorite of these books, as they showcase Le Guin doing what she did best: crafting intriguing stories peopled with very real characters who grow, change and mature as they learn about their place in the world and deal with life’s challenges. She also wove in a number of themes, like power and the abuse thereof, cultural and religious conflict, the treatment of women, slavery, warfare and colonialism. And as with so much of her other speculative fiction, she proved yet again that she was one of the best world-builders in all of (English-language) literature.
As a sort of postscript, I’ll just add the delightful Catwings series. These are meant for small children just learning to read, and in my opinion it’s never too early to get kids interested in reading, especially if that involves reading something by Le Guin. As the titles suggest, it’s about cats – with wings! It all starts when a tabby alley cat named Jane has a litter of four winged kittens. In the course of the four books, they move from their big city slum to the country, go back to the city to visit mom and find out they have a younger, similarly winged sister, meet some new friends, and so forth. Even here, the unifying theme of this post, the coming of age, comes into play.
These are fun to read – even by adults – for a number of reasons. Le Guin really ‘gets’ cats, but these stories are not sappy and cutesy. And S.D. Schindler’s illustrations are perfect.
Author: Edo Bosnar
Edo, or Ed (or, if you must, Edward) Bosnar currently lives in Zagreb, Croatia with his partner Sanja, their dog and too many cats. He is, however, American born and raised: he grew up in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, and then spent his college years and a little after in several parts of the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Most importantly, as far back as he can remember, he’s been a fan and consumer of all kinds of atomic junk (comics, SF, fantasy, cartoons, pulp fiction, and movies and TV shows of questionable quality).
View all posts by Edo Bosnar →
George Kennedy, Crimefighting Mary Sue
tomfitz1
I work in an university library, and can confirm that the library has a number of her books in both the Young Adult collection and the adult collection.
January 10, 2020 at 10:32 am 2 weeks ago
My Mum used to read me Earthsea; it was one of the earliest fantasies I read. (Uh, I also read it myself.)
“However, the two main characters are not children or teens, but rather a man (Hugh) and woman (Irene) in their early twenties.”
Should have no effect on whether it’s YA or a kid’s book or not. Doctor Who was originally aimed at kids, and didn’t have any kids in it.
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Artist: Spock's Beard
Genre: Heavy Metal
Review by Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck
Spock's Beard has recorded their magnum opus with "Snow." If you have been longing for the sound of progressive rock in the 70's, this band is prepared to transport you back to that time in the blink of an eye. Clearly reminiscent of the group's that inspired them to become what they are such as Genesis and ELP, they produce a tight and even mixture of layered keyboards and heavy-duty guitar runs, and the gentle touch when necessary in each composition. This is their first concept album, which is about a boy that turns into a rock god. Snow is comparable to the character called "Powder" in the film of the same name.
This was a very expensive and lavish production. Getting a copy for review was even a difficult task because it was so costly. Finally, I have one in my ever-loving prog-rock mitts. This album could be the best progressive rock recording of the year, and the year is nearly over. I have heard many great projects this year, but this one has to be the most ambitious and accessible recording yet. It is chock full of defining moments. As with many groups in the genre, this band sports a superstar at every position in the band, much like Dream Theater or The Flower Kings.
"Devil's Got My Throat" is rousing number that I would consider the apex of the entire recording. Neal Morse growls his way through the song and it surges with power and energy from start to finish. In actuality the entire scope and breadth of the 26 tracks has an impact that will linger with you long after you have given it an initial listen. This group is widely considered the best at producing their style of music over the last 10 years, which is a mouthful to digest considering the company that they keep. It may or may not be true dependent on your own personal tastes or perception. In any event, Spock's Beard is no doubt one of the premier prog-rock bands in the world today. I think with the advent of this recording it should put them in the same category as their influences. They do indeed have many other groups that are the wind at their backs; they just are not strong enough to knock them of their perch high atop the world music giants yet.
1. Made Alive/Overture (Morse) - 5:32
2. Stranger in a Strange Land (Morse) - 4:29
3. Long Time Suffering (Morse) - 6:03
4. Welcome to NYC (Morse) - 3:32
5. Love Beyond Words (Morse) - 3:24
6. The 39th Street Blues (I'm Sick) (Morse) - 4:05
7. Devil's Got My Throat (Morse) - 7:17
8. Open Wide the Flood Gates (Morse) - 6:14
9. Open the Gates Pt. 2 (Morse) - 3:02
10. Solitary Soul (Morse/Morse) - 7:33
11. Wind at My Back (Morse/Morse) - 5:12
12. Second Overture (Spock's Beard) - 3:47
13. 4th of July (Spock's Beard) - 3:11
14. I'm the Guy (Morse) - 4:48
15. Reflection (Morse) - 2:49
16. Carie (Morse) - 3:06
17. Looking for Answers (D'Virgilio) - 5:17
18. Freak Boy (Morse) - 2:12
19. All Is Vanity (Morse) - 4:35
20. I'm Dying (Morse) - 5:09
21. Freak Boy Pt. 2 (Morse) - 3:01
22. Devil's Got My Throat Revisited (Morse) - 1:55
23. Snow's Night Out (Morse) - 2:04
24. Ladies and Gentleman, Mister Ryo Okumoto... (Morse) - 2:40
25. I Will Go (Morse) - 5:08
26. Made Alive Again/Wind at My Back (Morse) - 8:27
Neal Morse - lead vocals, piano, all synth, acoustic guitar
Ryo Okumoto -hammond and mellotron
Dave Meros - bass, vocals, French horn
Alan Morse - electric guitars, vocals
Nick D'Virgilio -drums, percussion, vocals
Chris Carmichael - violin, viola, cello
Jim Hoke - saxophone, clarinet, autoharp
Neil Rosengarten - flugelhorn, trumpet
Molly Pasutti - background vocals
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A PARISH GONE ILL
St. Joan of Arc's open rebellion against the faith
By John Grasmeier
Angelqueen.org
Although the degree to which individual Catholics are catechized is diverse, and our personal knowledge of Church teachings may vary, it doesn't take a degree in theology or canon law to identify that which is distinctly outside the faith. Regarding heterodoxy, there is the insidious form which resides in that "grey area" of doctrine, then there's the literal and overt form. The former will go unnoticed by all but well formed and knowledgeable Catholics, while the latter can be identified by anyone who happens to witness it. Even those with limited catechesis know overt heterodoxy, heresy, scandal and liturgical abuse when encountered. Given the fact that the law of God is written in all of our hearts, all of us, even non-Catholics know distinct aberration when we see it.
One such aberration is the parish of St. Joan of Arc (SJA as it's known) in the archdiocese of Minneapolis - St. Paul. To anyone who visits the SJA website, it will quickly become obvious that SJA is at best a parish in open rebellion against the Church, at worst a hopelessly fallen congregation on an active mission to usurp the faith.
Be forewarned that if you harbor any degree of affinity for the Catholic faith and plan on browsing the this website, you may afterwards feel the need to shower. Better yet, call your local Homeland Security asset and ask if they would indulge you a full de-con scrub while you pray the Rosary.
The website, as of the time of this writing, is a bastion of Catholic mockery contains no church teaching or content directed towards proper Christian formation. Although you'll find a "flying Jesus", you will not come across any images of crucifixes or our Lady, or anything else that will remind you that the site is the property of a Catholic church. What you will find is unbridled left-wing social advocacy, promotion of hedonism, prayers to idols and lessons on socialist political activism.
What follows is some of what those who surf the SJA site are subjected to.
St. Joan's Healing Circle Ministry (Link)
If you're feeling afflicted and think it the perfect time to enrage your Lord and Savior, then St. Joan's Healing circle is for you. Here you'll find a crew of pleasant post-menopausal ladies dedicated to making your final judgment as horrific as possible. The ladies all have "credentials" in various forms of pagan healing, so the monthly theme of these sessions could be anything from Japanese Reiki to the "Crown Chakra", which was the theme of the July 19, 2005 session and subject of the linked article. Chakra is a Hindu practice where emphasis is placed on certain anatomical areas the body, while everyone stands around a cloth adorned with strange trinkets and statues. The information contained on the page doesn't indicate whether any of the nice ladies are credentialed in Voodoo, but it seems quite possible.
It's too bad women like these weren't around when Job was suffering, perhaps he would have gotten some relief from those pesky boils.
Reconciliation (Link)
If you're having second thoughts regarding the eternal consequences of your pagan healing session and would like to confess, be comforted in the fact that you'll only have to wait until next Lent to take part in the "Communal Reconciliation service". This is where twice a year, you get to sing joyous songs in a "communal setting" along with everyone else in the congregation. Of course you may have to overlook some minor details, such as being afforded the opportunity to make an actual confession and have your sins forgiven. As reported in Lumen Gentleman, SJA frowns upon penance, referring to the confessional as "the box". Here's what SJA had to say on the website regarding of these services:
Many of us might recall those times when we entered 'the box'....If you haven't attend this service in the past, you will have a second chance during Lent when the Prayer Partner Group will offer another Reconciliation service. Until then, you'll have to look for 'the box' in another church."
For those of you who simply don "get it" and absolutely insist on receiving this Catholic sacrament from a supposedly Catholic church, SJA will grudgingly accommodate you. If you call and make an appointment, you can be seen only on Saturdays and only before 5 PM.
GLBT Community (Link)
For those who are lagged in their modern lexicon, "GLBT" stands for "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender." For those who are really lagged in their lexicon, a transgender person is either a man who has had his penis chopped off and disposed of as medical waste, or a woman who has had a non-functional pseudo penis sewed on. Forgive the gory details, but some actually don't know what these terms mean, much less why they are given prominence on a Catholic church's website.
At the time when this article was written, there were two articles advocating legalization of adoption for gay "parents" and one article encouraging "adult role models" for gay youth. SJA apparently does not advocate Christ for its "GLBT" members, as there is no mention of God or Christ to be found at the link. Plenty of homosexual advocacy, zero Christianity. None, nada, zip.
Peace Prayers (Link)
Here you'll find a wide variety of false gods to pray to, if you're not able to get over to SJA where they actually pray to them real-time during Mass. No, the last statement was not an inappropriate joke. During the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, this congregation recites Muslim, Jewish, Native American, Shinto, Sikh and Hindu prayers in addition to the prayers of other religions that many reading this will have never heard of. There are more heathen prayers on this one page then there are Catholic prayers throughout the entire website.
After witnessing first hand the offense to God and His first commandment on the "peace prayers" page, one can only conclude that this parish has not only rejected Catholicism, but Christianity altogether. The only thing missing is a "peace prayer" to the golden calf. Perhaps
I shouldn't have wrote that last dig, as I fear that the webmaster from St. Joans may read it and decide to actually add golden calf peace prayers to the page.
SJA/WAMM Collaboration (Link)
SJA has teamed up with and linked to the website of the group known as "WAMM" (website), an acronym for "Women Against Military Madness". WAMM is a left wing feminist organization that is against violence, unless of course the violence happens to be perpetrated by left wing communist dictators. According to their website, WAMM has thrown their support behind Venezuela's violent communist strongman Hugo Chavez. Among other activities, SJA volunteers help WAMM distribute literature to encourage young people to become conscientious objectors. What does this have to do with Catholicism? It's hard to say. Then again what does a tin-pot South American dictator have to do with American anti-war feminists?
Christmas with the Gay Men's Chorus (Link)
One must wonder why a chorus - or any other organization - would limit its membership exclusively to men who have sex with other men. Further, one must wonder what is specific to men who unrepentantly have sex with other men that would cause a Catholic church to feel it necessary to have them perform during a celebration of Christ's birthday. In any case, if a church is to invite a chorus comprised exclusively of unrepentant homosexuals for the purpose of celebrating Christ's birthday, they would at the very least sing songs about Christ's birthday... wouldn't they? Wrong. The theme of the show was the most holy and reverent topic of "snow". The repertoire included such traditional sacred Catholic classics as "White Christmas", "Winter Wonderland", "The Christmas Waltz" and "Must the Winter Come so Soon", as well as some good ol' fashioned homosexual activism. From the advert:
In a departure from the snow theme, the Chorus will perform a new piece that speaks to the power of single individuals when they have the courage to take a stand and speak out against bigotry and hate. Not In Our Town...
This isn't the half of it
In order to create an article that would comprehensively cover all of the heresy, sacrilege, strident leftism and other assorted wackiness at the SJA website, the size of the HTML file required to write such an article would consume more server space than the entire SJA site itself. The amount of error contained within it is literally voluminous enough to wear out any writer possessing the wherewithal to weed through this insufferable testament to the current state of the Church in America.
Don't forget, this parish is under the charge of Bishop Harry Flynn, so not much can be expected. If you decide to go through the SJA site yourself, it is not recommended that you do so after eating.
Authors Note: Being that the nature of the internet is dynamic and some tend to abscond when light is shined upon them, the content that is the subject of this article will be preserved here for as long as is necessary.
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+ "I am haunted by no phantoms. It is rather that the ashes I stir up contain the crystallization that hold the image (reduced or synthetic) of the living and impure beings that they constituted before the intervention of the fire. If life has a meaning, this image (from the beyond?) has perhaps some significance. That is what I should like to know. And it is why I write." -- ''[[L'homme foudroyé]]''
+ |}
{{Template}} {{Template}}
- '''Frédéric Louis Sauser''' ([[September 1]], [[1887]] – [[January 21]], [[1961]]), better known as '''Blaise Cendrars''', was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized [[France|French]] in [[1916]]. [[Blaise Cendrars]] openly declared his admiration for [[Gustave Le Rouge]]. His ''La Fin du Monde Filmée par l'Ange'' [The End Of The World Filmed By An Angel] (1919) and ''Moravagine'' (1926) are surrealist novels, the latter named after, and telling the story of, an evil madman whose crimes rival those of [[Fantômas]], a character much appreciated by the Surrealists. {{GFDL}} +
+ '''Frédéric Louis Sauser''' ([[September 1]], [[1887]] – [[January 21]], [[1961]]), better known as '''Blaise Cendrars''', was a [[Swiss novelist]] and poet naturalized [[France|French]] in [[1916]]. His ''[[The End Of The World Filmed By An Angel]]'' (1919) and ''[[Moravagine ]]'' (1926) are generally considered [[surrealist novel]]s.
+ ==Life==
+ ===Early Years===
+ He was born in [[La Chaux-de-Fonds]], [[Neuchâtel]], [[Switzerland]] to a bourgeois francophone family. Initially, they attempted to send young Frédéric to a German boarding school, but he ran away. After, they tried enrolling him in a school in Neuchâtel, but he had little enthusiasm for his studies. Finally, in 1904, he left school due to poor performance and began an apprenticeship with a Swiss watchmaker in Russia.
+ It was in [[St Petersburg]] that he began to write, thanks to the encouragement of R.R., a librarian at the [[Russian National Library]]. There he wrote the poem ''[[La Légende de Novagorode]]'', which R.R. translated into Russian. Supposedly fourteen copies were made, but Cendrars claimed to have no copies of it, and none could be located during his lifetime. In 1995, the Bulgarian poet [[Kiril Kadiiski]] found one of the Russian translations in [[Sofia]]. Today the authenticity of the document is still contested.
+ In 1907, he returned to Switzerland, where he studied medicine at the University of Berne. During this period he wrote his first verified poems, ''Séquences'', influenced by [[Remy de Gourmont|Rémy de Gourmant's]] ''Le Latin Mystique''.
+ After a short stay in Paris, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1911. There he wrote his first novel, ''Moganni Nameh'', which was not published until 1922. Then he was travelling once more, this time to New York to rejoin his friend Féla Poznanska. They married, and together they would later have three children: Odilon, Rémy, and Miriam. Cendrars was inspired by the modernity of New York, a world where everything was based on speed and mechanization. During his short time there he wrote his first long poem, ''Les Pâques à New York''. He signed it, for the first time, Blaise Cendrars.
+ He returned to Paris in the summer of 1912, now convinced that poetry was his vocation. With [[Emil Szittya]], an anarchist writer, he started ''Les Hommes Nouveaux'', a journal and a publishing house, where he published ''Les Pâques à New York'' and ''Séquences''. He soon became acquainted with many of Parisian artists and writers, such as [[Marc Chagall|Chagall]], [[Fernand Léger|Léger]], [[Léopold Survage|Survage]], [[Amedeo Modigliani|Modigliani]], [[Joseph Csaky|Csaky]], [[Alexander Archipenko|Archipenko]], and [[Robert Delaunay|Robert]]. Most notably, he encountered [[Guillaume Apollinaire]]. The two poets mutually influenced each other's work. Cendrars' poem ''Les Pâques à New York'' was of critical influence over Apollinaire's poem ''Zone''. Cendrars would create a style based on photographic impressions, themes, and reflections in which nostalgia and disillusion were blended with a boundless vision of the world. In 1913, he demonstrated this through his lengthy poem titled in English as [[La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France|''The Prose of the Transsiberian and of the Little Jehanne of France'']] in which he described his world journey. The work was accompanied by the paintings of [[Sonia Delaunay|Sonia Delaunay-Terk]]. The long poem printed in folded form (2 meters), was called "the first simultaneous poem" by Cendrars. This is especially important since this was an outgrowth of [[Robert Delaunay]] and other's experiments in proto-[[abstract expressionism]]. Similarly, [[Gertrude Stein]] was attempting to write prose in the manner of abstractness of [[Pablo Picasso|Picasso's]] works.
+ ===The Left-Handed Poet===
+ His writing career was interrupted by [[World War I]]. When it began, he and Italian writer [[Ricciotto Canudo]] appealed to other foreign artists to join the French army in battle. He himself joined the [[French Foreign Legion]]. He was sent to the front line in the [[Somme]] where from mid-December 1914 until February 1915 he was in the line at Frise (at La Grenouillère and the Bois de la Vache). He described this experience in his famous books "La Main Coupée" ("The Severed Hand") and "J'ai Tué" ("I have Killed"). It was during the bloody attacks in Champagne in September of 1915 that Blaise Cendrars lost his right arm and was discharged from the army.
+ [[Jean Cocteau]] introduced him to [[Eugenia Errázuriz]], who proved a supportive if at times possessive patron. Around 1918 he visited her house and was so taken with the simplicity of the décor, he was inspired to write the sequence of poems ''D'Oultremer à Indigo'' (''From Ultramarine to Indigo''). He stayed with Eugenia in her house in [[Biarritz]], in a room decorated with murals by [[Pablo Picasso]]. At this time he was also driving an old [[Alfa Romeo]] which had been "colour-coordinated" by [[Georges Braque]]. Cendrars became an important part of the era of artistic creativity going on in [[Montparnasse]] at the time, his writings a literary epic of the modern adventurer. He was friends with [[Ernest Hemingway]] and [[Henry Miller]] plus many of the writers, painters, and sculptors living in Paris. In 1918, his friend [[Amedeo Modigliani]] painted his portrait.
+ After the war, he became involved in the movie industry in [[Italy]], [[France]], and the [[United States]]. Needing to generate sufficient income, after 1925 he stopped publishing poetry and focused on novels or short stories.
+ ===Later Life===
+ During [[World War II]], tragedy struck when his youngest son was killed in an accident while escorting American planes in [[Morocco]]. In occupied France, the [[Gestapo]] listed Cendrars as a [[Jew|Jewish]] writer of "French expression."
+ In [[1950]], he ended his life of travel by settling down on the rue Jean-Dolent in Paris, across from the [[La Santé Prison]]. There he collaborated frequently with [[Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française|Radiodiffusion Française.]] He finally published again in [[1956]]. The novel, ''Emmène-moi au bout du monde !…'', was to be his last work before suffering a stroke in [[1957]].
+ In [[1960]], [[André Malraux]] bestowed upon him the title of Commander of the [[Légion d'honneur]] for his wartime service. A year later, he also received the Paris Grand Prix for literature. Shortly after, he died. His ashes now rest at [[Le Tremblay-sur-Mauldre]].
+ ==Works==
+ Most of his works were translated into English including the long poem "''Le Panama ou Les Aventures de Mes Sept Oncles''" translated by [[John Dos Passos]] and published in the United States in 1931.
+ ===Selected poems===
+ *"''Les Paques à New York''" - (1912)
+ *"''[[La Prose du Transsibérien et la petite Jehanne de France]]''" - (1913)
+ *"''Le Panama ou Les Aventures de Mes Sept Oncles''" - (1918)
+ ===Selected stories and novels===
+ *''"Profond aujourd'hui''" - (1917)
+ *"''"J'ai tué''" - (1918)
+ *''"[[La Fin du monde filmée par l'Ange N.-D.]]''" - (1919)
+ *"''L'Or''" - (1925) In English, ''Sutter's Gold'', a fictionalized story of [[John Sutter]], a Swiss pioneer, who started the great gold rush in the northern California
+ *"''[[Moravagine]]''" - (1926) (novel)
+ *"''Dan Yack''" - (1927) (novel)
+ *"''Le Plan de l'Aiguille''" - (1929) In English, "''Antarctic Fugue''"
+ *"''Les Confessions de Dan Yack''" - (1929) (novel)
+ *"''Une nuit dans la forêt''" - (1929)
+ *"''Comment les Blancs sont d'anciens Noirs''" - (1930)
+ *"''Rhum--L'aventure de Jean Galmot''" - (1930).
+ *"''Hollywood, La Mecque du cinéma''" - (1936)
+ *"''Histoires vraies''" - (1937)
+ *"''La Vie dangereuse''" - (1938)
+ *"''D'Oultremer à indigo''" - (1940)
+ *"''L'Homme foudroyé''" - (1945)
+ *''"La Main coupée''" - (1946) [http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Main_coup%C3%A9e (in French)]
+ *"''Bourlinguer''" - (1948)
+ *"''Le Lotissement du ciel''" - (1949)
+ *"''La Banlieue de Paris''" - (1949)
+ *"''Nöel aux autre coins du monde''" - (1953) (novel) In English "''Christmas at the Four Corners of the World''" (1994)
+ *"''Emmène-moi au bout du monde!... ''" - (1956)
+ *"''Du monde entier au cœur du monde''" Poésies complètes - (1957)
+ *"''Trop c'est trop''" - (1957)
+ *"''A l'aventure''" - (1959)
+ {{GFDL}}
"I am haunted by no phantoms. It is rather that the ashes I stir up contain the crystallization that hold the image (reduced or synthetic) of the living and impure beings that they constituted before the intervention of the fire. If life has a meaning, this image (from the beyond?) has perhaps some significance. That is what I should like to know. And it is why I write." -- L'homme foudroyé
Frédéric Louis Sauser (September 1, 1887 – January 21, 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. His The End Of The World Filmed By An Angel (1919) and Moravagine (1926) are generally considered surrealist novels.
1.1 Early Years
1.2 The Left-Handed Poet
1.3 Later Life
2.1 Selected poems
2.2 Selected stories and novels
He was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel, Switzerland to a bourgeois francophone family. Initially, they attempted to send young Frédéric to a German boarding school, but he ran away. After, they tried enrolling him in a school in Neuchâtel, but he had little enthusiasm for his studies. Finally, in 1904, he left school due to poor performance and began an apprenticeship with a Swiss watchmaker in Russia.
It was in St Petersburg that he began to write, thanks to the encouragement of R.R., a librarian at the Russian National Library. There he wrote the poem La Légende de Novagorode, which R.R. translated into Russian. Supposedly fourteen copies were made, but Cendrars claimed to have no copies of it, and none could be located during his lifetime. In 1995, the Bulgarian poet Kiril Kadiiski found one of the Russian translations in Sofia. Today the authenticity of the document is still contested.
In 1907, he returned to Switzerland, where he studied medicine at the University of Berne. During this period he wrote his first verified poems, Séquences, influenced by Rémy de Gourmant's Le Latin Mystique.
After a short stay in Paris, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1911. There he wrote his first novel, Moganni Nameh, which was not published until 1922. Then he was travelling once more, this time to New York to rejoin his friend Féla Poznanska. They married, and together they would later have three children: Odilon, Rémy, and Miriam. Cendrars was inspired by the modernity of New York, a world where everything was based on speed and mechanization. During his short time there he wrote his first long poem, Les Pâques à New York. He signed it, for the first time, Blaise Cendrars.
He returned to Paris in the summer of 1912, now convinced that poetry was his vocation. With Emil Szittya, an anarchist writer, he started Les Hommes Nouveaux, a journal and a publishing house, where he published Les Pâques à New York and Séquences. He soon became acquainted with many of Parisian artists and writers, such as Chagall, Léger, Survage, Modigliani, Csaky, Archipenko, and Robert. Most notably, he encountered Guillaume Apollinaire. The two poets mutually influenced each other's work. Cendrars' poem Les Pâques à New York was of critical influence over Apollinaire's poem Zone. Cendrars would create a style based on photographic impressions, themes, and reflections in which nostalgia and disillusion were blended with a boundless vision of the world. In 1913, he demonstrated this through his lengthy poem titled in English as The Prose of the Transsiberian and of the Little Jehanne of France in which he described his world journey. The work was accompanied by the paintings of Sonia Delaunay-Terk. The long poem printed in folded form (2 meters), was called "the first simultaneous poem" by Cendrars. This is especially important since this was an outgrowth of Robert Delaunay and other's experiments in proto-abstract expressionism. Similarly, Gertrude Stein was attempting to write prose in the manner of abstractness of Picasso's works.
The Left-Handed Poet
His writing career was interrupted by World War I. When it began, he and Italian writer Ricciotto Canudo appealed to other foreign artists to join the French army in battle. He himself joined the French Foreign Legion. He was sent to the front line in the Somme where from mid-December 1914 until February 1915 he was in the line at Frise (at La Grenouillère and the Bois de la Vache). He described this experience in his famous books "La Main Coupée" ("The Severed Hand") and "J'ai Tué" ("I have Killed"). It was during the bloody attacks in Champagne in September of 1915 that Blaise Cendrars lost his right arm and was discharged from the army.
Jean Cocteau introduced him to Eugenia Errázuriz, who proved a supportive if at times possessive patron. Around 1918 he visited her house and was so taken with the simplicity of the décor, he was inspired to write the sequence of poems D'Oultremer à Indigo (From Ultramarine to Indigo). He stayed with Eugenia in her house in Biarritz, in a room decorated with murals by Pablo Picasso. At this time he was also driving an old Alfa Romeo which had been "colour-coordinated" by Georges Braque. Cendrars became an important part of the era of artistic creativity going on in Montparnasse at the time, his writings a literary epic of the modern adventurer. He was friends with Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller plus many of the writers, painters, and sculptors living in Paris. In 1918, his friend Amedeo Modigliani painted his portrait.
After the war, he became involved in the movie industry in Italy, France, and the United States. Needing to generate sufficient income, after 1925 he stopped publishing poetry and focused on novels or short stories.
During World War II, tragedy struck when his youngest son was killed in an accident while escorting American planes in Morocco. In occupied France, the Gestapo listed Cendrars as a Jewish writer of "French expression."
In 1950, he ended his life of travel by settling down on the rue Jean-Dolent in Paris, across from the La Santé Prison. There he collaborated frequently with Radiodiffusion Française. He finally published again in 1956. The novel, Emmène-moi au bout du monde !…, was to be his last work before suffering a stroke in 1957.
In 1960, André Malraux bestowed upon him the title of Commander of the Légion d'honneur for his wartime service. A year later, he also received the Paris Grand Prix for literature. Shortly after, he died. His ashes now rest at Le Tremblay-sur-Mauldre.
Most of his works were translated into English including the long poem "Le Panama ou Les Aventures de Mes Sept Oncles" translated by John Dos Passos and published in the United States in 1931.
"Les Paques à New York" - (1912)
"La Prose du Transsibérien et la petite Jehanne de France" - (1913)
"Le Panama ou Les Aventures de Mes Sept Oncles" - (1918)
Selected stories and novels
"Profond aujourd'hui" - (1917)
""J'ai tué" - (1918)
"La Fin du monde filmée par l'Ange N.-D." - (1919)
"L'Or" - (1925) In English, Sutter's Gold, a fictionalized story of John Sutter, a Swiss pioneer, who started the great gold rush in the northern California
"Moravagine" - (1926) (novel)
"Dan Yack" - (1927) (novel)
"Le Plan de l'Aiguille" - (1929) In English, "Antarctic Fugue"
"Les Confessions de Dan Yack" - (1929) (novel)
"Une nuit dans la forêt" - (1929)
"Comment les Blancs sont d'anciens Noirs" - (1930)
"Rhum--L'aventure de Jean Galmot" - (1930).
"Hollywood, La Mecque du cinéma" - (1936)
"Histoires vraies" - (1937)
"La Vie dangereuse" - (1938)
"D'Oultremer à indigo" - (1940)
"L'Homme foudroyé" - (1945)
"La Main coupée" - (1946) (in French)
"Bourlinguer" - (1948)
"Le Lotissement du ciel" - (1949)
"La Banlieue de Paris" - (1949)
"Nöel aux autre coins du monde" - (1953) (novel) In English "Christmas at the Four Corners of the World" (1994)
"Emmène-moi au bout du monde!... " - (1956)
"Du monde entier au cœur du monde" Poésies complètes - (1957)
"Trop c'est trop" - (1957)
"A l'aventure" - (1959)
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Blaise Cendrars" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on original research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
Retrieved from "http://artandpopularculture.com/Blaise_Cendrars"
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Coloring/Activity
Comics/Graphic Novel
Diet, Health & Medicine
All Young Adult
YA Non-Fiction
A Secret Tale: Requiem for Deliverance (children's version)
Availability: Usually ships in 3-5 business days. + Available in e-book formats see bottom of page. ___________________________________________________________________
A Secret Tale: Requiem for Deliverance
by Lee Crawford
In a town called Brownsville, Lees unassuming life is jolted by the arrival of a woman, Osaris, who carries an aura of mystery about her. Unlike most women he knows, Osaris suggests a strange world of achievement, performance, and direction. Severely feeling a lack of these lately in his life, it is perhaps little wonder that Lee is drawn to Osaris.
Finding himself in pursuit of this woman, Lee guesses that the current version of himselfat least that part of him that he cares to revealis hardly the kind that will find favor in the eyes of Osaris. But what can he do? Is there enough of him, in him, that could meet squarely with this challenge?
In A Secret Tale: Requiem for Deliverance, we find that the old values of valor and fortitude are not yet dead, but rediscovered with a touch of humor in the intriguing story of man who has to dig deep to get what he badly wanted for himself.
The Author Lee Crawford also is an Actor whom has appeared in numerous Commercials, TV Shows, Print, and International Commercials. His Athletics Career spanned for 4 decades ending with a traumatic head injury while playing Minor League-Semi Professional football with the MIAMI KNIGHTS SPRING LEAGUE FOOTBALL TEAM as a Stand out Wide Receiver/Kickoff Return Specialist. He is eagerly anticipating a return to the Screen and resuming a promising Acting Career.
Times of Deliverance - eBook
Times of Deliverance
Mukti (Deliverance)
A Secret Tale: Requiem for Deliverance 1
A Season of Joy and Pain
A Seal Fascination at Sea: A Fascinating Seal
A Shining Star: A Journey for All Ages
A Secret in the Shack: The Secret Series
A Silent Cry
A Scientific Theory of Everything
A Special Place
A Short Story of Women's Self-Esteem, My Life, & Positive Motivation - eBook
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Fiat exercises option to buy additional 3.3% of Chrysler shares
Purchase brings closer a merger of the two automakers
Automakers, Manufacturing, Production
Fiat today exercised an option to raise its stake in Chrysler by 3.3 percent.
The move is part of CEO Sergio Marchionne’s step-by-step purchases intended to lead to full control of Chrysler and the creation of a merged company that would be able to compete better with industry leaders Toyota, General Motors and Volkswagen.
Fiat has been exercising options since mid-2012 to buy holdings of about 3.3 percent from the VEBA, a medical-benefits trust for the U.S. carmaker’s retirees.
Including today’s purchase, Fiat has exercised three of its six-monthly options, increasing its stake to 68.49 percent.
Fiat has said it wants full control of Chrysler, which would give it access to some of Chrysler’s cash flow for investments in new models.
Chrysler has become Fiat’s most reliable profit generator as the Italian company struggles to end losses in Europe that totaled 704 million euros ($903 million) in 2012 amid a
Buyout, Chrysler, Fiat, Financial, More Tags...
Mr WordPress| September 10, 2014 at 7:45 pm
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Food waste massive contributor to global emissions – IPCC
August 9, 2019Article
Aug. 9 (BusinessDesk) – Agriculture, forestry and other land use may be responsible for 23 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but food waste is also a major culprit, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.By Rebecca Howard
Aug. 9 (BusinessDesk) – Agriculture, forestry and other land use may be responsible for 23 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but food waste is also a major culprit, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
From 2010-2016, global food loss and waste contributed 8-10 percent of total anthropogenic GHG emissions and currently 25-30 percent of total food produced is lost or wasted, the IPCC said in its latest report on climate change and land.
“Causes of food loss and waste differ substantially between developed and developing countries, as well as between regions. Reducing this loss and waste would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve food security,” it said.
New Zealanders throw away 157,389 tonnes of food a year, according to Love Food Hate Waste in Aotearoa, an initiative spearheaded by 60 local councils. That is equivalent to 271 jumbo jets of food that must go somewhere to rot, instead of being eaten, it said, adding the food is worth about $1.17 billion each year.
Government data show New Zealand retail spending on grocery items, specialist food, liquor, and food and beverage services totalled $35.77 billion in the year ended March 31, more than a third of all retail spending.
According to the IPCC, tackling climate change needs policies that operate across the entire food system. Policies that reduce food loss and waste and influence dietary choices “enable more sustainable land-use management, enhanced food security and low-emissions trajectories,” it said.
The report warned unsustainable land management has led to negative economic impacts and that climate change creates additional stresses. The stability of food supply is projected to decrease as the magnitude and frequency of weather-related food chain disruptions increases.
“Extreme weather and climate or slow-onset events may lead to increased displacement, disrupted food chains, threatened livelihoods, and contribute to exacerbated stresses for conflict,” it said.
According to the IPCC, the level of risk posed by climate change depends both on the level of warming and on how population, consumption, production, technological development, and land management patterns evolve.
The report noted, however, that land must remain productive to maintain food security as the population increases and the negative impacts of climate change on vegetation increase.
“There are limits to the contribution of land to addressing climate change, for instance through the cultivation of energy crops and afforestation.”
It also said it takes time for trees and soils to store carbon effectively. Bioenergy needs to be carefully managed to avoid risks to food security, biodiversity and land degradation.
“The world is best placed to tackle climate change when there is an overall focus on sustainability.”
Some options include improved and sustainable food production, improved and sustainable forest management, soil organic carbon management, ecosystem conservation and land restoration, reduced deforestation and degradation, and reduced food loss and waste.
Failing to act, however, will lead to irreversible loss in land ecosystem functions and services required for food, health, habitable settlements and production. That will lead to increasingly significant economic impacts on many countries in many regions of the world, the IPCC said.
Mike Harvey, Niwa’s principal atmosphere scientist, said New Zealand was a leader with early consideration and research on sustainable land management and the implications for greenhouse gas emissions.
However, he noted there were many challenges in meeting emissions reductions while maintaining food security and the long-term productive potential of land.
“Nationally, we may face the pressures of increased export demand particularly if food supply instabilities increase as predicted with more severe impacts of climate change in some major food-producing regions. The report is very timely,” he said.
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ACC invests $5m in Auckland Transport’s safety programmes
Press Release – Auckland Transport
Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and Auckland Transport (AT) have joined forces to improve the safety of Aucklanders as we travel on our roads, trains, buses and ferries.
A week after AT and its partners announced the Vision Zero road safety strategy, ACC has invested $5 million in AT’s safety programmes to improve safety on our transport network and reduce road trauma.
Auckland is a rapidly growing region – with many more people driving, walking and cycling to work, school or play.
Dame Paula Rebstock, ACC Chair and AT Board member, says both organisations share a common goal of reducing harm on our roads.
“AT has the knowledge and expertise in road safety research programmes and is an ideal testing ground for future safety initiatives for ACC.
“ACC works at a national level with a number of road safety partners and has made a significant contribution to the Ministry of Transport’s Road to Zero strategy. The opportunity to explore different types of safety programmes with AT lays the groundwork for future collaboration between a larger number of agencies like AT.”
Auckland Transport Board chair Dr Lester Levy says 2018 was the worst on New Zealand’s roads since 2009.
“Too many people are dying or being seriously injured on our roads. We are determined to bring this number down to zero. Working together with our partner – ACC is another step in reducing road trauma. I appreciate their investment in our safety programme and look forward to building on our collaboration with them.”
In 2018, 58 people lost their lives and an additional 595 were seriously injured on our roads in Auckland. All of this road trauma amounts to approximately 30 per cent of New Zealand’s new motor vehicle claims to ACC.
Māori are disproportionately represented in Auckland’s death and serious injuries on the road and part of the $5 million ACC investment will be used within Māori communities.
ACC is interested in AT’s safety programmes like Te Ara Haepapa. Te Ara Haepapa is a unique Māori road safety programme in New Zealand – developed in partnership with marae, kura kaupapa and the community.
Te Ara Haepapa is delivered within a Māori context by Te Reo speaking staff and covers a wide range of high-risk road safety themes – including child restraint use, alcohol, speed and young drivers licensing. In addition, a road safety and active transport programme is currently under development and being delivered in collaboration with nine kura kaupapa in Auckland.
Other AT programmes of interest to ACC are AT’s focus on reducing distractions while driving and in its projects to improve safety for people walking, people riding bicycles and motorcycles.
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Home » Politics » New Poll Has Trump Gaining, While Carson’s Support Drops
New Poll Has Trump Gaining, While Carson’s Support Drops
Wednesday December 02, 2015 – GOP front runner Donald Trump is the “undisputed leader” of the Republican presidential field, and his lead has grown over the past month while retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has plummeted.
Trump is the first choice of 27% of Republican primary voters nationally, according to a new survey from Quinnipiac University out Wednesday. It’s his best showing in the poll since August and a 3-point increase from last month.
Carson, who was 1 point behind Trump last month, has seen his standing plunge to 16%. That puts him in a tie for third place with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who along with Cruz has surged recently, found himself in second place in the poll with 17% support. Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida rounds out the top five, garnering 5% in the survey.
“It doesn’t seem to matter what he says or who he offends, whether the facts are contested or the ‘political correctness’ is challenged, Donald Trump seems to be wearing Kevlar,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll.
“Dr. Ben Carson, moving to center stage just one month ago, now needs some CPR. The Doctor sinks. The Donald soars. The GOP, 11 months from the election, has to be thinking, ‘This could be the guy.'”
Indeed, Republican leaders seem to be increasingly bracing for the possibility that Trump could be the party’s standard bearer next year. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the party was starting to become concerned that Trump as the nominee would negatively affect the GOP’s down-ballot candidates.
“It would be an utter, complete and total disaster,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a presidential rival who has repeatedly tangled with Trump, told The Times. “If you’re a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot, you’re going to have a hard time being president of the United States, and you’re going to do irreparable damage to the party.”
Carson, meanwhile, has seen his standing tumble as he has faced a slew of negative publicity in recent weeks. Most recently, questions about his foreign-policy knowledge placed him under days of scrutiny.
The poll found, however, that the race is still highly volatile two months away from the Iowa caucuses. Just 32% of Republican primary voters said their minds were “made up” about their voting choice, while 65% said they could change their mind.
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Proposition 3 -- Water bondsWhat it does: Authorizes $8.9 billion in bonds for water projects, including drinking water improvements ($3 billion), fisheries ($2.9 billion), habitat protection (940 million), water conveyance ($855 million), groundwater sustainability ($685 million), dams and dam repairs, including Oroville ($472 million).How much it costs: The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates the state would pay $430 million a year for 40 years to cover the bonds and interest – $17.2 billion in all for $8.9 billion in bonds.
Supporters: Ducks Unlimited; variety of water, conservation, wildlife and agricultural advocacy groups; Gerald Meral, former Resources Agency secretary who organized the measure.
What they say: The projects funded by the bonds would protect California’s water supply. The money would provide benefits for fish and wildlife habitat, farms, cities and recreation. Repairing Oroville Dam and building more storage would provide safety and more water.
Opponents: Taxpayers’ groups.
What they say: The state has authorized $29 billion in water bonds since 1996 with little to show for it. The bonds are very expensive and would likely lead to higher taxes. None of the money would go to build new dams.
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US should normalize relations with Cuba
http://informacionaldesnudo.com/u-s-should-normalize-relations-with-cuba/
By Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero© December 10, 2014
InformacionAlDesnudo – Correspondent Puerto Rico
The United States needs to overhaul its Cuba policy.
The United States can work with Cuba to tackle the urgent global challenge of the Ebola virus. Cuba stepped up to the plate early on, training doctors and nurses and sending a number of them to West Africa. Over the years, it has dispatched 185,000 health professionals to 103 countries to treat people for free. In fact, Cuba currently has doctors working in 32 African countries.
In recognition of Cuba’s contributions, Havana was chosen as the location of an international summit meeting on the Ebola crisis last October. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent an official. Cuba’s efforts against this disease have drawn praise not only from the World Health Organization, but also from Secretary of State John Kerry, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Powers, and the editorial page of The New York Times.
Havana and Washington can work together to fight this epidemic, but such a collaboration would be possible only if the United States closes its Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, which entices Cuban doctors working abroad to defect and seek asylum in the United States. This program risks undermining the effort to fight Ebola in Africa, and is also an impediment to a rapprochement between the two countries.
The United States can move to heal relations on other fronts. It should consider swapping U.S. citizen Alan P. Gross, in jail in Cuba since 2009 for smuggling communications equipment, for the three Cubans currently in American prisons for espionage. The three were convicted in 2001 of spying not on the U.S. government but on Cuban exile groups, some of which have had a violent past. Amnesty International has questioned the impartiality of their trial.
And the United States needs to lift the more than 50 years old trade embargo on Cuba. There is lot of political support for this move, even within the Cuban exile community.
The Cuban government has taken positive steps that the Obama administration should acknowledge. Cuba liberalized travel last year, and now almost all Cubans can travel outside the country. Approximately 20,000 Cubans are authorized to migrate out of the country every year.
President Obama, for his part, has also taken some positive measures. In 2009, his administration made it easier for Cuban-Americans to travel to the island and to send remittances.
But he needs to go much further. The time to normalize relations with Cuba is now.
Etiquetas: Carmelo, eng
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Weird Puzzles
Gearblox
The Witcher saga, The Wicher puzzles, The Witcher figurines.
Established in 2002, located in Warsaw (HQ), CD PROJEKT RED was born out of raw passion for video games.
The studio’s founders: Michał Kiciński and Marcin Iwiński, both pioneers in video game distribution in Poland in the 90s, decided to employ their gaming industry experience in video game development. In 2007, The Witcher was born.
We we have been working together for the last 20 years, first as one company, later as partners.
Blizzard Entertainment.
World of Warcraft series, Diablo series, Starcraft series, Overwatch.
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. We have been working together for more than 20 years.
Vampyr, A Plague Tale, Call of Cthulhu, Insurgency: Sandstorm, Mudrunner.
Focus Home Interactive is a French publisher based in Paris, France. Known for the quality, diversity and originality of its catalogue, Focus has published and distributed original titles that have become benchmark titles worldwide, available both in store and for download across the world. Focus publishes games on all major platforms, consoles and PC. The publisher’s catalogue will get even richer the coming months and years with eagerly awaited games such as Vampyr, Call of Cthulhu, Insurgency: Sandstorm, Greedfall, A Plague Tale, Necromunda: Underhive Wars and many more.
The Long Dark, The Slime rancher, The Walking Dead series.
Skybound Entertainment is an American multiplatform entertainment company founded by Robert Kirkman and David Alpert. We are partners since 2018.
Farming Simulator series.
GIANTS Software is one of the most successful game developers in Europe, with offices in Zürich (Switzerland), Erlangen (Germany) and Brno (Czech Republic). It is well known since many years for its “Farming Simulator” series, a worldwide best-selling game and real-time simulation.
Worhorse studios
Kingdom Come Deliverance.
Warhorse Studios s.r.o. is a Czech video game developer based in Prague. Founded in July 2011 by Daniel Vávra and Martin Klíma, the studio produced Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which was released in February 2018.
We. The Revolution, Heliborne, Apocalipsis.
Klabater is an indie game publisher based in Poland and funded by CDP.
V-Rally 4, Pro Fishing Simulator, Warhammer FB Chaosbane, Spike Volleyball.
Bigben Interactive SA is a French video game company based in Lesquin. Established in February 1981, the company designs and distributes accessories for video game consoles, and publishes video games for various platforms. We are partners since 2018.
Asterix & Obelix 2 XXL Remastered, Gearclub 2, Flashback 25th Anniversary.
Anuman Interactive SA is a French video game publisher and distributor. We are partners since 2018.
Crayola Scoot.
Founded in 2016, Outright Games has established its place in the market delivering engaging interactive games of beloved entertainment licenses globally. Outright Games brings stories and characters to life with titles including such favourites as Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion and Ben 10 with Cartoon Network, Hotel Transylvania 3: Monsters Onboard with Sony Pictures and Dragons: Dawn of New Risers with NBCUniversal.
CDP@CDP.COM.PL Tel.: +48 22 487 55 48 Faks: +48 22 487 55 49
NIP: PL 113-21-85-592, Regon: 016103851, KRS: 0000032579 Sąd Rejonowy dla m.st. Warszawy,
XIII Wydział Gospodarczy Krajowego Rejestru Sądowego Kapitał zakładowy: 3 024 000,00PLN
CDP.COM.PL
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Report: Cohen to Write Ephron Bio
Updated Apr. 14, 2017 5:26PM ET / Published Dec. 08, 2013 10:51AM ET
Gino Domenico/AP
The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen will write a biography of the late writer Nora Ephron, Page Six reported on Sunday. Cohen, friends with Ephron since the 1970s when she first began dating Carl Bernstein, reportedly asked Ephron’s family if he could write the biography. Cohen was the first speaker at Ephron’s funeral, at her request. “Nora Ephron and I started out as enemies,” he wrote after her death. She was angry over something he wrote about her. “I was awestruck, also intimidated, and so some months later when she came to my door with her new boyfriend [Bernstein], she coyly said, ‘This is going to be like the movies. We start as enemies and end as friends.’ She extended her hand. I took it and never let it go,” Cohen wrote.
Read it at Page Six
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Droit du Seigneur and the Neofeudal Privileges of Class in America
Want to understand the full scope of neofeudalism in America? Follow the money and the power and privilege it buys.
The repugnant reality of class privilege in America is captured by the phrase date rape: the violence of forced, non-consensual sex is abhorrent rape when committed by commoner criminals, but implicitly excusable date rape when committed by a member of America's privileged elite.
Compare the effectiveness of excuses offered by privileged elites (we were both drinking, I didn't hear her say no, etc.) when offered in court by less privileged males on trial for rape. The privileged elite is acquitted or given a wrist-slap while the commoner gets 20 years in prison.
This implicit privilege to non-consensual sex was known as Droit du Seigneur(right of the lord) in feudal Europe. While scholars debate whether the right of lords to have their way with female subjects was institutionalized, it doesn't take much imagination to see the lack of recourse unmarried female serfs had if summoned to the lord's lair.
The "right" to non-consensual sex is simply one facet of class privilege in America. One need only examine the histories of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Clinton to see how Droit du Seigneur works in America: from the perverse perspective of the privileged, the female "owes" the "lord" sex as "payment" for his interest in her, or (even more offensively, if that's possible) the female is "fortunate" to have attracted the violent sexual gratification of the "lord."
While the standard presumption of sexual assault / date-rape is that it's all about sex, the much more disturbing reality is that it's a crime of violence.Force and violence are also privileges of the New Aristocracy, both the direct violence of sexual assault and indirect violence threatened or manifested by the innumerable thugs that surround the New Aristocracy.
This right to violence and force manifests in all sorts of ways: the New Aristocracy constantly threatens and abuses underlings (the neofeudal equivalent of serfs), opponents with less power and other nations; violence and force are rights across the entire spectrum.
Another implicit right of the Privileged Few is a free pass / way out: caught shoplifting? Pressure is applied and charges are dropped. Drunk driving? Ditto, unless the incident is recorded and posted publicly.
The financial crimes of fraud and embezzlement never come back to cost the instigators. Their shell corporations pay a pro forma fine and the criminal New Aristocrats walk away, free to indulge their "right" to insider scams.
The New Aristocrats are also entitled to can't-lose "opportunities" to reap millions from crony-capitalist / insider skims unavailable to commoners. These "opportunities" come from a multitude of sources: from elite-university classmates, well-connected fathers-in-law, senior partners in the firm, political fixers, Hollywood / entertainment execs, etc. that are exclusive to upper-caste insiders.
The existence of a New Aristocracy is now undeniable, and this is upsetting the commoners' faith that America is a meritocracy. The sobering reality is some are more equal than others in America.
Who's in the New Aristocracy? Start with this chart: the top .1%, and everyone they can buy, for example politicos.
The New Aristocrats feel entitled to remain untouchable, regardless of the enormity of their crimes. People are starting to wake up to neofeudal realities of life in America, but the sexual privileges of this class are only the tip of the iceberg. Want to understand the full scope of neofeudalism in America? Follow the money and the power and privilege it buys.
Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Book Sale: (September only) Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform is now $2.99 for the Kindle ebook, a 25% savings, and $6.95 for the print edition, a 22% savings.
Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It is now $2.99 for the Kindle ebook, a ridiculous 70% discount, and $10 for the print edition, a 50% savings.
My new mystery The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake is a ridiculously affordable $1.29 (Kindle) or $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free in PDF format.
My new book Money and Work Unchained is now $6.95 for the Kindle ebook and $15 for the print edition.
Read the first section for free in PDF format.
Thank you, Simons C. ($10/month), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.
Thank you, Wayne T. ($50), for your monstrously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.
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A Quiet Revolution Is Brewing
Our society has a legal structure of self-rule and ownership of capital, but in reality it is a Neofeudal Oligarchy.
The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 is not an easy, breezy read; its length and detail are daunting.
The effort is well worth it, as the book helps us understand how the power structures of societies change over time in ways that may be largely invisible to those living through the changes.
The Inheritance of Rome focuses on the lasting influence of Rome's centralized social and political structures even as centralized economic power and trade routes dissolved.
This legacy of centralized power and loyalty to a central authority manifested 324 years after the end of the Western Roman Empire circa 476 A.D. in Charlemagne, who united much of western Europe as the head of the Holy Roman Empire. (Recall that the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire endured another 1,000 years until 1453 A.D.)
But thereafter, the social and political strands tying far-flung villages and fiefdoms to a central authority frayed and were replaced by a decentralized feudalism in which peasants were largely stripped of the right to own land and became the chattel of independent nobles.
In this disintegrative phase, the central authority invested in the monarchy of kings and queens was weak to non-existent.
In the long sweep of history, it took several hundred years beyond 1000 A.D. for central authority to re-assert itself in the form of monarchy, and several hundred additional years for the rights of commoners to be established.
Indeed, it can be argued that it was not until the 1600s and 1700s--and only in the northern European strongholds of commoners' rights, The Netherlands and England--that the rights of ownership and political influence enjoyed by commoners in the Roman Empire were matched.
It can even be argued that the rights of Roman citizenship granted to every resident of the late Empire were only matched in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The rights of commoners were slowly chipped away by civil authorities and transferred to the feudal nobility. As the book explains, these rights included limited self-rule within village councils and ownership of land. These rights were extinguished by feudalism.
The connections between these civil society/legal freedoms (of self-rule and ownership of land/capital), the Protestant Reformation and the birth of modern Capitalism are explained by historian Fernand Braudel's masterful 3-volume history Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, a series I have long recommended:
The Structures of Everyday Life (Volume 1) The Wheels of Commerce (Volume 2) The Perspective of the World (Volume 3)
The self-reinforcing dynamics of religious, civil and economic freedoms are key to understanding the transition from feudalism/monarchy to the world systems of today, in which some form of self-rule or political influence and economic freedom are expected of every civil authority.
Let's fast-forward to today and ask what relevance these histories have in the present era.
There are two points worth discussing. One is the acceleration of change; what took 300 years now takes 30, or perhaps less.
The second is the slow erosion of commoners' self-rule and ownership of meaningful, productive capital.
This gradual, almost imperceptible erosion is what I call neofeudalism, a process of transferring political and economic power from commoners to a new Financial Aristocracy/Nobility.
If we examine the "wealth" of the middle class/working class (however you define them, the defining characteristic of both is the reliance on labor for income, as opposed to living off the income earned by capital), we find the primary capital asset is the family home, which as I have explained many times, is unproductive--in essence, a form of consumption rather than a source of income.
Ultimately, all pensions, public and private, are controlled by central authorities, even though "ownership" is nominally held by commoners. (Ask middle class Venezuelans what their pensions are worth once central authorities debauch the nation's currency.)
In a globalized, financialized economy, the only capital worth owning is mobile capital, capital that can be shifted by a keystroke to avoid devaluation or earn a a higher return.
Housing and pensions are "stranded capital," forms of capital that are not mobile unless they are liquidated before crises or expropriations occur.
I am also struck by the ever-rising barriers to starting or even operating small businesses, a core form of capital, as enterprises generate income and (potentially) capital gains.
The capital and managerial expertise required to launch and grow a legal enterprise is extraordinarily high, which is at least partly why a nation of self-employed farmers, shopkeepers, artisans and traders is now a nation of employees of government and large corporations.
What sort of capital can be acquired by the average commoner now? Enough to match the wealth and political power of financial Nobility? This is the source of our fascination with tech millionaires and billionaires: a few commoners have leveraged technology to join the Nobility.
As for political influence: a recent study found that voters had very little power in the U.S., which is effectively an oligarchy: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.
Summary: "The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded."
Neofeudalism is not a re-run of feudalism. It's a new and improved, state-corporate version of indentured servitude. The process of devolving from central political power to feudalism required the erosion of peasants' rights to own productive assets, which in an agrarian economy meant ownership of land.
Ownership of land was replaced with various obligations to the local feudal lord or monastery-- free labor for time periods ranging from a few days to months; a share of one's grain harvest, and so on.
The other key dynamic of feudalism was the removal of the peasantry from the public sphere. In the pre-feudal era (for example, the reign of Charlemagne), peasants could still attend public councils and make their voices heard, and there was a rough system of justice in which peasants could petition authorities for redress.
From the capitalist perspective, feudalism restricted serfs' access to cash markets where they could sell their labor or harvests. The key feature of capitalism isn't just markets-- it's unrestricted ownership of productive assets--land, tools, workshops, and the social capital of skills, networks, trading associations, guilds, etc.
Our system is Neofeudal because the non-elites have no real voice in the public sphere, and ownership of productive capital is indirectly suppressed by the state-corporate duopoly.
I discuss these dynamics in greater depth in my three compact books:
Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic
Inequality andthe Collapse of Privilege
Why our Status Qup Failed and Is Beyond Reform
Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 ebook, $12 print, $13.08 audiobook): Read the first section for free in PDF format.
My new mystery The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake is a ridiculously affordable $1.29 (Kindle) or $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)
My book Money and Work Unchained is now $6.95 for the Kindle ebook and $15 for the print edition. Read the first section for free in PDF format.
If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. New benefit for subscribers/patrons: a monthly Q&A where I respond to your questions/topics.
Thank you, Judith S. ($5/month), for your superbly generous pledge to this site-- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.
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SHORT HISTORY OF THE CIRCUS
By Dominique Jando
If the history of theater, ballet, opera, vaudeville, movies, and television is generally well documented, serious studies of circus history are sparse, and known only to a few circus enthusiasts and scholars. What little the public at large knows, on the other hand, is circus history as told over the years by imaginative circus press agents, and repeated—and often misunderstood and distorted—by writers of popular fiction, Hollywood screenwriters, and journalists too busy to investigate further. One of the most popular misapprehensions about circus history is the oft-repeated idea that circus dates back to the Roman antiquity. But the Roman circus was in actuality the precursor of the modern racetrack; the only common denominator between Roman and modern circuses is the word itself, circus, which means in Latin as in English, “circle”.
Philip Astley: The Father Of The Modern Circus
The modern circus was actually created in England by Philip Astley (1742-1814), a former cavalry Sergeant-Major turned showman. The son of a cabinet-maker and veneer-cutter, Astley had served in the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) as part of Colonel Elliott’s 15th Light Dragons regiment, where he displayed a remarkable talent as a horse-breaker and trainer. Upon his discharge, Astley chose to imitate the trickAny specific exercise in a circus act.-riders who performed, with increasing success, all over Europe. Jacob Bates, an English equestrian based in the German States, who performed as far away as Russia (1764-65) and America (1772-73), was the first of these showmen to make a mark. Bates’s emulators—Price, Johnson, Balp, Coningham, Faulkes, and “Old” Sampson—had become fixtures of London’s pleasure gardens and provided Philip Astley with his inspiration.
In 1768, Astley settled in London and opened a riding-school near Westminster Bridge, where he taught in the morning and performed his “feats of horsemanship” in the afternoon. In London at this time, modern commercial theater (a word that encompassed all sorts of performing arts) was in the process of developing. Astley’s building featured a circular arena that he called the circle, or circus, and which would later be known as the ring.
The circus ring, however, was not Astley’s invention; it was devised earlier by other performing trickAny specific exercise in a circus act.-riders. In addition to allowing audiences to keep sight of the riders during their performances (something that was next to impossible if the riders were forced to gallop in a straight line), riding in circles in a ring also made it possible, through the generation of centrifugal force, for riders to keep their balance while standing on the back of galloping horses. Astley’s original ring was about sixty-two feet in diameter. Its size was eventually settled at a diameter of forty-two feet, which has since become the international standard for all circus rings.
The Circus Is Born
Astley’s Amphitheatre in 1777
By 1770, Astley’s considerable success as a performer had outshone his reputation as a teacher. After two seasons in London, he needed to bring some novelty to his performances. Consequently, he hired acrobats, rope-dancers, and jugglers, interspersing their acts between his equestrian displays. Another addition to the show was a character borrowed from the Elizabethan theater, the clownGeneric term for all clowns and augustes. ”’Specific:”’ In Europe, the elegant, whiteface character who plays the role of the straight man to the Auguste in a clown team., who filled the pauses between acts with burlesques of juggling, tumbling, rope-dancing, and even trickAny specific exercise in a circus act.-riding. With that, the modern circus—a combination of equestrian displays and feats of strength and agility—was born.
Astley opened Paris’s first circus, the Amphithéâtre Anglois, in 1782. That same year, his first competitor arose: equestrian Charles Hughes (1747-97), a former member of Astley’s company. In association with Charles Dibdin, a prolific songwriter and author of pantomimes, Hughes opened a rival amphitheater and riding-school in London, the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy. The first element of this rather grandiose title was to be adopted as a generic name for the new form of entertainment, the circus. In 1793, Hughes went to perform to the court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, Russia; that same year, one of his pupils, British equestrian John Bill Ricketts (1769-1802), opened the first circus in the United States, in Philadelphia. In 1797, Ricketts also established the first Canadian circus, in Montréal. His only competition in America, the British equestrian Philip Lailson (who came to the U.S. in 1795), brought the circus to Mexico in 1802.
Circus performances were originally given in circus buildings. Although at first these were often temporary wooden structures, every major European city soon boasted at least one permanent circus, whose architecture could compete with the most flamboyant theaters. Similar buildings were also erected in the New World’s largest cities: New York, Philadelphia, Montréal, Mexico City, et al. Although buildings would remain the choice setting for circus performances in Europe well into the twentieth century, the circus was to adopt a different format in the United States.
The American Traveling Circus
In the early nineteenth century, the United States was a new, developing country with few cities large enough to sustain long-term resident circuses. Furthermore, settlers were steadily pushing the American frontier westward, establishing new communities in a process of inexorable expansion. To reach their public, showmen had little choice but to travel light and fast.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus on tour (1940)
In 1825, Joshuah Purdy Brown (1802?-1834) became the first circus entrepreneur to replace the usual wooden construction(French) A temporary circus building, originally made of wood and canvas, and later, of steel elements supporting a canvas top and wooden wall. Also known as a “semi-construction.” with a full canvas tent, a system that had become commonplace by the mid-1830s. J. Purdy Brown came from the region of Somers, New York, where a cattle dealer named Hachaliah Bailey (1775-1845) had purchased a young African elephant, which he exhibited around the country with great success. Soon the addition of other exotic animals led to the creation of a bona fide traveling menagerie. Bailey’s increasing prosperity convinced other farmers from the Somers area to go into the traveling-menagerie business—to which some added circus performances. In 1835, a group of 135 enterprising farmers and menagerie-owners, most of them from the vicinity of Somers, joined forces in creating the Zoological Institute, a trust that controlled thirteen menageries and three affiliated circuses, thus cornering the country’s traveling-circus and menagerie business.
With that, the unique character of the American circus emerged: It was a traveling tent-show coupled with a menagerie and run by businessmen, a very different model from that of European circuses, which for the most part remained under the control of performing families.
In 1871, former museum promoter and impresario Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891), in association with circus entrepreneur William Cameron Coup (1837-95), launched the P.T. Barnum’s Museum, Menagerie & Circus, a traveling show whose “museum” part was an exhibition of animal and human oddities soon to become an integral part of the American circus, the Sideshow.
In 1872, Coup devised a system of daily transportation by rail for their circus. Another of Coup’s innovations of that year was the addition of a second ring. The circus had become by far the most popular form of entertainment in America, and Barnum and Coup’s enterprise was America’s leading circus. Ever the businessman, Coup resolved to increase the capacity of their tent. Due to structural limitations, this could only be done effectively by increasing the tent’s length, which resulted in hampering the view for large sections of the audience. The addition of a second ring, then a third (1881) and, later, up to seven rings and stages solved the problem physically, if not artistically. It could be argued that it changed the focus of the show to emphasize spectacle over artistry. For better or worse, multiple rings and stages became another unique feature of the American circus.
Circus Conquers the World
Circus Chiarini in Japan, print by Chikanobu (1886)
The circus is essentially a visual performing art and therefore unfettered by language barriers. As a result, it is easily exportable to countries with native languages different from the language(s) of the performers. Early circus companies, realizing this, embarked on extensive international tours.
In 1836, the British equestrian Thomas Cooke visited the United States and brought back to England the American traveling-circus tent. This innovation was to ease the task of a group of European circus pioneers consumed by global ambitions. The most remarkable of these early touring companies was managed by the Italian equestrian Giuseppe Chiarini (1823-1897). In 1853, Chiarini left Europe for America, where he created his own circus and went to the unchartered territory (as far as circus was concerned) of Havana, then went to South America, crossed the Pacific, and landed in Japan in 1855. In 1864, he settled in Mexico and toured Chile and Argentina before returning to Europe in 1869. In 1874, he went to China and then sailed to Brazil. In 1878, the company embarked on a tour of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Singapore, Java, Siam, India, and South America. And so it went, until the death of the intrepid Italian in Guatemala in 1897.
The French equestrian Louis Soullier (1813-1888), who managed Vienna’s Circus at the Prater, toured the Balkans, settled for a time in Turkey, and then continued to China, where he introduced the circus in 1854. When he returned to Europe in 1866, he brought with him Chinese acrobats who in turn introduced traditional Chinese acts such as perch-poleLong perch held vertically on a performer’s shoulder or forehead, on the top of which an acrobat executes various balancing figures. balancing, diabolo-juggling, plate-spinning, hoop-diving, et al., to Western audiences.
Another French equestrian, Jacques Tourniaire (1772-1829), went to Russia in 1816, where he established the first Russian circus. After his death, his sons Benoit and François followed in his footsteps, touring extensively in Siberia and traveling to India, China, and America.
On account of such extensive traveling, the circus was a global phenomenon long before the concept became commonplace. As a result of their international character, traditional circus dynasties experienced some confusion concerning national identities. The German equestrian Carl Magnus Hinné (1819-1890) established circuses in Frankfurt, Warsaw, Copenhagen, and in 1868, St. Petersburg and Moscow, where he was later succeeded by his Italian brother-in-law, Gaetano Ciniselli (1815-1881). Thus German and Italian names like Hinné and Ciniselli became associated with Russia. The French Gautier family is known as a Scandinavian circus dynasty. Some of the German Schumanns became a household name in Denmark, although the “Danish” Schumanns are Swedish. The first “French” circus dynasty was founded by an Italian, Antonio Franconi. And so on…
European circus companies had ventured so far from home because they hoped to increase their profits. Their success in doing so was not lost on the handful of American circus entrepreneurs who would follow their lead.
Before entering into a partnership with P.T. Barnum in 1881, James Anthony Bailey (1847-1906) had embarked his Cooper & Bailey Circus on a trip to Honolulu, the Fiji Islands, Tasmania, the Dutch East Indies, Australia, New Zealand, and South America, a journey that lasted from 1876-78. After Barnum’s death, Bailey took their Barnum & Bailey “Greatest Show on Earth” on an extensive European tour, from 1897 to 1902, which introduced bewildered Europeans to P.T. Barnum’s gargantuan vision of the circus as a touring show that traveled nightly by special trains and, every day, set up and tore down immense canvas tents that housed an amalgam of triplicate circus, zoological exhibition, and freak-show.
If the three-ring format and the sideshow met with only middling enthusiasm, European circus owners were nonetheless impressed by Barnum & Bailey’s touring techniques, and menagerie owners, whose business was fading at the time, were quick to recognize the advantages of adding a traveling circus to their zoological exhibitions. Thus, the tented circus and menagerie developed in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century.
When Bailey returned to the U.S. in 1902, he found his old market under the control of serious competition: the giant circus conglomerate created by the Ringling Brothers, Al (1832-1916), Otto (1837-1911), Alf T. (1863-1919), Charles (1864-1926), and John (1866-1936). One year after Bailey’s death in 1906, the Ringlings acquired Barnum & Bailey, which they combined with their own circus in 1919 under the title Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows.
In Europe, the traveling circus and menagerie reached its peak between the two World Wars, especially in Germany, where the flamboyant traveling enterprises of Krone, Sarrasani and Hagenbeck dominated the market. In large cities, however, circus performances were still given in circus buildings; Sarrasani had its own building in Dresden, Krone in Münich, Hagenbeck in Stellingen, and Paris alone maintained four permanent circuses. This, of course, created a demanding audience (in large cities, at least) who had grown accustomed to a degree of comfort and a fairly high level of production values in their elegant circus buildings. While in the U.S. the tenting techniques developed by W.C. Coup would remain practically unchanged for over a century, German and Italian tent-makers—and later French—constantly developed new systems for circus tents and seating, which eventually made some European traveling circuses nearly as comfortable and production-efficient as any permanent building.
Evolution of the Circus Performance
Palmyre Annato, circus star of the 19th century (1840)
Changes weren’t restricted to the commercial and physical aspects of the circus. The performance had evolved considerably since Astley and, at the turn of the twentieth century, was undergoing fundamental changes.
From its inception, the core of the circus performance had been equestrian acts (trickAny specific exercise in a circus act.-riding, bareback acrobatics, dressage or High School, presentation of horses “at liberty”Liberty act”, “Horses at liberty”: Unmounted horses presented from the center of the ring by an equestrian directing his charges with his voice, body movements, and signals from a ”chambrière” (French), or long whip.,” and even comedy on horseback) interspersed with acrobatic, balancing, and juggling acts. Dibdin and Hughes had added to that original fare the pantomimeA circus play, not necessarily mute, with a dramatic story-line (a regular feature in 18th and 19th century circus performances)., a dramatic presentation which traditionally ended the performance and involved a good amount of tumbling, clowning (not necessarily mute), and equestrian displays. Pantomimes often reenacted famous battles which, true to Astley’s spirit, gave equestrian performers a good opportunity to demonstrate “the different cuts and guards as in real action” or “a general engagement, sword in hand, with the different postures of offence, for the safety of man and horse…” [From an old Astley’s handbill] Pantomimes remained extremely successful during the nineteenth century and survived under various forms well into the twentieth. The last notable circus pantomimeA circus play, not necessarily mute, with a dramatic story-line (a regular feature in 18th and 19th century circus performances). was a spectacular adaptation of Lewis Wallace’s Ben Hur which the French circus Gruss performed for several years in the 1960s.
Although in the middle of the nineteenth century equestrians, male and female, were still the true stars of the circus, acrobats began getting more and more attention. Not surprisingly, it started with acrobats on horseback, especially Americans such as John H. Glenroy, who accomplished the first somersault on horseback in 1846. “Floor” acrobats were also quick to make their mark. The best of them were often clowns. At first, circus clowns were essentially skilled parodists who might talk, sing, ride a horse, juggle, present trained animals, do balancing acts, or tumble. In the first half of the nineteenth century, an English clownGeneric term for all clowns and augustes. ”’Specific:”’ In Europe, the elegant, whiteface character who plays the role of the straight man to the Auguste in a clown team., Little Wheal, became famous for regularly performing a hundred consecutive somersaults in tempo—quite a feat, then or now.
Paris’s Cirque d’Hiver (2011)
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tight-rope dancers were the fairgrounds’ undisputed stars and were among the first acrobats to appear in the circus ring. There, they developed an adaptation of their art which would eventually become one of the circus’s most prized attractions: the trapeze. They began by swinging on and hanging from a slack rope. Eventually, a bar was added in the middle of the ropes while the half ropes on each side moved toward a vertical position. With that, the trapeze was born. In 1859, a French gymnast, Jules Léotard (1838-70), presented at Paris’s Cirque Napoléon (today Cirque d’Hiver) an act titled La Course aux Trapèzes, in which he jumped from one trapeze to another. Léotard had invented the flying trapezeAerial act in which an acrobat is propelled from a trapeze to a catcher, or to another trapeze. (See also: Short-distance Flying Trapeze), for which he became the toast of Europe—as much for his act as for the revealing costume he originated and which is still used today by acrobats and dancers, the leotard.
By the close of the nineteenth century, railways and automobiles had begun to replace horses. Although major European circuses were still operated by equestrian families, equestrian displays were losing their supremacy to trainers of exotic animals (especially big cats), acrobats, aerialists, jugglers, and clowns. While some trained exotic animals had appeared early in circus history—around 1812 at Paris’s Cirque Olympique, the Franconis presented Kioumi, the first trained elephant—it was the European combination of circus and menagerie that triggered the vogue of wild-animal presentations, which were developed in large part in Germany by the Hagenbecks, the world’s foremost importers and dealers of exotic animals. Another significant transformation factor was a renewed interest in gymnastics and physical activities (which led to the resurrection of the Olympic Games in 1896) at a time when few gymnasts could be seen outside the circus.
The End of the Equestrian Circus
Student show at the Moscow Circus School (1974)
After World War I, the traditional equestrian circus was just a memory. Its legendary stars—Andrew Ducrow, Laurent Franconi, François Baucher, Ernst Renz, Oscar Carré, Albert Schumann, among others—had been replaced by the likes of triple-somersaulter Alfredo Codona on the flying trapezeAerial act in which an acrobat is propelled from a trapeze to a catcher, or to another trapeze. (See also: Short-distance Flying Trapeze), Con Colleano dancing on the tight wireA tight, light metallic cable, placed between two platforms not very far from the ground, on which a wire dancer perform dance steps, and acrobatic exercises such as somersaults. (Also: Low Wire), juggling legend Enrico Rastelli, and star-clowns such as François, Paolo & Albert Fratellini, Grock, and Charlie Rivel. (Clowns in Europe had remained true to their theatrical roots and maintained an important role in the circus. In America, however, victims of both the size of the tents and the three-ring format, they became speechless characters confined to oversized visual gags.)
The most consequential early-twentieth-century innovation in the circus, however, occurred in Russia. In 1919, Lenin nationalized the Russian circuses, and the vast majority of their performers, natives of Western Europe, fled the country. Faced with the task of training a core of uniquely Russian performers, the Soviet government established, in 1927, the State College for Circus and Variety Arts, better known as the Moscow Circus School. Not only did the school rejuvenate the Russian circus, it also developed training methods modeled after sport-gymnastics, created original presentations with the help of directors and choreographers, and even originated innovative techniques and apparatuses that led to the invention of entirely new kinds of acts.
When, in the late 1950s, the Moscow Circus (a generic name adopted by all Soviet circus companies touring abroad) started showing in the West, those trained by the Soviet school contrasted favorably with those trained by the traditional circus families. Russian performers displayed originality, unparalleled artistry, and amazing technique, whereas the rest just repeated themselves in a desperate attempt to compete with both the Russian innovations and increasing competition from movies, radio, and television, which they did using the only weapons at their disposal: time-tested traditional acts. But resistance to change had transformed tradition into routine. The old circus families were losing touch with their audience’s ever-transforming world.
Circus Today
Old circus performers may have resisted change, but a few producers, at least, tried to shake up the shows in which they appeared by modernizing staging, lighting, musical accompaniment, and more: John Ringling North in the U.S.; Bertram Mills and his sons, Cyril and Bernard, in England; and Jérôme Medrano in Paris. Eventually, the new Russian style prevailed. In 1974, Annie Fratellini (heiress to the famous clowning dynasty) and Alexis Gruss, Jr. (heir to the last French equestrian dynasty) created in Paris the first two western circus schools. Both incorporated a performing arm—a circus in which creation was paramount—though both schools retained a more or less traditional approach. (Alexis Gruss called his circus Le Cirque à l’Ancienne, the Old-Time Circus.)
There was obviously a strong planetary need for a circus renaissance: That same year (1974), in Adelaide, Australia, a young company of clowns, acrobats and aerialists that called itself “New Circus” began to perform and attract attention. It was followed a year later by the Soapbox Circus; both companies merged in 1977, to become Circus Oz. Meanwhile, in 1975, Larry Pizoni and Peggy Snyder launched the grassroots Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco, then the epicenter of the American counterculture movement.
Perhaps not coincidentally, all these changes came at a time when European intellectuals—mostly French—were fretting over the decline of the circus as a performing art. In 1975, Prince Rainier of Monaco (a longtime circus enthusiast) created the International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo, whose Gold and Silver Clown awards would become to the circus world what the Oscar® is to the movie industry. It was followed in 1977 by Paris’s Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain (World Festival of the Circus of Tomorrow), created to showcase and promote a new generation of circus performers, mostly trained in circus schools.
The Big Apple Circus at Lincoln Center (2010)
In this atmosphere, the Gruss/Fratellini model quickly stimulated other experiments. In 1977, Paul Binder and Michael Christensen, who had performed as jugglers with Fratellini, created the New York School for Circus Arts and its performing branch, the Big Apple Circus, which reintroduced the classical one-ring circus to America. The same year, Bernhard Paul and André Heller created Circus Roncalli in Germany, restoring the lost flamboyance of the German circus of yore. In Montréal, Canada, Guy Caron founded the Ecole Nationale de Cirque (National Circus School) in 1980, and in 1984, Guy Laliberté created the innovative Cirque du Soleil, with Caron as its first Artistic Director. All were outsiders whose enterprises, each in its own way, were highly creative and gave a much-needed boost to the circus (and for Cirque du Soleil, a drastically different image). They also had a profound influence on the development of a “new circus” movement, which redefined the circus as a performing art, and on changes in the artistic and commercial attitude of many of the traditional circuses.
In 1985, the French government created the Centre National des Arts du Cirque, a professional circus college on the Russian model. Other schools, often private not-for-profit entities and with varying degrees of professionalism, were established in England, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Australia, Brazil, and the U.S., among others, adding their numbers to the circus schools already in existence in the former Eastern Bloc.
Although China has a 2000-year-old acrobatic theater tradition of its own, its many troupes—similarly to their Russisan counterparts—developed new training method]]s after the Communist revolution and found themselves welcome participants in the circus renaissance. Director Valentin Gneushev (certainly the most influential director in the contemporary circus) opened his own studio in post-communist Moscow, while others opened specialized schools, like André Simard’s aerial-act studio, Les Gens d’R, in Canada.
The surge of teaching activity also led to the creation of a multitude of avant-garde and experimental circus companies, especially in England, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada (some of them extremely successful, such as the French “heavy metal” circus Archaos), as well as to a recent revival of the old variety theater, especially in Germany with the resurgence of German “varieté(German, from the French: ”variété”) A German variety show whose acts are mostly circus acts, performed in a cabaret atmosphere. Very popular in Germany before WWII, Varieté shows have experienced a renaissance since the 1980s.”. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the circus, which has always been a highly adaptable performing art, is undergoing cosmetic changes and a new expansion.
Tags: Circus, circus history, circus news
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SunEdison Sets Bankruptcy Exit With Nothing for Shareholders
0 comments Posted by SARTRE at 6:13 PM
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/sunedison-sets-bankruptcy-exit-with-nothing-for-shareholders
SunEdison Inc. won final approval for a bankruptcy plan that will leave what was once the world’s largest renewable-energy firm as a shell of its former self, with nothing for shareholders whose investment at one point had been worth about $10 billion.
SunEdison, known for gobbling up other companies and expanding at breakneck speed, will now exit Chapter 11 to “continue business operations to administer and maximize the value of the company’s remaining assets,” including intellectual property and fixtures, Chief Financial Officer Philip Gund said in court filings.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein’s approval of the reorganization plan in Manhattan court Tuesday came as he overruled remaining objections from shareholders as well as two investors who had opposed the company’s exit financing. He noted that many shareholders had emailed him to object to the plan, and that he would issue a written ruling explaining his decision to approve the reorganization in despite of their protests.
Bernstein said there was no evidence of bad faith in the negotiation of exit financing, as had been alleged by CNH Partners LLC and AQR Capital Management LLC, holders of second-lien debt. Left out of the exit financing, they had alleged that the company had essentially bought the votes of other second-lien creditors that had agreed to fund it in exchange for stock in the reorganized company.
Bleak Prospects
When SunEdison first sought court protection in April 2016, things looked bleak for creditors and its two companies known as yieldcos created to buy the wind and solar projects it built, TerraForm Power Inc. and TerraForm Global Inc., whose finances were deeply entwined with their parent. The bankruptcy covered $16.1 billion in liabilities and a tangle of 1,500 legal entities, including individual wind and solar projects still in development.
SunEdison managed to settle disputes with the yieldcos and negotiate a sale for some of its more prized projects. Its crowning achievement was the sale of its yieldco stakes to Brookfield Asset Management Inc.
SunEdison’s second-lien debt holders participating in the exit financing will get 90 percent of the company’s new common stock as well as 90 percent of Class A shares in TerraForm Power in exchange for backing a rights offering designed to raise $300 million for the bankruptcy exit, according to court filings.
The reorganized company’s modest agenda also includes completing transactions for remaining assets that are being sold, and maximizing the recovery of tax refunds, court filings show.
Management Actions
The plan also settles some disputes over what caused the company to fail. These included the actions of executives and directors, and how SunEdison created and used the two TerraForms to deliver yield to investors hungry for wind and solar investments. The pacts resolve issues that are all “highly contentious, complex, multi-party issues that would each raise their own risks and factual challenges if litigated,” Chief Executive Officer John Dubel wrote in a court filing.
Those measures helped unsecured creditors, who had once expected to get nothing. They secured $32 million in proceeds of directors and officers’ insurance through settlements, and $18 million through negotiations with the yieldcos. They will be repaid through a trust, seeded with those funds, which also has the rights to pursue lawsuits over the company’s demise. While the settlements limit potential lawsuits, court papers note that some claims related to fraud, willful misconduct or gross negligence are still possible.
Secured creditors, including some who rolled over their pre-bankruptcy debt into a new loan at the outset of the Chapter 11 case, will be repaid in full with cash, according to court papers. This group includes banks that provided the company with an operating loan to keep funding projects in bankruptcy.
More Lawsuits
A debtor-in-possession or DIP loan from Deutsche Bank AG as administrative agent at the outset of the case was repaid by a second DIP loan in April. The second DIP was arranged by Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs Lending Partners LLC and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Deutsche, Goldman and other funds were also lenders, according to court papers.
The reorganization doesn’t affect ongoing lawsuits from SunEdison’s common shareholders, who pursued the company’s former management. A spokesman for SunEdison didn’t return a call and email seeking comment.
Even as the reorganization draws to a close, letters from more than 100 disgruntled shareholders continue to roll in for the judge, and a group to represent them continued to object. They questioned how the company ran through $24 billion in financing, leaving nothing for them. They also complained that they were left in the dark about how assets were valued and sold.
“I have significant value in this company which will affect my family,” shareholder Piyush Patel wrote in a July 5 letter to Bernstein, complaining that an independent financial audit of the company was never done.
“SunEdison flew too close to the sun and landed in Manhattan bankruptcy court,” Nathan Serota, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in an email last week. “During the Chapter 11 process, the company lost nearly all of the the assets and personnel that -- for better or worse – defined it in the first place.”
The case is In re SunEdison Inc., 16-10992, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). The shareholder lawsuits are 16-02742, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
SunEdison sets bankruptcy exit as judge OKs reorganization plan
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3281232-sunedison-sets-bankruptcy-exit-judge-oks-reorganization-plan?uprof=46&dr=1#email_link
SunEdison (OTCPK:SUNEQ) wins final approval for a bankruptcy plan that will leave nothing for shareholders whose investment once had been worth ~$10B.
SUNE will exit Chapter 11 to “continue business operations to administer and maximize the value of the company’s remaining assets,” according to court filings.
SUNE’s second-lien debt holders participating in the exit financing will get 90% of the company’s new common stock as well as 90% of Class A shares in TerraForm Power (NASDAQ:TERP) in exchange for backing a rights offering designed to raise $300M for the bankruptcy exit.
Now read: SunEdison's Confirmation Hearing Is On July 20 - The End To This Saga »
Rick Perry: Trump may try to preempt state renewable energy policies
0 comments Posted by SARTRE at 5:59 AM
During an on-stage interview, Perry was asked if the administration would interfere with state policies requiring utilities to get power from renewable sources. Such a move would potentially destroy efforts by California, New York and other states to fight climate change by encouraging the growth of clean power.
Perry didn’t rule it out, saying the reliability of the grid was a matter of national security.
“That’s a conversation that will occur over the next few years,” Perry said. “There may be issues that are so important that the federal government can intervene.”
SunEdison Sets Bankruptcy Exit With Nothing for Sh...
SunEdison sets bankruptcy exit as judge OKs reorga...
Rick Perry: Trump may try to preempt state renewab...
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Civitots
E: mjohnson@civitasinc.com
Meet the rest of us.
Mark Johnson,
FASLA, President
Mark brings over 35 years of experience as a landscape architect and his creative leadership guides designers, project teams, and clients to push the edges of how we work to realize new ways to deliver project value. He worked at Maas and Grassi, an Ogden Utah design firm, where he learned how to transform ideas into built work for residences, campuses and the design of retail streets. After a brief time with Roy Mann Associates in Cambridge, Mark landed his first dream job with Jones & Jones of Seattle. There he worked on several zoo exhibits, urban plazas and streets, parks and several major river plans. He left Seattle to earn an MLA in Urban Design at Harvard, where he found important mentors in Peter Walker, Moshe Safdie, and Jose Luis Sert. These great designers and thinkers fueled Mark’s passion to make a real difference in how cities work for both people and the environment. His Harvard thesis, chaired by Moshe Safdie, focused specifically on how urban form responds to dramatic cultural, economic and environmental change, establishing Mark’s commitment to adaptable + resilient urbanism fully 30 years ahead of today’s focus on these issues.
Since co-founding Civitas in 1984 Mark has led major public space projects, urban design plans and strategies, and has become widely known for his impact on several cities, on education, and on the role that landscape architects can play in leading complex projects to successful results. He is a natural communicator who has led many communities through challenging programming and design conditions and he has established Civitas as a leading firm on a national and international level.
Mark is a regular lecturer at AIA, ASLA, APA, ULI events and a participant in many issue driven symposia around the world, notably the International Academy of Design and Health, with whom he has lectured in North America, Europe, Scandinavia, and Asia on the role of community design in promoting public health. He has been on many design juries for national awards and competitions, was Chair of the Editorial Committee of Landscape Architecture Magazine, and is a founder of the CEO Roundtable, an independent association of the leaders of the top landscape firms in the world that has met bi-annually for more than 15 years to assess impacts and trends in the profession
Mark is a leading designer and thought leader who has spearheaded Civitas’ most challenging projects. He began his career at Utah State University where he received his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture. He worked at Maas and Grassi, an Ogden Utah design firm, where he learned how to transform ideas into built work for residences, campuses and the design of retail streets. After a brief time with Roy Mann Associates in Cambridge, Mark landed his first dream job with Jones & Jones of Seattle. There he worked on several zoo exhibits, urban plazas and streets, parks and several major river plans. He left Seattle to earn an MLA in Urban Design at Harvard, where he found important mentors in Peter Walker, Moshe Safdie, and Jose Luis Sert. These great designers and thinkers fueled Mark’s passion to make a real difference in how cities work for both people and the environment. His Harvard thesis, chaired by Moshe Safdie, focused specifically on how urban form responds to dramatic cultural, economic and environmental change, establishing Mark’s commitment to adaptable + resilient urbanism fully 30 years ahead of today’s focus on these issues.
© 2019 Civitas. All Rights Reserved. Created by (in)spiregraphics
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The understanding and meaning of strategy has got lost
Thread: The understanding and meaning of strategy has got lost
A critique of the contemporary Anglo-US approach to conflict by Oxford University's Professor Hew Strachan, in a new book 'The Direction of War' and a short press story:
The understanding and meaning of strategy has got lost, confused or become stripped of meaning..Without strategic thought (or clear understanding of strategy) our execution of war aims is inevitably bungled – we didn’t know what to do or how we wanted to do it in Iraq and Afghanistan.
An anonymous 'senior officer' commented:
We as soldiers have a responsibility to ensure the options and advice we give are good and sensible material to make decisions from. On the statesman side, over the last 10 years, I don’t think they have been terribly clever about trying to understand the art of the possible. Too much has been taken for granted and not enough time taken to understand the nature of the problems we are throwing the forces into.
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...y-adviser.html
Who is the author? From the press story:
Sir Hew, Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford, has advised the Coalition on its treatment of the Armed Forces. He currently sits on the Chief of the Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel, and advises the UK Defence Academy, which trains senior officers.
His official bio:http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/people.php?personid=67
My own view is that the British government, under all parties, has one overwhelming strategic objective - to follow the USA when and where it can. Or as one scathing critic put as the First Gulf War began "We are America's Ghurkha". All else follows from that decision.
Invariably reference is made to the 'Special Relationship' between the UK and the USA, established with difficulty in WW2 and maintained since then. As others have written the USA has many such relationships with allies, what remains special (shared with the 'Five Eyes') is the close relationship between their intelligence agencies and their military.
The book is available for pre-publication purchase; a couple of short reviews too, Petraeus & Richards, and don't forget there is a Small Wars Amazon purchase button at: http://smallwarsjournal.com/content/support
Link to Amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/The-Direction-.../dp/1107047854
Link to Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Directio.../dp/B00GA22YFQ
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-09-2014 at 11:25 AM.
From a "lurker":
Sir Hew does not lack bravery - 'head above parapet', or what?
Obama has no sense of what he wants to do in the world.
The Daily Beast has now interviewed Sir Hew Strachan, with some pithy comment here citing the “crazy” handling of the Syrian crisis as the most egregious example of a fundamental collapse in military planning that began in the aftermath of 9/11:
If anything it’s gone backwards instead of forwards, Obama seems to be almost chronically incapable of doing this. Bush may have had totally fanciful political objectives in terms of trying to fight a global War on Terror, which was inherently astrategic, but at least he had a clear sense of what he wanted to do in the world. Obama has no sense of what he wants to do in the world...
On what the professional should do. Part of the problem, Strachan contends, is that politicians are unduly worried about allowing military leaders to give frank and open advice. He criticized the way General Stanley McCrystal was forced to resign after making unflattering remarks about his political bosses in Washington:
The concern about the military speaking out shows a lack of democratic and political maturity. We’re not facing the danger of a military coup. The professional experts, who deal with war all the time, should be able to express their views all the time, openly and coherently, just as you would expect a doctor or a teacher to express their views coherently about how you run medical policy or teaching policy...
Link:http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...the-world.html
Hat tip to Professor John Schindler, of NWC and a blogsite. His comment via Twitter:
FYI Sir Hew Strachan is the most eminent military historian in the Anglosphere; these comments are devastating.
Originally Posted by davidbfpo
This sums it nicely, Bush was astrategic and Obama is lost. The point about politicians not listening to military leaders is a point I have trying to make with Carl on another post. GEN Shinseki told Rumsfeld and others what size force it would take to stabilize Iraq was laughed at. An Army General that took the study of war seriously (not all do) and was a selfless servant was laughed at by an idiot SECDEF because his sound advice for winning didn't conform to the popular political hubris at the time.
Bob's World
Much of what has violently challenged us in the past couple of decades is not truly "war," so while certainly US leadership has been strategically confused in terms of what it has tried to do and how it has tried to do it, I would add that Sir Hew is equally confused in his assessment.
While war is violence and war is politics, not all violence is war nor is all politics war either.
Conditions put in place for implamenting a containment strategy for the pre-globalized era of the Cold War certainly were not somehow conditions designed to extend indefinitely into a rapidly evolving world.
Most of the conflict we deal with today is a function of populations (many held artificially static by a wide range of factors) are now released and evolving in their expectations of governance far faster than the systems of governance perceived to be affecting them are either able or willing to evolve along with them. The result is friction and conflict.
Domestic policies lag and the result (when inadequate legal, certain and trusted mechanisms for change exist) is illegal politics - better known as revolutionary insurgency. This may manifest violently or through more peaceful, but equally illegal, tactics.
When foreign policies lag the result is not unlike what occurs during a physical foreign occupation. A de facto "occupation by policy" that generates a very similar resistance insurgency energy that enables organizations such as AQ to rise to the degree of influence they hold these past several years and results in acts of protest and transnational terrorism.
This is not great mystery, but neither is much of it "war."
Governments, being made up of politicians, do not take responsibility for their short comings, but rather blame them on those who dare to challenge them. So we attack the symptoms, and largely leave the true causes of this negative energy unaddressed. Too often our efforts to attack the symptoms make the problems worse...
Last edited by Bob's World; 01-17-2014 at 12:46 AM.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
TheCurmudgeon
I will have to disagree with Sir Hew on … pretty much everything. First, his comments would lead one to believe that the ONLY way a politician can effect foreign policy is though war. There are no other instruments of national power. I will take that a step further, he gives the impression that any use of military capabilities less than war are inept: that deterrence through the threat of force is not the appropriate way to use the military. Second, he seems to be under the impression that national sovereignty is a passé concept the Anglo-American Alliance is the world’s police force. What exactly was he expecting us to do in Syria? Backing away from intervention in a conflict with multiple players none of whom have interests aligned with ours seems to me to be prudent, not clueless. Third, he believes that all military decisions in a democracy should be made in public. I doubt very highly that the press was invited to Churchill’s daily briefings or that polls were held on his policies. All in all, I get the impression that he is a bitter man who misses the days of the Bush-Blair confederacy – the endless war on “evil” that made the military strategists an indispensible asset.
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 01-17-2014 at 02:55 PM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
As for the relationship between President’s and the military, that is a subject that seems to rely mostly on the nature of the politician and the military leaders. Lincoln fired Generals until he found one he felt could fight and win. Truman fired a General because he thought that General wanted to fight and win at costs greater than Truman thought the world should bear. Bush fired Generals until he found one he felt would fight on his terms. Obama hasn’t really fired any Generals – they seem to have engineered their own demise – but Gate’s book would indicate that he does not fully trust them: that they wanted to fight beyond the point of deminishing returns. Who was right and who was wrong is a matter of speculation, but no one seems to be seriously arguing that the military should have free reign when it comes to executing war. If you believe that war is an instrument of policy, then the policy makers should decide the nature of the war.
And so we come to the problem of politicians not understanding “the art of the possible”. I would agree. But I don’t think the military understands it any better. What was militarily “possible” in Iraq and Afghanistan was accomplished. We then ran up against was a problem in the nature of the relationship between the military and their civilian masters. The civilians wanted us to fix the problem they created and the military is not in a position to say no. We say “no”, we get fired or must resign. The nature of civil-military relations gives the military commander no other options. Sure, they can always find a friendly Congressman to “force” them to testify that what the President wants is a bad idea, but that is still a political solution. Add to that the fact that you will always be able to find a General eager to get into the fight – even if they don’t understand what is “possible” any better than the politician – and the result is the military taking on missions they are unsuited for and cannot possibly accomplish. I have no solution to this problem.
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Conference on Understanding and Improving Intelligence Analysis
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Recognizing and Understanding Revolutionary Change in Warfare
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afghanistan, alliances, iraq, strategy, united kingdom, usa, war
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The Pros and Cons of TradeLink
Thread: The Pros and Cons of TradeLink
TradeLink is a 100% open source trading platform. That means it doesn't cost you any money to use it, and if you're a programmer you're free to modify it to do anything you might want.
According to their testimonials:
"Tradelink provides a firm foundation to build upon. You don't have to reinvent the wheel and so much is provided out of the box and that functionality is always growing."
"I use Tradelink because I want to use C# rather than other platform dependant language like MQL to implement automatic trading strategies"
If you're a C# programmer as well as a trader it sounds like it has a lot to offer. What if you're not a programmer though, or if you are a programmer but you're not keen on .NET?
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one - Albert Einstein
Quick Navigation TradeLink Top
.net, automated trading, c sharp, open source, tradelink
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Home / compendium decisions / Ouagadougou Labour Court, Zongo and othe...
Ouagadougou Labour Court, Zongo and others v. owner of the Bataille du Rail Mobil garage, 17 June 2003, No. 090
Constitution of Burkina Faso
Treaties or agreements which have been duly ratified or adopted shall upon their publication have a higher authority than the laws, provided that each agreement or treaty is applied by the other party.
Dismissal , Protection of wages , Minimum wages
Use of international law as a guide for interpreting domestic law , Reference to international law to strengthen a decision based on domestic law
Unfair termination of a contract/ Failure to respect fixed minimum wages/ Reference to international law to strengthen a decision based on domestic law/ Use of international law as a guide for interpreting domestic law
All three plaintiffs were employed by the defendant as petrol pump attendants. On 30 April 2001, the defendant informed them, through individual notes, that their contract of employment was being terminated, with no explanation or prior notice. The plaintiffs, deeming their dismissal illegitimate, turned to the Labour Inspection in a bid to settle the dispute amicably. When this attempt failed, they went to the Labour Court.
After deciding that the termination of the contracts of employment was unlawful, the Court looked at the different claims by the plaintiffs, including that of the right to recover outstanding wages because of failure to respect fixed minimum wages for their job category. The Tribunal saw that the wages paid to the plaintiffs were below the minimum rates set by the decisions of the Interprofessional Joint Committee on 12 March 1997 and 24 May 1999, respectively. The Court therefore concluded that Article 20(5) of the Labour Code had been infringed. That article states: “An employer must pay the wages and allowances duly stipulated in the texts of regulations, agreements and contracts.”
In addition, to confirm its reading of Article 20(5) and acknowledge the compulsory nature of the minimum wages, the Court referred to ILO Conventions Nos. 26 and 131 on ways of setting minimum wages. Burkina Faso had ratified the two Conventions.
The Court noted that Article 3(3) of ILO Convention No. 26 obliged employers and workers to respect fixed minimum wage rates:
“Article 3(3) of ILO Convention No. 26 on minimum wage-fixing machinery (…) stipulates that the minimum rates of wages which have been fixed shall be binding on the employers and workers concerned; they are not to be lowered by them, neither by individual agreement nor, except with the authorization of the competent authority, by collective agreement.”
The Court also referred to Article 2(1) of ILO Convention No. 131, which stipulates that “minimum wages shall have the force of law and shall not be subject to abatement”.
Lastly, to enable the plaintiffs to recover the sum thereby due to them, the Court again drew on ILO Conventions Nos. 26 and 131:
“[Given] that Article 4 [of Convention No. 26] says (…) that a worker to whom the minimum rates are applicable and who has been paid wages at less than these rates shall be entitled to recover, by judicial or other legal proceedings, the amount by which he has been underpaid, subject to such limitation of time as may be determined by national laws or regulations. It should be added that Convention No. 131, concerning minimum wage fixing, with special reference to developing countries, of 1970, ratified by decree 74-42 of 4 March 1974, stipulates in Article 2(1) that failure to apply them shall make the person or persons concerned liable to appropriate penal or other sanctions.”
The Ouagadougou Labour Court thus concluded that domestic law, interpreted in conformity with treaties which Burkina Faso had ratified, did not allow contractual derogation of the minimum wages set by the Interprofessional Joint Committee. Furthermore, when those minimum rates were not respected, the victim of the infringement was right to seek to recover the sums due, and the employer had to pay the entitlements that resulted from such an infringement.
1 ILO Convention on Minimum Wage-Fixing Machinery, 1928 (No. 26); ILO Convention on Minimum Wage Fixing, 1970 (No. 131).
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Congdon Orchards
Congdon Packing Co – Mead Ave
Congdon Packing Co – 64th Ave
ConAg Packing & Storage-Sawyer
About – Food Safety
Financial Statement Review
Shareholders Letter
2015 Hop Harvest
Congdon Ranch Locations
Dick Woodin, President, CEO
Dick Woodin has been an employee at Congdon Orchards since 1978, after earning his Bachelor of Arts in Economics at the University of Washington, joining Congdon Orchards as Supervisor of the Yakima orchards. Over the years he has gained experience in sales, packing and production, ultimately becoming General Manager in 1991, President of the Corporation in 2009 and Chief Executive Officer in 2011. Dick also serves as President of the Yakima Valley Canal Company, has served on several industry organizations, including the Yakima Valley Growers and Shippers Association where he is Past President and the Pear Bureau Northwest, where he currently serves as a Director. Dick also serves on the Board of Directors of First Fruits Marketing of Washington. In 2011 Dick was awarded the Silver Pear Award by the Washington State Horticultural Association.
Mark Blore, General Manager
Mark Blore has been in the fruit industry since September 1982 in various capacities. After earning his Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration at Central Washington University in 1981 Mark continued his education by attending JM Perry Institute and graduating in 1982 with a degree in Refrigeration Heating and Air Conditioning. During his years in the fruit industry he gained experience in operations through his work in maintenance, both in production and refrigeration. Mark joined Congdon Orchards in 2009 as Assistant General Manager, ultimately becoming General Manager in 2011. He has served on several industry committees throughout his career.
Bob Martin, Chief Financial Officer
A Central Washington University graduate in 1980 with an Accounting major, Bob has worked as the CFO for Congdon Orchards since 2007. Prior to that, he was a medical administrator for various entities for 20 years. He also has served on the board of directors for several nonprofit organizations such as the Association of Otolaryngology Administrators, The March of Dimes and currently the president elect of Entrust Community Services.
Pamela Tabert
Pam has been employed at Congdon Orchards, Inc since November 1990. She currently manages the Payroll Department, Human Resources and L&I accounts as the company Office Manager. Pam earned her AA from YVCC and attended Central WA University. She is a member of the State WISHA advisory committee representing Ag since 2012. She has served and is currently serving with many volunteer organizations in the Yakima Valley.
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